At least bring a bloody fire extinguisher, you tosser

The sky above the clearing was quickly covered in dark clouds. Sort you’d expect to see in the worst of the April Showers, you know the ones. ‘Cept there was no rain following these things.

Nah. All that followed those clouds was a rumbling like you wouldn’t believe, and a flash of light so bright it was hard to look at.

And another one.

And another.

And on and on for a good fifteen-to-twenty seconds. All the while, Court and I could do nothing but cover our eyes and ears until the blasted thing stopped.

By the time we opened them again, it was quite the bloody sight to behold. The dozens of lightning strikes had practically evaporated most of the oversized mongrels surroundings us, and those that were alive were scampering for the bloody hills.

Not because they were trying to get away from the lightning-wielding maniac (though I suspect that was part of it), but because of the obvious fucking thing that happens when a wooded area gets struck with lightning fifty bloody times without a single drop of rain.

“You set the whole feckin’ forest on fire, you special case!” I yelled at the numpty who looked way too bloody proud of himself.

“If it is to save my partner, I would burn far more than some old woods,” he said, somehow not seeing the glaring bloody issue here.

“Idiot! What good is saving her if we’re all going to die here!” Shouted Court at the fucking moron.

“Unless you want ‘er to die of third degree burns and carbon monoxide poisoning, I suggest you grab your bint and hold ya feckin’ breath while I think of a way to keep us all from an early meeting with Jehovah, you bellend!”

Seemingly finally realising what a massive fucking tosser he is, old Charlie boy ran over to the sickly looking girl cowering on the floor and covered both of them with his coat. Yeah, that’s right, cuddle up with the missus while I clean up the mess you bloody made. Prick.

“Court, I’ll be frank, I ain’t got a fuckin’ clue what I’m doing, but I’m guessing I can do something. Fire needs air to burn, right?”

“Well yes, but you’re not just fighting a fire mage, you can’t just put out the fire by controlling the air around it.”

“Maybe not, but a fire needs both air and fuel to keep going, dunnit? If I separate one from the other it should die down, right?”

Court tilted her head in confusion for a moment, then let out a gasp of shock.

“You want to trap the flames by localising the air around it?!”

“Unless you got a direct line to the magic fire service I ain’t see much of a choice.”

“But the epicentre would be directly above us! You misjudge the tiniest amount, or even just drop a bit of flaming debris on us or something, every one of us dies!”

“Do you got a better idea, love?”

“…can’t say I do.”

“Then you better hold your breath. The air might get a tad heavy.” I waited until Court gave me a hesitant nod of approval and buried her face in her coat, and then I held me wand above me head. “Cyclone!”

I hadn’t concentrated so hard since trying to perfectly time yelling ‘you fat bastard!’ at the Norwich goalie. A tornado wouldn’t do, since the centre of tornado was more dangerous than Hillsborough stadium. Had to balance it like a hurricane. Calm in the eye of the storm, with all the activity past a certain radius. Only instead of a careful balance of weather-related forces, it was just me and a ruddy stick.

Right nasty thing to control, it was. Managed to keep the flames at bay, but that ain’t mean some of that nasty air wasn’t drifting over this way. And I ain’t Brian Cox but it don’t take a bloody boffin to know that breathing smoke and feeling sleepy is a bit of a bad sign.

Didn’t matter. Was hardly a choice at that point. Just had to tough it out. Hold that stiff upper lip, just like old Queen Lizzie would have done.

Couldn’t see much over the smoke, but I could tell it was working. There was a wall of flame around us, high as the eye could see, but second by second it was thinning down.

At the same time, it was getting really feckin hot down there. Felt like a bloody sauna. Though most saunas are full of steam, not smog. Can’t say I liked the trade, to be frank.

All I could hope was that the fire would pack it in before me lungs or brain did.

Just had to hold on a bit longer…

“Arch! Arch, the flames are dead! You can stop now!” said a muffled voice next to me. Took me a good few seconds to realise what it was saying. Then I looked around me and, whaddya know, not a flame in sight. Wonder when that happened.

Now about all this bloody smoke…

“Don’t tell Macron about all this, yeah?” I said, feeling me legs give way beneath me. “Don’t reckon all this carbon is following the Paris agreement.”

“Arch? Arch, stay with me! Arch-!”

Figured it was time for a kip.