Entwine - third step

I sighed with relief, she was safe and it seemed that her mental condition was stable as well. Just in case I looked closely at Vio from each side.

“How was it?”

“Easy and fun… maybe a little scary at one point, but nothing I couldn’t handle. Onii-chan, let’s go and find a dark corner, I can’t wait to test out my power.”

Vio emerald eyes were shining with anticipation. This glaring difference in how she reacted to her first mana spot experience compared with my case was a bit hard to accept.

“Really now?”

That didn’t change the fact that I was curious about her ability and helped her to look for a suitable place, one without so many windows through which someone could be watching.

“Over there should be fine, come on, move.”

“Slow down.”

Violet ran behind the row of garages built on the side. There was a meter wide space between them and the concrete wall of someone’s possession and only one entrance as the other side was blocked by some stacked garbage. She waited for me to catch up and handed the piece of paper that once had been a ticket.

“Keep it in your outstretched hand and stand here, don’t move. Let’s do a range test.”

I did as she said and watched as Vio, with some difficulty - leaving deep footprints in the snow, measured the distance with her steps. She stopped after getting up to fifteen, turned back and stared intensively at the paper.

When nothing happened after ten seconds she moved a step closer, retracing her footprints, and repeated the process.

Telekinesis? Is that what she’s trying to test?

My guess was soon proved to be wrong. When Vio was about ten meters away, the paper I held began to smolder and a second later burst into an open flame. I dropped it into the snow.

"Onii-chan, did you feel any heat on your hand? I tried to focus on the paper, but was worried that you may be affected."

“No, I didn’t feel anything, but Vio… is this really what I think it is…”

“That’s right! Pyrokinesis! It’s great, right?”

A feeling of joy burst inside me like a bottle of a champagne. Truth to be told, behind it was a queue made out of the warning alerts that were waiting to be voiced but I didn't want to spoil her fun, at least not now.

“Wooooo~! My sister’s a red mage! Come on, show me more and tell me all about it!”

Her ability was hard to use and fire had many limitations, nevertheless, it would be a precious asset to raise our offensive abilities.

“Compared to my once-a-day-nii-chan I don’t have any limitations in this area, bow before the great me!”

“That’s great!”

“I can either set things on fire inside the ten steps range or raise the temperature in close proximity to myself and for example melt all the incoming snowflakes or the snow lying around. Watch this!”

She took a handful of snow and began melting.

“Good, good, what about throwing fireballs?”

“...”

With a slightly forced smile, Vio finished melting the snow on her hand and changed her focus to the surrounding piles of it, pretending not to hear anything.

“Fire arrows?”

“...”

“... a stream of fire? Even a small one is fine.”

With each of my questions, her initial enthusiasm visibly dropped by one level, my champagne of joy also ran out of gas.

Out of the tip of her pointing finger a thin strand of fire, about the length of a pencil, shot out for a second.

“Around this big… but it’s hot… I can only keep it going for a second or two before burning myself.”

Her ability turned out to be even harder to use than I thought.

“...”

When I was thinking about the possible usages of this power and everything we had to be careful about, she must have misunderstood my expression and immediately followed with:

“But it’s only the beginning! It can’t be helped, I’m raising both the active and the passive at the same time and the conversion rate is fifty percent so half of the mana is lost!”

I gestured to Vio, who was also trying to uplift her spirit with this statement, to get out of the growing puddle of water and come closer to me, so we could talk without raising our voices.

“What’s your passive? And the heck is that conversion rate you’ve mentioned?”

“Fire resistance, the more mana spots I conquer the stronger my flame is going to be and the less I will have to worry about burning myself. Yeo said that even my hair and clothes will be covered with a defensive layer after a certain point.”

There was a big problem with her answer - how did that demon had known what power she was going to obtain?

“… I don’t get it.”

“Give me your hand and stick close to me, I will prove to you that it’s useful!”

My little sister’s offended expression was cute. Violet had been really looking forward to obtaining her own ability and I had to be careful not to criticise it until she cooled down and looked at it with more distance or she could decide to set me on fire to prove her point. I had a feeling that the more she opened her heart, the more of her childish side was peeking from the inside of it. She was also gradually stopping to use the fake maturity and spout numerous insults as the backstage for her acting.

“Vio, don’t misunderstand. I’m not doubting the pyrokinesis usefulness and I can already feel that it’s getting warmer. I’m just curious as to how the mana spot conquering looked like in your case. Can you explain everything to me from the beginning?”

She didn’t answer.

We walked in silence on the snow-covered pavements, holding hands and leaving a watery trail of partially melted snow, which was already freezing a few meters behind us, creating a slippery trap. I was about to tell Vio to turn down the heating, but after glancing at her worried face I decided against it. It was dark and late anyway, there was no one other than us walking around and the rare passing car should be unable to notice anything.

Our next and at the same time the last goal was to retrieve Luna from the cemetery, it had to be done as fast as possible or the chances of finding her in the grave would drop considerably with each passing day.

Violet shook her head and sent me a small smile.

“Sorry onii-chan, you’re right I spiraled a bit down the wrong way, thank you for not laughing or saying that a lighter is more useful than this.”

A lighter may not be enough, but add to it a can of spray and it will overpower you.

“Of course I wouldn’t say anything like that. I can at least recognize when it’s time to be serious and when I can weave epic sagas about the endless justice plains of your chest.”

She snorted under her breath and returned to her usual cheeky expression.

“I wonder if this can be used to depilate my dumb-ni-chan legs, the same way they singe off the chicken feathers with a blowtorch.”

That’s how it should be.

“So, we still have a lot of walking in front of us… taxi?”

“Nah, it’s ok, I want to experiment some more with controlling the heat, in the meantime let me tell you everything that happened inside.”

“Look behind us.”

It seemed that her mood improved, so I changed my mind about the icy trail, it was too suspicious after all.

“Behind? Oh… I will turn it down a little. As for the mana spot… or not, I will start with my personal demon. His name is the 63rd demon of flames Yeolatrox. He looks like a three meter tall bald old man with a long burning beard, blazing mustaches, a set of pointy black horns and wears a loincloth. Scared the hell out of me when I woke up on the other side and saw this huge mass of muscles extending his brown hand in my direction. Without thinking I grabbed the slime rune and threw it straight at his face… the bloody orb exploded upon contact with his fire beard and… knocked him out for almost an hour.”

“Wait, you seriously knocked out your personal demon? I find it hard to believe...”

"I know, I couldn't believe it myself. For a moment I was even sure that he's dead and looked for a way out from that place, but didn't find anything. When he finally woke up he started laughing like crazy and said 'if you don't like candy then just say it, but I like your spirit!'."

“Candy?”

“The hand he extended at the beginning, he said that he wanted to make a good first impression and tried to give me some sweets. When I talked with him it soon turned out that he’s a good guy, he explained everything in more details than you did and there wasn’t any prelude phase or anything like that included.”

“Don’t trust that guy easily, he may be plotting something.”

“Um, I will keep it in mind. Anyway, the place I was in looked like a maneuvering area, you know like the one where people learn how to drive with all the different signs placed on it, but it was surrounded by a sea of lava from every side. It was quite hot, but Yeo gave me a bottle of ice cold water when I asked him for something to drink.”

“Life is unfair…”

“Heh, sorry ni-chan it will get more unfair from this point on. You know what my challenge mode is?”

“... eating candy?”

“Singing, acting, dancing and reciting, that’s how Yeo explained it.”

“The hell?”

"It's called Dazzling Performance and all I have to do it to please the summoned audience with my skills. I sang two songs and it was over. True, Yeo said that the bigger the spot, the harder it gets, but if I stick to the small ones then there's almost no chance for me to fail. However, if I will want to try my luck with medium ones then I will have to polish my repertoire."

Wasn’t it supposed to get harder the more you knew?! Is this some kind of discrimination against me or is that demon of hers helping her secretly? Seriously, what’s going on… but… it’s good, she should be safe thanks to it.

“What about this conversion you’ve mentioned earlier?”

“Oh, this. It’s about the reward I get from completing the challenge. It was supposed to be generated after leaving that place, but Yeo offered me a deal. He said that instead of placing my fate in the hands of luck, he would grant me the power of pyrokinesis as the active and fire resistance as the passive ability, but in exchange, he would take half of the rewarded mana every time I won the challenge.”

“And you’ve agreed.”

On the other hand, her lighthearted tone started to get on my nerves, she didn’t realize how painful it could get inside.

“Well yes, it’s a great power, that’s not limited by daily usage and after conquering some more mana spots it will be enough to destroy everything blocking our way. It will just take a bit longer to get to that point.”

I recalled how my first challenge had only one measly goblin included. Votr had also wanted to strike a deal with me at that time...

...no way... it can't be... is that fucktard... but it really got harder afterward.

When she had said ‘destroy everything’ I decided to move the priority of telling her about all the worries that were gathering inside me from the moment I had learned about her power.

“Vio, you do realize that your power is heavily limited, right?”

“Onii-chan what are you saying?”

“Listen to me please and remember that I’m not trying to undermine it, alright? This is all so that we can stand together as equals.”

Violet nodded and started listening to my explanation accompanied by the background sound of our steps crunching in the snow.

“First, you must be really careful while using it indoors, you never know what and when will catch fire and you should already know how easy it is to burn down our flat.”

“Heh, is that it? I’m not a little kid that has to be warned when given a box of matches.”

She waved her free hand as if trying to ward off unnecessary worries.

“Yeah, but let’s say that you grow to be a real firemaster. How do you plan on defending yourself against someone attacking you in our flat? By burning that person alive and our flat together with it? Or by only scarring them for life? Fire is good to scare off someone, but what if that won’t work? And like I’ve said, each indoor use is connected with the possibility of starting a fire. Even if you will be completely resistant to the temperature itself, what about oxygen? Carbon dioxide poisoning will get you before you even notice.”

There was more satisfaction in my voice then I wanted it to be.

“So what? I can still use it outside and it’s not as if I’m planning to burn anyone alive!”

She responded with a tone full of irritation and let go of my hand.

“And fry your brain with the seal? Or will you wait till everyone goes home first? Or what if you just wanted to use a bit, but the clothes of the person you used it on will catch fire and start melting for example? Can you extinguish-”

“Is reminding me of how useless I am really that much fun?”

She cut in the middle of my sentence with an ice-cold voice.

“What?”

“Even if the things you’re saying are true… do you really have to say them with this huge grin on your face?”

I touched my face with one hand and realized that I really was grinning from ear to ear. The perfect poker face that I was convinced should have been there, existed only in my mind. Without saying anything else, Violet turned back and started walking in the direction of our flat. Seeing that, I reached out one hand towards her, yet didn’t move and just said:

“Sorry.”

She kept walking.

“Vio I’m really sorry! I was jealous!”

She still kept walking, three more steps and Vio would disappear behind the corner.

“VIOLET! Please, I want you to go with me, I need your help!”

She stopped but didn’t turn back. I had only one chance.

The answers to this dilemma were many and they were mutually exclusive.

‘Leave the backpack before leaving, I will need the gas mask!’

‘Don’t leave me alone please! Let's grow stronger together right?!'

‘Screw everything I’ve said and let’s watch the world burn together!’

‘It’s not as if you are innocent!’

‘Come back here and let’s talk like equals do!’

… and others. But among all of them I’ve picked something entirely different, something that I hoped would become a representation of the bond between us, even if I weren't fully convinced if this was a safe and proper method:

“BECOME MY THESPIAN!”

Violet turned my way with a surprised expression.

“Become your what?”