“Fire!” The cry shattered the woodland’s calm, sending startled animals fleeing from its source. Alarmed, Wealdwend turned her eyes to the sound. “Fire in the forest!” Her feet beat the ground as she hastened toward it, sending foliage rustling and the shapes of small creatures scurrying away. She didn’t know what she would do when she got there, but she needed to go. Her mentors had taught her how dangerous a forest fire could be. It must not reach the Pale Tree, she knew. The Dream had afforded her no wisdom about forest fires, but in the three years since she woke she’d seen plenty of cookfires and torches. She’d scarcely been burned, though; she knew enough to stay well away from them. Still, she had always imagined a forest fire would smell differently. She almost bowled the other sylvari over as she flew to the sound of his calls. “There!” he shouted, extending his arm to point down a green hollow, and Wealdwend sprinted in without question. Navigating the brush was a challenge, but she didn’t let it stop her. She had to help, if she could. “Just a little farther!” called the sylvari from somewhere behind her, even as thorns needled her by the dozen. Surely she was almost there. But the more she thrashed and strove, fighting to negotiate the thicket, the larger and more numerous those thorns seemed to grow. Then there was a shifting, a creaking, a rustling—and they tightened around her. Immobilized, she yelped in pain and struggled against her bindings. When she cried for help, the low cadence of a laugh only just touched her ears. Finally, she smelled the smoke. Her alarm turned to panic. Back in the Grove, her mentor had warned her about a new danger lurking in the umbrage. It was still nebulous and ill defined to her—and indeed to many of the Grove’s denizens—but he had cautioned her not to wander too far afield, lest she stumble upon such an evil. But as she had not heeded his advice, no one now heeded her bestial screams. The flames began to lick at her, darkening her soft yellow skin to a sickly brown, then to black. By the time it sloughed off it was little more than ash. Her screeching turned to desperate choking as the scorching smoke stung her lungs. Her fronds burned hot and quick, taking her ears with them. Her sap sizzled and dripped at her feet. The pain was incomparable, white-hot.
Wealdwend felt her muscles begin to curl and mute her frenzied thrashing. Finally, desperate for life, she tore herself away from the burned brambles. What was left of them carved a long, shallow laceration across her throat. She only managed to make it a few steps away before she fell, but it was enough to get her out of the blaze. She—if such a word was still appropriate—lay in a misshapen heap at the other sylvari’s feet. Robbed of her senses, she wheezed and wailed like an animal in its death throes. Such was her suffering that she would have gladly accepted death to escape it. But her aggressor looked down on her aberrant shape with approval. “You survived,” he noted. “That’s a good sign.” Kneeling, he pulled up her chin to peer into the blackened craters that used to cradle her eyes. His touch was like a second fire. “The road ahead of you is a hard one. Many who have trodden it have perished. But I swear to you, sister: After survival comes the surfeit.” The words echoed in the darkness that swallowed her world. Agony shunted her back to consciousness. She stirred with a whimper, then a wail. Something liminal suggested she wasn’t in the forest, that time had passed, but it was too faint to focus on and she had no way to gauge it. To the shuffle of footsteps she replied in a torn rasp. “Help me. Please.” “No,” came the familiar voice. “Help yourself. Feel your suffering. Learn from it. Grow.” Wealdwend’s body may as well have still been burning. Her lamentations echoed back to her. “Good,” he encouraged. “Remember this moment. Remember the despair. Listen to me. You’re going to lose everything. What you’re going to experience will chasten you until there’s nothing left. In a way, you’ll die—and if you falter, we’ll burn your body.”
He went on. “But you’ve already passed the first test.” She could feel pride swelling in his empathy. He asked, “What is your name?” “Wealdwend.” As soon as she spoke, she knew she’d made a mistake. His pride turned to disgust. “What use is there in hiding behind some insipid byword? If only you could see yourself now. I said tell me your name, you cretin.” “Embry,” she answered with a crackling sob. “Apt.” His demeanor softened. “When they tell you about forest fires, they tell you about the devastation. The choking smoke, the singeing cinders, the loss of life. Embry, do you know what happens after the fire burns itself out?” Pain clouded her thoughts. The conversation was hard to follow. She whined, “No.” “Idiot girl, think,” he snapped when his anger leapt toward a dangerous flashpoint. “You’re burnt, but you’ll live. What will happen to your body?” “Heal,” she guessed. “It’s forever changed, but it will heal. What they don’t tell you about forest fires is that when they’re over, the forest regrows with triple the verve. It’s louder, greener, more alive than it ever could have been without the fire that ruined it. “You have a choice: to stay blackened and withered and become nothing, or to ameliorate yourself and seize a life you could never have had unburnt—a life that is good and grateful for the burning.” When she gave no coherent answer, he continued in a gentler tone. “I don’t expect you to understand it now. But I want you to think about it as you’re healing and to hold fast to it in the days to come. It’s worth surviving. “Like the burnt forest, you lie now in the ashes of those who let the blaze swallow them whole. Whether you grow from them or become them is yours to decide.”