The spell was, in fact, still going.
Lotus felt it, though she couldn't exactly describe what she was feeling, or how. The spell wasn’t drawing power from her anymore, the same way it took active concentration to hold something up in the air. That wasn't a good thing—a spell that she wasn't actively casting was a spell that she had no way to stop.
"It shouldn't be!" She stood up, stumbling away from his camera. The little toy woodpecker toppled off the side, clattering against the floor.
Lotus recoiled, her ears tucking firmly against her head. She wanted to run, to find somewhere dark and quiet to hide from what was happening. But she couldn't, not with Gus's growing terror, all attention focused firmly on her. She had to get away, had to find a way to flee—but she couldn't.
"Eric, there's something... I thought you said this didn't hurt!" He groaned, reaching towards his back. Something strained against his shirt there, pressed down until the cotton finally yielded, revealing something naked and bony protruding from his back.
There should be nothing at all, except there so clearly was, with the outlines of multiple bones under thin flesh.
He tried to stand, but made it only a few feet before dropping to one knee, reaching out for her. "G-god. Eric, h-help! You have to make it...stop!" His voice roared through the building, loud enough that Iron would definitely wake. But that was the least of her fears now.
Gus's eyes changed from brown to unnatural amber, fixed firmly on her. Gone was any pretense of using her false name. Only betrayal remained.
"I'm trying!" She flipped desperately through the book in front of her, scanning for anything that might help her stop a spell once it was set loose. It was like trying to learn rocketry in time to stop a failing vessel from crashing into the Pacific.
Your fault, whispered that little voice. Her doubt grew louder as she watched. Little black feathers erupted from his face, while his hands grew darker, sharper—bony. She took another few steps back, tail tucking behind her. The book tumbled out of her magical grip, clattering to the floor.
"I don't know what's happening! I was just trying to change your hair!" It didn't matter that she was telling him the truth, he just kept on transforming.
He stumbled forward, spasming briefly as whatever was happening to him made it unable for Gus to even keep standing vertically anymore. One hand smacked up against the wooden floor in front of him. His fingers looked more like claws by then, digging deep into the wooden tiles and leaving huge scratch marks behind.
She kept backing away, until her rump smacked against the far wall. But she could get no further, and that wasn't enough to stop from seeing what she’d done. This was exactly what Iron had warned her about, happening before her eyes!
She was just trying to change his hair color! Why was it going so wrong? "I don't—I don't understand!" she screamed, almost as loud as he was.
Of course it didn't matter how loudly she screamed, or how confident her voice was when she did it. The magic wasn't listening, the magic didn't care. Gus didn't stop changing. The pain didn't seem to stop either. He doubled over, clutching at his chest for a second time—or even lower. Something slipped out through his shorts, which were now too loose to hold up on their own. That something was a tail, covered in light-colored fur. Fur not feathers. What was going on?
The door banged open behind her, just a few inches away. Iron Feather stood there, somehow wearing most of his armor despite having been asleep before. Only the breastplate was off, probably thanks to his broken wing. He couldn't have put it on even if he wanted to.
"Lotus!" he yelled, dropping the spear onto the ground. His eyes moved from Gus hacking and coughing on the ground to the spellbook, to Lotus herself in just a few seconds. "Lotus, what have you done? Of all the magic to practice—didn't you give me your word?"
She had, and she had broken it. Iron was right, he'd been right from the beginning. Lotus hadn't cared, and now they all paid the price—starting with Gus.
Her friend curled up tighter, then started coughing. Blood oozed from his new beak, though she couldn't tell why. She still felt the magic on him, it wasn't going out of control the way the spellbook warned could happen and could be fatal to anyone who suffered it. She had done it perfectly!
It didn't matter if she thought it was perfect, of course. He kept changing, fur spreading across his body wherever she saw skin. Except for his face and neck, where she saw only more feathers, expanding by the second.
This isn't happening this isn't happening this isn't happening!
Iron Feather loomed over her, Gus kept crawling towards her, and her back was already up against the wall. Where else could Lotus run?
This is all your fault. You just made things much worse than they had to be. Gus will never forgive you. Iron will never forgive you. You don't deserve mercy.
Lotus couldn't flee any further. She couldn't stop the transformation from consuming Gus like a flame. She had never deserved contempt more in her life.
"I was doing my best!" she screamed, at nobody in particular. She couldn't look at Iron, couldn't bear to see the display of living body-horror taking place before her eyes. "I gave up my whole life to help you, Iron! This whole time I've been doing what you said, fighting to get you back to a world I've never heard of and care nothing about! I should've left you on the side of the road!"
The heat on her face was suddenly all around her. Bright orange and blue flickered off the walls, overpowering the light of Gus's computer, and the little stage light he had pointed towards her. The warmth came from her, somehow. She didn't understand how.
She also didn't care. The heat overpowered the shame, embarrassment, and despair. Suddenly it didn't matter how the others thought about her. What were a few broken promises, what was a little pain? It would all burn just the same.
Someone screamed. Gus, maybe? His voice was lost in the roar of smoke in front of her. She turned, more curious than anything else. As the fire grew brighter, it burned with the strength of her emotions, leaving only calm behind. Clarity.
She watched with detached curiosity as something orange spread across one of Gus's nerdy wall-scrolls. Some anime nobody or another melted into smeared nylon and black smoke. The computer sparked, then all the screens went out too.
She didn't need their light anymore. The flames provided plenty of light. They were in the wood floor where she stood now, surrounding her. Some part of her felt with mild interest as it brushed up against her body, with heat that should've burned her alive. Instead, it was only pleasantly warm. She barely even felt it.
Time itself was strange. Iron retreated from her, carrying something on his back. Where was he going, and why? Hadn't someone been in the room with her?
Lotus did not care. Wood groaned, and a smoke-alarm blared with furious intensity. She winced, ears pressing flat to her head against the shrill echo. Why did that stupid thing never stop? She looked up, gesturing furiously at it. The flames obeyed, soaring up along the wall and consuming the little plastic puck. Its desperate cries faded to nothing.
"Lotus." That was it, the little whisper of doubt in her mind. It wasn't a whisper so much anymore—and it wasn't doubt. Instead of belittling her, it praised her.
"Come closer."
She did, stepping through the fire and the flames, until she reached the place she had dropped the book. Gus's room was a maelstrom then—burning far faster than any interior space had any right to. This heat was supernatural in nature, spreading faster than any 21st-century protection could slow. It was probably spreading to the rest of the house. Her own things were burning too.
That didn't matter. Lotus had very little she cared about—maybe a few family photos, tucked into the back of her bedroom. She could get those out before the heat reached them.
"Know what makes us stronger than they are. Fire brings clarity—it burns away the foolish attachments to the vain things. It teaches that none of our connections mean anything. They flee us, or crumble to ash. No lesser creature is able to resist."
The voice spoke so clearly, somehow louder than the roar of air and the occasional collapse as the house burned around her. How could it be so clear?
The spellbook was talking to her. Lotus lifted it up, and found it untouched by the heat. Only a little ash settled onto its pages, a reminder of the truth it spoke to her. All that used to be Eric was burning around her. Her old life, maybe even her old friends.
She levitated the book open. The words and symbols written on its pages blurred together, turning to an outline—a face she'd seen in her dreams. It didn't terrify her the way it had last time. Now it seemed like an old friend.
"That's right. Stoke those embers, feel them rise. Let them burn away the weakness, until only clarity remains. You're right to hate them. The Equestrian took your life, and yet he expected you to sacrifice on his behalf. The other mocked you, when he knew you were suffering. He kept you trapped here. As though they had the power to contain you! The fire can't be imprisoned, only appeased."
She walked forward through her burning house. Great waves of heat and smoke surrounded her, overpowering. She should be blinded and scorched or maybe worse, but that didn't happen. This heat was her domain—she created it, and grew stronger the longer she stayed. She wanted to burn it.
Did she?
Then came a voice in the dark, distant and shrill. A child, screaming in terror. Her voice cut through the smoke, all the way back to a distant memory. It wasn't in Lotus's past, Lotus didn't have one. But Eric remembered—remembered when her little sister had screamed like that, after falling from the second story of a barn.
Was that her now, begging for someone to come and help?
"Lives are the greatest fuel of all," the voice said, pulling her attention back to the book in front of her. By then the duplex was engulfed. She couldn't see any vestige of the old house left, just black smoke. Her last five years living here, all consumed. Soon there would be nothing left.
"There are many nearby. Spread the flame, consume what they have, grow stronger. Then you can return to me."
Eric remembered that day, remembered blood on the snow. Remembered the backwards way Nicole's legs bent. Remembered the surgery, the wheelchair, the tears of a life ruined. That was just one life.
Lotus snapped the book closed, and the voice became distant, back to a whisper. "They just want to use you. The Equestrian only sees what you can do for him. You will never be more than what you provide, not without me.”
Lotus stumbled forward through the house, finally seeing what she had done. Lotus—Eric—owned very little physical property. What little she had gathered was almost all tucked into her small trailer-home.
Now it was all burning. Family photos, her old books, her favorite pair of jeans, everything. And Lotus was in the center of it! She should be burning right now, shouldn't she?
There was no time left to think about staying hidden—the little house was a torch, plain for everyone in Livingston to see.
Eric fled in terror.