Smokeless Fire

Samira stopped praying for peace. She stopped reciting the verses of protection.

Instead, she reached down into the deepest, darkest part of her soul—the part she had starved and hidden for twenty years. She found the spark of the Jinn, and she poured gasoline on it.

The needle touched her skin.

**BOOM.**

It wasn't a sound; it was a pressure wave. The glass cylinder shattered outward. The miners holding her were thrown back as if hit by a train, their clothes catching fire.

Samira stood up. Her hijab had burned away. Her hair was floating, a mane of writhing smoke and embers. Her skin had turned the color of obsidian, cracked with veins of lava. She was no longer a girl. She was a catastrophe.

"You wanted magic?" Her voice was a chorus of grinding stones and roaring flames. "Take it."

She swept her hand through the air. A wave of fire—blue and gold—incinerated the machinery. The pipes burst. The Null-glass shattered.

Above, on the catwalk, the Elders screamed as the metal melted beneath their boots.

Samira turned to the central pillar. She smashed her fist against the amber glass. It cracked. She hit it again. It shattered.

Her father fell out, a skeletal heap on the floor. He was dead before he hit the ground, his spirit finally released from the torture.

The cavern began to collapse. The ceiling groaned, rocks falling like rain.

Samira turned to Kaelen. The men holding him had fled or were burning. He lay on the floor, staring up at her, shielding his face from the heat she radiated.

She walked toward him. The floor melted where she stepped.

She reached down, offering a hand of obsidian and fire.