Unlike the last two intents Lexie had perceived, this one was pretty straightforward. She thought she knew exactly what she had to do.

First off, logically, the intent assumed that she couldn't create the flames, which was true. She could only feed it. So in order to do that, she would have to create a base, a Firestarter, but with card magic.

Or could she just get a Firestarter from the Firebringers and use card magic to feed those flames? She eyed Luther out of the corner of her vision, her gaze flickering down to the rings. Was it something only Firebringers could use? Or was it open to the general public, or friends of the family at least?

She wanted to ask, but she didn't know if that was maybe something Luther was sensitive about, given that it was evidence of him not being as good as the rest of the Firebringers. Luther was already clearly touchy about her being here. She didn't want to make it worse.

"Is there a reason you're staring at me so much?" He murmured without looking at her.

Lexie debated whether or not to say anything, but she tried, "Your ring is really cool."

He stiffened instantly, and his eyes smoldered at her.

Yeah, that was certainly the wrong thing to say, or at the very least, he was the wrong person to ask.

She would have to go over and ask Theo again once he was done with the training.

He got done right around when the sun was setting, and Mane and Aiden began to move inside to finish the rest of the meal. According to them, the kitchen staff were already setting up, and they'd been in charge of making dessert too.

"I'm not great at dessert," Mane confessed as he covered the pan of meat. "I learned how to do it because my wife and daughter both have a sweet tooth, and Tamsin won't eat anything unless there's a promise of a treat at the end of the meal. But I'm still not great at it. Usually, I stick to the simple stuff, but today we're making several treats, including a celebratory croquembouche, so I'm letting the experts handle that."

"Dad makes excellent croquembouche," Lexie pointed out.

"Yes." He smiled. "My wife mentioned that. She also mentioned that you would mention it."

"Of course, since it's the truth." Aiden didn't even look the tiniest bit humble as they walked together.

Luther stayed put where he was, still reading whatever he was reading on his system screen, and Theo came trotting out of the summer hut, with his shirt off, wiping the sweat on his forehead.

"Are you done?" Lexie asked, hopping off her seat to follow him as he made his way inside.

"Yup. Let me guess, you have more questions."

Lexie blushed, giving him an almost apologetic look. "Yeah."

He heaved a long-suffering sigh, but amusement tinged his tone when he said, "This is going to be a long winter."

"So," Lexie barrelled right through that, walking double step to keep up with him. " The Firestarters. How do they work exactly?"

"They're converters, I think," Theo said. "All we have to do is raise our body temperature past a certain threshold, and they focus and convert that heat into fire."

"Huh. But like how exactly? Fire needs three things: fuel, oxygen, and heat. Is the Firestarter the fuel? Does it compress the air around, creating an adequate pressure for a fire? Or does it simply magnify that heat to boil the air in the atmosphere, like a magnifying glass? Also, don't you need material for it to burn? Where's the material? Does the firestarter provide that?"

"I don't know, kid, I just work here," Theo answered laughingly. "All I know is that I raise my body heat, focus on which ring I want to use, or which set of rings, and boom. There's a fire in my palm that I can grow and use for my needs."

"You said fire was an explosive ability. Which means that it's easier to grow than diminish?"

"Yup."

"Does the Firestarter help you control it?"

"I guess, although as a Firebringer, fire control is literally the first thing you learn." He stopped at a water fountain, pushed a button, and leaned down to drink out of it.

Once he was done, he wiped his mouth. "You know, instead of asking me a thousand and one questions about this, you would be better off checking out our library. There are tons of books there with all the fire-related fun facts, and if you read them, they might help you figure out exactly what it is that you want to know."

"Oh." Now that she thought about it, that was a good idea. "Can I go there now?"

Theo shrugged. "I don't see why not."

"You're not just saying that to get rid of me, are you?"

"Oh, I totally am. But I'm not lying either."

"Okay." Before she took off, she told him, "I'll probably have more questions by dinner time, just so you know."

Lexie dashed off to the sound of his groan, smiling as she took the stairs two steps at a time.

Once in the library, she thumbed through some of the books, picking out one or two she thought could help her. They were guides for beginner fire mages who wanted to know how to control their fire powers. Fire control really must be the hardest part of it, because she saw multiple books showing different techniques of achieving control.

But that would be a problem for another day. Today, she just wanted to know how to start the fire in the first place.

She wanted to spend time with her dad still, so she took the books to the kitchen, sitting at an empty spot on the counter near where her Dad, Mane, and the rest of the staff were getting the desserts together. Vanilla and sweets mingled with the scent of meats, making Lexie's stomach rumble. She looked forward to the celebratory dinner.

"What are you reading, honeybee?" Aiden asked.

Lexie lifted the book so he could see the cover. Her father frowned.

"Why are you reading a book about fire magery?"

"Just out of curiosity," Lexie said, and though Mane smiled at her, her dad clearly didn't buy it.

"I wish my kids would just read sometimes," Mane said, slicing the meat into thin strips. "Instead, I have to bribe them with all manner of things to even get them to sit still. Especially the twins. They're always running around like they have ants on their butt, getting into one trouble or another." He paused, knife in the air, frowning. "Which reminds me, I don't think I've heard from them in a minute. They've been far too quiet."

Those were the magic words that had everything screeching to a stop. All the staff stopped working instantly.

A growing alarm echoed in the ensuing silence as Mane immediately made eye contact with one of the staff, a younger-looking woman with a shock of short blonde hair.

She immediately lowered the plate in her hand onto the counter, degloved, and dashed out of the room.

Mane sighed and sent Aiden an apologetic look. "The last time they were this quiet, they got into their mother's secret file cabinet and we nearly had an international incident on our hands." He shook his head. "You're so lucky that your Lexie is so studious and mature. I'm sure you have no problem keeping her out of trouble."

Lexie's face heated as her father turned his wry gaze to her. "Oh, you have no idea."

As they went back to their cooking–after it turned out that the twins were with Theo and had zonked out watching an AFC match–Lexie returned to perusing the book. The first book only mentioned Firestarters in its intro chapter, and was far more focused on what to do once the fire starts, than what actually made up the Firestarters.

The second book went a bit more into the history of Firestarters, made by a scientist called Clem Firebringer. He was not a Firemage, but his brothers were, and he made the Firestarter to aid them in their lessons.

His research grew year after year, but the firestarter originally began as a miniature flint and steel ring, which, when knocked together, would spark a flame. However, this was a very time-consuming and inefficient way to start fires, so he went to the Fae Planet and learned from the fire faeries over there.

The narrative has been illicitly obtained; should you discover it on Amazon, report the violation.

Lexie remembered some of her fae history books mentioning fire faeries. Some fringe Fae factions believed that they were descended from faeries who had been made from fire, the same way humans were made from Earth.

It wasn't a universal or even far-reaching belief at all, and only a small faction of Fae acknowledged this origin story, but there was an ancient race of Faeries called fire faeries, and they described creating fire almost as a way of summoning life.

Lexie searched the NET for more of their story and found that they described fire as a life force in their body. Creating it was essentially just drawing it out. So it was more of an intrinsic magic than it was science.

Or was it?

What did the Firestarter do?

She thought about it. Luther did have some heat within him, but it wasn't enough to form a fire on his own. But the firestarter, probably through a combination of physics and magic, drew the heat into reality and helped him control the flame. The Firestarter had a link to the flame even as Luther did, as he was its life force. But what was the link?

Was it soul magic? Was that what made them special, the way Lightlarks were made special by their light? Was it bits of their soul wrapping around his pathways that made her perceive them as being made of fire?

In that case, the flame came from within, and the Firestarter acted more as a conduit, or an accelerant, than a converter. They were creating life as fire.

So what did that mean for her?

Feed the flame.

She tried to combine everything she knew so far. Flame as a living thing. Fire needs three components to be alive. Firestarters, as some combination of physics and magic, were activated when the Firebringers raised their own body heat past a certain threshold.

Why was the body heat thing necessary? Was it because of physics or because of magic?

Was raising the body heat creating that fiery life source, or was it simply the physics of the heat that mattered?

If it were the latter, she could use physics to create heat, too.

Maybe she could condense air particles into a microflame. Hydrogen was part of the air, wasn't it–albeit a small part. Concentrated hydrogen could act as a fuel, and once that was introduced to oxygen and heat, it could potentially create a fire.

Was that all she needed? It might not be the same or even as powerful as the Firebringer fire, but she didn't need it to be. She just needed it to work.

It was really simple once she thought about it. Very straightforward. She wasn't even sure she'd needed an intent to figure it out, but of course, the intent was what let her know she was on the right path.

Maybe she was also overthinking the void card after all. Seize the End. Maybe it was just as simple as working out what a void was, physically, how to create one, and then linking that to the intent.

Lexie was so focused on reading her book and thinking her thoughts that she didn't notice anyone approaching her until she was suddenly airborne.

"Dad!" she said as he lifted and picked up her book. "Don't just carry me in front of people. I'm not a baby."

"I know." She heard people chuckling in the background. "But I thought you'd probably be more comfortable reading in the living room."

"I was comfortable where I was," she grumbled, but she didn't struggle as he situated her on their plush leather couch. He surprised her by sitting beside her and whispering, "Now tell me what you're really reading that for."

She could lie to him, but he probably wouldn't believe her. "I want a card that creates fire."

"Why?"

"For my Defense Deck," Lexie said. "Just in case I need a card that is pure attack."

"Lexie…"

"I know what you're going to say," Lexie said. "That it's too dangerous, and I don't need to be making cards like that. That it's going to exacerbate the growth of my you-know-what. But the you-know-what is growing anyway, no matter what I do, so I might as well. Not to mention there's a psycho who wants me dead. I can't afford to be complacent here."

"We're taking care of it. We're also taking care of the you-know-what."

"How? By sacrificing yourself?"

Aiden's eyes got so wide they essentially bugged out of his head. "Naem–"

"Naem didn't tell me anything. I figured it out myself, and I just want you to know that I'm very pissed at you for what you were about to do. If you go through with it, I'm going to be mad at you for the rest of my life."

Her father's mouth opened and closed, pressing together. "Maybe I can live with that. I can live with you being angry at me, as long as you're alive."

Lexie glared at him, steam coming out of her ears. "If you even try it, I'm going to sabotage you every step of the way. Heck, I might even kill myself just to stop you."

That shocked him again straight. "You wouldn't. Don't even say that."

"I would, Dad. You know I would," she said. "So don't dare me."

He reached up and cupped her cheek. "I'm not daring you. I'm letting you know, Lexie, if you hurt yourself, my life wouldn't be worth living again. I'd follow you wherever you went, you know that."

She ingested that with a simple nod. "Likewise."

Aiden's hazel eyes brimmed with emotion released in a raspy breath. He kissed her on her forehead.

Then he backed away and told her, "I'm trying to test how long and how far away I can communicate with you through my mind."

Lexie allowed the change of subject. She'd made her point, so she'd let it go, for now. "Does the channel disintegrate after you're done?"

"I think so. You're the first person I've tried it with, so there's a lot to experiment with."

Lexie nodded. "It's okay. You can experiment with me. I don't mind."

He stared at her and closed his eyes. Lexie thought she felt tingling in her mind, but it was so faint she might just have been overthinking it.

On the other end, she was curious as to what Alchemy felt like in his pathways.

She closed her eyes and went into deep meditation, using her subconscious to trace the lines. She couldn't see much of his body activity as most of it was in his mind. His mana was a tad chaotic, and the band around his neck was exuding some type of energy that was then moving outside of his pathways rather than inside and shifting it artificially.

Just like with Tate.

Huh. It made sense since Tate's pathways had been adjusted through alchemy, too.

Lexie opened her eyes, and while her dad worked, she went back to reading.

About fifteen minutes later, she heard a voice speak in her mind, Can you hear me?

Yup, she answered back.

Good. The link was easier to establish the second time. I'm not sure if that's because I'm getting better or because I've done this with you before.

I think you're getting better, Lexie said. Are you just working on your mind magic for now?

Mostly. It's easiest for me because it's one of the disciplines I never focused on as an Archmage. So my pathways aren't really primed for that type of magic.

Oh, cool.

I'm going to try to keep this link open through all of dinner and even after I leave. I'll keep giving you check-ins every thirty minutes until it drops off to see how long I can keep it.

Okay, Dad.

Dinner was a delicious affair, and Lexie wasn't much of a meat person, but she had to admit that this was the best steak she'd ever had.

"This is really good, Uncle Mane," she said.

"Thank you, Lexie," he said. "That's why they keep me around."

"That and your amazing hair," Aiden said, making Mane wink.

"Oh, you flatterer, you."

As the conversation flowed, Aiden managed to keep the link open, dropping a joke every few minutes throughout the meal. They were dad jokes, too, terrible ones that made her want to groan and made him chortle behind his napkin.

What do you call a fake spaghetti, Lexie?

Dad, please don't.

An impasta!

Lexie's eye roll was so apparent that Mane wanted to know what he'd said that upset her, and she embarrassingly had to admit that she'd not been paying attention and was only responding to her own thoughts.

The rest of the dinner went on smoothly, but the mind link dropped toward the end, evidenced by how she no longer heard her father in her mind. After it was done, Lexie bid a tearful goodbye to her dad.

"I'll see you soon," he said. "Perhaps after the AFC match."

Lexie nodded. "I'd like that."

Once he left, she went to her room, a little disconcerted when she checked and saw that two bodyguards were standing outside her door.

She wasn't sure she would ever get used to that.

In her room, she took out her card-making tools and began to craft.

All through dinner, she'd been thinking about and subtly checking the NET to figure out the simplest way to create a fire.

The right combination of hydrogen and oxygen would form a combustible air mixture, but at the last minute, she decided to go with methane instead of hydrogen. There was far more of the latter in the atmosphere, and hydrogen was more explosive, which meant more risk to Lexie herself.

Once she decided on that, she searched and figured out a way to create nodes that could separate the minuscule portion of methane molecule from the air, encasing them in a tiny force field. This was a variation of the windbreaker forcefield, but it only focused on one type of molecule, which she also figured out how to do by viewing the Chemist's Deck.

Lexie then used a similar force field to separate and hold an amount of oxygen in the air. It took her about two hours to get the calculations for this right and get them in their separate fields.

The pathway for this card was already complex enough, and she decided to add a separate card for combining to create the flame. The timing had to be exactly right because once the microflame was sparked, she had to have the accelerant needed to kick in instantly.

As she weaved both pathways together, she figured out that she could place a final external trigger that would introduce heat and start the flame once the activation protocol was met. She thought about it, and it came to her.

A snap. It was friction and sound waves that could be compressed and tightly focused, converted into heat.

That brought in a third card.

Lexie scrawled and worked for what felt like hours. She heard sounds of movement outside her door, but no one came in to disturb her. A bird called in the distance, but she ignored it.

By the time she was done, her back hurt from her hunched position, and her butt ached. She got up and stretched, glancing out the window. Was it midnight already? Where had the time gone?

Oh well. Time to try it out.

She arranged all the components and attached them to an Eldritch Land card. She would need to get a power source to get a more powerful flame, but for now, she just needed a proof of concept.

She closed her eyes and began activating the cards, feeling it weave inside her, three cards becoming one unit.

It took more than a few seconds, but once it was done, Lexie opened her eyes and reached out, snapping her fingers.

A small flame burst out at the tip.

Lexie grinned. She'd made fire.

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