Seraphina Zenith had been fighting fire since a quarter past six, and she was beginning to understand why Marcus Kane had never lost.
The outer foundries of Pyronis sprawled across the southern edge of Avalon like a city of their own: smelters, rolling mills, cooling towers, long brick halls where molten steel ran in channels as wide as streets. Kane's fire-mages had held them since dawn. Forty of them, Pyronis veterans, every one of them Integration-rank or higher, every one of them standing inside a foundry that made them stronger with every breath they drew of its burning air.
She had been fighting them for an hour and a half.
