It did not take Qama long to build their tiny army. By the time they had asked three people for help, news had spread far more quickly than it normally did in the Woodlands, and five more had volunteered. Most of them had been forced to flee from the area around the new mine, and welcomed any chance to restore it to its natural form, or if not that then at least to prevent further damage. One, a woman called Salara, was especially passionate. Her son and daughter, neither of them yet three years old, had been caught in the fire. She ran towards them many times, hearing their cries turn to screams which stopped with terrifying abruptness, and seeing their young skin wrinkle and crackle and blacken and disappear.
Each time the heat drove her away, yet driven on by instinct and futile courage she continued trying to save her children long after the last fragment of hope had joined them in death. Eventually, badly burned herself and feeling that a mighty hand had cracked open her chest and wrenched out her heart, she gave up, and staggered, howling, from the danger. Now, despite the pain in her body and her mind, she was overcome by a need for something so unfamiliar to the Woodlanders that they did not have a word for it, but which we would call vengeance.
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