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The other main character of my novel. He’s doing his best to take over it.

(Please note: This is fresh from NaNoWriMo and is UNEDITED)

The young man, not much more than a boy, walked down the main street of the village. Behind him, everything was in flames. Ahead of him, people fled, some of them screaming. At each house and building he came to, the young man raised his arms and shot flames out, standing in front of it until the structure was engulfed. Then he moved on to the next one. He gave almost no thought to the possibility of people still being inside the buildings. The smart ones had already fled. When he came across a man he recognized as one who had been at his house that night, he burned him as well.

Tenai hadn’t come across any in the last several minutes. The men had run much faster than the women and children.

A stumbling, crying woman clutched her child’s hand as she ran across Tenai’s path. She tripped, over something in the street or over her own two feet. As she struggled to rise, she turned to shield her child from Tenai’s approach. “Please …” she begged when Tenai was only a few feet away. For a moment, the rage in his eyes faltered. He made a wide circle around the pair, leaving them clutching each other in the dusty road.

The rage rose back up in him, like fire caught on a fresh log. This village would burn. By tomorrow it would be nothing but charred timbers and ash. And the men that had fled wouldn’t get far. Tenai would follow them, to the ends of the earth if he needed to. Every last one of them would die.