"Ash slow down!"
Emers shouted as he and Tim dodged another fireball.
"Not a chance, Emers!"
Phoenicia yelled back while leaving a trail of fire.
"I have business to take care of!"
Phoenicia charged up energy within the palms of her hands and moved closer to a line of houses.
Using the wall as leverage, she used one hand and blasted diagonally towards the other side of the street. Meanwhile, she used her other hand to pelt them with dart-sized fireballs to keep them at bay.
"S**t!"
Emers dragged Tim and the two of them dove behind a parked carriage.
The fire darts sprayed the area and exploded on contact with anything, checkering the area with softball-sized holes.
The carriage was no exception. They could feel it chipping away with every volley. Even more so than the screams of the townspeople or the horse's dying cry.
When everything quieted down, they cautiously stepped out.
They saw the massive layer of holes that blanketed the area. There was a massive wall of fire that zigzagged through the streets. The townspeople were frantically trying to put out the fires to no avail.
"Whoa, I didn't know she had it in her."
Tim said in awe of the destruction.
"Most people don't, and those who do expect a lot more."
Emers said while forming a spell to put out the flames.
"How does she even have this type of capability? Isn't she a first-grader? And why does she hate Grant with the blazing fury of a thousand suns?"
Tim said gesturing in the direction where she left.
"Well."
Emers said in a matter-of-fact tone.
"Grant trained her. And Grant trained her."
"Ah..."
Tim stopped to think about the implications for a moment.
"Wait, that doesn't actually answer my ques-"
"HA!"
Emers yelled out as a mighty gust of air swept through and blew out the fire.
"Later man, we have to catch up first. Chu can ask her then."
Emers said as the two started running.
"Would that not stoke the flames of her hatred even further? Turning an already roaring fire into a neverending magma of unbridl-"
"Just shut up!"
Emers shouted in frustration as they rushed after her.
"Make me!"
The two mages arrived at a three-way intersection near some railroad tracks. Every direction they looked was already covered in flames or already destroyed.
But that was the problem. They can't follow her trail of destruction if every route was already destroyed.
"I don't suppose you would have some ingeniously clever method of deduction that would boggle the mind but allow us to pursue our target, would you?"
Tim asked Emers as he casually took note of the screaming people that were rushing out of the burning buildings.
"Actually, I do."
Emers calmly took off one of his enchanted gloves and walked towards the burning building.
He moved through the crowd impassively and brushed off some of the people that tried to get his attention.
Once he stood in front of the building, he gathered his courage... and thrust his unprotected hand into the flames.
*hiss
"What the! What the f**k is wrong with you!"
Tim said as he watched Emers quickly pull his arm back and hiss in pain. He quickly grabbed his guitar and cast a healing spell.
*sigh of relief
Emers stopped clutching his hand and started forming another spell.
"Solving our problem. Ash's flames from when she casts a spell are different from the flames that naturally appear when she's angry. So we just need to tell which flames are natural and we have our trail."
He said before blasting away all of the fire as well as the rest of the house with a gust of air.
"Okay, sure. Brilliant idea, truly brilliant. But, um..."
Tim put his hand to his chin as chunks of the house started falling from the sky.
"Don't we have that relic that could detect spell residue from that time we went looking for Grant a while back? Couldn't we use that to follow our firey haired charge?"
"No, I've tried. The difference is too subtle. I'll have to go through all of the flames myself."
Meanwhile in his brain.
'Why didn't I think of that?! Well, I can't back down now. I'll look like a fool!'
*Fwoom!
The flames rose higher as the falling debris only provided more fuel for the remining flames.
So it was that Emers and Tim started the long, long, LONG, painful process of checking the flames.