The fire raged and sought to burn any piece of flesh that it could get close enough to, savouring the delicious pain whenever it did get close enough. The dragon-mares are smart and use their leathery wings to make a gap within the wall.

But the cheetah was not watching the escape any longer. Had everyone listened to the advice of those who warned against harming the cheetah, this battle might never be over. Those with wings could outrace the flames, but what of the little pearl-strewn filly and the others without? Could they have contended with the might of this unnatural fire as it raced them across the dying grass fields surrounding the Heart? If they managed to escape from the wall first?

Weaver, Reichenbach, Iona, and Amaris turned their attention away from the wall of flames and the flame creature swiftly moved onto its paws - unsettled. They weren’t supposed to pay attention to anything but their own doom, yet these four had other plans.

A roaring hiss escaped the creature as the raven Weaver dived towards its face - it dodged, blurring and reforming a few feet away only to have Iona and Amaris there as well, charging at it with fury, and Reichenbach. The flames of the figure flared up in anger, in fear, in defense, licking those who dared to come so close.

The diving attack from Iona scattered the creature again, the flames dancing away and trying to escape, but Amaris’s charge ceased any further attempts. Fire-formed claws lashed out as the cheetah retreated, each inch bringing it back to the fiery mouth of the Heart. Just as a snarl escaped the near-formless creature, just as it was reaching one fiery paw to drag across Amaris’ chest, the fires from the Heart rose up and snatched it. The cheetah exploded in a shower of sparks - the majority of which settling on Amaris, though she would find that these sparks did not burn her as they simmered into her skin.

A quick heartbeat later, the fire wall disappeared in a similar fashion - with only a roar of protest from all the monstrous faces housed within it, leaving only a scorched circle of earth and grass as a sign that anything had happened at all. Well, that and the burns that were received. Those who had attacked the cheetah, if they sustained any burns, would find that theirs glowed with the hot orange light of the flames while those who had been escaping and trying to help others do the same would have smoke billow from their burns.