The copy of Maggie threw its flame first.
The white lance crossed the basin and the real Maggie stepped in front of us and met it with her palm, and the night turned inside out. Light everywhere. Heat like a hand pressed flat against my whole body. The stone ridge under us cracked in three places, and Kassie's arm was around me before I even started to fall, hauling me back from an edge that no longer existed.
When my eyes worked again, Maggie was still standing there. Her sleeve was gone from the elbow down. The stone around her had melted into a glassy bowl.
"Hm," she said.
That was all. But I had known her long enough to hear what sat under it. The copied flame was real fire. Not a shape of fire, not a picture of it. The thing had watched her burn a forest for an hour and had come away with something that could actually burn.
