I DID IT!! I DID IT!! OH MY G

<i>WOOSH!</i>

Flames and wind alike burst outwards from Rosaline’s arm in a flurry of mana. Her perfection of these first two steps did not come easy, and she did not expect the final, tiny smidgeon of a step to be any easier. She had to put all of her effort into it, else she would not truly succeed!

The first parts of the claw erupted outwards, creating a funnel of wind and fire each swirling separately around her arm. The claw at her hand flexed and twisted, it’s sharp, fingerlike edges glimmering with the flames.

In her free hand she held the list, the one she had made at the beginning of her trials.

“Step one. Create a funnel of wind around your arm and hand and shape it. This protects your arm from the flames and provides a mold for the fire.” Check.

"Step two. Mold fire around the funnel of wind in the same manner." Check.

She glanced down at the next step, squinting. How vague!

"Step three. Merge them?"
(Rosaline Floures)

Merge them? What was that supposed to mean? Rosaline kept staring at her list, even perhaps turning it upside down a few times to see if she was reading it wrong. Her mind worked in different ways when she was younger, and it certainly wasn’t making this any easier.

Merge them. It made it sound easy. She began to plot down the miniature steps within a step in her mind… Merging ment to put two things into one. That would require the flames to move inwards, closer to her arm with the winds. The winds, funneling around in a spiral, would have to be able to keep the flames <i>within</i> them without suffocating them.

It sounded more complicated than ‘merging’ them!
(Rosaline Floures)
Her thought process didn’t end there. When you merge something, it usually requires mashing them together! The uppermost layer of magic would have to be <i>pushed</i> down into the lower. It was likely that, nearly immediately, the winds would suffocate her flames instead of allowing it to merge in with their flow.

But it wouldn’t hurt to try.

Just as Rosaline had learned to use wind to manipulate the movement and shape of her flames, she could easily use it to send it downwards, ironically, back into winds. A breeze stirred on the outer rim of the flames, consuming some of the fire while willing it downwards, pressing it upon the other barrier of air.

Slowly but surely, the flames began to merge with the winds with no complications but the weakening of the fire, which wasn’t exactly important. Several minutes of pressure and…

<i>WOOOOOSH!</i>

The flames let out an audible roar as they merged with the shell of winds around Rosaline’s arm. They rolled with the tornado-like spiral, creating a beautiful miasma of air and fire that twisted around Rosaline’s arm, forming in the shape of a claw --

Ifrit’s Claw.
(Rosaline Floures)