by Frank Morin
It was nice to get confirmation that he was reading the situation correctly. Connor switched to his primaries. First the familiar itch of granite, then the boundless energy of basalt, followed by mind-accelerating obsidian. He didn’t have much diorite left, but dared tap some of it, embracing the lightning-like rush that blazed through his veins. Pumice came next, like an insulating cloud. He added some blind coal, for good measure.
“I don’t need your help to finish this,” he told Water.
Then he max-tapped his primaries, and raised a fist to curse-punched the queen with every bit of strength he could muster.
Air chose that second to interfere with his connection to her, and he dropped just as he punched, so he missed the queen’s chest and instead punched her in the hips. With pumice and blind coal activated, his fist burst through the elemental shielding and smashed into the queen with a mixed granite and diorite explosion.
The impact threw her tumbling through the air in a spray of blood and bone. Her legs fell free, leaving her lower torso a mangled mess. Connor fell almost all the way to the ground before he re-established connection with air and slowed his fall.
Air appeared beside him, her expression as dark as a storm cloud, and shouted, “Stop!”
She looked angry, and winds whistled around him, but Connor managed to remain stationary in the air.
Evander’s voice came to him again. “One hand may wield a sword, but the other may carry a shield.”
“No offense, but I can’t really deal with Sentry speak right now,” Connor said as he focused on rising through the howling wind. One more good punch, and he could shatter the queen’s head. Since she didn’t want to heal, maybe that would actually kill her.
Air was screaming at him in a language that sounded more like a winter’s gale than real words, and the winds tore at him, trying to slow him down, but he still managed to push through it. The queen rose faster above him, probably more of Air’s handiwork.
“The elementals seek to break free of all constraints of the natural world, but they are not yet free,” Evander explained, his voice calm and thoughtful. “They have pushed into the realm of the green frequency of entropy to accomplish this goal, and yet the bulk of their power still resides in the red frequency, controlled by the natural world.”
That sounded important, but Air’s shrieking was making it hard to even hear himself think, let alone focus on Evander’s deep thoughts. She had shed all pretense at human decorum and was displaying the raw, dangerous side of herself. “What does that mean?”
“It means they cannot completely block you from tapping their powers, particularly in the red frequency.”
“Oh.” That made so much sense, he probably should have thought of it. “Thanks!”
Knowing that fact didn’t make it easier to fly through Air’s tempest. The air buffeted him on all sides, even though he was still tapping pumice. He didn’t have much blind coal left, so resisted the urge to tap it again. He would need it for the next punch. When he focused on limiting his connection to air to the red frequency, his connection did stabilize. He started to gain on the queen, but her torso had stopped bleeding. She had said she wanted to die, but why heal herself?
A moment later, he realized healing wasn’t what was happening.
She was changing.
Her body swelled, and crackling energy began gathering around her. Through his connection with fire and water, Connor sensed a sharp concentration of charges, and his heart sank. The elementals were gaining the advantage, and they were forcing her to raise an elfonnel.
With strum.
They were winning the race, but they hadn’t won yet.
Connor tapped serpentinite and stilling together, siphoning the power of sound through stilling to magnify it to super-sound. He’d never tried that before, but hoped it worked like other affinities linked through stilling back on themselves. The power of serpentinite built within him at an astonishing rate, and he exulted. He opened his mouth to shout, planning on blasting the queen’s bloated body with sounds so concentrated they’d rip her apart.
Except Earth chose that moment to clobber him in the face with mouthful of packed sand.
The blow took him totally by surprise. He hadn’t seen the earth rising from the ground, hadn’t seen Earth appear next to Air, hadn’t felt the attack through his earth senses. The blow sent him tumbling away, his super-enhanced death shout tearing harmlessly at the air.
He managed to catch himself with another current of air, but all four elemental beings appeared in front of him, forming a hostile line to block his access to the queen. He marveled at the change in them. They’d worked such subtle deception for so long, and had begun the process of deceiving him even before his third ascension.
They had manifested into his mind, hinting at human traits like flirting and compassion. Water had even assisted in pulling him through the final threshold. They had choreographed the deception brilliantly, teaching him just enough to win his trust and position him so they could destroy him. When he’d learned enough to understand the danger, they had tried pleading, then cajoling, then tempting him with benefits, and finally threatening.
Now they had shifted to outright hostility. Not what he needed right now. He needed to destroy the queen before she completed the transition to elfonnel form, but killing her was already nearly impossible. How could one fight the elementals? They weren’t even human, weren’t even alive like he was.
Water scowled at him, and Fire said, “We warned you of consequences, human.”
Connor drew deeper from all of his affinities. He was Blood of the Tallan, so he would fight them.
His connection with slate faded away.
Tallan-cursed luck! The queen had destroyed the ancient slate sculpted stone and severed access to the red-frequency power of earth. He tried switching to green, and for a second felt the strength of earth flow into him again.
Then it shut off, as if someone had turned off a faucet.
Earth grinned and said, “I could not prevent you parasitic humans from sucking on my power when that stone filtered the sylfaen into your precious red frequency power, but that filter is gone. Now that we have begun to cross the final bridge to freedom, I control access through the green, and I choose to not share it.”
“Nor do I,” Fire added with a harsh laugh, and just like that, Connor’s green-frequency access to fire winked out.
Panicking didn’t usually help, but Connor was tempted to give it a try anyway. How could he fight them when he couldn’t access elemental powers? Fire and earth were two of the most powerful battle elements, and now they were gone.
For a second he feared Water and Air would block the green frequency levels of their powers too, shackling him further, but the women only glared. Maybe they couldn’t block access when their convergence points weren’t broken yet. He hoped that was true, because he needed those powers.
“Let me pass. This is not the way,” he told them, rising toward them. They looked more solid than ever, but he hoped they couldn’t take physical form yet. Once they reached that point, he doubted he could stop them. “I promise to help you figure out a solution to—”
“Enough talking!” Fire shouted. “Now is a time for action. Behold our vessel!”
The queen’s body had expanded beyond the point it should have simply exploded. Terror was still boiling off of her, and a though struck him across the mind. “No! I deny you crossing.”
Water chuckled. “You no longer have the power to deny us.”
She faded from view, as did Fire, and the charges of strum gathering around the queen intensified sharply. Her body ripped apart, flesh burning away under a firestorm of crackling, blue-white energy that consumed the space where she’d hung. That living energy sparked and twisted over itself like ten thousand deadly snakes of lightning.
Earth held out a hand to Air and said, “Let us rise to the east and consume the armies of men.”
“It will be my great ple
asure,” she said with a graceful curtsy, and the two of them disappeared.
The situation was spiraling totally out of control. The storm clouds were roiling overhead, the air cold, and his affinities felt weak. The elementals had just left him, as if he no longer posed a threat. It seemed both Water and Fire were combining to rise through the queen as a lightning elfonnel, and he feared what Earth and Air were planning with Nicklaus.
Think! The strum charges were still building at an ever-increasing pace within the still-expanding lightning being. He sensed if it chose to, it could unleash lightning bolts big enough to fry an entire city.
The air felt heavy the way it often did before a severe storm. It was growing colder, and the clouds above were boiling and spinning in ever-increasing spirals. The broken ground of their fight filled the air with a faint smell of charred earth, and a constant low crackling from the lightning skittering around the queen’s transforming form raised the hairs on his arms. Every sense screamed of danger and he had to fight a growing urge to simply turn and run.
He couldn’t outrun this disaster, though.
Connor focused his quartzite senses to the east and cast words to all of his friends. “The queen is getting consumed by the elements. I’m not sure how to stop her, but I’m working on it. Beware, Earth and Air are coming your way, and they’re not friendly.”
“Connor, be careful!” Jean replied immediately.
“We’ve already got elemental problems,” Kilian said, and behind him, Connor could hear the sounds of fighting and screaming.
“And we just lost access to slate,” Aifric added in Ennlin’s voice, sounding panicked.
“Do what you can,” Connor urged them, hating that he couldn’t offer anything more concrete, but he was so scared, he couldn’t think of anything more.
The queen-lightning monster had risen higher, a brilliant being of light and deadly strum charges. Wind howled across the plateau, spitting rain into Connor’s face and plastering his hair to his head. He barely felt it, staring at awe at the queen’s new shape. From the waist up she took on a humanoid form, retaining her same features, only they were now made up of those crawling ropes of living lightning. From the waist down, where she’d lost her legs, her form was indistinct, a whirlwind of crackling energy and glowing light.
She slowly rotated to stare down at Connor with huge eyes glowing pure white. She spoke, and her voice was a mixture of both Fire and Water. “This vessel is a fitting vehicle for our wrath. We will be free at last!”
The queen’s thought hit him at the same time. “Why haven’t you killed me yet, useless boy?”
“I’m working on it,” he promised, amazed that any part of her still remained intact.
“I can’t hold them back much longer. My final bridge is burning, my mind frayed, my affinities gone. I want to punish you for your stupidity, but cannot allow myself to agree with these monsters even in that righteous desire, or be lost. Get on it!”
Amazingly, she sounded almost more stable than ever. Maybe she’d allowed the elementals to strip away her madness first. The fact that she was still fighting helped settle his thoughts and focus on the problem. If she wasn’t gone, then the elements weren’t free yet. There had to be a way to stop them.
He embraced Water as deeply as he could, and was shocked to discover he could feel the strum charges building around the creature still, as well as fields of magnis radiating off of it. He lacked fire, so how could he access the combined might of both water and fire?
“The elements have united within their chosen vessel,” Evander suggested from his library in Connor’s mind. “It appears that union has inadvertently extended through your thrice-ascended affinities to you.”
“I’ll take it,” Connor replied, happy that Evander was there to share his insights. The man was so wise, Connor didn’t mind having an armchair commentator along for the desperate fight.
He embraced strum and magnis. They were the only powers he might be able to use to fight the monster. If he still had access to slate, he might try burying it under the plateau, since earth seemed good at dissipating strum.
“Here goes something,” he muttered, grasping the unruly current of air holding him aloft and willing himself higher.
The queen elfonnel roared, the sound like a thousand thunderclaps, and the air seemed to shatter, as if every current fainted or fled. Connor clutched at his head from the overwhelming sound and instinctively tapped serpentinite to deflect some of it away.
Four thick bolts of lightning erupted out of queen-lightning’s mouth and ripped across the distance to Connor. Immersed in both strum and magnis, he felt the charges growing, the air transforming into plasma. He instinctively pushed the conduit of plasma away, splitting it to either side. The lightning flashed down that conduit, filling his world with incandescent energy that momentarily blinded him, and the crashing thunder that would have busted his ears if not for serpentinite that he used to deflect it.
Bolts tore past to either side of him in that odd zigzagging movement of lightning, and struck the ground far behind him. Enormous currents of energy would have vaporized him if not for the magnis he wrapped around himself. Connor was so stunned by the strike that he didn’t even think to try grasping any of the strum to cast it back at the elfonnel before it all dissipated through the earth. He tapped limestone and covered his eyes with shadow to protect them from getting blinded by any future bolts.
He was in trouble. He couldn’t fight them with strum. The entire queen elfonnel was bursting with concentrated charges. She’d overwhelm him in a heartbeat, but his success at deflecting the lightning gave him one small hope. He did not sense her actively manipulating the fields of magnis around herself.
The elementals were consuming her, but she still resisted, still set at least some bounds on them. Connor took a chance, heavily shielded his mind, then reached out toward her with chert.
He immediately wished he hadn’t.
Queen Dreokt was locked within the monster in a dark chamber, filled with fear and pain and hopeless fury. She clung to the last vestiges of her humanity with all her strength, but the effort tortured her almost beyond Connor’s comprehension. He gasped from the glimpse into her plight, not wanting to draw any closer. He wasn’t sure he could have fought against such torture.
“Are you here to gloat?” she asked through her fog of pain and exhaustion.
“No. I’m trying to help. Keep them focused on strum instead of magnis.”
“Magnis is useless,” she shot back, then screamed so loud into his mind he winced and pulled back. Her momentary lucidity was gone, replaced by a rabid anger. She was lashing out at the elementals, but didn’t recognize him as an ally and struck out at him too.
Connor recoiled from her and cut the connection. He wasn’t sure he accomplished anything, but at least he’d confirmed she didn’t see magnis as a viable battle strategy. Hopefully that blind spot would limit the elementals’ ability too.
He focused on the power of magnis and directed it inward on himself to reinforce his defenses, but the great queen lightning elfonnel swooped down toward him. He’d suffered all sorts of different huggers in the past, but wasn’t sure he could survive getting hugged by that beast.
He threw himself toward the ground, drawing as much speed from air as he could. If he could reach the ground, he could super frack and maybe keep ahead of her. Kilian had dodged lightning. Maybe he could find that level of speed.
He wasn’t fast enough.
The monster might not move as fast as a lightning bolt, but it moved a lot faster than he did. It transformed the air in front of it into plasma, allowing it to plunge through with no resistance. It closed with terrifying speed, the face twisted with fury. The expression might be from the elementals, but it might be reflecting her anger at them for consuming her like she had consumed the minds of so many others. Or maybe she was taking the risk to agree with them enough to scowl at him. Whatever the reason, staring a giant, angry lig
htning elfonnel in the face was not a happy moment.
Trying not to give in to his paralyzing fear, Connor braced for the monster’s impact. He focused magnis into his body, concentrating the defensive shield as strong as he could, and his body reacted to it in surprising ways. He sensed the molecules that made him alive shift along with that magnis field, pointing their tiny charges all in the same direction, transforming himself into a living lodestone, a highly concentrated magnis field.
It felt weird, as if his entire body was suddenly packed with pedra’s spittle foam. He felt insulated from everything, including his own senses.
He didn’t have time to wonder about it because the terrifying queen elfonnel caught up to him and opened her enormous mouth wide enough to swallow a horse. Connor couldn’t escape as that lightning-filled maw closed over him and wrapped him in a deadly cloud of living lightning.
His world turned incandescent as hundreds of lightning bolts rippled around him. The searing light would have permanently destroyed his sight if not for the limestone already applied to his eyes. Connor instinctively held his breath and rolled into a fetal position, his entire will bent on reinforcing his magnis shield.
Lightning reached out to touch him with absolute obliteration from every side, but it all deflected away, pulled out of course by his concentrated magnis field. Instead of shattering him into component bits, it instead rippled around him. Crackling, deadly lightning energy completely encircled him, but he huddled in a cocoon of calm.
The constant thunderclaps and menacing crackling sounds seemed distant as he pushed them away with serpentinite. The hairs all over his body stood on end from the enormous currents of strum flowing around him. He bet he couldn’t build up such a mighty charge even if he super-fracked over every carpet in the world. When he finally forced himself to take a breath, the air smelled thin and tasted charred.
Consumed by the queen lightning elfonnel, he scarce believed so much strum couldn’t quite penetrate to destroy him. He seized that tiny bit of hope and held on for dear life.
“Good. The distraction of your execution occupies their focus. Maybe I can fight them back across the bridge,” Queen Dreokt’s thought filtered through the lightning storm to his mind. “Try not to die too soon. Maybe your death can serve a purpose after all.”
