by Frank Morin
He couldn’t trust them.
What else could he do? His mind hurt, his enormous body was shaking with the strain, the mountain quivering, and the pressure to explode again was growing fast. Was that what Fire meant by a back-pressure blast?
“We can do this!” he insisted, gritting his enormous teeth and throwing himself back into the fight, sinking down through the volcano and into the earth, descending through the boiling magma filling the great fracture in the planet’s mantle toward the center.
He didn’t dare go all the way down into the core. Not even he could survive the molten heart of the planet, but he descended many miles until he approached the break, a section a hundred miles thick that had been formed of solid stone before the queen punched a hole through it.
Connor tried again to drain away the heat of the magma pushing up into the gap, fighting to form a plug of earth over it and seal the hole. Despite crouching just a few miles above that critical section, he still couldn’t create a strong enough boundary quickly enough.
In the process, he absorbed vast amounts of heat energy, though. As it built inside of him, his elfonnel form swelled with that energy that coursed through him with growing intensity, needing a release.
“Surrender to us, Connor, or all will be lost,” Earth urged, and he sensed the elements’ fear. If he didn’t try something different, and fast, they’d all be consumed, and everyone he loved would die.
Kilian’s words came to mind again. “Don’t fail, Connor, or everyone dies.”
He needed an idea, he needed another tool.
All he had was heat. Lots of heat.
He thought back to how he had destroyed the queen. Could he try that here? Could he disintegrate part of the planet? Would that make things better or worse?
Only one way to find out.
92
Too Much of a Good Thing
Wait!” Fire shouted, but Connor couldn’t wait or he would die.
He focused all of that heat into the highest-frequency energy he could, sucking in more and more until his entire giant form thrummed with pent-up power. Then he unleashed it all, roaring an underground challenge, the sound impressively mighty.
If only Hamish could have heard that. He might die in this attempt, but he’d figured out the thunder-chuckle at last.
All of that heat energy blasted away in a vast invisible beam down through the fracture in the mantel. Energy poured out of him in a titanic burst that ripped down through the magma and shattered it all in an instant, boiling the superheated magma to gas, then rending that gas into component bits like the plasma generated by lightning.
Some of those basic elemental molecules sundered under the bombardment, and they weren’t happy about it.
Those breaking elements unleashed staggering amounts of energy in vast detonations that eclipsed the energy driving the magma upward, forming pressure voids that drove the magma back in every direction. The magma already pressing toward the surface accelerated, ripping past him like a molten whirlwind. Connor fought the current with all his strength, but was still swept upward for miles before arresting his ascent.
The magma blasted up through the top of the volcano, spewing fire and superheated air tens of thousands of feet.
He ignored that problem and focused all his strength on filling those pressure gaps with new-formed earth. By draining heat from the magma at the lowest edge of the hole, he hardened it to stone. By the time the pressure voids faded and magma again began driving upward, he’d formed a far thicker crust than before. It still flexed under the strain, stones cracking and the entire new construct groaning like underground thunder.
Connor held on with all his strength. He hurled his huge body down, crashing into the top layer of the plug he’d created, and pushed with all his might. The stones flexed and cracked, threatening to burst again.
Howling with the effort, he fought the growing pressure while adding more layers of stone as fast as he could create them. For twenty eternal seconds, he fought the elements, on the cusp of losing the tiny plug again. His body shook from the strain.
He hadn’t realized fire could feel exhausted, but it could. So could earth. Panting fire and dust, he fought on and the pressure slowly eased. Finally, after adding more than a mile of new stone in the gap, the pressure subsided and he sensed that the plug would hold.
For a moment he simply sprawled there, laying atop his newly-formed stone, a totally exhausted, but happy monster, surrounded by magma and stone.
In his mind, he glimpsed the elementals standing to either side of him. Fire looked impressed. “I hadn’t expected a mortal human to discover the power of fission.”
“You mean ripping those molecules apart?”
“Indeed. Those basic components of matter contain vast power, as you’ve witnessed. Those bonds are not easy to break, but when they are broken, the result releases world-changing power.”
Connor grinned to think he’d discovered another subtle world power. The thought of climbing the miles back to the surface made him grimace, but staying down there forever would be worse. So he sighed and slowly began to rise through the magma-filled conduit, filling the fractured mantel back in behind him. He again gathered enormous quantities of energy as he sucked away the heat from the magma, but he didn’t dare release it down into the core again for fear of shattering the plug he’d just created.
Some of it he used to replenish his strength, soon feeling his monstrous best again. He held in the rest until he ascended up through the top of the still-spewing volcano. There he tipped his giant muzzle into the sky and roared with victory, releasing all that energy into the sky in an invisible death beam that wouldn’t stop until it smacked into the moon.
He glanced after it, suddenly wondering if that was a good idea. What would that beam do to the moon?
He hoped no one noticed.
Then he cast his elemental senses across the rest of the greater disaster area. He immediately sensed Kilian and Evander still fighting to help contain the mess. Evander stood to the west, blazing in Connor’s affinity senses like a miniature sun. Walking with air, he was grasping the wild air currents rushing around the new-formed mountains and seeking to tear across the continent, carrying with them deadly clouds of ash. He pulled them back to spin around the ring of new mountains in a darkening funnel cloud.
Standing to the east, Kilian was dousing the clouds with water, dragging the ash out of the air and casting it down onto the still-bubbling lava. It sank into the lava, becoming one with the earth and fire that Connor controlled.
Despite their best efforts, they were not capturing everything. The funnel cloud was growing so fierce, winds howling faster than a fracked Strider, it threatened to burst free. He didn’t dare walk with Air and Water while in elfonnel form. He was already fractured enough.
That didn’t mean he couldn’t help. Kilian was already working to drain heat away from the funnel, but that wasn’t enough. After what he’d learned about storms from the elements, Connor understood what he needed to do to prevent that still-growing funnel of wet ash from growing into the biggest thunderhead the world had ever seen.
So he seized that heat, dragged it high into the air above the funnel cloud, and spread it out there. Storms grew when hot, moist air was forced to rise by cooler air above. Now he was spreading so much heat above the funnel that the air there turned super hot. That snuffed out the impetus for the storm, robbing fresh power from the currents that had sought to drag in new currents from across Obrion.
So much ash was whirling within that funnel cloud, tons and tons of it in a gray, swirling mass over the mountains that Connor’s earth senses easily slipped up through it all. He grasped it and tugged.
All those tons of ash fell from the sky, plunging down onto the red-hot eruption area like a gray blanket a quarter mile deep. It fell with a rolling cascade of muted thunder as Connor dragged it all down into the new mountains, preventing the lighter ash from blowing up into the air again.
He sensed surprise from Kilian and Evander both. He wished he could speak with them, but only managed another rumbling thunder chuckle. Elfonnel were so good at those.
With that part of the disaster contained, he focused on the deeper earth again. He verified that he’d sealed the fractured conduits fueling the eruption, but was surprised to feel other fractures, fissures, and cracks throughout the lands of Obrion.
With a start, he realized those had been caused when the elfonnel had clashed during the invasion of Granadure by Dougal’s armies. He clearly felt the fracturing of the solid rock beneath the borderlands and under Mount Murdo and the Carraig. There were natural fissures there, but the titanic struggles of Petralists and elfonnel had ruptured them far beyond their natural state.
So Connor seized those fissures and fused them back into solid stone again.
“We did not agree to seal the other veins,” Earth protested.
“Why shouldn’t we? I can stabilize things and keep further destruction from happening.”
Fire grumbled, “I told you it was a bad idea to give him too much too soon.”
“It’s not a bad idea. This is wonderful,” Connor replied. He didn’t understand their concern. They might not be human, but it still surprised him that they didn’t celebrate what he could do.
They didn’t like it, and they continued to murmur, but Connor kept working. He’d gained control, and he was not about to give it back. He wasn’t sure what they could do to him if he upset them. Could they eject him, cast him back into mortal form to die in the volcano he was still mostly immersed in?
He hoped they wouldn’t. They seemed to still want him to help them in the future, and he planned to do so, as long as they didn’t want something he couldn’t give. At the moment, he couldn’t ignore this unique opportunity to fix some of the problems plaguing the land.
Despite their clear displeasure, they did not attempt to thwart him. The challenge of the unstable elements had stumped Kilian and Evander and the mightiest of the Petralists, but in elfonnel form, Connor found he could readily manage sealing those fissures and settling the land. He bled away the restless energy pooling under those broken lands and dissipated it out through the continent where it couldn’t harm anything.
Kilian had spoken of raising an elfonnel as the greatest challenge a Petralist could survive, but at the moment, Connor was loving it.
That gave him pause. Was he really having so much fun as an elfonnel, or was he mad, suffering a broken mind? Had he really failed and just hadn’t realized it yet?
Somehow he doubted that. He felt like himself, far more than he probably should. Sure his body was made out of living fire, he was lounging in a bubbling volcano in a bath of superheated lava, and he’d just eaten Queen Dreokt. So maybe it wasn’t exactly a normal day, but inside he felt like himself. He bet his thrice-ascended bond with the elements was what helped so much.
Maybe ticking them off hadn’t been such a good idea. What if they left him and removed their protective influence? There had to be weird side effects that came with stepping outside of his human form and possessing a mountain of fire, but he felt great.
He decided not to worry about it. He was having way too much fun to get all mopey about possibly melting later.
With a renewed sense of optimism, he turned back to the new mountains he’d formed. The great central peak was a massive, rough shape that would become a landmark of Obrion from that point forward.
It was kind of ugly.
He cringed to think of generations of Obrioners pointing out the huge, misshapen mass of new stone and saying, “Yup, that was Connor’s greatest accomplishment.”
So he got to work. The new stone was still pretty soft. If that mountain was going to be his monument, he’d make it a fun monument.
He started by simply smoothing the shape and making it less ugly, but that wasn’t enough. People would know he had built it. It would tell them something about him. What did he want them to know?
Ideas poured in and he grinned and leaped to the task. In his giant, lava form, he scampered over the mountain to work the new stone. He might not be a sculptor like Aunt Ailsa, but he’d learned a lot of the concepts from her.
He started by scraping the sides of the gigantic peak as smooth as polished granite, sculpting the mountain into a nine-sided shape. On each flat section, he carved the ancient symbol of one of the nine core affinity stones. Moving farther up the mountain, he rounded the peak and sculpted from memory his favorite image in the whole world.
Verena.
Of course, Verena. What else would he want to create as a monument to the world beside the face of the most amazing girl he knew? He sculpted the mountain so that she looked north toward her homeland, that mischievous smile on her adorable face. He fashioned the sections representing her hair out of pure, black basalt and laughed again when the final shape became clear.
As much as he loved Verena, she wasn’t the only thing he wanted to carve. He did pause to add a carving of her father’s prize duck trophy onto the mountain just below her. No reason not to impress him a little too, since Connor would be seeing a lot of Verena’s family if he managed to survive the day.
He’d survive, and he’d show everyone that he could do it with style. So he leaped from the central peak to the surrounding, smaller mountains and worked them too. In the top of the first, he carved the faces of Tomas and Cameron, wearing their customary insolent grins. He added the epitaph, “Mighty heroes and unfailing friends.”
It felt right to leave a monument to the two brave men who had sacrificed everything. They were heroes the entire country should celebrate. Without their sacrifice, Connor never would have succeeded. It didn’t seem adequate, but it was more than most fallen warriors got, and it helped ease some of the cold knot of sorrow that remained in his heart, despite his boiling temperature.
On another mountain, he carved Ilse’s face beside her husband, Lukas. On the shoulder of the mountain below, he wrote, “Protect and defend.” He hoped the monument would serve as a memorial to the brave pilots of Ilse’s Revenge who had battled so bravely against the queen while their mechanical wore her face.
He dedicated the next mountain to Hamish and Jean, and included her favorite phrase “Look deep, see clear” above an image of a giant cookie, complete with the recipe, which he had long-since memorized. It was one of Hamish’s favorites.
The next mountain he dedicated to Rory and Anika, carving them looking at each other, with the inscription, “Love breaks borders.”
He carved his parents on the next one, and thinking of them helped ease his headache. It was as if bringing his loved ones to mind and creating tangible memorials to them all, he was somehow drawing upon their strength.
“This is unwise,” Fire said, speaking for the first time in a while.
“Why? These are people I want to honor.” Surely even an inhuman elemental could understand that.
Earth responded. “Because you strengthen your bridge, when that will lessen your ability to walk openly with us.”
Only then did Connor feel it. In his mind, he saw his affinityscape, and the terrible cankered, rotten damage he’d caused by casting his need upon it during his elfonnel transition did look less severe somehow. That was amazing! He hadn’t realized he could repair that bridge, and despite how it displeased the elements, the fact that he could eased some of his lingering unease about the choices he’d been forced to make.
“Are you quite finished?”
He glanced down and found Kilian standing atop one of the smaller peaks nearby. He was surprised to see the afternoon was already far spent. He’d consumed the bulk of the day plugging the eruption and playing with his new mountains. He didn’t even feel tired. In elfonnel form, he could probably go for weeks without needing a rest.
Evander slid up the side of the mountain to stand beside Kilian and said, “The fresh-cut flower is beloved by every maid, but only foolish suitors dump a wagonload upon thei
r beloved’s head.”
Connor glanced back up at the towering peak with Verena’s image engraved for all to see. Maybe he had gone a little too far.
No. It was perfect. She was going to love it. In fact, he considered taking the time to carve Kilian and Evander on one of the other peaks. They deserved it, but he sensed they’d really not appreciate the gesture.
Unfortunately, now that they’d broken his concentration, he found his enthusiasm fading. When he looked around at the lands beyond his new ring of playground mountains, he noticed that although the air was a bit hazy, it was mostly clear.
Kilian said, “Somehow I know you’re in there and you’re far more aware than you should be, but there’s danger in staying immersed in the elements for too long. Can you return, Connor?”
Return? Why would he want to do that? He was so much more as an elfonnel. Connor turned a slow circle, surveying the great peak and the ring of smaller mountains surrounding it. He’d done that. He’d formed them, carved them, and saved the continent. Why not stay elfonnel? What could he do tomorrow?
“When the hunt ends and the pack is sated, return to slumber.”
The words from Porphyry surprised him, and as he focused on the beast still protectively wrapping his core thoughts, he suddenly felt more himself. Of course he needed to return. He couldn’t show Verena her new mountain, couldn’t hold her or steal a kiss in monster form.
He sensed reluctance from both Fire and Earth. They wanted to play, although they still seemed to be grumpy about his decisions. Maybe they needed a break as much as he did.
“So, how do I get out of here?” he asked himself.
His mindscape shifted back into the dim tavern. Earth and Fire were both scowling as they drained their mugs. Air was walking upside down along the ceiling, singing softly to herself like the sighing of winds over the mountains at night.
