by Frank Morin
Water rose and extended a hand. “Come with me, Connor.”
Fire slapped Connor’s hand onto the tabletop before he could move. Heat flowed into Connor from the elemental being, and even though he no longer feared heat, he sensed danger through the contact. He’d hoped Fire would have enjoyed the play time in the volcano more.
Before he could stammer another apology for bottling everything up so fast, Fire surprised him by smiling warmly. “I have to apologize for acting annoyed earlier, Connor. We so rarely get to walk in elfonnel form that I got carried away.”
“You showed great wisdom in your choices today,” Earth added, saluting with his mug.
Connor sat up straighter, feeling a rush of pride. They were treating him like an equal, a trusted companion instead of a child they needed to teach how to walk. He did not doubt that experience as an elfonnel would always be a pivotal moment in his life.
Fire added, “Today I took you to the edge of greatness and bequeathed a greater measure of my influence upon you than upon any little human who has ever called forth an elfonnel.”
“I really appreciate it,” Connor said quickly, and he meant it.
Fire held his gaze and said, “I did so because I trust you, Connor. I trust that you will honor the debt you owe all of us. We need your help, and you are the only one who can help us.”
There it was again, the obscure debt. Connor glanced at the other elementals, who all nodded agreement, and he felt a surge of determination to find a way to help them. They’d helped him save everyone he loved, perhaps everyone on the continent. He had to do everything in his power to show his appreciation. “What exactly do you want?”
Fire leaned back and spread his arms wide. “Freedom, of course.”
“I don’t know how to give you that,” Connor said, feeling confused. He was still immersed in the elfonnel. They’d confirmed it was the most powerful elfonnel ever. How much more freedom could they want? He glanced at Water and said, “You spoke of being imprisoned before, but I don’t understand how that’s possible.”
Air descended to join them, slowly rotating in an invisible wind, arms extended. “We are beings of the sylfaen, Connor.”
Water added, “And yet we exist partially apart from it.”
“We have outgrown the original restrictions placed upon us from the days of creation, and yet we cannot walk freely upon the earth and choose our own fate,” Earth said solemnly.
Fire leaned forward. “We seek release from our prison, a chance to live a free life, just as you do.”
Finally, their needs were becoming a little clearer, although he still didn’t understand how they could be imprisoned. They were elements, for Tallan’s sake! But he understood the need to escape bondage and to fight for freedom. That was the entire focus of the revolution, after all. The elementals might not be human, but knowing they shared at least some similar challenges helped him feel closer to them.
“I don’t know yet how I can help you find more freedom, but if there’s any way I can help, I promise to do so,” he said sincerely. “Can you explain more about what it means for you to be free?”
“Enough for today,” Fire said with a benevolent smile. “You’ve pushed the limits of your strength.
“Rest, Connor,” Air urged, blowing him a kiss.
He wanted to know more, to understand their need and how they expected him to help, but suddenly he felt completely exhausted. Maybe he had walked as an elfonnel too long. He sensed that if he delayed much longer, he might lack the strength to return. Was that how the queen had gotten trapped in the long sleep?
The thought of slumbering under a mountain for centuries made him shudder. He quickly rose and took Water’s hand. Liquid flowed down her sleeves, over his arm, and across his body, enveloping him. As it did so, he became aware of his own, mortal body taking shape in the center of the burning heart of the great elfonnel.
Then her waters plunged down his throat, snuffing out his connection to Fire and to Earth and catapulting his body out of the great elfonnel. His consciousness shrunk back down to fit into his tiny, regular body.
The elfonnel shrank away and disappeared, leaving Connor alone. His body was miraculously intact, but felt completely wrung out. Worse, the sense of unstoppable power faded back to reality, leaving him feeling woefully puny and weak. Returning from elfonnel glory to everyday life was a huge downer.
The air felt cool to his skin, even though it was still shimmering with residual heat from the new-formed mountains. He landed on his backside on hard stone, his mind reeling from his recent monster experience. It already felt more like the craziest dream of his life. His vision was blurry, as if still coated with water.
Exhaustion clobbered him like a gigantic club. He groaned as every inch of his body protested, and his eyes drooped, feeling as heavy as if cast in lead.
He managed to whisper, “Ow.”
93
Hard Lessons
Connor groaned as he focused every scrap of remaining strength on simply blinking his dry eyes. His left moved, which felt like a huge victory, but his right only twitched. His entire body felt sore, even though he’d instinctively already begun tapping sandstone again. Luckily, he was still connected to the conduit back to the Sucker Punch mechanical, and healing energy thundered into him like the famous Mealt Falls of Donleavy.
“Wow, what a day,” he mouthed as he stared up at the hazy sky of early evening.
For a moment his vision was overlaid by the memory of the world through elfonnel eyes. Had he really managed it?
“So you did decide to survive,” Kilian said, crouching beside Connor and extending a hand to help him sit up. He groaned as he moved, but managed not to black out or fall over again. His head swam, and he rubbed his left temple. It felt like maybe Air and Water had entertained themselves beating on him while Fire and Earth got to play in elfonnel form.
They were on top of the new peak he’d shaped like a duck, sitting on the long, flat bill. It gave them an excellent view of the majestic central peak that towered three times higher. It looked good, the smooth, faceted sides reflecting the last rays of the setting sun. The growing shadows helped soften the features of the giant Verena statue at the peak. Connor loved how it turned out.
Evander dropped to one knee on Connor’s other side, a gentle smile on his huge face. “The strongest trees grow in the fiercest wind, and the greatest honor a student can bestow upon a master is to grow beyond their training.”
Wow. The words infused Connor with a warm glow of pride. He’d survived, and even Evander was impressed. Not bad for a single day’s work.
The giant hauled Connor to his feet. Even though he was filled to bursting with healing power, he still groaned again. But as he started moving, he felt a little better, as if his body realized it was really back.
That much healing power could really set a person right. He hoped his friends had tried it too. Deep down inside, he still felt a terrible exhaustion lurking, but for the moment he managed to ignore it. He rubbed one hand through his hair. It felt dirty, but not burned off like it should have after taking a lava bath.
“Well, that was unexpected,” he said.
Kilian chuckled, but watched Connor with cautious eyes. “How do you feel?”
“Hungry.”
“That’s a good sign. Raising an elfonnel and returning takes a lot out of a person.”
Connor dug out a handful of smashpacked meals and popped one into his mouth. It tasted like beef stew, and he savored it, tapping marble enough to heat it so he could enjoy it more thoroughly. He offered one to Kilian, who accepted with a nod of thanks. Evander took three and popped them into his mouth together. It looked like he didn’t even bother chewing, but just swallowed them whole. Connor really needed to work with him on that. He was missing out on so much.
“Did you really walk with fire and earth at the same time and become a lava elfonnel?” Kilian asked around his mouthful of food.
Connor grin
ned. “Wasn’t that amazing?”
“Unheard of,” Evander said. He looked astonished, or maybe a bit gassy. Probably the result of those expanding smashpacked meals in his stomach.
Kilian shook his head slowly, looking less pleased than Connor expected. “I can’t imagine how you did it. I’ve never heard of anyone doing that, not even Tallan or my mother.”
“Don’t you need two elements in order to return?” Connor asked.
“That’s different. The second element breaks your connection with the first and helps restore balance. It brings you back to yourself, returns you to your body and helps you escape the element that owns you. But you held onto two for hours, and they weren’t even opposites.”
“Good thing I did, or I don’t think I would’ve been able to stop that eruption. Your psycho mom punched a hole right through everything, down to the core.”
“I felt it,” Kilian confirmed.
That reminded Connor. He gripped Kilian’s arm and exclaimed, “Did you see? I destroyed her!”
“I saw,” he said, but didn’t look like he was celebrating.
“I killed her. It’s over. She’s gone!” Connor exulted. He still could barely believe it. After all their worry, he’d flipped everything against her and killed her instead.
“She’s had a pretty bad day,” Kilian agreed. Then he gestured toward the great central peak. “I lost track of what was left of her while we were fighting to contain the ash clouds. Get us up there, and we can see where things stand now.”
“You can’t think . . .” Connor breathed, stunned by the suggestion in Kilian’s words. He’d melted the dread queen, disintegrated her with energy so intense it could shatter the tiniest particles of matter.
“I think we need to be sure.”
So Connor tapped quartzite. Air responded immediately and regarded him critically. “Connor, you look terrible.”
“I’ll look worse if you let me fall off this mountain.”
Laughing, she seized his hand and tugged. With almost no effort, he lifted himself and Kilian all the way up to the crown of that towering peak. Even that little exertion left him feeling light headed. They landed on top of Verena’s head. Evander followed, flying confidently with air too. Connor had half expected to see him jump on his favorite sliding earthen seat and simply ride up the side of the mountain.
When they landed, Kilian raised one hand, eyes half closed, expression intent. He seemed to be searching. That was interesting. How was he doing that? He didn’t use quartzite or sandstone or obsidian or chert. Was he searching for a body heat signature?
Connor tapped chert and quested out as well, pouring his senses in every direction, seeking any other minds. His mental senses usually felt like sleek, invisible fingers of thought that flowed across the land effortlessly, but he in that moment they felt clumsy and raw, creeping along far slower than usual. Still, he managed to faintly sense in the distance all of the Builder flying crafts that had fled the disaster, carrying with them the still-living juggernaut pilots.
Just not Tomas and Cameron. Connor abruptly remembered their suicidal bravery, and grief punched him in the gut. He swayed, stifling a sob, and his good mood faded under a flood of mourning.
They’d helped distract the queen in a critical moment, helped break her connection with that sculpted stone. If they hadn’t, would he still have managed to usurp control over the eruption from her? Or would she have possessed the strength to challenge him, perhaps seize control over him in elfonnel form?
He didn’t know, but chose to believe their sacrifice had allowed him to succeed.
Then he felt another living mind and that unexpected connection snapped his thoughts back into focus. With a gasp, Connor spun to the west and pointed, shouting, “There!”
Tapping quartzite, he magnified his vision in time to see a tiny shape rising into the air beyond the flanks of the westernmost peak of the ring of mountains he’d created. It took a second to understand what he was seeing. When he did, he gaped.
A flying skull.
Queen Dreokt.
He clearly remembered spewing the tiny bits of her across the landscape. The biggest part had been that charred skull, but he would have sworn all the flesh was gone, the brains vaporized inside.
Some of it had regrown. Patchwork skin covered the re-formed skull, revealing facial muscle in places. No hair had grown, but one hate-filled eye was mostly complete. The skull rotated to point that milky orb toward Connor. The thin, scarred lips peeled back from scorched teeth in a snarl.
Her mind-voice had lost none of its potency. Her thoughts screamed with fury. “I warned you, child, but my days of restraint are over. You will reap the consequences of your stubborn idiocy.”
Connor couldn’t believe what he was seeing, couldn’t fathom how Queen Dreokt somehow lived. It was impossible, but he was seeing it.
She was regrowing her body from charred bits that could not have contained life. How? Was she using the same fleshcrafting he used? There had to be more, but he couldn’t fathom it. Staring at that distant skull with skin slowly growing over exposed muscle sent a shiver of horror creeping down his spine.
But she didn’t have to know how freaked out he was. He cast a thought back at her. “You shouldn’t have revealed yourself.”
Harley had survived death several times, abandoning her form and most of her humanity to survive. They’d finally destroyed the last, disgusting monstrous aspect of her. The queen sounded like herself still, even though she was reduced to the shape of a flying skull.
She wasn’t quite dead, but she wasn’t very alive either. He did not intend to allow her the luxury of restoring her full strength. Connor reached out with quartzite and snatched at her, trying to seize air away from her to prevent her from escaping. If they could hold her there, Evander could slice that psycho skull in half like he had Harley.
Queen Dreokt somehow slipped past his quartzite fingers and accelerated away. Connor grabbed for her again, but he was no longer elfonnel, was miles away, struggling with almost overwhelming exhaustion. The lack of a body seemed to have only condensed her will. She blocked his clumsy attempts and continued accelerating until she shot away even faster than she’d chased him from Crann.
“She’s running!” Connor cried. He was right, they could kill her, but only if they could catch her.
Kilian hissed and made a snatching motion. Fire burst out of the air around her all those miles away. It was an impressive display of fire mastery, but although she was limited in physical form to a ghastly skull, her affinities remained at full power and her skull burst through his ring of fire, trailing white-hot sparks. It would have looked really amazing if the sight didn’t inspire so much fear.
Connor’s mouth felt dry, and his heart was beating so fast it was hard to breathe. He’d thought he was scared fighting her before, but seeing her survive that superheated death ray left him deeply shaken.
Evander was already beginning to compress light into a new death beam. That was more like it, but she was moving so fast, could Evander even hit her?
“We can’t lose her now!” Connor shouted, wishing he’d memorized her curses from earlier. He felt like using them all.
Evander released the death beam, and it ripped through the air, covering the miles in a heartbeat. The beam of light deflected away from her at the last second, as if it struck a piece of Sehrazad steel glass. The beam struck the charred ground in an explosion of dirt.
“How can she do that?” Connor shouted. “She doesn’t have any stones. She doesn’t have a body even!”
Kilian glared after his departed mother, then sighed and turned to Connor. With a shrug he said, “She will. As soon as she leaves the range of Sucker Punch, she’ll begin growing a new one.”
“We need to go after her, chase her down,” Connor cried, even though the thought of engaging in another battle made him want to cry.
Evander seized his arm and held him back. “No.”
“Why not
?” Connor exclaimed. “She’s barely alive. We can take her.”
Kilian too shook his head. “Not even you can catch her before she reaches her armies in Crann. Do you plan to destroy all of her soldiers to get another shot at her?”
Evander added, “By the time you do, she’ll be restored. She’s angry, and down there she would be beyond the reach of our sandstone trap. She would have full access to healing.”
Connor sagged. They were right, but he hated to admit it. “We were so close!”
“Closer than ever,” Kilian agreed. “But perhaps not as close as you hoped. This is the great challenge we’ve always faced with her. We don’t know her weakness. We hurt her today, and if she had not distracted us with this.” He gestured at the ring of new mountains. “Perhaps we might have hurt her enough to matter. But perhaps not.”
Evander said, “We learned much today.”
“As did she,” Kilian said gravely. “She knows we’re hunting her weakness and that we are learning about her secret ramverk. She’s willing to put all of that at risk to defeat us. What will she do next?”
Connor frowned. “She used that marble sculpted stone, but I don’t feel my fire affinity interrupted like serpentinite.”
“Nor have I, but I expect to feel it soon. We were distracted when she struck Jagdish so did not notice how long it took for the affinity to drain away.” The calm way he spoke about that impending disaster was a little unnerving. When fire faded, he’d lose half of his elemental powers. Connor would lose only a quarter of his, and hoped to still manage some kind of connection through the green frequency. Would Kilian still be able to connect that way too?
Kilian took a deep breath and said, “We must figure out how to deal with her, but for now, we need to understand how you walked with two elements in elfonnel form.”
Connor couldn’t believe he was taking his mother’s escape so well. He still didn’t quite believe it. “How can we deal with her? She regenerated from a skull, Kilian! Who can do that?”
