by Frank Morin
“A couple days after she started recovering, all of a sudden she couldn’t walk straight. Kept toppling over without any reason. My mom thought she was having a relapse, but when Mhairi checked her out, she said it wasn’t a big deal. Neilina had fluid build-up in her ears.”
He spoke the last like it was important, but Connor shrugged, not understanding. “So?”
Hamish pointed a cookie at him to drive home the point. “So, she said that it caused a pressure problem in the inner ear.” He paused and frowned. “That’s so strange. I never even knew we had an inner ear. What does it listen to, and why can’t we hear what it picks up? I bet it hears everything that goes on in there, like the dripping of snot when we get sick, or the sounds of thinking really hard.”
“Hamish, do you have a point?” Connor interrupted. The questions were good ones, but they really didn’t have time to digress that far.
“Oh yeah. Mhairi said that pressure problems with the inner ear mess up people’s balance.”
“There’s got to be more to it than that. If I filled Harley’s ears with water, she could just tip her head and dump it all out.”
Hamish shook his head. “I don’t think so. The inner ear hides deeper inside your head. I think there’s something usually blocking it. Mhairi mentioned some kind of drum, but that didn’t make sense to me.”
Connor considered that. He felt sure he could hit Harley with water and shove some into her ears, but it sounded like he needed to do more than that.
“Let me check your head.” He reached for Hamish.
Hamish’s eyes widened and he looked excited by the idea. “Are you going to test making me trip all over the place?”
“Maybe. First I want to see if I can figure out what the inner ear feels like.”
He grabbed Hamish’s head and drew from the sandstone pendant hanging on its chain inside his shirt. Liquid healing rolled into him, warming him and easing his fears as it infused him with vibrant health. He directed it into Hamish’s head and let his thoughts slip along for the ride.
He’d used the method to explore injuries many times and had learned tremendous amounts about the human anatomy. The head was squirrelly, though. He’d spent so much time in Verena’s head, but hadn’t bothered to check her ears.
Connor pushed healing power into Hamish’s ears and studied them. The outer ear was about what he expected, with the little canal leading into the head. Then some kind of membrane blocked it. Maybe that was the drum Mhairi had mentioned?
Hamish shivered. “It kind of tickles.”
“Ears are strange,” Connor muttered as he studied the little cavity behind the drum and the tiny bones and weird handle-like extension that connected it to a strange, spiral-shaped organ deeper inside. There was fluid in part of it. Was that where he’d need to increase the pressure, or should he fill the entire cavity?
Probably both, just to be safe.
When he released Hamish, his friend grinned. “My head never felt so good, like I could run into walls and not even feel it. What did you figure out?”
“It might work, but I’d have to get my hands on her for a few seconds.”
Hamish grimaced. “Not our best option, then.”
“Probably not, but something to keep in mind.”
“Maybe I can come up with some kind of mechanical to help with that next time we need it.”
“If we get a next time?”
The speakstone at his belt spoke. Wolfram said, “I doubt she’ll give us much more time. The Althins have another chemical that survived that explosion, but I’m not confident it’ll do much. They hadn’t invented things with the goal of dissolving several feet of stone and earth.”
“That suit of hers is super annoying,” Connor admitted.
He studied Harley through Pathfinder eyes, trying to calm his fear and see her as a battlefield challenge, like the Carraig battles. If they survived the day, he needed to try that earthen suit idea. Could he do it?
Could he do it now? Could he master the concept well enough to challenge her to a duel, get close enough to grab her and fill he ears with water?
That sounded suicidal.
Hamish mumbled around a cookie, his eyes still closed. “Tallan take it and smoke fish with it, but that woman’s got impressive armor. I don’t think we can beat her until we figure out a way to strip it off.”
He was right. They had to get Harley out of that armor. Then maybe one of the creative chemical or lightning attacks could finally hurt her.
General Wolfram must have heard that because he spoke again. “How do you propose we get her out? Connor, can you separate her from earth long enough to strip it away?”
“I haven’t managed it yet. She clings to the ground like a tick. She hasn’t drawn deep from the earth yet, but she might decide to try and that might destabilize this area like what happened at Harz.”
Hamish said, “Well, I guess that means you have to get her to drop it voluntarily.”
“How do you propose we do that?” Wolfram asked.
“Not we. Connor.”
That’s what Connor had feared he might say. He considered possible attack plans, but discarded every one of them. Finally he settled on the only one that might help. It might also obliterate him.
“Come on, Connor,” Hamish urged. “You’re the clever battlefield guy. You’ve got to have something.”
Connor nodded slowly. “I do.”
“Really?” Wolfram sounded surprised.
“I need to ascend the second threshold.”
45
Whose Stupid Idea Was That?
Wolfram rushed up to Connor, looking more worried than Connor had ever seen. Eystri followed close behind, and she looked like she was contemplating transitioning to Student Eighteen to check him for mental collapse.
For his part, Hamish only took another huge bite of cake, his eyes half-closed, a look of rapture on his face. Connor wasn’t sure he heard anything they said any more. Maybe he’d decided his best defense against the looming defeat was to eat himself into a coma and hope Harley would ignore him.
“Are you cracked?” Eystri demanded, her face flushed and her eyes flashing with unusual passion.
“The way I see it, Harley is simply more powerful. She has access to abilities that we just can’t match,” Connor said.
Wolfram said, “Agreed. Are you thinking that committing a spectacular enough suicide might impress her enough to leave?”
“I doubt it. Dying never seems to work out for me. I can’t stop her unless I have access to the same amount of power.”
“You are forgetting the facts that she has getting centuries of experience and you will having about fifteen seconds,” Eystri pointed out.
Hamish shook himself out of his sugar stupor and said, “The situation sounds hopeless when you describe it with that attitude.”
She glared at him. “So you are thinking it’s a good idea?”
“Actually, I do.”
He really had slipped beyond rational thought. It was a terrible, insane, desperate idea.
Wolfram asked, “Why would you say that?”
“Because none of us can come up with anything better, and he’s right. Without a lot more power, we’re doomed. So we either quit and go find the best seats to watch Dagmanson get buried under a falling mountain, or we dig in our heels and try something crazy.”
“I watched Alasdair die. I won’t watch another city get buried like that,” Connor stated. He trembled with fear inside, but that single thought helped stiffen his resolve.
“Kilian said not to do it,” Wolfram reminded him.
“He said ascending again is dangerous. He said don’t do it anywhere near Dougal. Dougal’s not here, and I don’t think Harley’s got the same mind controlling power. I think she’s even more dangerous than anything the threshold might throw at me.”
When Wolfram couldn’t come up with an argument to that, Eystri shivered visibly, then spoke in Student Eighteen’s voice.
“We can’t think of a better idea either, but we don’t like it. If she can somehow turn you after ascending, I’ll have to kill you.”
Connor smiled. “Thanks. You have no idea how comforting it is to hear a trusted friend promise to kill me again if my choices turn out badly.”
“Even if she doesn’t get to kill you, Verena will probably punch you in the face once she hears about this,” Hamish offered.
Connor welcomed the day when Verena recovered enough to do that.
Harley stirred in her chair half a mile away and her quartzite-enhanced voice boomed across the valley again. “I’m getting bored. Do you really have nothing else?”
Connor gestured toward the Hawk. “Hamish, go! My sculpted stones are in the compartment under the second row. Bring me marble.”
Wolfram stroked his long mustaches. “I’ve heard the marble threshold is particularly difficult. If you hesitate or fail to push through the burn, it’ll incinerate you.”
“Then spread my ashes over the ruins of Alasdair, if you make it that far.”
Connor tapped quartzite to his voice and boomed back at Harley. “Relax. We’re preparing some arsenic-laced refreshments.”
Harley rose and laughed. Her earthen chair melted away and she stretched her enormous earthen arms wide. “I admit I’m disappointed.”
“You haven’t even tried them yet,” Connor said.
As if on cue, the Tabnit fire tubes belched and thundered, flinging another volley of projectiles. These looked different, more silvery than the last.
Harley slid to her left, and the projectiles missed by several yards. They exploded, but without the enormous blasts of the last ones. Instead, amber-colored liquid splashed out in every direction. She still stood well inside the blast radius and ended up covered from head to toe.
She started to laugh.
Wolfram said, “They mentioned they might try this. Would you be so kind as to ignite that liquid, Connor?”
“My pleasure.” He created a spark in front of Harley’s face.
The liquid ignited like lantern oil. Thick flames rolled over Harley, billowing black smoke, temporarily obscuring her from view. She stepped through the smokescreen, with fire burning fiercely all over her, making her look like a fire elemental.
Earth flowed up to smother the flames, but a second later new smoke began seeping out and the flames ate through.
“It burns through earth?” Connor had never heard about anything that could do that.
“They call it the Fires of Olcan. Water can’t extinguish it. It can’t be smothered. It continues to burn until all the fuel is gone.”
Harley seemed just as surprised. More earth flowed up around her form, but then she began beating on her chest, as if trying to put out the flames.
“Abandon your suit,” Wolfram whispered, hands clenched, leaning forward as if he could command Harley by force of will alone.
She didn’t abandon the suit, but it did suddenly shrink, most of the layers melting away, taking the still-burning liquid with it.
Close enough. Connor yanked on the river and struck with concentrated blasts of water aimed at Harley’s feet. They struck with enough force to stagger her back, but couldn’t quite trip her. He kept the water pouring in, scouring away the earth, trying to break her contact.
For a second, it looked like it might work. The ground under her feet ripped away under the focused water barrage, but then more earth flowed up, buttressing her feet. Three low, earthen walls rose between her and the water assault, deflecting it away.
Wolfram muttered a curse. “So close.”
Hamish ran up, holding the exquisite, sculpted marble, shaped like a woman wreathed in flames.
Connor took it and said, “Not close enough.”
As soon as his fingers closed around the stone, fire erupted out of thin air around him, ringing him with orange and crimson flames. The others cried out in surprise and retreated.
He wanted to apologize, but couldn’t make the words come. Fire seemed to fill his veins, his lungs, and his vision. Everywhere he looked he saw a world on fire. Heat shimmered in his vision and his worries were immolated under a rush of marble-induced euphoria.
Fire roiled through him, not burning his flesh, but burning away hesitation. Fire appeared in front of him, like a wildly laughing youth. Connor laughed with him, and Fire grabbed him, lifting him off the ground.
Connor had never felt so wildly and completely alive. He drank in the power of the marble statue, far beyond the point he’d ever tried before. The burn intensified until he no longer felt it, couldn’t taste anything. Flames roared through his ears like continuous, rolling thunder, and Fire leaped about him, laughing harder still, eager to consume anything he focused on.
He focused on Harley. She had noticed his fiery pillar and stood watching him, one enormous hand on her hip, stone head cocked, as if intrigued.
In a moment, she’d fear him.
Connor threw aside all restraint and gestured Fire closer.
Fire’s eyes burned white-hot, and he spoke for Connor’s ears alone. The threshold is the ultimate purifier! You can’t stop the burn once it starts.
“Do it!” Connor shouted.
So be it. Fire stopped laughing. He reared back and lunged, his form condensing into a blistering-hot spear that plunged down Connor’s throat.
Fire erupted through Connor, infusing his entire being. He became one with the flames. He was fire.
A wild hunger consumed him, an intense, insatiable need to feed, to consume everything. The flames around him intensified from crimson to white, and then to blue. He floated higher and the air around him crackled with pure heat.
Fire raced through his veins like a molten bloodstream, and in that moment he felt pain. Connor convulsed under the searing heat that seemed to be burning away everything that defined him. His flesh seemed to be melting from the inside, but Fire also stripped away his thoughts, his fears, and his hopes, until all that remained was the innermost core of his identity, his will to live and to fight to the last breath.
Fire consumed.
Fire purified.
Connor sensed the threshold, looming just above him as the water threshold had done. It felt like a gateway of living flames that would melt away the last of what made him Connor if he dared leap up through it.
If he hesitated, it would consume him anyway.
So Connor leaped.
Screaming with the need to survive, to win, to return to Verena, he shot up through the threshold like a comet.
For a second, all he felt was searing heat and blinding pain. It scattered his thoughts then burned them to ash. He saw only the intense blue flames, heard only the thunderous roar, smelled smoke that just might be the last of him floating away on the wind.
Then his thoughts snapped back into place, his vision cleared, and feeling returned like a splash of icy water across his skin.
Connor stood two hundred feet above the ground, encircled in fires so hot that down on the ground people were retreating, hands shielding their faces. The charred ground far beneath him looked melted. When he glanced down at himself, he was amazed to find he hadn’t melted away with it.
Connor looked out across the valley and everything glowed in his elemental senses. The flames ringing him were like extensions of his mind. They no longer hurt, but still filled him with wild, enthusiastic energy. Fire stood in the air beside him and saluted.
Welcome, brother.
Without conscious thought, he tapped soapstone too. She appeared beside Fire and gave Connor an approving smile. Then she embraced Fire.
Laughing, Fire hugged her back, and for the first time, they did not fight, but embraced like long-lost lovers. Connor felt moved to witness the elements reconciled. He hadn’t expected that, but it must be tied to his ascension.
Together, Water and Fire gripped Connor’s arms. The river glowed in his sight, as did every living person. When he focused on Hamish far below, he could sense the blood fl
owing through his veins. Unlike his rampager sight that seemed capable of looking into flesh for the lifeblood beneath, Connor sensed the water within that liquid.
He could take it.
Just as he could pull water out of thin air, somehow he sensed he could yank the water right out of a person’s blood. That thought disturbed him so much that he looked away.
He tapped slate. Even though he hovered so high over the earth, he sensed Earth in the distance, felt him raise a hand in salute and share his strength.
Amazed, Connor tapped quartzite. She appeared nearby and blew him a kiss, looking far less flighty than he’d ever seen her. Strands of her hair blew to him, and when they touched him, all the nearby air currents became visible to his air senses.
When he called one to him, it responded instantly, with none of its normal hesitation. He wrapped it around himself, flaring his fires brighter and helping support his weight.
Connor laughed with wonder. The elements felt more real, more like dear friends than ever. He’d survived, and the ascension had affected all of his affinities far more than the first. He was fire, but he was also water, earth, and air.
Before he could reach for serpentinite to see if he’d gained greater connection to sound too, his strength abruptly fled. Just like that moment after ascending through soapstone, he exceeded his strength and exhaustion crashed in over him.
The elements faded from his sight. Water left last of all, and her expression looked somehow sorrowful. The fires ringing him winked out, and the current he’d wrapped around himself whistled away, as if laughing. Connor grabbed for them, cursing himself for having forgotten that dangerous, momentary weakness that came with ascension. For a second he connected with them again.
They felt wrong.
As Fire, Water, Air, and Earth appeared in front of him, Connor saw that the power that gave them life did not emanate from within them. Instead, they stood within a vast current of energy. Some of it funneled through them, using them like a conduit and giving them life. He tried to understand the shocking revelation, but it faded from his mind, and that current of power split into distinct waves.
