The Fire Elemental stopped walking, pausing on a landing between floors. It turned sharply on the shorter of the two generals. Despite the stare coming from an unintimidating figure, Geryon shrank from the intensity in the burning eyes.
“General Geryon,” the Elemental said, “you offer me excuses at every turn. Don’t offer another.”
With that warning, it turned and continued its descent down to the main level of the keep. It heard the heavy, booted footsteps of the generals following close behind.
“We’ve reviewed the battle plan, Master,” Kobal said. “The Third Legion is ready to accept the main assault. We’ve conducted reconnaissance of the city. Most of its towers and turret are in disrepair following the earthquakes. The sea has swallowed much of its Western seaboard. We expect minimal resistance.”
“You please me, Kobal.”
The stairs ended in a long hall that led to the throne room. In front of the wide double doors, a pair of guards stood stoically, their eyes fixed straight ahead. When the Fire Elemental and two generals approached, the guards stepped to the center of the doors and, pulling the heavy handles, opened the massive entryway.
“Geryon, you have yet to offer your assessment of your mission.”
The Fire Elemental stopped and turned toward the generals.
“Your plan is aggressive, Master,” Geryon said. “With the forces available, I’m not sure I’d be capable of carrying out your—”
The Elemental lifted its hand, and the ground beneath General Geryon split open. Lava shot upward in a geyser and consumed the man. He screamed briefly before his body was completely covered in the scalding magma. The Fire Elemental dropped its hand, and the lava receded back into the floor of the throne room. There was no trace of General Geryon after the magma had disappeared.
It looked to the space where the general had so recently stood. An odd sensation settled into its chest, one that it wasn’t familiar with. The Elemental reached up and touched the protruding female bosom. It felt almost like… guilt? It seemed unlikely. General Geryon wasn’t the first Fire Warrior it had destroyed, nor would he likely be the last. With a shake of its head, the Fire Elemental turned toward General Kobal.
“Select a commander from within the Third Legion to replace General Geryon. I will inspect both legions within the hour.”
The Fire Elemental turned toward the far end of the throne room.
“Do you wish me to accompany you, Master?” Kobal asked.
The Elemental reached up and rubbed the feminine chest, eager to be rid of the odd sensation that continued to brood there.
“Don’t be a fool, General Kobal. You may look at me and see a weak female, but don’t for one instant forget what resides just beneath this soft exterior.”
Kobal bowed apologetically and backed out of the throne room without another word. The Fire Elemental appreciated the general’s discretion. It would serve him well under the new regime.
When the doors clicked shut behind the Elemental, it walked forward, passing between the room’s tall, carved pillars. The throne sat against the back wall, a mix of worked metal and carved stone. It climbed the stairs leading up to the raised dais and looked down on it. Reaching out, it closed its long, delicate fingers around the arm of the throne and shoved it aside. The stonework holding it to the floor snapped as though it were wood instead of Ignatius rock. The heavy seat was lifted up and crashed to the ground beside the dais. The metal bent on impact, and the stone shattered. The Fire Elemental looked at the destruction before turning its attention back to the tapestry hanging behind the throne’s pedestal.
A flash of its eyes ignited the tapestry. The well-woven scene of Fire Warrior ascension to power blazed quickly before falling to blackened ash onto the floor. The Elemental knew there was a secret button to reveal the passage beyond, but it didn’t bother searching for it. It formed a fist and felt the untrimmed fingernails biting into his palm. Driving its fist forward, the Elemental crashed through the wall. Stone vaporized on impact and the rocks near the blow fell away, revealing the sloped, dark passage beyond.
When Sammy descended this path before, she had done so with a flame in hand, lighting the way through the darkness. The Elemental needed no such tools. The smoldering, red eyes revealed the passage beyond as it walked.
The guilty feeling from earlier quickly disappeared, replaced by a growing anger. It had spent thousands of years trapped within the stone prison at the far end of the passage, far too large in its natural reptilian form to escape. The prison had been a devious gift from the Earth Elemental. Though Fire hated Earth for his trickery, it respected the Elemental for its attempt. However, it would never be trapped again. The stone prison at the end of the passage was every bit a symbol of its imprisonment. Now that its caste was taking control of the planet, it would never be in someone else’s prison again.
It reached the end of the tunnel and stared across the wide chamber. It knew every niche in the walls, every curve of the roof, and every scratch mark it had left across the stone with its enormous claws.
The Elemental raised its arms wide, and the ground beneath its feet rumbled. It savored the growing power within him. As a prisoner, it had never had the power to escape. The stronger its caste became, the stronger it became. In its new host, the Elemental finally had the power to bring this prison crashing down.
The walls shook stronger, and cracks formed across the ceiling. The floor split with a deafening crash, and magma poured out of the chasm. Slabs of stone fell from the ceiling, splashing into the lava. Cracks formed a spider web along the walls. More and more stones fell inward. Slowly, the Elemental stepped out of the room, savoring the destruction it left in its wake. The rest of the room collapsed inward, blocking the doorway, and forever sealing the room.
The Fire Elemental climbed out of the passage and crossed the throne room. It pushed open the doors and stormed across the narrow hallway, exiting onto a balcony that overlooked the castle’s courtyard.
Below the Elemental, perfect rows of black-clad Fire Warriors stood at the position of attention, their eyes locked on the balcony. With the Elemental’s arrival, their hands snapped to their chest in salute.
The Elemental smiled, Sammy’s pearly white teeth glistening in the torchlight. “Stand tall, Fire Warriors. Tomorrow, we take the surface world by force!”
The Fire Elemental sat in a circular room within its palatial apartment. The room was barren of any niceties, aside from an odd, circular, hieroglyphic pattern carved into the stone floor. The Elemental took a seat in the middle of the circle and closed its eyes. Around the room, flames sprung to life, hanging in midair and wavering in an unseen breeze, as though ignited on the wicks of candles. The room illuminated with a soft glow, casting dancing shadows on the Elemental’s feminine features.
With its eyes closed, the Elemental reached out its thoughts across the world. Its awareness traveled the pathways of lava that ran beneath the upper crust as it sought out its emissary. Slowly, its consciousness found General Abraxas perched on the edge of a cliff, looking down on a burning city below.
Sensing his master’s presence, Abraxas turned away from the scene. Above him, a burning, draconic eye hovered in the air. Abraxas bowed and placed his fist against his chest.
“Master,” he said.
The Fire Elemental looked down on the man’s bald and tattooed head and a sense of nausea washed over it, as though the Elemental was disgusted and bothered by the sight of the loyal general. It quickly suppressed those feelings as it addressed the warrior.
“You have served me well thus far, General Abraxas,” the Elemental said, its voice booming in the open air of the plateau.
“Thank you, Master. Tell me what more I can do to serve you.”
“Our enemy has unleashed the power of the Wind Elemental and even now searches out the next of my Elemental adversaries. Though I can sense his presence, he is protected from my scrying by the very elements he now controls. He moves fast, p
ushing us quicker toward an endgame, quicker than I’d like. When I locate Xander again, you will go and kill him for me at once.”
General Abraxas smiled, feeling blessed to be given that task. Xander had been part of the pair that nearly caused his death. The other person—Sammy—had already been destroyed when she became the host. He would be honored to kill the infuriating Wind Warrior as well.
“As you command,” Abraxas said.
The orb of an eye disappeared in the air above General Abraxas. He looked down on the burning city once more before flaming wings emerged from his back, and he launched into the air. The Fire Warriors below were engaged in the wanton destruction of humanity. It was time to go awaken another clan of warriors.
The trio skimmed over the crashing waves as they sped over the endless ocean. In all directions, the rolling water stretched to the horizon. It was a lonely landscape. Without any land in sight, a sense of agoraphobia settled over Xander. He’d never been bothered by quiet hikes by himself through the countryside surrounding White Halls, but this was different. This was nothing. This was a long and lonely expanse of nothingness.
Despite the inhospitable terrain, he still felt the tug forward. Wherever they were going and whatever they’d find when they got there, they were close. He could sense it. Like a magnet, he was drawn toward the Elementals. It was becoming a physical pull, like gravity drawing him closer and closer.
He looked around again but saw nothing. If an Elemental was nearby, he couldn’t begin to fathom where it might be.
The direction of the pull shifted immediately downward. The force of its draw was strong enough that Xander felt his stomach lurch as it sunk toward his toes. He pulled up and hovered in midair above the inexorable downward force.
Sean squinted and looked around as he hung, buoyed in the air next to his friend. “This is it? We’re here?”
“I think so,” Xander said.
“We’re where?” Jessica asked as she covered her eyes with her hand. She glanced around the lonely ocean and saw nothing remarkable. “There’s nothing here. Please, please don’t tell me this whole thing was a wild goose chase.”
“It’s here. I can feel it nearby.”
Sean turned a full circle in midair but still saw nothing useful. “Want to help a brother out here, Xander? I’m with Jessica; I’m not seeing a whole lot around here.”
“It feels like it’s right below us,” Xander explained.
The trio looked down at the choppy ocean waves beneath them. Sean looked up, paler than he had been during the flight.
“Clearly you don’t remember how much I disliked the boat when we sailed to Iceland. I’m not a fan of the water. Fat kids float. We kind of struggle to stay underwater for any amount of time.”
Jessica sighed at Sean’s inappropriate sense of humor. “So safe money is on the Water Elemental, right?”
Xander looked down at the rolling waves and shrugged. It made sense, but common sense didn’t seem that common when dealing with the budding apocalypse.
“What are you thinking, Xander?” she asked.
Xander bit his lip. “I’m thinking that for once I agree with Sean. I’m pretty sure we’re not going to be able to just go for a dive.”
“Then what are our other options?” she asked.
Xander held his arms out wide, and both Sean and Jessica were pulled protectively behind him. “I’m thinking it’s time we took this wind power out for a real test drive.”
Despite the bubble of pressurized air around them, all three could hear the loud rumble as the wind kicked up around them. Xander closed his eyes and listened to its siren’s song—a gentle whisper of inaudible melodies that accompanied the summoned storm.
A deafening roar split the air as a gale sliced across the waves. The rolling waves directly beneath them shifted directions unexpectedly, slamming into one another and collapsing into a churning, boiling sea. The ocean became frothy, as though a feeding frenzy were occurring just beneath the water’s surface as the waves crashed confusedly into one another.
The sea spray licked at their ankles, and the wind tugged at their feet as a vortex appeared around them. Far wider than even the waterspout they had kept around the Wind Warriors’ island, the tornado slammed into the surface of the ocean. In the center of the frothy waves beneath them, a small, dark hole appeared as the driving winds burrowed into the water. As the wind continued to bore deeper beneath the choppy sea, the hole became bigger.
Around the burgeoning void beneath them, the water swirled maddeningly. The whirlpool quickly grew in both strength and size, swallowing the nearby water as it dug deeper and deeper beneath the waves. The sea spray that had previously clung desperately to their ankles was instead sucked into the heart of the tourbillion with an audible hiss.
As the whirlpool grew, Xander, Sean, and Jessica slowly descended into its core. The waves around them swirled angrily but were held at bay by the velocity of the vortex Xander created. Lower and lower, they sank beneath the waves.
At first, the water was a deep blue as thin sunlight filtered through the upper levels of the ocean. They could see the silhouettes of schools of fish approaching the walls of the whirlpool inquisitively before quickly disappearing as they fled. Larger shadows skimmed the edge of the vortex before angling lazily away.
Slowly, the deep blue faded to near black as they descended lower and lower. Xander knew instinctively that they were beyond the depth any human had ever gone without mechanical aid, yet still they sunk deeper into the Atlantic Ocean.
The meager light from above strained to illuminate the area into which they sank. The sunlight seemed to shrink from the depths to which they flew.
“It’s freezing,” Jessica remarked as she rubbed her arms. She pulled her fur-lined winter jacket from her bag and slid it on but still shivered against the chill.
Xander looked over his shoulder and saw Sean pulling on his jacket as well. It had been so warm when they were eating lunch at the Azores. The warmth was clearly gone, as a cold seemed to emanate from the ocean around them.
For some reason he couldn’t explain, the cold seemed to affect him far less than the other two. He remained in his T-shirt and, though he could feel goose bumps spreading across his exposed skin, it wasn’t enough to warrant putting on the thick winter coat.
The darkness swallowed the filtering sunlight, leaving the sea around them in perpetual dusk. The sunlight that had followed them surrendered its chase and retreated to the surface. The glassy perimeter of the vortex still swirled around them, but it was barely visible anymore.
“H-how far down are we g-going?” Sean asked as he began shivering uncontrollably.
Xander could feel the tug in his gut like someone had tied a rope to his stomach and dropped it from a bridge. “We’re close. Really close now.”
He looked back at both Sean and Jessica hovering behind him and noticed their lips were turning blue. Jessica’s eyebrows looked frosted as small ice crystals formed on her brow.
When the darkness was on the verge of swallowing them whole, their feet touched down on the silt and sand of the ocean’s floor.
“I can’t see anything,” Sean said.
Jessica fumbled in her pocket, and they heard the jingling of keys. She pulled out a massive keychain, its lengths adorned with charms and discount tags from assorted department stores. She sifted through the jumble before exclaiming loudly and raising her hand above her head.
“Found it,” she said.
“Found what?” Sean asked as he stared inquisitively at the barely visible shape in her outstretched hand.
Jessica lowered her hand and pressed a button on the object dangling from the end of her keys. Light spilled from the pocket flashlight. Though its illumination was weak compared to the oppressive gloom, they were able to make out the shapes immediately around them.
The light fell first on the ground at their feet. Xander furrowed his brow as he leaned forward and brushed away some of the damp
sand. His hand fell on hard stone with clearly defined edges. The narrow gap on the edge of the stone led immediately to another paver stone set artfully beside it. From that paver, Xander followed the path to another and another.
As his eyes adjusted, he was able to make out the silt-covered edges of the path—a clear trail that led forward from where they had landed.
“What is it?” Sean asked, crouching beside his friend.
“It’s a road,” Xander said unbelievably, his words escaping in an amazed exhalation.
The two stood and glanced along the path of the trail.
“Shine the light over there,” Xander said, pointing ahead of them.
As Jessica turned the meager flashlight forward, the light poured over the unnaturally sharp corner stones and dilapidated rooftops of the nearest buildings. Just beyond the crumbled buildings, the light exposed the rounded exterior walls that were now crumbled from age and choked with sea life.
“It’s a city,” he whispered unbelievably into the still air.
It was a city, or at least it had once been ages ago. Xander touched the slime-encrusted stonework of the nearest building with admiration. Despite the water being held at bay by his vortex, the sea still clung to the ruins around them. Coral had taken root on the collapsed walls, growing bulbous forms until the stonework was nearly unrecognizable at parts. Water still poured in miniaturized waterfalls down the facades of the ruined buildings. He stepped further away from the cobblestone road they had discovered as he explored the structures.
“Who built this?” Jessica asked as she took a squishy step forward. Her foot sank slightly into the ocean floor, and the seawater flooded into her shoes. It only added to the cold that had permeated ever corner of her body.
“I don’t know,” Xander said.
“This was a doorway,” Sean said, rushing toward one of the buildings. Though his breath still escaped in clouds of white, the adrenaline rushed through his body at their discovery, helping him temporarily forget about the cold. “I mean, if there had been a real door here once, it’s rotted away. But it’s clearly a doorframe.”
Water Shaper (World Aflame) Page 2
