Elemental Earth (Paranormal Public)

by Edwards, Maddy

  The werewolf didn’t get up again.

  Next to me Sip whimpered.

  Now six werewolves were approaching the creature, flanked by pixies. The pixies were only about half the size of Camilla, and much greener. They had evolved and changed over the generations more than I had realized. One of them, the female, had long blond hair and was thick in the middle, with arms that looked like they spent a lot of time lifting heavy weights. The other, a male, was a bit older and bald, with large, sky-colored eyes and a beaked nose.

  Right before the werewolves reached the monster, one of the pixies surged forward, spewing pixie dust.

  “Lisabelle, what is that thing?” I asked my friend, whose eyes were glued to the battle. I glanced sharply around, but I couldn’t see the other students, who were too far into the living memory of battle for me to know where they stood. I couldn’t see Lough and Trafton at all. They were cocooned in dream, in the memory of bone.

  “It’s the cousin of basilisks,” Lisabelle explained. “It’s called a falcon basilisk for its famed talons. After battles like this they were systematically killed by the paranormals. Now they’re extinct.”

  “Falcon basilisk,” I murmured. “Glad that’s one thing we won’t be fighting.”

  The female pixie’s dust had stretched out and become thicker, so it looked like someone was holding a blanket right in front of the falcon, which was stamping its foot and preparing for another round of battle. The pixie’s hands worked quickly, looking assured.

  Another pixie darted forward to grab the other end of the blanket, and the two sprang forward like darts. From somewhere nearby I heard a gasp, but I didn’t know if it was a fellow student or part of the dream.

  I felt wretched.

  “This could work,” Sip said hopefully, but all of us, including the werewolves and pixies attacking the falcon in the long-ago battle, had forgotten about the demons. Sip grabbed my arm in a painful grip.

  A long blade sliced through the air and I heard a muffled yelp. Another flash of steel whipped out, and one of the werewolves crumpled. The pixies were desperately trying to get the green mask over the basilisk’s face, but the thing was faster even than they were. As they continued to attack, demons continued to kill them from behind.

  “That’s a Demon of Knight,” Sip yelled, pointing. “Watch out!” Her purple eyes were huge as she watched. A massive demon, wearing armor and carrying another long sword, this one crackling with fire, was engaging the pixies.

  They were hopelessly outnumbered.

  Even from here I could see the pixies trembling. The sword was slicing through the air, leaving bits of fire in its wake. The pixies were maneuvering around it, but if they didn’t get some help they’d be forced to let go of their blanket.

  I jumped out of the way of an axe-wielding paranormal as he swung and sliced his weapon through the air. It was silly of me. I wasn’t really there, but the battle felt so real that I was sure I’d have dirt and grime under my fingernails when we returned to Golden Falls that night.

  Then something happened. Something very small came darting through the crowd.

  He looked like he might be a fallen angel, but I couldn’t see his ring, or his wings. He came to stand between the demon and the basilisk. He had a thick crop of dark hair and smooth pale skin. His body was tiny, and more round than tall.

  “What’s he doing?” I breathed. “He’s no match for any of them.”

  The child was glaring up at the demon. The demon wasn’t even looking at the young fallen angel, because he knew perfectly well that he could squash the child like a bug.

  He shouldn’t have taken his eyes off him, though, because as soon as the demon lifted his arms to make another pass at the pixies, the child’s wings came out. Pumping frantically, he went straight for the demon’s middle, a silver cord appearing in his hand.

  “He’s going to tie him up. GO!” Sip cried, yanking desperately on my arm. The child was so small that once he got that close to the demon, the demon didn’t have a chance. One end of the cord fell from the child’s hand but came up again, so he could quickly loop it around the demon’s middle.

  “He’s going to die,” Sip cried, for the demon had realized he had to deal with the small fallen angel or be neutralized in the battle.

  “No, he’s not,” said Lisabelle. “He’ll get away.”

  The moment the child finished tying off the string, he tried to dart away. The demon was swinging his great sword again, but he had no chance of hitting the tiny paranormal.

  But the basilisk had come to help its partner in battle.

  “Uh oh,” I said, watching in horror as the basilisk swiped at the pixies one last time, forcing them to retreat.

  Then it reached down and grabbed at the child, just as the child darted backward from the attacking demon.

  The little guy never had a chance to escape as the basilisk’s great claw wrapped around his middle, forcing him to retract his wings too quickly.

  The fallen angel gave a little cry and the pixies redoubled their efforts with the cloth. I also saw one pixie raise his arm. The silver cord was still tied tightly around the demon, and even as I watched, it tightened further. I couldn’t see where the other end was, but I could see the result of its being pulled.

  With a sickening sound of fury the Demon of Knight was swept off of his feet, so that he fell backward and landed hard in the dust.

  “Victory!!” the male pixie yelled, keeping his eyes on the basilisk and the captured child it held in its arms.

  “Don’t worry, Jeremy,” he cried. “We’ll free you.”

  To my amazement Jeremy wasn’t crying, but he did look terrified.

  The female pixie dropped the cloth and darted right at the basilisk’s face, forcing it to use its other claw to defend itself. This gave the male pixie an opportunity to use the cloth without interruption.

  The female pulled up just before she was about to collide with the monster, skidding to a halt mid-air and desperately trying to turn around.

  She was almost fast enough, but the claw slashed through the air, and my throat burned as I watched the long blades rake down her back. She screamed and collapsed, blood oozing from her body.

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  As his companion fell, the male pixie slammed the cloth into the basilisk’s face, blinding it.

  My eyes were glued to the scene taking place in front of me. I wanted to cry and scream, but I didn’t. This had already happened. If the pixies hadn’t saved Jeremy, then he was long since dead.

  With my heart pounding I kept watching, though, hoping against hope for a miracle. The problem was that the battle was vicious and violent. The paranormals were outnumbered, so there were not many to come to the boy’s aid, and they all had problems of their own. I saw hellhounds cornering vampires and the vampires falling. They didn’t wear long robes like they did at Public, but black breeches that made it easier to fight.

  A strangled cry brought me back to the basilisk, which was squeezing Jeremy as the boy desperately pushed against its claws. The child’s effort was useless. It didn’t matter that the basilisk’s face was covered by the male pixie’s cloth; it didn’t need to see Jeremy to kill him. The female pixie lay on the ground, not moving. Blood seeped from her back and I wondered if she was dead.

  For a second, time stopped. The battle still raged, but somehow it went on in slow motion. I didn’t see the male pixie start to dive after Jeremy, or Jeremy start to cry. The demon was still on the ground, the werewolves tearing at him. His sword was too far away.

  There came a ripping sound from above, and I looked up to see a sky filled with demons and fallen angels. They fought in the air in a desperate battle to survive. There were flashes of black and white interspersed with the red fires that burned high in the sky.

  Then I heard a cry, and the body of a fallen angel fell. His swings tattered to pieces as he landed hard on the ground.

  “This isn’t a battle, it’s a massacre,
” Sip cried. “Why are we here?”

  It was a good question, because all it seemed to be telling us was that the paranormals had suffered a horrible defeat.

  “We’re here to see what could happen again,” said Lisabelle. “We have to be very careful.”

  “This is never going to happen again,” I said quietly, my eyes returning to the struggling boy. I wondered how hard this was for Lough and Trafton to dream. They must have been devastated.

  “We have to help them,” Sip said frantically, her nails digging into my flesh.

  “We can’t,” said Lisabelle stepping in front of her. “They are beyond our help now. That’s not why we’re here.”

  “Why are we here, then?” Sip repeated frantically, silent tears streaming down her cheeks. It was a gruesome scene, with paranormals dying and Jeremy having the life slowly squeezed out of him. I was reminded of Faci and his enjoyment of torture. It was one thing to kill your enemies, and another to take some sort of pleasure in destroying them.

  “We can’t know yet,” said Lisabelle. “But there’s something that we’ll have learned from it, and we’ll know later.”

  “I don’t want to learn anything,” said Sip bitterly. “I want to go home and forget this ever happened.”

  But that was not in the cards. The male pixie made one last effort to save Jeremy, but he wasn’t strong enough. Demons surrounded him and pulled him out of the air. He frantically threw dust and cried to the werewolves he had started with for help, but they had their own problems, since more demons had come to help the Demon of Knight.

  Suddenly I heard a noise unlike all the others, a ripping sound. Surprisingly, it didn’t give me a bad feeling in the pit of my gut; instead it was like the very earth was coming unmoored.

  Lisabelle, still standing in front of us, looked over her shoulder. “Wow,” she said. “That’s cool.”

  The earth was flying up in great chunks, like a wave of sand that had been ripped free of gravity’s pull.

  “It’s taking the demons with it,” said Sip in wonder. “It’s giving the paranormals a chance to run.”

  “What’s left of them,” I said quietly. We had watched many of the paranormals as they were cut down, including both the pixies, neither of whom had moved from where they fell. Jeremy was still alive and struggling, but he wouldn’t be that way much longer.

  There was a crash of thunder and I looked up at the battle above us. They had all stopped fighting. Demons and the handful of fallen angels who were left were scattering as lightning ripped the air, creating a trail of sparks.

  “It’s an elemental,” I cried suddenly, watching the pulsing and lifting earth. “It’s an elemental!” It was an amount of power I had never seen before in a world where I was the only elemental left, and the only elemental Starter in my year. There had been no one left to show me what a powerful elemental could really do. In Astra’s ballroom I had seen my mother, and the elemental in the battlefield of my vision there, so I had an idea. But this far surpassed anything I had seen before.

  “It’s a man,” said Sip with wonder. And indeed it was. He had brown hair and was of medium height, his slight frame easily stepping over the mess he was making. He picked his way around large clumps in the earth without even looking. His eyes were intent on Jeremy as he continued to rip the earth from in front of him. Hellhounds were tossed into the air, and as demons tried to get to him, to kill him and stop him, he pushed them back with powerful gusts of wind. But the man’s hair never moved, because the wind just flowed around him as he ripped up the earth in every direction. I wondered where the fire and water were. I hoped they were still to come.

  “He’s going for Jeremy,” said Sip. “He’s going to save him!”

  The young fallen angel had started beating the claws that held him with his tiny fists. Great quantities of earth and air were hitting the falcon, so much so that he was finally forced to release Jeremy, who tumbled down to earth. Sip cried out, because he wasn’t going to unfurl his wings in time.

  But the elemental had planned for that as well. Even from this distance I could see that his eyes were a deep violet. Gusts of wind caught Jeremy and cradled him, pulling him away from the falcon even as they slowly lowered him to earth.

  Chunks of earth started to come unmoored, and as they rose into the air, long jagged pricks of lightning lanced down. There was a crack, the sound of charring, and they burst into flame. The balls of flame slammed into the basilisk, and every time the creature tried to stand straight or start after Jeremy, they slammed into him again. Hit after hit kept falling on the creature’s black shoulders. It stumbled again and let out a sheer howl, more of anger than of pain.

  “He’s burying the basilisk alive,” I whispered. “He’s going to bury him in the earth.”

  “Better than leaving him above ground to go on killing,” said Lisabelle.

  After that the battle ended quickly. It was already basically over. The demons had won, but there was still a question of how many paranormals would get away.

  The elemental was saving them. A small band of paranormals were retreating.

  “That’s amazing,” I breathed, even as the stench of death hit my nostrils again. Dead bodies had now been thrown haphazardly around by the elemental’s attack. “Amazing.”

  I couldn’t take my eyes off the man. Watching this elemental defend his comrades was eye-opening for me. I had tried in the past to fight, to learn, and I had done a good job. I knew that. But this was another level entirely.

  I wanted to get there.

  I wanted to learn to fight like that.

  When we came back to reality I needed to remember to thank Lough and Trafton for showing me what my power could become. We had gone into the dream thinking that we were going to watch a paranormal defeat, and we had, but it had turned out that there was more to be learned than just despair. There was creativity and heart. Most importantly, there was loyalty. The elemental could have just left. Instead he went back to get Jeremy, the child of fallen angels.

  As the sky cleared and the earth settled, returning us to reality, Sip, Lisabelle, and I moved closer together. Returning to the present after a dream was always stressful, but gradually the living memory faded and the stench of death subsided, blown away by wind and time.

  The elemental, though, was firmly planted in my mind.

  The first thing I saw was Lough and Trafton. They collapsed at the same time.

  “WHAT WAS THE MEANING OF THAT?”

  We had forgotten about Faci. He was bellowing angrily at Lough and Trafton, neither of whom was in any condition to respond. Faci’s strangely misshapen face was purple with rage.

  Lisabelle quickly stepped forward as Sip and Rake hurried to attend to our exhausted friends. “Leave them alone,” she said. “You aren’t their professor.”

  Ferwick, standing nearby, stepped forward.

  “I cannot see the problem,” he said nervously. “It was a very educational experience.”

  “EDUCATIONAL?” Faci spat. “Are you mad? You are mad. My father says so. The only professor here who is categorically insane. No wonder you sleep in your classroom.”

  Professor Ferwick looked like Faci had slapped him. He cowered in on himself, but he found the courage to say, “I am a learned man and we are going to discuss what we learned from that battle.”

  “We learned that the demons are far superior in every way to the paranormals. We learned that hellhounds are impressive and powerful beasts. We learned that the paranormals should submit,” said Daisy, coming to stand next to Faci.

  “When do you think their wedding is?” Lisabelle said out of the corner of her mouth.

  I shuddered. “Imagine that ceremony.”

  “Lanca would be so angry,” said Sip. “She’d probably have to attend.”

  “No way Faci is dumb enough to invite Lanca to his wedding,” I said.

  “She’s the queen of the Rapier Vampires and commander of the Blood Throne,” said Lisabelle. �
��She gets invited to everything.”

  “Does anyone have anything to add to what Ms. Validification said?” Ferwick asked, running his fingers through his messy hair.

  Lisabelle raised her hand.

  “Oh, this ought to be good,” said Camilla icily.

  “We learned that elementals are hard to defeat if they know how to use their powers,” said Lisabelle. “Their magic is more varied than that of darkness mages or demons.”

  Ferwick nodded. “That was Tyler the Imagined, so named for his creativity and heartlessness in battle. They imagined he had a heart. In the end he did not. He was the great great grandfather of Queen Ashray, most famed of elementals.”

  “Did he live to old age?” I asked.

  “No,” said Professor Ferwick. “He was stabbed through the heart in battle, as it happened, but not before he had a son. By that time he’d been granted an Earldom, and through marriage and conquests, his became a powerful family. Queen Ashray was said to possess much of his courage and intelligence, not to mention his bravery and spunk.”

  “Queen Ashray didn’t have children, did she?” I asked.

  “Who cares if the Queen of the useless elementals had children,” said Daisy, stamping her foot. “This conversation is stupid. Can we go home now?”

  Professor Ferwick looked like he was about to say something, but after a moment he thought better of it. The history books said that Queen Ashray had died childless, but if Tyler the Imagined had had illegitimate children, I wondered if Queen Ashray might have as well. It was a long shot, I knew; a queen is not a conqueror. But somehow it was very hard for me to digest the idea that an elemental as good and powerful as Queen Ashray had not continued her bloodline.

  When we got back to Golden Falls that night we were all quiet. We had hardly spoken on the return ride. Lough and Trafton were so tired that Rake had to help them back to the dormitory. Jewel was totally impressed. She couldn’t speak Trafton’s praises highly enough. Pearl, meanwhile, followed Lough around like a puppy who had found the love of its life.