Dangerous Creatures

Dealt With

Going through the enormous book would have given Elijah a headache if he could have any. Mackenzie wasn't so lucky. The dozens of languages that the grimoire contained made her feel like she would never discover all of its secrets. Fortunately, there were pictures on most pages, mostly of creatures such as fairies, werewolves, mermaids, trolls and other weird and sometimes creepy monsters. Elijah was going through the pages at a rapid pace, reading some of it and giving a rough translation to Mackenzie. He chose passages he deemed important such as the one about mermaids and fairies being real or having been real in the past. It was impossible to tell if it were true or not, and in his ten centuries of life he had never met or even heard of such creatures walking this earth, so he highly doubted it. The elemental was fascinated. If the book were to be believed, elementals were descended from mermaids, fairies and other creatures like phoenixes and angels. They were their evolution, of sorts. "More like a downgrade," Mackenzie mumbled. According to the book, the creatures were being hunted by humans and started hiding their wings and tails, making themselves look human so they would be safe from persecution. This led to the total disappearance of the limbs as their children were born without them and looked like other humans.

The book was also a kind of family tree. They were biographies and short stories about many members of the Alemaund family as well as the Fays', the Dalimores', the Hayes' and the Engelbrechts'. Jonas had said the truth. They seemed to be the most important families among elementals. The Fays were mostly elementals of nature, the Dalimores of water, the Hayes of fire and the Engelbrechts of air. The Alemaunds were the first family to have one of them being able to control more than one element. It was a complete surprise but a good one as apparently as soon as it happened, most elementals started to become overly confident. They thought they would be able to finally defend themselves against witches and humans. But keeping their existence a secret was an outmost priority. The strong smell of their blood attracted werewolves and vampires which were sometimes used by witches to uncover villages of elementals and destroy them. It was some kind of law that most communities of elementals shared. "It worked rather well," Elijah commented. By the looks of it, the grimoire had seen many owners who had added more and more pages through the generations. But Elijah and Mackenzie were mostly interested in the story of Avery Alemaund. Unfortunately, even after over 6 hours of thorough research, they still hadn't found anything. They had noticed, however, that a few pages were missing around the middle of the grimoire and they wondered what they could possibly have been about. "What Avery did probably brought outrage within the community. They might have wanted to erase any trace of it, especially if they hated witches as much as witches hated them. They probably weren't too happy about one of their own becoming a witch," Elijah said.