Chapter 36: Void
SHE ENDED UP BOUNCING OFF the soil like a ball, leaving her knife stuck in the earth above, and when she landed she cracked her head against the ground. The jarring stop sent shockwaves through her brain, so at first she thought it was the impact of her body against the earth that had forced her into the soil itself, till the ground started turning soft underneath her and she sunk like it was quicksand. Air against Earth is a bad match up. I can't blast my way out of here even with this power boost.
It started with her hands and legs, sinking down into a slimy bog. She tried to cut into the earth with wind from her fingers, but the Earth Adepts had somehow managed to seal everything underground airtight, like a vacuum. Her dagger was in the ceiling and her whip in her belt. She strained till the muscles in her abdomen burned and the earth trapped her hips like suction cups. If only she still had that enhanced hearing, then she'd be able to hear the sounds of battle outside her little dome, see if the others were okay.
The Demon girl's the first to get taken down, huh? She would've clenched her fists if she could. Not a bloody chance. I'm going to maim them when I get out. She was Conquest, for god's sake. If War-Calida beat people up, she could win this damn dome thing.
Her body was sinking even deeper – soon she might not be able to get herself out. But as the walls closed in around her, the air compressed, volume decreasing, pressure increasing. Soil crept up her neck and squeezed her chest when she took a deep breath. It felt like she was tensing every single muscle in her body, and then trying to sprint with her limbs in concrete blocks at the same time. It was utterly counterintuitive to try and do both together.
She had to channel her magic, except not through her weapons but through her own body, bring the remaining air in her prison down to her body, pushing her magic through every pore on her skin, making it turn the edges of the air sharp and hard, letting the wind shred her own skin and flesh. Another silent countdown and she shoved everything outwards like she was the epicenter of an explosion. The rest of the power she had left went upwards to bust a hole in the dome above.
Solid earth shattered around her, the unbridled Air magic rushing out to shove at the falling chunks of her prison and turn them into dangerous shrapnel. Startled shouts were the first things to reach her ears when she dragged herself to her feet in the crater that she'd formed, dagger back in her hand. But the Adepts regrouped quickly enough, and soon the ground turned to soft slush again, enveloping her feet and holding her to the ground.
She scanned her surroundings, trying to pull up her feet. There has to be something— Sharp metal dug into her shoulders, clamping on for purchase and then yanking her up into the air. Something popped in her left shoulder and she tried to not cry out. Enough lucidity remained for her to boost herself up with an embarrassingly weak gust of wind, and her roc slid smoothly under her to carry her up and away.
When it swerved to avoid missiles made of earth, she looked down and saw Daniel and Calida fighting back to back. Earth Adepts went to join the assault against them. They looked like they'd be overwhelmed soon. Daniel looked up at her, eyes wide, but shook his head as if to clear it and pointed to his left. Her roc flew that way without even a command from her, but when they went lower there was a thud, and the Demon screeched, flapping wildly. She looked over and a long shaft was stuck in its wing, arrow tip buried firmly in muscles so necessary for flight.
More thuds and throwing knives were buried in its other wing. Helpless but still struggling, her roc began to fall, flipping over and over in midair, wounded wings straining to catch itself. A flash of flame from below was all she saw before black feathers engulfed her body and she was swung up and around so her roc was beneath her. After a searing heat she opened her eyes to find shadow beneath her, already dissipating, wisps of it leaking away to vanish in thin air. When she landed, her fall softened by a cushion of wind, something clinked by her feet – a beak, sharp and shining silver. "Thank you," she told the piece of metal, but her words more heartfelt than anything she’d said to another Human.
His back to her, Nicholas said, "Decided to join the party?"
"Stupid," she muttered, and straightened to face their attackers as she passed him her dagger. Some of them had leaves and stalks growing out of their bodies, which she could only assume were the results of Nicholas’s earlier work. Water Adepts, mostly, with liquid curling around and over their fingers, but there were some without anything, holding only weapons. Mind Adepts. Apparently only Daniel had enough power to get into her head, since he was an Adept like her, but that didn’t mean they had to crack everything open to influence her. “They’re stronger now,” she told him.
“You noticed too?” Nicholas grinned. “We’re already proving Leone wrong.” The Adepts closed in on them and he said, "Cover me.” She swung her whip in reply, her wind turning the end into serrated blades of air. The boy crouched down, and under the cover of her whip he dashed out into the forest of blades to fight with just a dagger, looking for all the world like he was playing tag.
She tried to shield him from elemental attacks by revolving wind around him, deflecting the water that went after him in streams, but that only went so far when physical weapons came into play. Nicholas proved himself better than her at close combat though, as he caught bladed strikes with the hilt of her dagger and then ducked under their guards to simply pat their bare skin. A fraction of a second later he was gone, taking cover under the whirling arc of her whip again. Everything he touched mutated and changed, like with Calida’s hair though the messiness of everything showed that he couldn’t concentrate on finesse as much as before. Adepts’ body parts turned green or purple or brown like tree trunks, and grew and swelled like tumours, cells multiplying uncontrollably.
The roar of water nearby almost made her whip falter, but the sound not sharp, not designed to cut, maim, impale. No, this was the swell of water on the horizon, like a tsunami in the making. She’d heard this before.
Allowing herself a fraction of a glance upwards, she caught sight of the massive geyser crashing back into the pool in front of—oh, no wonder it sounded so familiar. I’ve been practicing that for months.A lone figure stood, barely visible in the sky above him. Two flashes in midair almost caught all of her attention again, as she multitasked. The figure raised a sword, so fast it was just a silver flash, and the flying projectiles were repelled with one swipe, before Daniel raised his arms, spread open wide. She braced herself – something big was coming. But if it was Daniel, it would work.
And it did; at least she supposed it did. In the time it took for her to glance up at him and then turn back to Nicholas on the ground everyone around them had frozen, like they’d been replaced by figures made of wax, bodies holding them up but faces pale and slack, eyes closed in some sort of dream. Sleeping? Doesn’t matter; it’s a chance. Nicholas and her sped around, the former seeming to have a gleeful time playing tag with motionless statues, touching them and making that turn-into-a-plant mutation of his spread, while she disabled as many of them as she could, snatching away weapons and knocking them out.
She didn’t expect to last long though, so it didn’t come as a surprise when a shout reached her ears over the distance, and Daniel collapsed to his knees on top of the Ferris wheel. Perhaps the Mind Adepts had managed to cobble together a counter-attack, pressing “play” on a video that had been paused only moments before. More flying flashes and Daniel disappeared from view as he ducked. A fireball, somehow lobbed hard enough to cover the distance, exploded behind him. Too close. The last thing she saw of his battle was him leaping off the Ferris wheel, like they’d done back then, long ago, with the words bring it to its knees, and the column of water shot up again, saving his life once more.
But with Daniel’s concentration broken things started up again, and soon they were back to back, her whip cracking in the air and Nicholas bobbing in and out of safety, playing some kind of twisted game of cat-and-mouse with two-against-a-hundred odds as the remaining Adepts closed in again. There were enough of them left for her to grimace. She swung her whip faster, leaving no side open with a shield of wind.
“Leone,” Nicholas shouted suddenly. “I know you’re lurking somewhere. Come out and talk to your son like a mom is supposed to do!”
“In the first place, I doubt that’s the correct tone to use with your mother,” came the placid reply. Even then she could hear the smile in her voice. One of the Adepts managed to get under her guard, coming at her when she was preoccupied with Nicholas and Leone. She couldn’t use her whip or they’d have an opening to get at Nicholas, so she batted the blade away with her bare hand. Her shoulder screamed at her, but she ignored the pain, hooking his ankle with hers and pulling him down to stomp on his face, knocking him out. Flipping his short sword up with her foot, she caught it and winced at the pull on her shoulder. Dislocated, or something. At least I have another weapon now.
“Well,” Nicholas drawled, though she could hear the hitch in his breath that meant he was trying not to pant. “I’m mad that you’re not listening to me.” No reply came back, as if Leone was silently raising an eyebrow. “I’m the reincarnation of the original Nature elemental that created the Beasts and the Humans,” he said, “and I can feel what the magic in me has been used for. The Elemental Legacy was never meant to harm us, only to help when new problems came in the future. No one was supposed to be hurt or sacrificed. Criterion eight was just a warning to the Emblems.”
“You’re being selfish.” came a male voice, its owner somewhere in the crowd of Adepts surrounding them.
Before they could say anything in rebuttal, there was a battlecry and a bolt of flame and earth and water ploughed through the enemy, followed immediately by the Water, Fire and Earth Adepts that had been chasing after them. Calida and Daniel joined them in the middle of them all, both panting hard. Nicholas was breathing heavily as well, and she could feel the whirling lashes of her whip get slower and weaker against her will.
“You just can’t accept that you need to die.” More voices joined in.
“Sacrifice four to save thousands!”
“If you don’t die, we die.”
“Can’t you feel it, or something?” she shouted back at them. “You’re already getting stronger because we’re here!”
“Exactly,” Leone said. “And that’s only a tiny, tiny bit of all your magic. If you give everything to the power stream, your full hundred percent, wouldn’t everyone get even stronger?” Amber faltered, her mouth clamping shut as the Adepts attacked again. “Don’t you think that it makes sense?” Leone asked, her voice somehow coming through the din of metal on metal. Despite her smile and gentle tone, she sensed that the lady knew the answer to the question was glaringly obvious.
When Leone spoke again she was directly ahead of her, gaze fixed on Amber. “You’ve said it yourself, when Janna and I were training you. You don’t want to hurt anyone else. You’d rather be alone till you die than lose control again.” With the chaos of battle swirling around her, threatening to swallow her up, Amber took a few steps closer to where Leone was, the short sword and whip in her hands.
She found her a few metres away, supporting a pale Janna. Someone had probably healed her in time for the battle. Both of them studied her as she fended off a mix of Adepts of almost every element. Janna tilted her head slowly. “You don’t like seeing me,” she said. “You don't like hurting people, but you hurt me. Looking at me makes you angry and looking at Leone makes you even angrier.” Amber gritted her teeth, knowing that a slip now could mean her death. With the two of them distracting her, the Adepts around were getting even more hits in, adding onto all the cuts she’d gotten from busting out of the earthen prison. Her shoulder burned like Calida’s fire, but there was no healing this time. It was probably getting worse the more she swung her sword. Janna spoke again, “Hearing me dissect your emotions frustrates you.”
“Of course it does!” The words burst out of her without thinking. A wind blast sent the nearest Adepts flying. She sent a bolt of air at the pair, but they disappeared before it connected, flickering back into existence on her left. A teleporter? Behind them she caught a flash of buzzcut hair. He has to have more stamina than Robert.
“If you died, no one will get attacked by a Demon ever again,” Leone said. “What better way to stop hurting people than to remove yourself from the world and give to the next generations? The seal in your mind won’t last forever.”
Shaking her head as her mind dredged up the image of her roc’s beak lying on the ground, she dashed forward, lashing her whip. The tip of the stingray tail almost caught them, but they were gone in a flash. That left an opening for the other Adepts to close in again, and when she tried to blow them away, maybe with a small tornado like in Camp, nothing happened. She dodged the strikes instead, but nothing could counter the elemental attacks. A wave of water slammed into her with all of the force of a brick wall and when she stumbled back a rock hit her in the back. She heard the crackle of flames and rolled away before she got burnt, but that only brought her straight into anotehr stream of water, this time holding her limbs in place as air jabbed into her stomach, pummeling her. When she looked down she couldn’t see the links in the air anymore and the wind just kept coming at her with bruising force.
As suddenly as it had come, the water dispersed, winding away to form a thin shield around her, pushing the fists of air away. Daniel landed behind her, and there was a thump and a groan and an Earth Adept collapsed. She’d fallen to her knees without the water restraints holding her up. When she braced her arms on the ground and hacked, blood splattered the earth beneath her. Internal bleeding, or something. My shoulder is numb and I can’t feel that arm. Where had that short sword gone?
“Need help?” Daniel asked as he covered her.
“No. Leave me alone,” she grunted, dragging her almost useless body to its feet. She didn’t miss the slight smile that tilted his lips. Calida and Nicholas soon fought their way over till they stood in a circle, protecting each other’s backs.
Amber swayed, reached for her Air magic, wanting to feel some sort of power to boost herself back into battle, and found a void instead.