Elemental Earth (Paranormal Public) (22 page)

“Dreaming it was the best way,”
Trafton explained patiently. “Not that you’d know anything about it.”

Camilla was in no way impressed
by how gorgeous Trafton was, and it seemed to be throwing him.

“I know plenty about dream
givers,” Camilla shot back.

“Fine,” said Trafton, turning to
Lough. “Shall we?”

“What are we ‘shalling’?” Lough
asked suspiciously.

“We’re going back to the battle,”
said Trafton. “Camilla seems curious about what the pixies were up to at the
time, so let’s remember.” He turned back to Camilla, his beautiful blue eyes
cold. “Let’s dream.”

“I think this is a brilliant
idea,” said Ferwick. “I wanted my students to see the field of battle, but if
you return through dreams I do believe we can all go and see the turns and
shifts of the battle as it actually happened.”

For a second I thought Lough
would refuse on principle, because he hated Faci and Daisy enough so that he
wouldn’t want them to see a dream that he created. But he surprised me by
agreeing. Sighing, he moved to stand next to Trafton.

“This is going to be cool,” I
said.

“This is going to be
heartbreaking,” said Lisabelle quietly. “Just heartbreaking.” She was looking
sadly at the bones, and I was reminded that they were mostly of paranormals,
not of demons. There was a good chance we were returning to a slaughter.

Lough and Trafton didn’t join
hands. I’m sure they could have, but Lough probably didn’t want to get too
close. Instead they stood facing each other, and the air between them started
to ripple with color. I felt my wind, tinged with a magic that wasn’t mine,
start to swirl, as dust rose up and drifted through the air. I closed my eyes
against the power, but it didn’t matter.

We were all in the dream.

There was a tangy smell in the
air that made me open my eyes.

Chaos erupted before me and I
stood stock still, afraid that if I moved, one of the long swords the demons
wielded would slice me to pieces. The desert wasn’t as dry as it had been
outside the dream; in the dream the ground was more dirt than sand. The trees
were darker with leaves, and at the moment several were on fire. The sky was
black, with spots of fire scattered around. I wondered what was up there
burning, friend or foe.

Directly in front of me was an
immense black creature that looked like what I would expect a dragon to look
like if a dragon could move around on its two back legs.

It wasn’t breathing fire; instead
it was slamming paranormals left and right with its front two claws, which
apparently passed for hands. There was a sickening thud as a werewolf made a
leap for the thing and was slammed backward, landing awkwardly in a heap.

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.

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.

Since it wasn’t Lisabelle
simpering over Trafton, Lough didn’t seem to care, but Jewel trailed along back
to the suite with them.

“I think we have another friend,”
Lisabelle said. “At least Trafton does.”

“Maybe Nolan can get her to join
the Sign of Six,” said Sip thoughtfully. “After today I think it’s more
important than ever that we have some power other than Caid defending us.”

“We have loyalty,” said
Lisabelle. “That’s all we need. Jewel can’t ever be a part of that. I don’t
care how nice she is or how much she likes Trafton. That goes for Pearl too,”
she added bitterly.

“There are paranormals who want
to help,” said Sip stubbornly, “paranormals who aren’t one of the three of us.
The Sign of Six gives them a means to do that. They read Tabble.”

Lisabelle snorted. She clearly
wasn’t convinced. “We need to be bringing our ranks closer together, not adding
new members.”