Chapter 6—Heaven Crashing Down

Chapter 6—Heaven Crashing Down

Seerah, Anazi, Myrac, and Keenan carefully picked their way down the edge of the basin, slowly making their way to the marble tower.

Halfway down, Seerah suddenly stopped and glanced up to where they had just been. Wrinkling her nose, she said, “I think my siblings are closer than we thought.”

“What makes you think that?” Myrac asked her.

“Call it a hunch,” Seerah answered scowling, turning back around to scrabble farther down the basin.

As the four neared the bottom, the ground shook sending several rocks sliding down the edge. Anazi quickly sent up a wall of stone to block the rocks. With a slight wave of her hand, she made the slab act like a catapult, sending the rocks back from where they had come from.

The dust cleared from the rocks’ landing area exposing three figures obscured by shadows. Seerah’s scowl deepened as she let out an almost feral snarl.

“Well, hello, sister. Did you and your friends miss us?” asked a familiar rasped voice. One of the figures walked forward, exposing itself as Seerah’s twin brother, Soren.

“Don’t flatter yourself, Soren,” said the second figure as it strode forward. Terima smiled as she cleared the shadows. “You need to remember, there is now three of us. You shouldn’t leave out sister dearest,” she continued, sounding faintly strained.

The last figure walked out the shadows, which then trailed behind her. “Yes, it’d be a shame to loose such an important member of our group here before our grand finale,” she said emotionlessly.

Keenan glanced from the third Dark elemental and then back to Seerah. “Answer this question, where in the nine layers of hell did the third bitch come from?!” he asked/ demanded.

“Now’s not a time to answer that question,” Seerah snapped. This is all wrong. How can I be in two places at once? How can I be two separate entities? Hundreds of questions buzzed through Seerah’s mind.

“Well enough with the formalities, let’s just get to the bloodshed!” Soren yelled launching himself forward. “You and I never got to finish our fight, Fire!” Shadows started accumulating around Soren’s drawn-back hand. Keenan put his hand up, gloving it with fire. A sickening hiss resounded from contact, and Soren yelled and jumped back, clutching the singed hand.

Keenan fisted his hand, causing the knuckles to simultaneously crack. “Fire destroys Shadows. You’re at a disadvantage,” he said mockingly. Soren growled and launched himself forward, Fire and Shadows meeting again.

x-x-x-x

Death stared blankly at Seerah, then said blandly, “Might as well get this over with. Fighting against yourself will be fun, won’t it?” She smirked, her first sign of any hint of emotion since she showed.

Seerah gritted her teeth together. She waved her hand, pulling water out of the air.

Death’s smirk turned into a crooked smile. “I’ll make your flesh peel off your bones,” she threatened.

Seerah twitched here fingers and froze the water into icicles. With a wave of her hand she sent the icicles and Death. The dark elemental jumped in the air. With a flick of her wrist, she conjured thin black tendrils out of her fingers. Death landed in a crouch. She flicked her wrist again, sending the tendrils straight to Seerah.

Seerah turned herself into water and seeped through the ground. She reformed herself and barely had time to react before she had to return to her water state. She reformed again and threw herself to the ground to once again avoid the fast-moving black tendrils. The tendrils changed direction and Seerah was forced to revert back to her water state. I can’t keep this up for much longer. I’m running out of Energy too quickly. The water elemental reformed again, glancing around to pinpoint the black tendrils again.

A scream caught her attention. The tendrils had picked a new target—Keenan. The tendrils had wrapped themselves around the fire elemental’s wrists, neck, and waist, dragging him to the ground.

“This was our fight! Leave him out of this!” she yelled to Death, who was still pulling on the tendrils, which had now begun to choke Keenan.

“I don’t think I will. I’ll kill the pretty boy first,” Death said tauntingly. “Or rather, Soren will.”

Seerah looked to where Myrac and Anazi were, just to find that both were occupied by Terima, who had somehow copied herself. She looked back to Soren, who had drawn out a knife that was dripping with what looked like liquid shadows. Seerah gritted her teeth together. The one way she could save him would drain most of her energy.

The water elemental let herself fall back into her water state. She reformed herself right in front of Soren. She grabbed his arm that had been holding the knife and slammed the palm of her hand into his elbow, not letting up on the pressure until she heard the joint crack. The knife clattered to the ground. Seerah pulled water out of the air and wrapped it around the dark elemental’s wrists. The water pulled him into the wall of the tower, pinning him by his wrists. She bent down and grabbed the knife from the ground, coating it in ice. She poured more energy into it until it glowed with a faint blue light.

Seerah approached Soren, who was panting though gritted teeth. She looked into his eyes, which were wide with insanity and anger.

“Go ahead,” he rasped out. “Kill me. I can promise it’ll be the last thing you ever do.”

“Don’t make promises you’re not sure you can keep,” Seerah said slowly. She pressed the blade of the knife into Soren’s throat. “Didn’t father ever teach you that?” With the last word, she rammed the knife upwards into his chin, cutting any screaming into muffled gurgles before he finally lay limp. Seerah stopped pouring her energy into the knife and turned around.

Keenan was attempting to set the black tendrils wrapped around his arms on fire. Finally, something caught and fire raced up the tendril toward Death. She relinquished her hold on the two tendrils, but as retaliation she pulled the tendril around the fire elemental’s neck tighter. He gasped for air and pulled at the tendril. He set his hands on fire again, catching the tendril and forcing Death to relinquish her hold on that one as well. The dark elemental twitched her fingers and thinned the tendril still wrapped around the fire elemental’s waist and pulled.

At an instant, blood started flowing from a wound caused by the wire-like tendril. Keenan grunted and tried to get a hold on the thin tendril without losing his fingers.

Seerah pulled water out of the air, froze it and sent it flying towards Death. The dark elemental simply dodged them by jumping out of range, further tightening the tendril around Keenan’s waist.

“Shit! Don’t do that!” the fire elemental yelled at Seerah. He was still clutching his stomach, attempting to light the tendril on fire, though only succeeding in scorching his shirt and cutting up his fingers. Blood was still flowing freely from the wound in his stomach.

Seerah reached up and pulled the knife out of her brother’s throat. She poured more energy into the knife until it glowed the same pale blue light and threw it with all her strength at Death. The knife embedded itself into the dark elemental’s arm. She screamed as the blue light seeming burned her arm. The blue light spread to her hand where it severed the connection to the black tendril cutting into Keenan. The tendril dissipated into the air as the blue light continued to spread across Death’s arm. When it reached her chest, her screaming stopped suddenly and she collapsed in a heap.

Seerah walked up the fire elemental and crouched where he was now laying on the ground. She put her hand on the wound, ignored his hiss of warning, and gently sent her energy into the wound. She healed the deepest part of the wound and closed the rest.

Both elementals stood and looked over to where Anazi and Myrac were finishing off Terima. Anazi raised her arms, caused rock to jut out of the ground and completely enclose the dark elemental. The earth elemental and the air elemental put their hands on the rock until it glowed with a green and a white light. After a minute, they removed their hands from the rock. Anazi rammed her heel into the ground, causing the earth tomb to collapse, bringing the now-dead dark elemental with it.

Seerah swayed slightly before Keenan caught her by her shoulders and steadied her. “We have to get to the top of the tower,” Seerah said breathily.

“Aw, how sweet; you two are bonding,” Anazi said in a sickly sweet tone. “But, don’t you think this isn’t a great time?” she added.

“If I wasn’t so low on energy I’d kick your ass for that statement,” Seerah retorted.

“Um, don’t we have to be at the top of the tower before sundown?” Myrac asked. He pointed to the west where the sun was just beginning to slip below the horizon.

“Well, shit, we have almost no time at all,” Keenan said, “and I don’t know about you, but I don’t see a door anywhere.”

“We’re supposed to just walk through the wall by focusing our energy,” Seerah stated.

“Sounds like something those insane people on the border watch babble about,” Keenan muttered under his breath.

“Well we won’t know if it works until we try,” Anazi said while walking up to the wall. She pressed her hand into it, focused her energy and walked through it.

“Is that enough of an example?” Seerah asked scornfully.

“That’s Earth. She can walk through rocks, anyway,” Keenan retorted.

Seerah rolled her eyes before watching Myrac walk up and mimic what Anazi had done, disappearing into the wall within seconds.

“Last time I checked, Air can’t walk through rocks,” Seerah said mockingly. “So I’m waiting on you, considering I can’t seem to stand anymore.”

Keenan gritted his teeth together, but said nothing. He and Seerah turned and walked up to the wall. “Ready when you are,” he said after staring at it for a second. Seerah nodded and both elementals walked through the wall.