by Frank Morin
The ground rippled beneath him, but standing atop his mixed water and fire, he couldn’t feel what Harley was attempting.
He saw it though.
Three seconds later, the ground buckled under the Althin researchers, smashing the careful stacks of steel drums together.
One of them ruptured.
The explosion ripped through the Althin company, triggering the other barrels, resulting in an enormous fireball. It consumed the entire hilltop with a thunderclap that set the Sehrazad horses on the opposite side of the river screaming and bucking in terror.
Connor pulled the flames away as fast as possible, but it wasn’t fast enough. The initial shockwave from those explosions had shattered the trebuchets and scattered people and equipment in every direction. Many of the Althin researchers lay unmoving, broken by the explosion. Others twitched or screamed once he pulled the flames away.
Connor turned back to Harley, his fears fading under a wave of anger. He pulled all that fire across the valley and wrapped it around Harley’s defensive sphere, shearing it off the ground to separate her from her element. He’d incinerate her defenses, no matter how many layers of spinning earth she constructed. She’d see how well she liked getting burned, or at least suffocated.
The earth blackened and smoked, and he drove the fires in harder, whipping them around the sphere in a whirlwind of flames that tore at the outer layers. He only needed a little time, and he’d destroy her.
Behind him, the Varvakins broke into a charge, shouting their battle cries, steel spears raised, chains clanking. A little lightning might help a lot. He vowed to keep her busy until they could strike.
The front of the sphere erupted outward and Harley charged out through his flames. Only, Harley now stood at least twelve feet tall, her torso eight feet thick, with limbs nearly half that diameter. She’d wrapped herself in layers of earth, forming an elemental battle suit like nothing he’d ever seen before.
“I hate you,” he muttered.
Connor struck again with fire, but it only charred the outer skin of her suit. He tried seizing her limbs with the flames to restrain her, but fingers of earth erupted all around her, shearing off his fiery ropes and rendering his attempt useless.
Her voice echoed out of the suit. “Not a bad try, pup, but I was the general of the queen’s own battle maidens. I’ve survived dozens of battles against Petralists who actually knew how to use their powers.”
Her laugh chilled him.
So he yanked waters out of the river and clobbered her with a huge wave, hoping to send her tumbling back and win some time to figure out what to do next.
Just before the water hit, her legs fused to the road, locking her in place. His wave struck with tremendous force, but it barely rocked her a little to the side. Growling with frustration, Connor struck again and again, rocking her side to side, blasting apart the roadway, and churning the earth there into mud.
Harley maintained her connection to the earth, refreshing it as fast as he tore it away. Connor wasn’t sure if the queen’s edict against using much earth elemental powers extended into Althing, but he didn’t want to give her time to decide that destabilizing the area fit into her plans.
So even as he kept bashing at her suit from every side with water, he pulled the waters away from the top and drove all that fire he had hanging around down into it with all his might, spearing deep into the suit.
He hit something solid, something human. He felt the connection for the briefest instant before the earthen suit exploded in every direction. It shredded his water and scattered his fire, revealing Harley standing on a patch of dry ground, fury boiling off of her like invisible fire.
Her face bore a wicked burn mark, right down her forehead, between the eyes. He’d missed her skull and brain by inches. Even as their eyes met, her red, blistered skin healed, returning to perfect health.
Angry Harley was even scarier than earth-giant Harley. This close, he got a great look at her. She was tall and muscular for a woman, with a blocky face and unruly black hair that fell to her shoulders. She wore a long, black leather jacket that reminded him of Evander. He was surprised to note she wore a pink silk blouse underneath.
“If you hold still, I’ll finish you off quick. Less pain and a lot less mess that way,” Connor told her conversationally, trying his best to appear calm.
Harley stalked forward, fingers curled like claws. “You’ve officially annoyed me, pup.”
She still didn’t unleash the full might of her earth powers on him, but as she walked, the soles of her boots began to extend. First growing to high clogs, then long, earthen stilts. She clearly planned to rise up to catch him on his elemental pillar.
As if he’d just stand there and wait for her.
Actually, he did wait a bit to give a little more time to the charging ranks of clanking Varvakins, with their coated cable snaking back toward their power station. She cast only a single, disdainful glance in their direction, then ignored them.
Someone who just woke up from a three-centuries nap should consider that maybe progress was made in their absence. Connor was happy that in her arrogance she didn’t seem to consider the possibility.
That didn’t mean she wouldn’t scatter them like pesky flies, though. Connor needed to hit her hard enough to give them a chance, but he didn’t dare to leap into close physical combat with her.
She didn’t know that, though.
His obsidian-fueled thoughts finally caught hold of a brilliant idea and whipped it into a plan by the time she took one long, lumbering stride and rose to six feet above the ground. She was barely fifty yards away and approaching fast, while the Varvakins were already beginning to swarm past him from the other side.
Connor tapped limestone.
He gave the light streaming past a savage twist and tapped chert at the same time. Riding that obsidian-fueled moment of inspiration, it seemed obvious that he should push toward her what he wanted her to see. Harley’s emotional state was easy to read. His skin prickled with angry heat, although the pulsing sense of her thoughts seemed far too calculating and calm.
Time to rattle her.
Connor threw himself high into the air, launching off his twined elements. What everyone else saw was him lunging forward, propelled by his twined elements, fist cocked to deliver a hammer-strike.
The Varvakins cheered, and Harley actually looked startled. She surged up to meet him, looking eager to pummel him in the face and prove herself stronger.
Instead, Connor swept his elements across her earthen stilt legs, slashing them apart in a dozen places. They shattered and Harley cursed in surprise and fury as she dropped like a stone to the ground.
Shouting war cries in their harsh language, the soldiers lunged, steel spears stabbing to meet her. She hit the ground a second before they pierced her.
That was at least a second too long.
Earth erupted upward and deflected the spears away.
Blue-white lightning erupted from the spears. It scattered across the earthen barrier, blackening it and sizzling like a hundred sausages flash-frying in half an eyeblink. Intense heat radiated off the lightning and Connor grabbed it, adding it to his flames, which intensified to white.
As impressive as the lightning looked, it did not penetrate the earth to Harley. She looked briefly surprised, then just annoyed. Fingers of earth snatched spears away from the soldiers, spun them around, and stabbed them back with terrific force.
Their armor was thick, and most of the spears deflected off. A couple punched through, though, and the soldiers screamed as lightning charbroiled them inside their suits.
The earth erupted under the soldiers, tossing them aside before Connor could help. The stench of charred earth and burned bodies rose all around him in a sickening cloud, which dissipated a second later under a gust of wind.
Hovering in the air under a huge canopy of fire that provided enough lift to keep him aloft, Connor drove more of his fires down against Harley again
, but her protective suit reformed, deflecting it away. The helmet hardened into solid stone. Connor couldn’t do that, not yet. In her element, Harley commanded powers that Connor couldn’t even imagine yet.
His mirage faded, and Harley turned her stone head up toward him. Just in time for Hamish to unleash all eight missiles from the Hawk as he swept in from above. Propelled by quartzite, they jumped across the distance and struck Harley’s huge earthen torso, exploding with enough power to send the Varkakins tumbling back to the ground.
Harley leaped through the explosion, her suit charred but not seriously damaged. Stones the size of horses erupted out of the ground at the Hawk, but Hamish seemed to be expecting that. The puking dooms erupted, shooting him skyward, and he banked away to safety.
Connor needed space to figure out what to do next. Everything they’d tried had failed, their initial attack was broken, and if he lingered, she’d tear him apart. So as he transformed his fiery canopy into wings to bank away around the town, he tapped serpentinite, drew deep from the stone, and threw a barrage of high-pitched, screeching sound at her. He imagined all the most annoying, cringe-worthy sounds he’d ever heard, magnified them a hundred-fold, and beat at her with them.
Student Eighteen had said that serpentinite could transform sounds into weapons once one ascended with the stone. He didn’t know how to do that yet, but the sound barrage did have an impact.
It enraged her.
Harley gripped her stone head with giant hands, and earth flowed up out of the ground to reinforce it, turning her head into a huge ball, wider than her shoulders. It made her giant look goofy, but must have protected her ears because she raised an angry fist after him.
The air bucked all around him, currents screaming in from every side as she struck after him with her other elemental power. Connor tapped quartzite and tried to fight for control, at least around himself, but Air had a new master, and winds ripped away his fiery wings and began tumbling him around.
Connor felt panic building as he tried to right himself. He didn’t have time to purge obsidian and absorb granite before crashing. She was going to splatter him against the buildings of Raufarhofn.
He caught a brief glimpse of the Varvakin knights fleeing from her, their cable shredded. She didn’t even bother to look at them, but was focused on crushing Connor.
Connor called to Air and tried to draw water out of the air to help shield himself, but Harley overwhelmed his feeble attempts. Air suddenly grabbed his hand, but only to yank him around, spinning him even faster. He wasn’t sure if he’d reach the stomach-lurch point first, or if he’d simply pass out. He was plunging down toward the city far too fast.
He was going to die.
In that moment, the Tabnit soldiers joined the fray. Their three long metal tubes belched thunder and flame. Projectiles half as tall as Connor erupted from the raised mouths of the steel tubes, already flying at tremendous speeds. They whooshed dangerously close past Connor, and he urged them on with all his fading hope.
The missiles struck true. Two fell to either side of Harley, while the third struck her giant in the chest. They exploded with enough force to shatter the front of her suit, rip giant holes in the ground, and send Harley tumbling out the back.
Her control over the air faltered, and Connor seized Air with all his affinity strength. She didn’t fight him, and through that connection, he yanked on the wild currents. He managed to deflect his course enough to plunge down into the icy river instead of shattering himself against the cobblestone streets.
The shock of the cold water nearly made him gag and inhale a mouthful of water, but Connor was now in his element. Water embraced him and pushed him back to the surface. Connor rose, completely dry, on a pillar of water. Relieved, Connor wasted a couple of precious seconds simply breathing and accepting the fact that he still lived.
By the time he turned back toward Harley, she’d already risen an impenetrable bunker of earth around herself.
“She’s not moving,” Wolfram said through the speakstone still tucked into Connor’s belt. He started in surprise, amazed that he hadn’t lost the little stone.
“Those explosions hit hard. She might be wounded. Hit her again,” he urged as he swept toward the bank.
“It’ll take half a minute to reload.”
Connor’s brief flash of hope melted away. “She’ll be back to full strength before then.”
“Can you slow her?” Wolfram asked.
“I haven’t been able to manage much yet. I’m trying to figure out a better plan.”
He didn’t dare return to the air or step onto earth. That left only one option.
Time to take things up another notch. Maybe he could irritate her enough to make a mistake. Connor turned back to Water and yanked on the river, diverting the entire flow over the bank and smashing it into Harley’s earthen bunker.
More earth rose around her, thickening her defenses, but she could have managed so much more. Maybe she really was worried about further destabilizing the area. If she hesitated long enough, he might manage to get to her.
So Connor rose on a slender pedestal of water over the river beside the town. He twisted the waters into a huge whirlpool, centered over her bunker, and drove the spinning waters down into the ground around her. He wanted to uproot her and lift her away from the earth. He’d destroyed an elfonnel once he got it separated from the ground. He could do the same to her.
The problem was, the bunker was surrounded by tons of earth and it would take far too long to tear through enough of it to matter.
He didn’t have that much time.
Enormous missiles of muddy earth erupted out of the ground outside of his whirlpool. The size of oxen, dozens of them soared north toward the gathered army and the town.
Soldiers scattered, and Connor diverted waters to slap the missiles out of the air. They struck fields and river with muddy splats or impressive geysers. He managed to catch them all, but the distraction cost him too much time. Harley’s bunker sank all the way into the earth.
That couldn’t be good.
Connor hated landing, stepping into the element of her power, but he had to know what she was doing. So he released the waters to return to the riverbed and threw himself across the town, dragging enough water with him to form a soft cushion to land on. Hopefully that would help insulate him from her earth senses too. As soon as he touched down, he connected with earth and cast his senses in every direction.
Earth felt a bit grumpy to his slate senses. Connor hoped he didn’t get angry. Harley wasn’t even trying to hide. She had slid back to the road. As soon as he touched her with earth senses, she rose to the surface, still encased in her earthen suit.
She laughed, her quartzite-enhanced voice booming again over the valley. “Creativity, halfway decent teamwork, and some new inventions. Well done, little people. What else have you got for me?”
She made a dismissive gesture and sat back on a giant earthen chair that rose to support her. “I’ll give you a few minutes to prepare a second attack. Impress me again and I might even let some of you live for re-education.”
Hamish landed nearby and jumped out, looking as worried as Connor felt. He jogged over, not even bothering to bring his tray of sweets. “Did you see that? I hit her with every missile and it did nothing!”
“We hit her with a lot of things that would’ve killed anyone else ten times over, and she’s taking a nap.”
“Got any new ideas?” Hamish asked hopefully.
“Not yet.”
“If you need thinking food, I’ve still got a cake in the Hawk.”
“No, thanks.” He was too nervous, too scared to eat. How could they stop her? If they failed, she’d march through them and destroy Dagmanson, burying it under tons of earth and stone like the queen had done to Alasdair.
“I think I hate that woman,” Hamish decided, frowning in her direction.
“I wish Kilian was here,” Connor admitted. As much as they needed his unmat
ched Dawnus powers, his very presence would have bolstered Connor’s confidence. Kilian always seemed to know what to do, but ever since the queen had treated Connor and Ivor like amusing pets, he’d begun doubting himself.
Did he really think he could beat Harley? She was an ancient Dawnus, one of the strongest Petralists of all times. What could he do against that?
Hamish ran back to the Hawk and fetched a tray of cookies. He began shoving them into his mouth and gulping them down.
“Ideas?” Connor pleaded as Hamish returned.
“Not yet, but I’m working on it.” Hamish took another huge bite and chewed fast. Connor usually agreed with the sugar-induced inspiration approach, but couldn’t make himself embrace it today.
What was wrong with him?
He considered the question as Harley put her feet up. It was hard to tell, but he wondered if she was actually dozing off.
Connor glanced at the central command tower, but everyone there was looking at him. He didn’t need quartzite vision to read their fear. They were completely stumped. The lord of Raufarhofn who stood with them was gesturing wildly, trying to convince them to act, to do something, anything to protect his city.
Across the river, the Althin researchers who hadn’t died in that earlier explosion had managed to right one trebuchet and were cranking back the long catapult arm. Maybe they had something still to try, but could it do more than their earlier, failed attempt?
Hamish had closed his eyes and begun to chew much more slowly, a sign that he’d reached sugar saturation. He mumbled to himself, “Raufarhofn. Roffer-hoffin. Rotter-coffin.”
Then his eyes popped open and he got that surprised look that signaled fresh inspiration. “Can you fill her ears with water?”
“Um, maybe. Why?”
“Remember that time when my sister Neilina got really sick a couple years ago? Even Mhairi looked worried for a couple days before she got it turned around.”
Connor nodded. Mhairi was a brilliant healer, but not even she could save everyone. Children seemed particularly susceptible to strange illnesses that could claim their lives before she could identify and treat the disease. Neilina had nearly died.