“I didn’t know,” Xander pleaded.
Jessica sighed and climbed down from the hay bale. “You’re fighting it too much. As soon as you close your eyes, you get this panicked expression, like you’re afraid of your abilities.”
“I am,” Xander explained emphatically.
“Don’t fight them. Let them do their thing. You said yourself the power is tugging at your gut, telling you which way to go. Just let it go.”
“And be quick about it,” Sean added as he glanced through the slats of the barn door to the dusk beyond. “If there were any Fire Warriors around, they definitely felt that power surge.”
“You’re not helping,” Xander said.
Sean turned toward his friend. “I wasn’t trying to help, just stating a fact.”
Jessica stepped between them so Xander’s attention was fully on her. “Close your eyes and try again. Please.”
Xander took a deep breath and tried to relax, even as Jessica resumed her spot on the now-damp hay bale. With a sigh, he relaxed his shoulders. Rather than fighting to contain his power, this time, he focused on his ability to connect with the waterways and air surrounding the planet. As soon as he closed his eyes, he was sinking into a quagmire of underwater currents and overlaid jet streams. He tried to focus on where he was being taken, but his senses tumbled end over end as he was bounced from the air to the sea, as though the elemental powers were fighting with one another for dominance. He couldn’t concentrate on a single point or hope to find the Earth Elemental when he was, instead, growing nauseated and motion sick.
He quickly opened his eyes. The room still spun in his vision. Shaking his head angrily, he uncrossed his legs. “This isn’t working,” he moaned. He lowered his head between his legs to fight the nausea.
“Try again,” Jessica demanded.
“I did try again. I’m telling you, this isn’t going to work.”
“You’re our only chance of finding the last Elemental,” she said as she stood and approached Xander. “Sean and I can’t fight an Elemental by ourselves. We need you, and you need the Earth Elemental. Now try again.”
“What are you not getting about this?” Xander asked angrily. “This isn’t—”
Jessica slapped him hard across the face. The words died on his tongue as he stared at her in utter disbelief. His hand drifted to his stinging cheek even as a bright red, hand-shaped welt began to rise on his skin.
“Snap out of it, Xander,” she said sternly. “You’ve been moaning and bitching since this started that you’re not the right person for the job, that you can’t be responsible for saving the world, and you can’t believe the lengths you’ve had to go to keep everyone safe. I get that it’s a lot of crap for you to handle, but it’s time to man the hell up! I’m starting to realize that keeping Sean and me alive isn’t enough of a motivation for you.”
“That’s not what I meant—”
She jabbed him hard in the chest. “Shut up. I’m not done yet.”
The hay around them levitated into the air as the air pressure changed drastically. A chill settled over the room. Near the door, Sean shivered as his breath escaped his lips in small clouds. He looked at the dueling pair and wondered if Xander even knew what he was doing or if this was an involuntary side effect of his obvious anger.
Jessica took a deep breath and allowed some of the brilliant flush to recede from her cheeks. She reached up and smoothed back some of the wayward blonde hair that fell over her eyes. “If you won’t do it for us, and I can’t believe I’m actually saying this, then think of Sammy. You really want to save her? All because you two have some supernatural connection, since both of you were created to be hosts to the Elementals? Then do it. Quit talking about it. Quit complaining that everything that happens puts her more at risk. Quit telling us how hard it’s going to be to save her. Just… just do it. Now, can you find the Earth Elemental or not?”
Xander moved his jaw side to side as he worked through the rest of the burning sensation on his cheek. He quickly realized Jessica’s last question hadn’t been rhetorical; she actually expected an answer from him.
He glared at her for a long second, feeling a boiling anger just beneath the surface. His gaze drifted past her, and he saw frost forming on the wooden walls. He hadn’t been aware he was using his powers, just that Jessica had managed to push all his buttons at once.
The hay dropped to the ground, and the room instantly warmed. Sean gave himself a thorough shake as he tried to warm himself by the setting rays of sunlight.
“For the briefest moment,” Xander said, when he knew he was calm enough to speak again, “after I landed in the woods, I wondered why you and I had ever broken up. Now it’s all abundantly clear once more.”
Jessica smiled, unfazed by his attempted insult. “Because I’m way more woman than you can handle. Can you find the Elemental or not?”
Xander clenched his teeth but nodded. “I’ll find him.”
“Good,” Jessica said, infuriatingly. She turned and walked back to her hay bale, as though their last back and forth hadn’t just occurred.
He stared at her for a moment longer before closing his eyes once more. The power surged immediately, but Xander quickly forced it aside. Concentrating on the power alone wasn’t enough to keep it focused. He needed something on which to pour his attention, something connected that would help guide him to the Elemental.
Sammy’s face rose in his mind, the diminutive, blonde Fire Warrior who had originally come into his life for the sole purpose of assassinating him before he fully realized his powers. Though it had only been a few months, it seemed like a lifetime ago that she had been anything other than his infatuation, his reason for being.
With her memory still forefront in his mind, Xander felt himself lifted from his seat in the barn. He opened his eyes slowly, only to find himself looking down on his still-seated body. Jessica and Sean stood nearby, watching his steady breaths, completely unaware Xander was having, for lack of a better term, an out-of-body experience.
“All right,” he said, though his ghostly form made no real noise. “Show me the way.”
Xander was pulled through the wall of the barn, his intangible form passing through the wooden wall easily enough. He rose quickly over the trees, the ground dropping rapidly away as he went higher and higher. The French countryside became a blur of green, marred by clouds of black smoke and smoldering, dead woods behind the encroaching forest fire. His vision was blocked as he passed through dense white clouds. He emerged moments later, the last rays of the sun striking his face as it slid over the distant horizon.
Details were lost as he flew even higher, skimming the lower edge of the atmosphere. The ground below was a blob of green, edged by blue ocean in the areas where he could see through the cloud cover. He should have been able to feel the frigid cold on his face at such an incredible elevation, but he felt nothing other than an eerie stillness all around him.
Without provocation, he stopped rising and was instead drawn forward. The planet slid past below at incredible speeds. The land gave way to ocean as he hurtled westward, toward North America. The British Isles were visible momentarily as he soared over the Atlantic, but he quickly left them behind as well.
Far below, blue and white mixed together as giant ocean swells crested in white caps before crashing back into the sea. The sight would have been beautiful, were it not for the unnatural quiet that enveloped him. He couldn’t hear the roar of the wind whipping past his ears. The waves crashed silently below, as though someone had hit mute on the universe’s remote control.
Though there was nothing to truly note a change in direction, Xander sensed he was turning south. North America appeared off his right shoulder as he skirted the coastline, heading toward Florida and Central America beyond. He cursed himself for not knowing geography better than he did. Mentally taking note of everything he saw, he knew he’d have to rely on Jessica once he returned to his body.
Islands dotted the w
ater below as distant landmasses rose in nearly all directions. He hurtled toward the closest spot of land. He didn’t know where he was as he made landfall. The buildings far below were indistinguishable from his height. Smoke rose from the landscape in all directions, more proof that what he was seeing was hardly a dream. The Fire Caste’s destruction stretched in all directions, touching everyone on the planet simultaneously.
Xander barely had a chance to acknowledge that he was passing over a significant stretch of land before he turned sharply westward and rocketed even quicker in that direction. His eyes watered, not from the stinging wind that never seemed to come, but from a sensory overload. The land disappeared quicker than he could blink and the ocean reappeared, the Pacific, he assumed. Small islands appeared and disappeared in a blur, leaving Xander to wonder if he’d seen them at all. He sped faster and faster, the water becoming little more than a streak of blue beneath him.
Then, as quickly as it had begun, he stopped moving. The water came into sharp relief. He saw waves crashing again, only the crystal blue waters were lapping against the shores of an unknown island. Smoke rose from it, but not because of Fire Warrior destruction. Three volcanoes, one in each corner of the roughly triangular island, poured lava down their slopes and into the cool waters. The magma steamed angrily as it connected with the ocean, hardening in an ever-expanding ring around the mysterious land.
Xander yearned to fly lower, to examine the island further so he had more information to take back to Jessica and Sean. As he tilted, finally in control of his faculties once more, a far more sinister feeling settled over him. The sensation chilled him to the bone, as though he were being watched by a power far greater than anything he had experienced before. For a brief moment, he hoped it was the Earth Elemental who, in theory, should be somewhere on the island below him. Instead, he knew the sensation came from over his right shoulder, to the north of the mysterious island.
He turned slowly, unsure if he really wanted to see whatever approached. As he spun in the air, he saw a red shape flying toward him, its path unmistakably taking it directly toward the Wind Warrior. Xander squinted as it quickly approached. The blurry shape took form as it grew closer: red, leathery wings shook with each stroke, its stocky, blood-red body covered in glistening scales.
“I see you, Wind Warrior,” the dragon hissed. “I know where you are, and I’m coming for you.”
The dragon opened its massive maw as it drew closer. Xander could see a smoldering fire burning within its gullet as it inhaled. The deep breath fueled the embers within the dragon, making its flames grow even brighter.
As Xander hovered, transfixed by the sight of the mythical creature hurtling toward him, it breathed out, shooting a broad jet of flames toward him.
He shut his eyes as he raised his arms defensively over his face.
Xander screamed, his voice reverberating through the barn. Jessica and Sean both hurried to his side, concerned as he threw his arms over his face.
“Xander?” Jessica said as she placed a hand on his shoulder. “Xander, what happened?”
He opened his eyes and blinked away the after image of a wall of flame bearing down on him. His heart pounded in his chest, and sweat soaked his shirt to his body. He felt like he had run a marathon, though he had technically never left the center of the room.
“Did you find the Earth Elemental?” Sean asked.
“Yes,” Xander stammered. “No. Kind of. I found something worse.”
Sean arched an eyebrow, concerned.
“I found the Fire Elemental. But worse, it found me. I think it’s coming here… now.”
“A dragon?” Sean asked. “The Fire Elemental is a dragon? How come the Wind Warrior was some old lady and the Water Elemental was a water nymph, but the bad guy has to be freaking Smaug!”
Jessica arched her eyebrows. “Is that some movie reference I don’t get?”
Sean shook his head, but his intense gaze never left Xander. “A book, actually. Well, eventually a movie, too. It’s not important. We’ll discuss the shortcomings of your childhood later. A dragon, Xander, seriously?”
“I’m telling you what I saw,” Xander replied. “It was a huge, red, scaled dragon with the wingspan of a 747.”
“What do we do?” Jessica asked, her normally stern demeanor cracking with nervousness. “How do we fight a dragon?”
“We don’t,” Xander said, shaking his head. “You two are going to run as far as you can so you don’t get yourselves killed. I’m going to fight it.”
“No, absolutely not,” Sean interjected. “We already talked about this. Where you go, we go. You promised.”
Xander stood from his meditative position in the center of the barn and paced back and forth, kicking hay aside absently as he walked. “No, I promised I’d keep you all alive. It might have been the safest thing for you to stay with me before but this is different. This isn’t a Fire Warrior who you can bash over the head with a fire extinguisher. This isn’t even General Abraxas, as big a pain in the ass as he was. You said it yourself, Sean. This is a freaking dragon. I’m the only one who can fight it and hope to live.”
“Not even you can survive it,” Jessica corrected. “Not the way you are right now. The Water Elemental said you needed the Earth Elemental too if you hoped to win this war. Without its power, you’re not strong enough. If you go out there and face the Fire Elemental, you’ll die.”
“What would you have me do?” Xander asked. “You just told me I needed to man up. That’s what I’m doing.”
“Manning up is not the same thing as being stupid,” she said. “God, except with you two, then it’s usually synonymous. Sometimes, you have to fight. Other times, it’s just smarter to run. This is a running time.”
Xander shook his head. “Running isn’t an option. It’s got… crap, I don’t even know the word for it. My scent, maybe? It knows where I am and how to find me. I don’t think I could run from it, even if I tried.”
“Fine,” Sean said brashly. “Then we fight.”
“There’s no ‘we,’ Sean.”
Sean stormed over to his friend’s side and grabbed his shoulders, turning the Wind Warrior toward him. “Yes, there is. We’re not leaving you and you’re not leaving us. If you die fighting the Fire Elemental, how long do you think we’ll last without you?”
Xander smiled faintly, glad to have such faithful friends. “You know, Jessica once gave me some pretty good relationship advice. She said you should always want to be around someone but should never need them around. If you need someone around to be happy, you should probably move on.”
Sean gave his shoulders a squeeze. “Then I guess that makes us overly attached girlfriends. Like it or not, we need you.”
“Okay, smartass, how do we kill a dragon?”
“It’s not like we can just look up a historical reference for killing a mythical creature,” Jessica said sourly.
Xander shrugged. “Well, there are lots of stories about knights killing dragons, even if they’re just fairy tales.”
“Okay,” Jessica said. “How did they slay dragons?”
“Magic swords!” Sean exuberantly replied. “Ha, I knew that one!”
Jessica frowned deeply. “We’re a little short on magic swords. What else do we have?”
“Tolkien used a ballistae.”
“Nope,” Xander said.
Sean scratched his head. “Saint George befriended the dragon and set up a mock battle.”
“The Fire Elemental isn’t going to go for a handshake,” Jessica said.
“At least I’m trying. It’s really easy to poke holes in all my ideas, but I don’t hear you offering any.”
“That’s because fighting a dragon is a stupid idea!” Jessica retorted.
“If you two are done with your first lover’s quarrel, maybe we can focus on the problem at hand again.”
Sean and Jessica turned away from one another and took separate seats on different hay bales. Sean crossed his arms
and glowered at no one in particular. Jessica looked relaxed and nonchalant, but Xander knew her well enough to see her anger boiling just beneath her calm façade.
“I have powers,” Xander explained. “I may not have found the Earth Elemental yet but I still have two of the four elemental powers. Even if it’s not enough to destroy the Fire Elemental, I should be able to hold it to a stalemate, right?”
Sean snapped his fingers as a thought struck him. “What if we do have the Earth Elemental’s power? You can probably fly faster than a dragon, right? I mean, you do control the wind. You could probably suck the wind out from under its wings and drop it to the ground. So we do what Jessica said and run to the Earth Elemental, get its powers, and then we face the Fire Elemental and kick its ass.”
“Sounds great, but I never found the Earth Elemental. I got close, I could see the island it’s on, but then the dragon interrupted me. I have no idea where it’s at, other than somewhere out in the Pacific Ocean.”
“What did the island look like?” Jessica asked.
“Triangular with three volcanoes, all erupting. I wanted to fly in closer for a better look, but I didn’t have the time. Does that help at all?”
Jessica glanced at Sean, but both shook their heads. “I really wish it did,” Jessica replied. “It’s just a little too vague.”
“I wish we had a laptop and some Wi-Fi,” Sean said. “It worked for the Wind Elemental.”
Xander walked toward the closed front door of the barn and peered out through the slats. He could see the glow of the fires in the distance but not the lights of any nearby towns or cities. “It wouldn’t do us any good. The power’s out everywhere I’ve been. I don’t know if the Fire Warriors targeted power plants or if it’s just a side effect of the destruction, but I think it’s going to be decades until we can sit around again at a Starbucks, checking our email and drinking a latte.”
They stared at one another, hoping beyond hope that one of the other two would have a brilliant idea. It didn’t take long for them to realize that everyone was in the same boat. There was about to be a war between the three of them and a dragon and they were no closer to finding a way to survive, much less to win.
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