Sean raised the collar of his shirt until it covered his nose and mouth. He and Jessica squinted as ash stung their eyes. Noting their discomfort, Xander summoned a gust of wind that blew the clogged and filthy air away. They passed through the falling debris in a perfectly round bubble of clean air.
“Turn around,” Jessica demanded.
The two men looked perplexed as she stood behind them, her hands on her hips.
“I’ve been holding this for a long time.”
The two men nodded quickly and turned away, staring instead out of their little sliver of calm within the maelstrom of smoke and fire. They could see little beyond the borders of their bubble. Objects emerged like shadows in the distance, barely visible until they entered the far edge of Xander’s pocket of air. As soon as Jessica was finished, they walked off the beach, their shoes crunched through stiffened green grass and loose stones. A dark shadow rose before them as they passed through the first line of burnt trees. It looked like a boulder or the edge of a cliff. Yet, as it entered their protective bubble, carved details became visible. The stone was broken into sections, each of which lay at awkward angles, yet the overall image of the carved stone was easily identifiable. One of the once-massive stone faces of Easter Island had toppled and shattered. Xander paused beside the stone, noting the high forehead and crudely carved features before walking around the boulder.
The further they walked, the closer they approached the perfect center of the three volcanoes. Small rocks, still sizzling and smoking from the recent eruptions, quickly replaced grassy ground. The ground itself was black, covered by a sheen of white ash. Despite the cold air Xander was summoning, the heat was oppressive. Sweat beaded and dripped down Sean and Jessica’s backs as they walked, plastering their shirts to their skin.
They had to be getting close to the center of the island, Xander knew. Visibility was nonexistent beyond their small, encapsulated world. He wasn’t entirely sure they were heading in the right direction until they came upon a perfectly formed dome emerging from the earth. He could feel power radiating from the smooth stone, like waves of electricity charging the air around them. Even Sean and Jessica, not attuned as he was to the elemental force, could sense something surreal about the rounded rock.
“Is this it?” Sean asked, his throat parched from the heat.
Xander nodded as he reached out toward the rock. As his hand made contact, a power surged through his arm, jolting him to his core. He tried to pull away but felt transfixed to the stone, as though someone had glued his hand in place. A second surge poured through him, chasing the first. His head flew back in surprise but his eyes didn’t see the ashy sky above.
The wind howled around Sean and Jessica, forcing them further away from the Wind Warrior. They could see their friend was in need but could do little to reach him. They didn’t know if Xander had summoned the wind involuntarily or if something was manipulating him. Either way, every step toward him was met with resistance, enough that their feet slid in the loose gravel and threatened to throw them handily from the protection of the bubble.
The power coursing through Xander was carrying his mind far away from Easter Island, not just through space but through time as well. Images raced through his vision, of a time when the planet was almost primordial. The seas boiled as volcanoes the size of small continents billowed ash and stone high into the atmosphere.
From the heart of the ocean, like time-lapse photography, earth began to emerge. It forced the sea apart as it towered over the surrounding waters. The ground was a stark brown, devoid of vegetation or life. As Xander watched, helpless to look away, green sprouted from the brown earth. Grasses clung to the harsh soil before trees sprouted high into the air. They weren’t the types of trees with which Xander was familiar. These were primitive, giant cousins of the deciduous and coniferous forests he had come to know. The few trees grew into massive forests that covered the ground as far as the eye could see.
For long seconds, eons he was sure in the timeline he was watching, nothing drastically changed. Trees fell only to be consumed by the earth, feeding the next generation of the forest. A few spots of color seemed to flash through the trees but it happened so quickly Xander had no chance of seeing what they were, whether some ancient animal or something else.
Eventually, he had a sense that time was slowing. The trees didn’t move with a blurred motion of millennia passing in the span of a heartbeat. Xander could see the individual leaves swaying in the breeze. He could, for the first time, see colorful birds flittering about in the treetops. It wasn’t just motion he acknowledged, either. For the first time since the vision began, he could hear the sounds of a world being born; his world being born, he reminded himself. The waves crashed against the cliffs like thunder. Unseen animals called out through the trees, their voices bordering between the chirps of birds and the roar of dinosaurs.
Motion near the tree line drew Xander’s attention. A figure emerged, stepping into the sun. It wasn’t a bird or another animal, like he had expected. It was a man. He was naked in the sun, his body covered in coarse hair. His posture was hunched, both from genetics and from fear of the blazing sun overhead. A thick, scraggly beard covered his face, but it wasn’t enough to conceal the thick shelf of a brow that cast both his eyes in deep shadows.
Xander felt strangely at peace as he watched this ancient ancestor standing on the edge of the cliff, alternating between staring up toward the brilliant sun and looking out over the rolling waves. Nor did Xander need an explanation of what he was seeing or why. The Earth Elemental had been empowered to create land on which the first of humanity could live and sculpt his survival. Without him being present, Xander could sense the Elemental’s guiding hand at work all around him.
As quickly as the vision had appeared, everything before him was sucked into itself, like the vision was falling into its own black hole. It faded to a pinprick of light before extinguishing completely.
As he opened his eyes, Xander was staring at the smooth rock dome in the center of Easter Island. The world around him was dark, cast in shades of gray from the ash drifting around their capsule of pressurized air. He glanced slowly over his shoulder and saw Sean and Jessica, both looking disheveled as they stared at him in concern.
“This is him,” Xander said by way of an apology. “The Earth Elemental is inside.”
Sean ran a hand through his hair, pushing his curly hair out of his face. Jessica tried the same beside him, but her fingers caught in the knots at the ends of her strands of hair.
“That’s great,” Sean said, “but how do we get inside? I’m guessing he’s not going to rush out to meet us.”
Though he wasn’t facing the dome, Xander’s hand remained in place. He felt the stone shifting beneath his touch. He turned back toward the rock and was surprised to see the shape of a brick wall emerging. Perfectly shaped bricks extended a few feet to the left, right, and just a few inches over his head. Beyond that, the dome remained perfectly smooth.
“What is this?” Xander muttered, though everything about it seemed eerily familiar.
“Bricks?” Jessica asked as she walked up beside him. She ran her hand across them before Xander could stop her, but nothing happened. She didn’t receive the same vision-inducing jolt of power Xander had experienced. “I don’t get it.”
“It’s just right there,” Sean added as he walked a few feet away, noting where the brick pattern returned to the seamless rock. “It’s still normal over here.”
“It’s a sign of some kind, but I’ll be damned if I know what,” Xander said.
Jessica ran her hand back and forth over the brickwork. “Assuming the Earth Elemental knows it’s you, why would he make this? It would have to be something you and you alone recognized.”
Xander ran his hand alongside hers, feeling the grooves where mortar would normally be. The mortar was missing, however, leaving deep canyons between the bricks. They reminded him of some of the rivers in Tennessee, where they woul
d erode the rock until they sat at the bottom of deep chasms. That was the idea behind the Grand Canyon as well. He half expected to see rivers at the bottom of the grooves, if he only looked deeply enough.
His eyes slowly widened in surprise. “I recognize this. I knew I did; I just couldn’t place it.”
“By Jove, I think he’s got it,” Sean said in a poor British accent. “So what does it mean?”
“It doesn’t mean anything,” Xander replied.
“Sorry to bother you, Jove, apparently, the lad is still a little daft.”
Xander smiled as he shook his head. “You were right, Jessica, the Earth Elemental has been watching me. And he does know it’s me, at least he should after shocking the crap out of me when I touched the dome. Do you remember the last time we were stuck next to a brick wall?”
“Can we forego the Socratic Method and just tell us what it means?” Jessica asked.
“London,” Xander replied excitedly. “When we were facing Abraxas and stuck underneath the crumbling building, we escaped by breaking apart the brick wall beside us. I think the Earth Elemental wants me to do the same thing.”
“So it’s a test?” she asked.
“A pretty lame test, if you ask me,” Sean added.
“Maybe, if it were just about breaking apart the brick wall,” Xander said, “but it’s not. The only way I can break apart this wall is by using the wind powers first…”
His eyes glowed white as he drew down super-cooled air from the upper atmosphere. It came down in a narrow column, piercing the thick, dark smoke surrounding Easter Island. It penetrated the top of their air bubble and poured over the bricks. The stone turned white as the air from the upper atmosphere froze the rock on contact. Xander could hear the creaking of the stones in protest, though the air alone wasn’t enough to crack the brickwork. However, through the narrow tunnel he’d carved through the darkness, a single ray of sunlight crept into their realm.
“And then we’ll need to use water,” Xander said as his eyes shifted to blue.
A small storm cloud appeared over their sunlit tunnel. It erupted in a stream of water that poured solely over the bricks on the dome. As the water encountered the frozen bricks, it froze into rivulets running through the canyons.
The stone groaned louder as it began to fracture. Xander poured even more water onto the bricks, all the while freezing it solid with the super-cooled air. Before long, like they had witnessed in London, the bricks crumbled, falling into a heap at Xander’s feet. He released both the wind and water and the dark smoke from the volcanoes rushed into the void that had been created.
The trio stood before a dark maw in the rock, a pathway leading deep into the heart of the earthen dome. They all knew the Earth Elemental was concealed within, but none of the three seemed eager to be the first to enter.
The inside of the dome was pitch black. The meager light that filtered in from the ashy outdoors was quickly consumed by the impenetrable darkness. Xander stepped inside, the glow from his eyes offering the only illumination.
The walls of the dome were nearly ten feet thick, but the interior was completely hollow. The light from his eyes glowed weaker than a flashlight, offering no chance of shining on the far wall of the massive inner structure.
“Hello?” Xander called out, his voice echoing off the far walls.
“Are you out of your mind?” Sean asked. “Have you never seen a horror movie? There are rules. The guy that calls out into the darkness always gets the axe. Hell, you might as well just announce that you’re going to strip naked and take a shower.”
Xander ignored his best friend as he stepped further into the chamber. The ground beneath him was no longer the gravely or grassy ground that they had found outside. It was completely smooth stone, which shone under the light like polished brown glass. Mineral veins cut through the surface of the floor like black rivers.
“I can’t see a thing,” Jessica whispered, but even her low tone carried in the hollow room.
“Then I shall illuminate your way,” a weak voice called from within the gloom.
A flower bloomed on the wall beside the trio. As it opened, its pistil glowed a soft red. The colored light bled into its petals until it offered a gentle glow. As they watched, the illumination raced up a vine growing against the smooth rock wall. As the light passed buds, they bloomed and added their light to the glow that was beginning to fill the chamber.
Xander turned in wonder as flowers bloomed in rapid succession overhead, racing one another over the ceiling and toward the far wall. Within seconds, the light had filtered throughout the room. The illumination pulsed along the lengths of the vines and radiated through the blooming flowers, filling the air both with light and an intoxicatingly sweet scent.
He let his eyes fall to the center of the room, where a stone altar broke the otherwise smooth ground. Lying atop the altar was a creature, almost human but too crude to be real. His skin was coarse and unfinished, like rocks stuck haphazardly together in the general shape of muscles and joints. His head was too large for his body, his forehead extending high above his heavily sloped brow. In the red, yellow, and orange glow of the flowers, his skin was gray and molted.
Stepping forward, Xander ignored his friends’ hasty warnings as he approached the figure. He could feel the draw to the prone man as surely as he had felt the connection with the Water Elemental. This, for better or worse, was the Earth Elemental.
“It is good that you came when you did,” the Earth Elemental said at Xander’s approach. “I don’t have much longer. This form is already crumbling, unable to sustain my life.”
Xander paused beside the Elemental and noted for the first time that one of his arms was missing, shattered just below the shoulder. Gouges marred the stony surface, left by claws with which Xander was more than familiar.
“You’re hurt,” Xander said, noting the sand seeping from the wounds on the Elemental’s chest.
“I have kept myself together through great strength of will, solely to await your arrival. I can certainly hold myself together a few moments longer.”
“The Fire Elemental did this, didn’t it?” he asked softly. Anger boiled within him. “That’s why there were all the earthquakes. It tried to kill you.”
“My heart aches for the damage done in my stead. Fire came looking to take my life, but instead, it took the lives of thousands of others around the planet.”
Jessica and Sean approached from behind Xander and peered in amazement at the rocky figure. Sean reached out slowly toward the Elemental’s leg, but Jessica quickly slapped his hand aside.
“You look just like the statues on the island,” Sean said.
“The statues look just like you, he means,” Jessica corrected, before quickly adding, “Elemental, sir.”
The Earth Elemental smiled weakly, the shifting of its facial features sounding like rocks rubbing together. “There is no need for such formalities. I am the Earth and can be called as such.”
“I’ve come for your powers,” Xander said matter-of-factly. “The Fire Elemental is destroying the planet, and I’m the last chance to stop it.”
“Fire is destroying humanity, not the planet. With humanity gone, the planet will reset and the cycle continue.”
“You can’t be serious,” Sean said, shoving Xander aside. “Are we really going to go through this again with another Elemental?”
Xander placed his hand firmly on Sean’s shoulder, ensuring his friend knew not to push him aside again. Sean begrudgingly stepped back beside Jessica.
“What my tactless friend means is that our time is limited. I don’t believe for a second that you’re on the Fire Elemental’s side on this. If you were, it wouldn’t have tried to destroy you.” He pointed toward the scars on the Earth Elemental’s chest. “The Water Elemental told me that you were the architect behind my creation. Don’t tell me you’ve somehow changed your mind about me.”
“You misunderstand me,” Earth replied. “I know of yo
u and your adventures thus far, Xander Sirocco. I did, in fact, put into motion the events that would lead to your birth. I owe Fire nothing, except my help in ending this vicious cycle of birth, evolution, and eventual destruction.”
“Then you’ll help us?” Xander asked, breathing a sigh of relief.
“I will. This body doesn’t have long anyway. The power must be passed on before I crumble.”
Jessica touched the Elemental’s leg, much to Sean’s chagrin having recently been stopped from doing the same thing. “Is this your host? Is your host dying?”
Earth shook his head. “This is a construct. When I first awoke, we had only the crudest idea of what mankind would eventually become. I formed this body in a close facsimile to humanity. It served me well for millennia, but never did I expect it to be destroyed.”
“What we would become?” Sean asked. “You were the first Elemental in the cycle. Did you… create humans?”
“No, young one. Humanity was put on its path long before the four Elementals were birthed. I merely gave mankind a place to live, shelter over their heads, and the basest necessities for survival. In return, I created my Earth Warriors from their ranks to spread the seeds of life throughout the planet.”
“And in return, they created the statues in your honor?” Sean asked, motioning toward outside the dome.
“When our time was coming to an end and only a few Earth Warriors remained, we retreated to this island to live out our days in peace and quiet. They built the statues to honor me. The statues kept me company even as the last of them passed away and I handed over the reins to Water.”
The Earth Elemental’s body shook with what Xander assumed was a cough. Gravel poured from Earth’s joints and sand gushed from the scratches across his chest. The stone body was crumbling before their eyes.
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