Kashur

By the fates! He’d never seen an Elemental up close before, and this one was bigger than he'd expected—three storeys in height at least. Ambush Pass looked like the road itself had exploded. Injured Imperials dotted the landscape, moaning and wailing around the giant. And there was the broken elf carriage he’d spotted in the scrying bowl, with a flash of green under it where the Elves cowered.

Kashur’s horse reared in fear as the shadow of the thing fell over them. The Elemental’s eyes glittered, two merciless shards of glass.

“Easy, Northwind.” Kashur patted the stallion’s flank as he dismounted and wrapped the reins around a nearby branch.

The Elemental raised its fist, which alone was the size of two elf carriages. How did the Alchemist expect him to find out what it wanted? This Elemental was a bunch of boulders held together by chaos and rage. He supposed the first thing to do was get its attention.

Kashur curled his hands inward, forming the spell’s token, and whispered the accompanying words to call the winds that would lift him up into the air. Flying had been one of the more satisfying lessons the Alchemist had taught him. Like most magic, it had come easily, along with the summoning ability he’d been named for. Kashur stopped himself just in front of the Elemental’s chiseled face. It was like staring into the entrance to the great Dwarven Halls.

“Great Elemental! It is I, Summoner of the Arcane Sect, at your service!”

He’d never been very good at the Upperspeak, but the Elementals were just living manifestations of the land—surely they wouldn’t judge his words.

A fist whooshed through the air toward him. Kashur forced himself upwards just in time.

“Whoa there, Friend.” Perhaps the Elemental preferred more accessible language. “Why so angry? Care to tell me what's going on? I’ve been told I’m an excellent listener.”

The glass-shard eyes flicked toward him, cold and animalistic, yet glowing from within like the white-hot core of a planet. “Summoner.” The word rolled off its earthen tongue like thunder. “Stay out of this.”

“Happy to!” Kashur chirped. He caught a glimpse of green movement down below. The Elves were floundering, one attempting to drag another out of danger. The third struggled with something—was that a cage?

“But, while I’m staying out of it, completely, do you mind telling me what has stoked your ire, so that I may help if I can?” When it didn't answer he said, "Was it the Imperials or the Elves?"

The great stone fist charged his way again.

Kashur swung into a tree and conjured a protection spell around himself just in time. The Elemental’s great stone teeth gritted, knuckles shuddering against the shimmering shield. Kashur’s spell wouldn’t hold for long against the power of an Elemental, and yet... this one felt weak. The enormous boulder should have been breaking through the layers of his protection, molecule by molecule, but it wasn’t. Kashur’s magic must have grown stronger than he imagined with the looming planetary convergence.

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Except the Elemental’s magic should have grown equally. Yet he was stronger than he should be, and it was weaker.

Nothing good could come of that, either.

Well, maybe something good could come of it. Right here, at this moment, Kashur could not get pulverized. But those who dwelt in this realm relied on the health of Terris, and the Elementals were a physical manifestation of that. They needed Terris, and therefore the Elementals, to be whole and strong.

“What is going on, Ancient One?” Kashur asked it in what he hoped was a gentle voice that suggested, We’re all in this together and I’m here to help and not a gentle voice that suggested, I sense how weak you are and maybe I’ll take advantage of that.

Below, the Imperials had carried their injured off into the woods. The Elves were struggling to release their horses from the broken carriage. The animals whinnied, and the Elemental’s ice-chip gaze plummeted.

“Ope! Eyes up here! We’re still talking!” Kashur shouted, but it was too late.

Not that he should care if a trio of Elves got the business end of an Elemental. They mostly just frolicked around for eons in their woodland paradises, participating in the global politics of Terris only when duty called, which was not often in these times of peace. The Alchemist had sent him here to find out what had triggered the Elemental’s odd behavior. Maybe once the Elves were gone, he could have a more relaxed conversation with it.

But, by the blood of griffins, what was in that cage?

The Elemental’s attention locked onto the frantic horses and their Elven handlers. Its fist rose into the sky like a rocket of old. When it crashed down this time, there would be no survivors. Kashur’s heart thumped in his chest at the sight of the Elves’ beautiful, terrified faces.

Aww, fates.

Before he could overthink it, Kashur bit his gloves off and swooped down lightning-fast, passing the rock fist on its downward trajectory. He seized branches as he went and, with each touch, the wood swelled, like sponges soaking in water, growing, spreading, widening, tangling with one another into a thick, knotted overgrowth. The unnatural canopy created a dome above him, and when he reached the ground beside the three cowering Elves, he added a layer of protection spell. The Elemental’s fist crashed down onto the tree cover, snapping wooden limbs, but its momentum was broken as well.

“Hello, lovely Women of the Forest,” Kashur said, wincing at the sound of splitting wood above them. The Elves were beautiful, as all of Elvenkind were, and young, although it was always hard to tell with Elves. There was a sharp-faced one in a cowl with odd yellow eyes. A second one had a freckled, girlish face and brown hair tucked behind her pointed ears. The third was unconscious, the left side of her bodice bloodstained under a tangle of straw-colored hair, face regal and serene, with full pink lips and that radiance of skin that only came with being practically immortal.

“Who are you?” the dark one asked. Too snappily, in Kashur’s opinion, seeing as he’d just saved their blemish-free skins, and at great peril to himself. Something snickered inside the cage she was holding, and Kashur shivered.

“I’m a Wizard, and, apparently, also an idiot.” He untwisted the wrist straps attached to his gloves and slid them back on. He peered through the woods in the direction of the portal that had brought him here, tucked away in an abandoned mill. Above, the Elemental roared like the sea in a storm. “Let’s go. My protection won’t last forever.”

Kashur seized the unconscious Elf and made to lift her onto his shoulder. He tried not to be offended by the swarm of tiny wooden wasps that suddenly had their stingers pointed toward him.

“What the—?”

“Unhand her, Wizard,” the brown-haired Elf said, no longer looking girlish.