The Last EleMage, Chapter One pt 3

She stretched her neck and caught the back of A`lanon’s shirt in her beak, then before he could do more than see his life flash before his eyes she picked him up and set him back on the edge of the nest.  As A`lanon recovered his balance and his composure, she climbed out to sit on the opposite side.

With the warmth and weight of their mother removed, three Roc chicks raised their heads and looked around sleepily.  Gently but firmly, the mother Roc nudged them aside with her beak, revealing a fourth chick.  This one didn’t sit up, in fact it didn’t react at all.  The only sign that it was alive was the slow rise and fall of its breathing, and even that seemed weak and unsteady.

A`lanon glanced up at the mother Roc, but no words needed to be exchanged.  He leapt down into the nest and waded through the knee-deep feathers to reach the chick’s side.  It was about the size of a horse, but otherwise it looked like any normal baby bird; except, he noticed as he got closer, its skin under the soft downy feathers was unnaturally pale.  When he gently rested one hand on the chick’s shoulder, it opened one apple-sized eye part way and looked at him, but then the eye closed again and the chick made a low moaning sound that no bird – no animal – had any business making.

He could instantly tell that the chick was quite uncomfortable, so he rested a hand on its head and drew on the power of the shadows cast by afternoon sunlight; he called them to him and pulled them over the chick like a gauzy blanket that soon soaked into it and eased it into a deep, painless sleep.  Then, using the powers of Water and Life, he began examining the chick to see what was wrong.  Its own nerves told him that its guts hurt, and he could feel that the flow of fluids through its digestive system was stopped, so it was only the work of a moment to diagnose the problem.

With his eyes closed and most of his concentration focused on the chick, he spoke to the mother Roc.

“How long ago did you catch the armored Human?”  He asked.

The mother clicked her beak in surprise.

“Three days.”  She answered from where she was keeping the other three chicks from hobbling over to try and eat A`lanon.

“Good, then it shouldn’t be too bad yet.”  He said, half to himself.

A large piece of steel, probably a piece of a suit of armor, was lodged in the chick’s digestive tract.  It was impeding the normal flow of fluids toward the exit, so not only was pressure in the system rising, toxins that would normally be expelled were building up.  To help the chick he would need to get the armor moving again, but since steel was beyond his abilities to manipulate directly with magic, he would need to use the muscles and fluids in the chick’s body to do the work.  It would be a precision job requiring a steady magical hand, but he was fairly sure he could do it.

He explained the situation and his plan to the mother Roc and with her approval got to work.  As he relaxed the muscled in the chick’s intestines and carefully caused the fluids to flow in different directions to dislodge the armor, the part of his mind not focused on the task began to wander a little.

When Rocs had eggs or chicks in the nest, both parents would work in week-long shifts – one on the nest and the other hunting – and when they returned to switch, the hunting partner would bring a meal for the chicks to eat.  Humans would often fall prey to Rocs hunting for their chicks because they were large enough that two or three could feed an entire clutch, yet small enough to not be a danger to them.  In this case,  the mother had just recently begun her turn, and the meal she’d brought had been a Human in armor – probably a soldier or knight from one of the larger cities to the east.  Normally in a situation like that the parent would break up the armor with their beak before giving the meal to the chicks, but in this case the mother was quite young and probably on her first clutch, meaning she didn’t know to do that, and this chick was paying for it.  As he worked he made a mental note to give the other chicks a quick check to be sure they weren’t going to get sick too.

Had anyone been eavesdropping on his thoughts, they would likely be shocked that he was so cold-blooded as to not even care that one of his own Race had been brutally killed and eaten.  Well the truth was he did care a little, however he also understood that all living things must eat, and that means taking the lives of other living things.  What’s more, he understood that no matter how much they may dislike it, the members of the Five Races were part of the food chain as well, and not necessarily at the top.

He worked carefully, pushing the steel the rest of the way through the chick’s guts to its rectum, and then expelling it – though that part actually required him to physically pull the armor free in addition to his magical pushing.  Once that was safely out of the way he made one more sweep with his magic to make sure the armor hadn’t done any lasting harm, then he altered the Darkness spell he’d cast so that the chick slipped into a more natural sleep that would allow it to heal and recover.

A`lanon wiped his hands on the feathers in the nest, then straightened; he’d been bent over the chick for so long that his back had seized up and protested at the movements, so he took a moment to stretch and work the muscles.

“It should be okay now.”  He said as he bent backwards.  “I got the armor out, and there doesn’t seem to be any damage done inside, so it should be fine after it sleeps a while.”

“Thank you.”  The mother Roc said.

A`lanon gave the other chicks a quick checkup but found nothing wrong, so once he’d instructed the mother about breaking up armor  before feeding it to the chicks, she picked him up and set him on the ledge outside the nest.  A moment later she handed him a fresh feather nearly as long as he was tall and thanked him again, promising to mention him to her mate when he returned.  A`lanon thanked her, and she settled back onto her chicks; a moment later all of them were asleep.

A`lanon smiled ant turned and slipped the feather into his pouch, but then he suddenly realized that he had no idea how to get down off the cliff.  There were no paths that he could reach, and only a shear drop to the ground several hundred feet below.  It looked like the only way down was to jump, though thankfully a touch of EleMagic would make that merely a stupid idea rather than a suicidal one.

He pulled his staff back out of his pouch, stepped up to the edge and took a deep breath, but before he could jump an oddity in the forest below caught his eye.  He looked closer at the tiny hole in the canopy, but from this height he couldn’t be sure.  With a shrug he leapt into space, summoning the wind to lift him from below to slow his fall.  He broke through the trees after several seconds, then landed on the ground only slightly harder than if he’d jumped off the roof of his and Kestranon’s hut.  He straightened, brushed himself off, and then started off in the direction of the odd hole he’d seen from above.

Eventually Kestranon formed an avatar from fallen leaves riding on the wind, and it walked beside A`lanon as his master teased him about almost getting eaten.

“How’d you get your feather, then?”  A`lanon asked, causing Kestranon to launch into an obviously exaggerated tale about having to free climb thousands of feet up a shear cliff in order to sneak up on a particularly vicious male Roc.  He’d then ripped a feather out while the great bird was busy eating and then thrown himself off the cliff, only slowing his fall enough to survive at the absolute last possible second.  The Roc had then chased him for three hours, attacking him from above in a frenzy until Kestranon had managed to dive into a cave too small for the Roc to pursue him; even then he’d been forced to wait a week for the Roc’s hunger to force it to leave long enough for him to slip away.

“Sounds to me like I did a better job that you.”  A`lanon said after an hour.  “At least I was able to leave on friendly terms, and I even saved a life while I was about it.”

“I won’t deny that.”  Kestranon said.  “But I will say that I had to get by on pure skill, where you seem to have nothing but the Mother’s own luck.  You’ve been at this less than a day and you’ve breezed through six of the seven items.  That’s completely unheard of, even in the days of the Collegium.”

“At this rate I may be able to sleep in my own bed tonight.”  A`lanon said.

“I rather doubt that.”  Kestranon said.  “The last item is a really tricky one.  If you can get it before sundown then I’ll eat my hat.”

“You don’t own a hat.”  A`lanon commented.

“Doesn’t matter since you won’t be able to get the Dreamblossom pollen in time.”  Kestranon said with a shrug.  “You should probably go ahead and make camp now, but that’s your choice.”  There was a slight puff of wind as Kestranon released the spell, and the leaves drifted back to the ground.

A`lanon knew that Kestranon was probably right, and he had every intention of making camp soon; however he wanted to check out that hole he’d seen first.

An hour later, when the sun was starting to slip behind the trees, A`lanon reached the unnatural clearing.  Roughly circular, it was clear of all plant life with the exception of a single large black flower bud standing on a thick stock in the center.  The only other thing in the clearing was a lingering trace of the scent of death.

That he’d found a New Moon Dreamblossom was obvious; what he was supposed to do with it wasn’t.  Dreamblossoms were a kind of carnivorous plant that grew just about everywhere, though they preferred the more wooded areas in Human and Elf lands where there was more prey.  When a Dreamblossom seed took root, it immediately began killing off all other plant life in the area, creating a clearing that would grow along with the Dreamblossom itself.  Once it was mature enough, it would raise its single flower into the air.  Then, on the night of the new moon when the light was dimmest, the flower would bloom and release thousands of spoors of pollen to the wind.  The pollen was a potent hallucinogenic, and it carried natural Darkness magics that enhanced the effect; any animal that inhaled the pollen would begin to have peaceful visions that would lead them to wander into the Dreamblossom’s clearing.  There, they would simply lie down and drift off to sleep, making them easy prey for the Dreamblossom’s highly mobile roots; the roots would rise up from the ground and strangle the sleeping creature, then coat the body in a sap that would speed its decay into nutritious fertilizer.  By the next new moon, not even bones would remain of the Dreamblossom’s latest victims.

There were only two ways for him to collect the pollen; to wait for the flower to bloom or to try and take the whole flower and harvest the pollen later.  The problem with the second plan was that the Dreamblossom wasn’t a plant that would just sit still while he picked its flower; it had simple self defense instincts and was more than capable of attacking a perceived threat, meaning if he wanted to take the pollen the hard way, he’d be in for a fight.  The best way was to wait for the flower to bloom, however that would not only put him at rick of inhaling the pollen himself, he’d also have to wait nearly a week for the moon to fully wane.  He was tempted to try it the hard way just to see Kestranon’s reaction if he pulled it off, but he knew that between the work he’d done for the Salamander and the Roc he was nearing his limits, so a fight wouldn’t be a good idea.

He started to turn to go find a good spot to make camp, but then his eyes wandered across the long shadows cast by the trees.  A crazy idea suddenly popped into his head, and after a moment’s consideration he decided to try it.

The first thing he did was to pull his handkerchief out and tie it around his mouth and nose to give him some protection from the pollen.  Then he entered the clearing and circled the flower until the setting sun was at his back.  He positioned himself within arms reach of the flower, pulled an empty sample jar from his pouch, planted his staff in the ground so that he’d have his hands free, and then began to cast his spell.

Reaching out with the EleMagic, he touched both the Light of the sun and the Darkness of his own shadow, which fell across the Dreamblossom.  He found the balance held between them, and then began to alter it; he strengthened the Darkness and weakened the Light, so that his shadow became darker with each passing second.  Nature fought him to restore its own balance, but he held it off and enforced his new order on that one tiny piece of the world.

He worked slowly and carefully, but after about a minute the flower trembled slightly and its petals relaxed and opened, revealing a midnight blue interior speckled with fine fibers that emitted faint light, like miniature stars.  A`lanon smiled under his handkerchief as the pollen-bearing central stalk extended from the heart of the flower, holding it’s bewitching load out to the wind.  For safety A`lanon flung out another tendril of EleMagic and bent the wind away from him and the Dreamblossom so that the pollen wouldn’t be scattered, and then he froze his shadow spell so that he could harvest the spoors.

Moving carefully so as not to create any breezes that would scatter the pollen, A`lanon placed the sample jar under the cluster of pollen at the end of the stalk and gently brushed a pinch of the pollen into the jar – which was harder than it sounds, seeing as the lightweight spoors wanted to float rather then fall.  Once he had enough he slowly pulled the jar back and sealed the lid, then replaced it in his pouch.  Feeling very pleased with himself, A`lanon was just about to begin reversing the spell on his shadow, but then he felt something tugging slightly on his pants leg.  Glancing down he saw that one of the Dreamblossom’s roots was slowly creeping up his leg, having mistaken him for prey hypnotized by the pollen.  Without thinking A`lanon kicked to try and dislodge the root, but that was exactly the wrong thing to do.

Thinking that its prey was struggling in its sleep, the Dreamblossom’s simple pseudo-mind gripped the leg it held harder, figuring that the hapless creature would eventually quiet down again.  What it couldn’t understand was that not only did it have hold of a person who was wide awake, he was standing.  That meant that when the Dreamblossom tightened its grip, it pulled on A`lanon’s leg and pulled him off balance for just a second, however that was a second too long as his mind and body reflexively abandoned all other tasks in order to keep him from falling.  His concentration shattered and the spell he’d cast on his shadow came apart, allowing nature to rush in and instantly restore the proper balance of Light and Dark, but that wasn’t the worst of it; as A`lanon stumbled, his shadow shifted with him, and the Dreamblossom went directly from the almost tangible darkness of a moonless night, to being scorched by the direct rays of the setting sun.

Blazing pain flared through what little brain the Dreamblossom had, and the petals of its flower reflexively snapped shut, however they moved so fast that the retractable pollen stalk got caught by them, and as it was pulled back inside all the pollen that the Dreamblossom had created over the years of its life was scrapped off all at once.  In the same instant the root the had held A`lanon’s leg released him as though scalded, then in the midst of a pained spasm it whirled and smashed him in the side with unbelievable force, throwing him several feet.

A`lanon hit the ground hard, but reflexes honed through years of training kicked in and he rolled without conscious though to dissipate the force, then he came up on his feet and – with his hand mimicking the motion unconsciously – flung out a tendril of EleMagic and called his staff to him.  An instant later his other hand flashed up to check his handkerchief and to press it more firmly to his face as he saw the thick haze of insidious pollen spreading in a cloud around the Dreamblossom.  With his left hand he made a rising sweep with his staff, and the wind gusted into the clearing and caught the pollen, then immediately turned and rose high into the air where the spores would be widely dispersed so that they couldn’t do any harm.

As for the Dreamblossom itself, it had transformed into something befitting a fevered nightmare.  The plant’s pseudo-mind was filled with pain and rage, and all of its many roots had burst free of the ground to writhe in the air; the plant’s simple reasoning ability couldn’t comprehend its pain, and its primitive instincts told it to lash out and destroy the source of the pain.  It searched around it with its basic senses, and discovered a warm body nearby that wasn’t affected by its pollen.  Lacking a better target, the Dreamblossom attacked.

A root came literally whistling through the air towards A`lanon’s head and he ducked under it, then a fraction of a second later he leaped over a second root that came at him from the other side.  A third root tried to smash him from above, and A`lanon threw himself backwards and then tumbled like an acrobat to escape the plant’s reach.  As he landed he threw out a tendril of EleMagic and touched the Dreamblossom’s crude brain, trying to send it feelings of peace and contentment, but its pseudo-mind wasn’t having any of that.  All it cared about was that the infuriating warm body had escaped it, but it was still in pain, which only made it angrier.  It redoubled its efforts, and soon it succeeded in uprooting itself completely.  In moments it’s limited problem-solving ability figured out that it could drag itself forward by slamming its roots into the ground and pulling, and just like that it began to chase A`lanon across the clearing.  It was slow, and A`lanon knew that he could escape it easily, however given what he’d sensed when he’d touched its pseudo-mind he knew that if it lost him, then it would go on a berserk rampage though the forest, killing and destroying everything it could until it eventually died itself.  Not wanting to be responsible for that, A`lanon slipped into a fighting stance and opened himself to the EleMagic.

Since the Dreamblossom wasn’t a hunter by nature, once A`lanon was in easy reach it stopped dragging itself and focused all its efforts on crushing him.  A root slashed in from the right and A`lanon ducked under it then swung his staff at the ground; a surge of EleMagic through the staff and a double-fist sized rock shot out of the ground and blasted towards the Dreamblossom.  It hit, but it simply bounced off the plant’s hard exterior with little more than a small scrape.  Another root tried to sweep A`lanon’s feet and he leaped over it, then in mid-air he ducked and twisted to slip under another that came at him higher from the opposite direction.  Landing, A`lanon tried to leap in close enough to attack the central mass of the plant directly, but a root shot out and rammed point-first into his left shoulder, throwing him back and spinning him partway round.  He staggered and just barely dodged another attack, then he leapt back and began calling the wind to his staff.  Once he had a ball of compressed air the size of his fist he swung his staff and threw it at the Dreamblossom; as with the stone he scored a direct hit, but even though the wind-ball blasted outwards with a surge of gale-force winds, the plant was scarcely even fazed by the attack.

A`lanon dodged three more roots in quick succession, then a fourth tried stabbing at him again.  Too off balance to dodge he batted it aside with his staff, but the root wrapped around the wood and tried to pull it from his hands.  For a second he fought to recover the weapon, and that proved to be a second too long.  A root flashed out and wrapped around his throat, lifting him completely off the ground and squeezing until his eyes felt ready to burst out of his head.  Six more roots wrapped around him, squeezing with bone-crushing strength and making him feel like a sausage being tied into links.  Red mist filled his vision and the blood in his head and face was pressurized, but then blackness began to consume him.

In a detached part of his mind, a calm voice that A`lanon scarcely recognized as his own spoke.

So, this is it.  I’m going to die.

The voiceless words galvanized something in A`lanon, and another, much less calm voice responded.

The NEITHERWORLD I am!!

A surge of strength from somewhere deep inside A`lanon flowed through this body and drove back the darkness from his vision.  Acting without thought, he plunged a tendril of EleMagic deep into the ground below him, then pulled.  A wall of stone shot up out of the ground like a guillotine in reverse, slicing through the roots that held A`lanon like they were threads.

A`lanon fell to the ground and the severed roots loosened enough for him to gasp a great lungful of glorious air, and even as his mind was focused on simply breathing through a bruised larynx, his hands pulled the clinging vines away from him.  Every breath and movement hurt, and he knew enough about anatomy to know that he’d come within a hair’s breadth of having his windpipe crushed, as well as a few bones, more than likely.  As it was he’d probably be okay with a few days’ rest and some healing tea or something, but he still had an enraged plant to worry about.

As though summoned by his thoughts, the Dreamblossom pulled itself around the stone wall, ready to kill him.  A`lanon staggered backwards, away from the plant, but the bands of fire across his body where he’d nearly been crushed slowed him.  In addition he could feel the hollow ache in his chest that told him he’d been using his EleMagic too much.  If he pushed it much more then his magic would simply cut out on him, and if that happened at a time when it would get him killed then there was nothing he could do about it.  He knew he had only moments before he simply collapsed from exhaustion, which meant he had to end this now.

A root slashed in and smashed into A`lanon’s already sore left shoulder, sending bright flashes of light dancing in front of his eyes like agonizing fireballs.  As he smashed into a tree some six or seven feet away, a memory bobbed to the surface of another fireball he’d seen that day, and from that memory an idea immerged.

Dodging behind the tree for cover, A`lanon plunged his left hand into his pouch and pulled out of the Salamander droppings.  Popping out for just a moment he threw the dark sphere as hard as he could towards the Dreamblossom.

It struck, bounced off the plant’s leathery exterior, and fell to the ground.

“Oh, for the love of the Mother!”  A`lanon swore, unable to believe his luck.

The Dreamblossom suddenly sensed another spot of warmth; smaller than the one it was chasing, but much closer – close enough to be a threat, its pseudo-mind decided.  One of its roots smashed down on the dropping, shattering its shell and releasing the Fire inside it.

Fire and heat blasted outwards in a massive explosion, and the Dreamblossom was thrown back nearly a score of feet, completely covered in flames.  The plant writhed and struck out with its roots, setting half a dozen small fires in the nearby underbrush, but the magic-spawned flames were insatiable; in a score of seconds the Dreamblossom’s flailing slowed and stopped, and A`lanon could sense the spark of its Life fade into the glow of the fire.

Panting, A`lanon emerged from behind the tree; though he barely had the strength to stand, he still lifted a hand and touched the fire with his EleMagic, reducing the Fire until the flames sputtered and died.  Then he sagged against the tree and slid to the ground, one hand weakly pulling the handkerchief away from his face.

For nearly a minute he gasped for air, but then he forced himself to calm down and take slow, steady breaths.  He opened himself to the EleMagic and took in a tiny bit of the power, then he cut it off from the rest of the EleMagic around him.  for ten minutes he meditated and focused his energies inwards, slowly converting the captured bit of EleMagic and attaching it to his depleted spirit.  It was a trick any EleMage had to learn early if they wanted to survive, and though it could only ease the hollowness in his chest slightly, it would keep him going a little while longer.

Suddenly, Kestranon’s voice magnified several times rang from the air.

“So are you going to die or not?”

“I’ll live.”  A`lanon said, opening his eyes.  “And you know it.  if you actually thought there was a chance I’d die even you would be at least a little nicer to me.”

Kestranon chucked.

“Maybe; though right now I’m rather annoyed with you for making me look like a fool.”

A`lanon grinned.

“Don’t worry, I’ll let you have ketchup with your hat; that should help a little.”

Kestranon scoffed.

“Well, I still say that you have far too much luck; it’s not natural.”

“Hey, even you can’t say I didn’t have to work for this one.” 

“Technically you worked for all of them to one degree or another.”  Kestranon said.  “Yet you still managed to collect all seven items in under a day.  Even in the days of the Collegium, no other Apprentice even came close to that.”

“And you know ‘cause you were there.”  A`lanon said.  “Come on, what do I do next?  I want to get home and take a hot bath to soak out some of these aches.”

Kestranon sighed.

“Go back to the mountain.  I’ve prepared a place for the Ritual at its peak.  I’ve also bespelled the stone to prepare a staircase for you to take you there.”

“Well that was nice of you.”  A`lanon said, getting to his feet with a grunt.

“I did it a long time ago, thinking that you’d be coming back from weeks or months out in the world, properly struggling to complete the Rite.  If I’d known you’d breeze through it like this I would have saved myself the effort.”

A`lanon chuckled, but a shot of pain from his shoulder turned it into a grunt.  He reached up with his right hand to massage the battered joint, but felt something wet and sticky.  When he pulled his hand back he found it covered in a thick substance nearly the consistency of tar, which he soon recognized.  Apparently the Dreamblossom’s roots had been secreting sap during the fight, and now that he looked at himself, he saw that he’d acquired at liberal coating of the stuff.

“You’re a mess, alright.”  Kestranon said.

“And I smell like a buzzard’s breakfast.”  A`lanon said, grimacing at the faint odor of decay the sap gave off, a smell which he hadn’t noticed before when he’d been distracted trying to stay alive.

“Well I suppose I’ll just have to take what satisfaction I can from that little bit of discomfort.”  Kestranon said as A`lanon scrubbed his hand on the cleanest patch of his clothes he could find.  “Don’t worry, it’s harmless.  It may be a digestive fluid, but it’s actually more of a catalyst than an acid.  As long as your flesh stays warm you’ll be fine.  I’ll meet you at the peak to tell you how to perform the Ritual.”

There was a slight ripple of magic, and then Kestranon was gone.

A`lanon sighed and used a touch of magic to call his staff over from where it had gotten tossed during the fight; then, leaning on it as he went, A`lanon turned and began the long hike back towards the mountain.

By the time A`lanon reached the mountain, twilight had already consumed the forest floor.  Following Kestranon’s directions he found a good spot where the slope wasn’t too steep, reached inside with his EleMagic, and touched the trigger Kestranon had placed there.  The ground rumbled slightly, and then the mountain seemed to flow slightly as a staircase formed from the rock; long and narrow, it went the full height of the mountain, more than a thousand feet to its peak.  A`lanon groaned, but started climbing.

It took well over an hour to reach the peak, partly because he had to stop and rest frequently, but also because the wind at that altitude was constantly trying to throw him from the steps and slam him into the mountain side.  He was too tired to try using EleMagic to block the wind, so all he could do was hunker down and lean into it as he climbed.  When he finally reached the top, he was relieved to find that Kestranon had thought to include a barrier to turn the worst of the wind with the rest of his preparations.

The place Kestranon had prepared was a flat circular area about forty feet across with a waist-high circular pedestal in the center.  Four stone Light-sconces stood at the cardinal compass points, and with the sun setting fast A`lanon reached out and gathered as much Light as he could from the last rays of sunset, then divided it into four spheres which he placed in the sconces.  The spells on the sconces activated, and the Light settled into them like a ball into a cup, allowing A`lanon to retract his concentration and his spirit and focus on the Ritual.

Kestranon suddenly appeared out of thin air, and for a moment A`lanon thought that his master had somehow teleported to the mountain top; however after a moment he realized that Kestranon had simply created an illusion of himself by weaving together strands of light into a new form.

The avatar glanced around, then nodded and looked at A`lanon.

“Alright, I guess it’s time.  You’ll be using this pedestal for the Ritual, but there’s some preparation you need to do first.”

Following Kestranon’s directions, A`lanon added the mermaid’s tear to the Dreamblossom pollen, then made a small cut on the heel of his right hand and added his blood to the mix until the jar was about a third full; then, using the quill of the Roc feather he stirred the mix together, and then used it as ink to draw the EleMage Sign on the inside of the Salamander scale.

The Sign was fairly simple, a seven-pointed star with a little picture in each point representing the Elements.  At the top was a leaf for the Life Element, then moving to the right was a sun for Light, stylized currents of wind for Air, waves for Water, a dark cloud for Darkness, a mountain and a hill for Earth, and a flame for Fire.

Once he’d finished the Sign, A`lanon placed the scale on the pedestal, lining it up and centering it in the larger Sign etched into the stone.  Then he used the Unicorn hair to tie the leaf to the diamond, placed a single drop of the pollen/tear/blood mixture in the center of the leaf, and then placed the diamond with the leaf on top in the exact center of the sign on the scale.  Then he used his finger and the last of the mix to write his name in EleMage runes along the shaft of the feather, which he then set across the scale so that it bisected the sign horizontally.  Next he opened himself to the EleMagic, allowing it to fill him like a warm fizzy drink, and then he cast a spell on the Light from the spheres in the sconces so that the scale was vertically bisected, with the right half bathed in brilliant light, and the left plunged into total darkness.  Then finally he poured the power in his body, as well as some of his spirit, into the items on the pedestal and chanted the spell Kestranon whispered in his ear.



“Briott g annya, gy balloa to.

Sepa ma pasotsro ca ma brio.

Frold gy gi harl ca brast Sapa’hanl mi prasd gi neib.”



As the final words died away, the EleMagic suddenly surged within the collected items, and the Salamander scale burst into flames.  Less than a second later everything on the pedestal was engulfed in a roaring multi-colored conflagration, however the blaze lasted only a few seconds before it vanished as quickly as it had come.  For another moment there was nothing, then a brilliant light caused A`lanon to blink and look away.  When he could look back, he saw a stone hovering at eye level in a column of light.  Acting on reflex he reached out and took the stone, and the second he touched it, it seemed to drink in all the light from the column into itself; and a shaved second later A`lanon felt the strength that had kept him standing vanish as well, and his knees buckled.

A`lanon just barely managed to catch himself on the pedestal and turn so that he could sit with his back against it.  once more he used a bit of the EleMagic to recover his spirit, but as it was wont to do it helped less than the last time.  What he needed was to get a good solid meal, and then to sleep for a day or so so that his spirit could recover naturally.  Still, now that he had his Crystal, that was the first thing on his ‘to do’ list once he got back to the hut.

Feeling the warmth and the magical pulse of the stone in his hand, A`lanon opened his eyes and looked down to take his first look at his own EleMage Crystal.

Like the diamond it had been born from, it was about two inches long and a little under an inch wide.  In shape it was a hexagonal cylinder with a tapering cone on either end – rather unremarkable, both in terms of normal crystals and EleMage Crystals, however each facet glowed brightly from within, showing seven different colors of light for the seven Elements; Fire was bright scarlet, Water was cool teal, Air was a light sky blue, Earth was a solid golden-brown, Light was a pure yellow-gold, darkness was a deep dark blue, and from one of the two cones, spotless white light represented the Life Element.

That was what an EleMage Crystal should be, however A`lanon’s crystal had something more; the second cone, opposite the Life point.  It was the grey of wet ashes, and it gave off no light whatsoever, yet for its dullness it was what caught and held A`lanon’s eye, because it shouldn’t have been there.  While it was true that every Crystal was unique to the EleMage who made it, they were all supposed to show only the power of the seven Elements.  There was no reason for the extra color to be there, yet it was.

As A`lanon stared at the grey point, he suddenly had the oddest sensation that someone – or perhaps something – unlike anyone or anything else was looking over his shoulder, and a chill with hot tingles passed through him.

Suddenly Kestranon’s avatar bent over to get a better look and snapped A`lanon out of his shock.  The feeling of being watched vanished, replaced solely with the exhaustion he’d felt before.

“Well that’s interesting.”  Kestranon said.  “I wonder why it has that extra point.  When you get back I’ll have a –“  He cut off suddenly and the avatar stood up and looked angrily to the empty air to one side.  “Who are you?”  Kestranon asked of no one.

For a moment A`lanon was confused, but then he realized that the avatar was simply mimicking what the real Kestranon did back at the hut, and apparently someone had just surprised his master.  A bad feeling settled over A`lanon as Kestranon presumably listened to whatever person or persons had interrupted him.  There was little reason for anyone to be calling on Kestranon this late, and those who might have reason – namely the people of the nearby village of Hearthstone – were all known to him.  So for a stranger to come calling was odd enough, but for that stranger to have managed to catch a fully trained EleMage Master by surprise boded only bad things.

“What are you talking about?”  Kestranon asked his unexpected visitor(s).  “I don’t know a thing about that.  Now get out of my hou—“  Kestranon’s avatar suddenly staggered backwards and cut out, but not before A`lanon caught a glimpse of ripped cloth and a spray of blood.

Exhaustion forgotten in a rush of adrenalin, A`lanon leaped to his feet and stared at the place where the avatar had been; then he turned and unconsciously summoned the wind to aid him, and he more or less literally flew down the mountain.