“So this is it,” Chelsea said, gazing up the long stairs. “And all it took…”
She turned to look back. But Grimoire was nowhere to be seen. One moment, she and Lorelei had been on the western shores of Grimoire’s Lunaria Lake. And then, with just a simple application of their Elemental Magic and a single step forward…
They’d been here.
“To think it’s that easy,” Lorelei said, gazing up the long stairs. “Well, I suppose not so easy. We needed to know the right way to open the way, but…”
“Yeah.” Chelsea nodded. Her owl Summon, perched on her shoulders, bristled excitedly, and Chelsea nodded again. He took to flight, relishing in the fantastic freedom afforded here.
Chelsea and Lorelei stood on a wide, rocky plateau. Long stairs rose up ahead of them, climbing a steep, magnificent mountain towards a high summit. Clouds swirled around, occasionally obscuring their view. High up, golden sunlight filtered down, giving every surface a fiery, gorgeous sheen.
The Endless Night hasn’t touched this place yet. How long has it been since I’ve seen the sun? We were in the Shadowheart, and then Midnight Bridge, then Grimoire…
“It’s beautiful,” Lorelei said. “And… warm.” She pulled off her coat, gloves, hat, and scarf, dismissing them into magical space through Conjuring Magic. She held out her hand, and Chelsea turned over her own winter gear. It was comforting leaving that weight behind. She loved the winter, but she wasn’t fond of bulky, heavy clothing to protect against the cold. Adjusting her bolero jacket, her favorite gift from Gwen, she started up the stairs with Lorelei.
Without her gloves, it was easier for her to feel the ring on her left hand. When she glanced at it, the sunlight hit the diamond so dazzlingly.
Caleb…
We’ll be together again soon.
She started up the stairs with Lorelei, while her Summon wheeled high overhead. Where those stairs stopped, high above, was their destination.
The Elemental Summit.
Oscar and Callum Greyson had told Chelsea and Lorelei all they could about the place. But what they found there would ultimately be something they couldn’t prepare for. As Oscar had said: “I can tell you nothing about your Elementals. What they have to show you, what you have to learn, is unique to you.”
Chelsea had never thought of her magic as anything so grandiose. That there would be some force, some being, existing as part of her magic, hidden and secret, was shocking. But the more she’d had time to think about it…
There are things about my magic that I’ve never really understood.
Time Magic has its limits, limits unique to it. Summoning Magic can be incredibly powerful, but comes with the danger of pain inflicted to a Summon being dealt to the Summoner, as well. All other magic — I’d thought — just had ordinary limits. You use it too much, you push too hard, and you get exhausted, you run out of strength. Like Caleb’s Containment and Mobility Magic, or anything else out there.
But Elemental Magic…
It’s always been different, hasn’t it? I haven’t just wielded it. It’s sometimes ignored my commands, run wild and free on its own. I’ve had to communicate with my fire, talk to it, work with it. Sometimes it’s taken over me. On Hollow Island, in the Library of Solitude… my magic was in control of me.
But those were also the times I was most powerful. I started to find my own way to that kind of power with the Fire Blossom, but that technique requires so much emotional control, and even then… my fire tells me if I can or can’t.
There’s always been someone there. Someone unseen, someone not recognized as a “someone.”
For Callum, that someone, his Elemental, was volatile and violent, and turned his own magic against himself. It was only by meeting his Elemental face-to-face and quelling its vicious desires that he was able to make his Lightning Magic his own.
Lorelei figured it out on her own. She’s even seen her Elemental, briefly. And while they’ve mostly gotten along so well, back at the Library of Solitude, when things were pushed farther than ever before… she froze. Encased in ice… was that her Elemental? Why would he do that? When fighting Kaohlad, he almost did it again, but she asked him not to, and he listened, even gave her a second wind.
What I don’t understand is… why don’t we realize these Elementals are here in the first place? Why do they hide? And why do they sometimes extract cruel prices from us for using our power? Summons don’t do that to their Summoners.
What am I going to find at the Summit?
And as she climbed, Chelsea’s thoughts also turned to the past.
Mother… did you ever come here? Did you ever meet your Elemental? What did you have to come to terms with?
I only saw you fight once, at the most desperate moment of your life, but you were… so powerful. And you were in complete control. So you must have come here. But even though you passed on the secrets of Fire Magic to me, even though you gave me my Talismans, you never said anything about this. Even in all of those journals you wrote, all the notes you left behind for me, I’ve found nothing.
Is there something I missed? Grandmother, you didn’t tell me, either. No one said a word about this. But you must have known.
Why has this been kept such a secret? Lorelei and I aren’t the only Elemental Mages in Grimoire — we aren’t even the only ones among the Hunters. How many of them have hit a wall, have hit costs and struggles with their own power, and had no one to explain why?
The climb looked so very long, but Chelsea and Lorelei reached the Summit far before they should have. Looking back, the stairs seemed just as long down to the bottom as they had from down there, and yet here they were at the top.
“Oh, check it out,” Lorelei said, nudging Chelsea. Chelsea turned around and gaped along with her.
Golden sunlight, dispelling motes of golden light across a field of vibrant flowers in all colors. Elaborate alabaster pillars forming a ring around a pond, its surface glittering like diamonds.
The Summit was not a large place, but it felt like something out of a fairytale. Light shone so brightly, yet it wasn’t harsh or painful in any way. It didn’t wash out colors, but brought them into vibrant, glorious contrast. The motes of light falling from the sky and bouncing around the flowers seemed like fairies, reminding Chelsea faintly of the Will Wisps. Her owl flew in circles high over the Summit, darting through the motes of golden light, each one bursting and turning his feathers to gorgeous, golden flame for an instant, before fading.
“It’s so peaceful,” Lorelei said, smiling.
Chelsea murmured her agreement. It was peaceful. But…
“Where are our Elementals?” she asked.
“Perhaps…” Lorelei held up her gloved hand, and the Talisman shone with light. Snowflakes scattered around her, falling and spiraling gently. “Are you there? I’ve come all this way. I hope you won’t be shy now.”
A few moments later, the snowflakes swept away from Lorelei. They spiraled in a wild fashion, and then from the snow emerged a ghostly, cerulean figure. All of him — eyes, hair, skin — was cerulean. He had no mouth, and yet his eyes, his face, said so much without words.
He seems… kind.
That wasn’t at all what Chelsea expected. After seeing the toll Lorelei’s Ice Magic could have on her — seeing her slowly get covered in ice, and then finally be encased in a massive block of it, in such a state that Chelsea had feared her dead — she’d thought the Elemental behind her magic must be some cold, cruel creature.
But despite being the same icy color as Lorelei’s magic, her Elemental exuded warmth. He reached out his hand, and Lorelei took it with hers.
“I still… don’t understand you,” Lorelei said, cocking her head to the side, gazing at him. “The way my magic works… the kinds of punishment dealt out when I push too far… I don’t understand it at all. And then you helped me against Kaohlad. You gave me an extension, let me push further without freezing. Why?”
The Elemental seemed to smile as his eyes narrowed, and a slight movement in his shoulders, a bob of his head, made Chelsea think he was laughing.
“You… you’ve been protecting me?” Lorelei asked. Her Elemental nodded.
“How’s that work?” Chelsea asked. “Back at the Library —”
“I pushed too far,” Lorelei said. “And the ice, when I couldn’t keep going anymore… it was a shield. Armor, to ensure Valgwyn’s horde wouldn’t harm me.”
Chelsea blinked, staring. Lorelei’s Elemental looked back at her, and for the first time, she thought she understood him, too.
Protecting her…
“But why can’t you just give her more power?” Chelsea asked. “Why can’t you just let her go further? Why couldn’t you have given her an extension in that fight?”
Lorelei’s Elemental seemed to laugh again, and Lorelei smiled. “He says you should talk to your own Elemental about these things,” she said.
Chelsea scowled, but Lorelei’s Elemental only did his little soundless laugh again. She turned away, walking a bit further through the flowers on the Summit to get some space. She paused just beyond the ring of pillars around the glittering lake, and raised one of her Talismans.
“How does this even work?” she muttered. With a soft sigh, she clicked her lighter once. A thin tendril of flame rose and spiraled in the air. “Come on out, then, will you? You should know by now I’m not such a fan of riddles.”
The thin tendril of flame shot forward, dissipating in a shower of emerald sparks. And from it arose…
Chelsea found herself gaping, her eyes widening slightly. After a moment, she shook her head. “Stop it,” she said. “That’s not my color. That’s hers. What are you playing at?”
The ghostly figure that emerged, flickering like fire herself, was a woman slightly shorter than Chelsea, with long, fire-like hair, but her color…
She was sapphire. Like Marion’s fire, like Chelsea’s mother’s magic. But her eyes… her eyes were the emerald of Chelsea’s fire.
“Don’t mess with me,” Chelsea said, shaking her head. “Just tell —”
The Elemental held out her hand, palm up. An invitation. Chelsea stared at it, caught between desire and revulsion. Curiosity won the day, and Chelsea reached out, tentatively taking the Elemental’s hand.
A voice rushed through her mind, a voice that brought tears to her eyes. She only spoke a single phrase, but it said so much:
“Protect her, now that I’m gone.”
Chelsea dropped the Elemental’s hand, reeling. Her voice caught in her throat, and it took her several attempts to take a full breath. Finally, she choked out one word. “Mother…?”
The sapphire Elemental with emerald eyes gazed steadily at Chelsea. Like Lorelei’s Elemental, she had no mouth, yet her eyes spoke volumes.
“You were… hers?” Chelsea asked. Slowly, the Elemental nodded. But there was a look in her eyes that said more. “You… only… part of you.” Another nod. “You’re… two.”
There it was. A flicker in those emerald eyes — a flicker of sapphire flame. And there again, in her sapphire hair, a streak of emerald shot through, then vanished. She was mostly sapphire, mostly Marion’s fire, but those bits of emerald, of Chelsea’s fire, came through clear and bright.
My Elemental… and Mother’s…
They joined together.
“Protect her, now that I’m gone.”
Chelsea stared at her lighter, emblazoned with the Fire Blossom crest that her mother had invented, had made her own.
Chelsea’s Elemental — Chelsea’s, wholly hers, yet partly her mother’s — reached out her hand once again. This time, Chelsea took it eagerly. That light touch, that connection, didn’t bring with it what it had the first time. She didn’t hear her mother’s voice again. But holding her Elemental’s hand brought more meaning to the expressions on her face, to her body language. They weren’t words, per se, but Chelsea understood. It was like how she communicated with her Summon.
“She passed you on to me,” Chelsea said, her voice still taut with emotion. “At the end of it all…”
…she was thinking of me.
“There’s… there’s so much I don’t understand. Like with Lorelei’s Elemental, and Callum’s, I don’t… well, especially Callum’s. He said his was too vicious, too violent, he even gave up Elemental Magic entirely for years before picking it back up with his father’s help. And you… you haven’t always listened to me.”
Chelsea was stunned at the impression she got from her Elemental. A clear, strong denial. As if she was saying…
“You… were always listening? But I…”
Sudden words shot through her mind again, but the voice was her voice this time.
“Nothing touches them. Everything else, you burn.”
She reeled. “That was… Hollow Island.”
Ah.
I remember.
I told you what to do. When Caleb fell, I called you out. I sent you into battle.
And you…
“But that power,” Chelsea said, shaking her head. “That’s so much more than anything I normally do. And at the Library of Solitude, I… I was completely wreathed in flame, and flying, and it was all such a rush, something I could never do on my own…”
She stared at her Elemental, at eyes, at a subtle head tilt, that said so much.
“You’re still learning,” Chelsea said softly. “Your Elemental and mine, joined together… it’s all new. And I’m like my mother, but I’m still not her. So it’s all… different.”
You have so much power. More than even I’ve seen so far. But you’ve carefully held it back, even when I’ve called so much out…
For my sake.
Chelsea bowed her head, smiling.
I get it, now. I’m weaker than you, than Mother. So you adjusted to what I could handle. Because while you’re a part of my power, a part of my magic… it’s still mine, in the end. My magic. You’re just a guide. A protector. A… I’m not sure the right word.
When Lorelei freezes, it’s because she’s pushed too far for herself. Her Elemental allows her to push farther, to those frightening effects, because he trusts her, but also because he knows he can protect her if worse comes to worst.
Chelsea laughed, gripping her Elemental’s hand tightly. It was such a warm, reassuring touch. “I don’t entirely get it,” she said. “But I have a feeling you’re going to teach me. Now that I’m here, where I can properly come to understand you.”
Her Elemental nodded, and Chelsea was certain she was beaming.
Though Chelsea and Lorelei were both there on the Summit together, it was as if each was alone, as they conversed with and questioned their Elementals. There was so much to learn, so much to understand.
But now that they were here, the answers would come.
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