Page 20 of Elemental Hall: Nautica
Looking up to the sky, I can see that the storm is swirling around the small island I’m on, its fury building and building. The rest of Nautica is being affected by the storm to some degree, but it feels as if the spot I’m in is the focus, the heart of it.
I see why a moment later, and fury builds in me. Two figures stand on a hillside on a nearby island, protected from the storm in part by a shield of air. Even at this distance, I recognize Ash and Sybil. They are gesturing, controlling the elements, building the power of the storm and directing it at this part of the island. Atme.
I set off in their direction. If I can get close enough to them, I can stop this. I can make them stop, turn the storm into something more manageable. I’m still stalking forward when I see another figure approaching along a side trail.
It’s Darius, and I can see him concentrating hard, forcing the wind and the rain back from himself, at least for now.
“Darius!” I call out.
“Sera, this storm is worse than I thought it would be. It is wild. It is out of control.”
“That’s because two of my classmates are directing it at me,” I explain.
“At you, or at me?” Darius asks.
I realize that he has a point. Ash has already said that he thinks Darius should be killed, so isn’t it possible that he’s taken it upon himself to kill him? Or maybe he and Sybil have decided to targetbothof us. Why get rid of one person they dislike when they can get rid of two?
“If we can get near them, we may be able to stop them,” I say.
Darius shakes his head. “It’s too late for that. Can’t you feel it?”
For a second, I don’t know what he’s talking about, but then I reach out to the storm with my gift. I feel its power, its wildness. I can feel a kind of fraying center trying to hold it together and direct it, but I also feel the moment when that thread of power snaps.
Ash and Sybil have poured power into the storm and now it is out of control.
I can feel it, building and building in a cycle of power that threatens to become something unstoppable. I can see it starting to roll away, back in the direction of the main island.
“At least it is drifting away from us,” Darius says.
“Back towards everyone else.”
Darius shrugs. “They have prepared for a storm.”
“Not forthis,” I insist. “They’re expecting the storm the elemental masters and mistresses summoned up, not something Ash and Sybil have been feeding. If that thing reaches the main island, people will die!”
Darius looks as if he might shrug again, but then the façade cracks and he looks concerned.
“There is nothing we can do about it, though,” he says.
“I think there might be. Just how good is your control over wind and lightning?”
“Not enough to dissipate all ofthat,” Darius says.
“I don’t want to dissipate it. It will burn out on its own. I want to hold ithere, where there are fewer people it can hurt.”
“You want… you want to call the storm to us?” Darius looks shocked by that. “That’s insane, Sera.”
“Not if we work together.” I’m sure about this, or as sure as I can be. “My friends are out there, Darius. Our fellow students. If they die because we didn’t act, I couldn’t live with myself.”
He looks at me through the rain. For long seconds, I think he will refuse, but then he nods once, sharply.
“All right,” he says. “We will call a storm down onto ourselves. I just hope that we survive it.”
Chapter ELEVEN
Darius and I huddle in the dark, calling the full might of a hurricane down onto the spot where we sit atop our bedrolls.
We are opposite each other, close enough to touch, hand to hand, power flowing out from both of us as we call in the storm. Darius is doing most of the work, pulling the clouds to us, pulling in all that whirling chaos to tear at us, to try to drown us or destroy us.
