Page 60 of Sealed By Fire (The Nature Hunters Academy 2)

“Excellent point,” Elias said with a wicked grin.

“Moving on,” Tara said, not wanting them to get completely off track. They were like freaking squirrels with their attention spans.

“Yes,” Aston agreed. “So, there are layers, which are called realms. The human realm is the only one all humans can see. But then there are supernatural realms. Each royal elemental has its own realm where their respective elementals reside. Though some elementals do choose to live in the human realm, even though humans, for the most part, can’t see them.”

“What do you mean for the most part?” Tara asked.

“Elemental beings do occasionally get seen. Then all sorts of myths and legends spring up around the sighting. Do you think someone simply dreamed up a fairy or a gnome from their imagination? No. They ran across one accidentally. Probably, the elemental was careless and somehow allowed themselves to be seen. Or perhaps they were playing a prank on a human. Whatever the reason, the elemental gets seen. Then the creature disappears. And the poor human spends the rest of his or her life trying to convince everyone that tiny fantasy creatures with wings really do exist.”

“So, what types of elemental creaturesdoactually exist, then?” she asked.

Aston titled his head and looked to the ceiling. “Hmm, there are many. For instance, earth elementals include forest sprites, dwarves, gnomes, certain types of fairies, ogres, and trolls, to name a few. And water elementals include sirens, merpeople, selkies, and kraken. Again, those are just some. Air elementals include sylphs, zephyrs, and certain types of fae. Fire elementals include the phoenix, salamanders, and dragons.”

“Wait. Stop. Dragons? Like, real-life dragons?”

“Hmm, yes and no,” said Aston. “They probably aren’t the dragons you’re thinking of. They don’t have scales, and they don’t sit atop a horde of treasure or breathe fire. It’s more like they aremadeof fire. There are water and air dragons as well.

“Good to know.” Tara furrowed her brow.

“The important thing to know is that some elementals are good. We call those light elementals. And some are bad. We call those dark elementals.”

Tara’s mind was officially blown. She hadn’t given any thought to the fact that the elementals were actually the beings humans believed to be made up. Was that not super bright of her? Yes. But then her bulb had been burning on dim for a while now. She was tired and worried and the soul bond was messing with … well … everything. “And do dark elementals have their own realms?”

“No, dark elementals have territories in the human realm.” Elias took over as some sort of alert on Aston’s laptop had taken his attention, and he’d quickly rolled himself back over. He’d probably just been notified that he’d managed to break into Gringotts and the goblins hadn’t caught on yet.

“They’ve been booted out of their respective realms because they drank the Kool-Aid that made them power-hungry,” Liam added.

Tara snorted. “Nice. Okay, so that brings me to acolytes. What’s their story?”

“Acolytes are the dark version of us,” Liam said. “They found out that the dark side has cookies and don’t care if it rots their teeth. A lot of times those who go to the dark elementals are those who lost a part—a big part—of their soul when their parents died.”

Tara glanced at Elias, feeling his eyes on her. She knew that could have been her fate. It’s why he was her soul bonded. He’d saved her from possibly becoming a dark cookie eater. Jeez, she was weird. Elias winked at her, and she shook her head with a small smile.

Liam was still talking, and she turned her attention back to him. “Or it could be that they had some other encounter with the supernatural world, and they already had darkness inside of them. If the devil on their shoulder was stronger than the angel on the other side, then it wouldn’t be hard for the dark elementals to collect them.”

She nodded when he finished and then considered everything they’d told her. Tara tried to sift through her mind and see if there was anything else she felt like she needed to know right then. She knew more questions would come as she continued to fall deeper into the rabbit hole, but some of it was “need to know” information. Then she remembered a term Elias had used. “Natura Venatori,” she said looking back at Elias. “You said something about that, but I’ve slept since then, lost my best friend, and turned into a walking hormone. Please, if you don’t mind, could you indulge me again?”

Elias’s eyelids lowered dangerously over his beautiful aquamarine eyes as he purred, “I’ll indulge you in anything you want, love.”

“Focus, squirrel,” she told him, forcing herself to not get on the floor and crawl to him like a cat in heat.

“Natura Venatorimeans Nature Hunter in Latin,” he said. “It’s what we will become when we graduate from the academies. Elements are the ingredients that make up nature.”

“Why didn’t they call themselves elemental hunters?” Tara asked.

“Because we don’t hunt all elementals,” Elias said.

“Just the cookie eaters,” Liam said with a grin.

Tara rolled her eyes. “You’re so strange.”

“Everything sorted?” Aston asked as he rolled back over. “We’ve got five minutes to get to the training field.”

“I guess that’s enough for now,” she said.

Liam stood and rubbed his hands together. “Alright, let’s go show these dumbasses why we should have been working together all along.”

“It would be a good idea not to call the profs dumbasses,” Aston advised. “People in authority usually don’t take kindly to being insulted.”

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