Distant Elemental

It hadn’t been long ago that Skye decided she needed a mask. Today was one of those days where a mask came in very handy. She whipped it out of her bag, slipped it over her face and away she went. Into the air. Flying had always been a delicate operation for Skye, but she was getting better and better at it as she felt the wind currents beneath her and swayed them to her will. She twirled in the air, letting the wind pull her up higher and higher until she was watching a commotion that changed her whole life.

Fulgora paused where she was, unsure of what to do. She could run, she could hide, or she could leap out of harm’s way. The monster was gambolling towards where she was, and she could tell it hadn’t seen her yet. If she turned away now she had time to run, but something seemed to be stopping her. She had been running her whole life from anything that scared her or posed even the slightest threat to the way she lived her life; in silence and secrecy. Now this creature had appeared, and Fulgora was tired of running. The monster she could see resembled an aged goblin. The skin was rugged like the twisting roots of a tree and she knew the hide must be very tough if bullets weren’t doing anything to it. She was suddenly unsure of herself and her element. She couldn’t be sure if lightning would have any affect.

Skye landed somewhat awkwardly on a building top and looked down at the street below her, fascinated. The girl down there was building up some serious emotions. Skye listened to the air around her, and she felt the fear instantaneously, but there was some sort of determination, some sort of drive focusing itself down there. She looked across, wondering what it could be that had driven such fear from the girl and saw the beast loping towards them. The next second, something interrupted her thoughts as she felt a pushing against the wind like something attacking her prowess. Skye looked toward the direction the feeling was coming from, feeling the wind moving in different directions, and without thinking about her actions she pushed back. No-one interrupted her.

Fulgora knew she was being watched. She felt it as a tingling on the back of her neck; all her senses were going haywire. She shook away the feeling and let the creature scramble toward her without backing away as she otherwise would have done. She had been wondering why the police would leave the monster alone and not attack it or, you know, do something. The helicopter droned far above her, but the sound seemed to be getting further away as she focused on the thing moving toward her. She knew now that it had seen her, but now it seemed to be moving even faster. In seconds it will be here. The wind wasn’t helping.

Now Skye felt another sense near her as though the force messing around with her wind was attacking her from two directions. She focused on this second one for a while before realising what it was- a helicopter. Well, she could fix that. The wind picked up around her, starting to swirl as she pushed it in towards itself, and that helicopter was out of there in a flash. Helicopters don’t stick around when wind starts to spin in a tornado-like fashion. But she wasn’t really going to make a tornado. She was more interested in the first thing attacking her. She didn’t want to be interrupted watching the girl and the monster below her. She had a feeling something interesting was going to happen, she didn’t need the emotions to spell it out for her.

Blaise, as anyone could guess, had been aptly named for a Fire Elemental. He had been following the progress of the monster on TV because he thought he could do something to help the situation. He’d never heard of anyone else that could control fire the way he could, in real life. It was always in movies or comics about his favourite superheroes that these fantasies existed. But of course, someone always struck gold with their imagination and in a recent movie had created a real depiction of what a fire-controlling super hero could really do. The answer to that was simple.
They could fly.

Like a flaming ball, Blaise streaked through the sky, undisturbed by obstacles in the vast emptiness. He looked down at the ground, working out where he was and how to get to the last known location of the beast that stalked the streets, searching for humans. He knew he was getting close when he heard a loud roar. That was when he started slowing down. What was going on? It was as though the wind was trying to push him backwards. He found himself sliding slowly down toward the ground and he shifted, trying to pull himself upward, but his attempts were in vain. He’d have to find somewhere to land, and fast.

Fulgora knew why the beast had been left alone as, with a roar, a massive ripple of energy shot through the street, flinging Fulgora off her feet and sending her crashing to the ground. She rolled sideways, got back to her feet and had the shock of her life when she realised the monster was standing right before her. It had moved so fast! She hadn’t had the time to calculate its speed properly. The thing made a swipe for her with sharp-clawed paws and she jumped out of the way, everything slowing down around her as she went into slow-time. She lashed out suddenly at the monster with a zap of electricity, but this bounced off its hide like a twig. She breathed in deeply as the monster swung a paw again, only it seemed to take forever to reach her. She ducked under the blow as easily as a boxer avoids the telltale punch of an amateur, but that was when she sensed something was wrong. Something was terribly wrong.