Elementals Book one Light and Shadow

Going Home

"What do you mean by home?" Aeolus asked. The water behind us splashing against the rock of the pathway and the people talking in front of us sounded a lot like New York.

"New York." I concentrated on opening a portal, and it appeared in front of us.

"You have to teach me that." Reggie said, eyes full of awe

"Lucky for you, we are going to train."

"Yeah?"

"Yep. River, Pax, Khonsu, Nessa, E, and Aeolus. You guys go ahead, I want to talk to the twins." Aeolus nodded, and ushered everyone through the portal.

"What did you want to talk about?"

"Your magic, I will explain more in a minute, but having shadow and light magic is extremely rare, and a huge honor, Aeolus and I will help train you, but the magic works differently for everyone. You are both young, and regular magic takes a lot out of you the first time. Shadow and light magic are even worse, I'm guessing you can already feel the effects?" Reggie nodded, I could see in his eyes he was tired. And I realized he must have been using Dylan for support

"Once we get through the portal, we will set up a place for you to rest, you may be out for a few hours. I'm not sure about how it works with twins, but you two seem closer than most brothers, you're tired too, aren't you?" I asked Dylan, he looked like he was going to disagree, but after a moment, he nodded. "I figured, So I will just tell you both now." I gave them the shortest version possible, the demon elder impostors, how the old us had died, all of that. By the time I was done, Reggie was leaning more heavily on Dylan, and he was having a hard time keeping him up. "Wow, that's insane." Dylan said

"I know."

"Can we please get somewhere we can rest?" I nodded, and sent Aeolus a mental message, asking him to use his light magic to create tents. We already had ours, but I realised that everyone else would need a tent too. I helped Reggie and Dylan stumble to the portal, and on the other side, Aeolus already had the tents ready. I nodded at him, and he understood my meaning. He came over, and slipped his shoulder under Reggie's arm. I did the same for Dylan, and we led them to neighboring tents. There were already sleeping bags in the tents, and I helped Dylan into his.

"It's kind of crazy." I could hear sleep creeping into his voice

"What is?"

"Reggie uses magic and I pass out too."

"You and your brother have a strong connection, hold on to that, it may come in handy." but Reggie was already asleep. I left his tent and found Aeolus walking out of Reggie's.

"He's out." I told him

"Reggie too."

"Is it time to talk to the others?"

"I think so, what about the twins?"

"I told them already."

"Okay." We walked to the group, everyone was watching us curiously.

"Are they okay?" Elena asked

"Yes, just tired."

"So, care to tell us why we need an army?" Nessa asked, arms crossed over her chest.

"The prophecy, the elders." I said, but Aeolus knew more about this than I did, so I motioned for him to continue. He explained it to our allies much better than I had to the twins.

"Any questions?" I wanted to feel like I was still helping. Elena raised her hand.

"So, the elders are actually demons?"

"Yes"

"And they disguised themselves as elementals?"

"Yes."

"How? Demons don't have that kind of magic."

"They are elder demons." it seemed I was just reviewing what Aeolus said.

"So then when do we attack?" Nessa asked, I got the feeling she wasn't one to wait around. She wanted to get straight into action.

"Not yet, the twins aren't fully trained. And we all need to be ready, we will stay here for a while and train."

"If the prophecy says we need to take down the impostors, we need to act fast, not give them time to prepare. They have to know that we have begun gathering the army by now, we need to act fast."

"When night invades day, guardians and army lead the way, taking down the imposters, and claiming their rightful place. But the fight is not over, not by half, more to protect, more to lose, but rest assured, the guardians will lead us through."

"What does that mean?"

"It's another prophecy. The beginning is talking about the solar eclipse in two weeks. We have until then to train."

"Fine." The tone of her voice told me that she wasn't happy to have to wait.

"While we train the twins, it wouldn't be a bad idea to practice fighting as a group. And in pairs."

"Like- fight each other?" Elena asked, sounding scared

"Yes, like hand to hand combat, magic would be too dangerous." she let out a small sigh of relief. "For today, everyone should rest, we start training tomorrow.'' The light of the sunset through the leaves of the trees reminded me of fire, the orange light with the black shadows of the leaves like flames with smoke. We had been all over the world and built a powerful army in a single day. well, two if you count time zone differences and the International Date Line. I knew that we needed to train quickly but efficiently, taking down the elders would be no easy task, even with four people with shadow magic and two with light magic. Even if those were the best defense against demons, these were elder demons, more powerful, different types of magic. If they could disguise themselves as elementals, could they make themselves look like one of us? What other kinds of magic did they have?

"Hey, what's wrong?" Aeolus asked. He'd been watching the others head to their tents, but was now looking at me, his eyes full of concern.

"Yeah, it's just- I'm worried, we promised E's mom that we would bring her home safely. What about Cruz's parents? This is big Aeolus, we don't know what we are getting ourselves into." he laid his hand on my shoulder.

"Serena, I hear you, and I get where you are coming from. I'm worried too, but we can't let that show, these kids left their homes, their families, let's get some training done, and go from there." I nodded, but I wasn't sure. What if we were getting in over our heads?