The Elements Book One: Gilly

Chapter 8: Complete

It was only around ten minutes later that Patrik caught up to us. The quiet whine of metal alerted me to his approach, so I stopped, motioning the others away from the track.

When Patrik arrived, I noted with amusement that he had opted to effectively use a bar to hoverboard his way back to us. "Let me guess, it's my turn to haul everyone?" He asked as he stepped down off of the tracks.

"Yep." I replied, then frowned as I got a sense of his mental state. "Hey, what's up?"

He rubbed a hand over his forehead. "I got curious, so I, uh, looked inside the train."

I sucked in a sharp breath. "Oh."

"How bad was it?" Andy asked in shock.

"They were massacred." Patrik replied, rage filling his voice. I quickly reached out a hand to stop him, looking over at Alexandra.

"No, it's okay. They need to know." Alexandra said quietly. "I get that you've probably been keeping yourself calm so that I wouldn't freak out, but...I need this, too."

I nodded, allowing the calmness that I had enforced on myself subconsciously to fade. "They were looking for her, I think, and in the process they murdered every single person on that train. Including her parents." I explained.

"What you saw wasn't even all of it." Patrik muttered. "When I put the train into the ravine, I saw some of the other passengers. The bodies had been dumped haphazardly as they passed over. Not...all of them were completely intact."

Alexandra clenched her fists. "You said that they were in Fairbanks. We have to stop them from doing this ever again."

Patrik nodded, a murderous look in his eyes. "Trust me, we'll make sure of that."

A familiar feeling of rage started coiling in my chest. "Let's get going." I said. "The sooner we get there, the better."

"Agreed." Evret said, actually standing mostly upright for once.

Patrik raised an eyebrow. "You're getting aggressive too, huh?" He then shook his head to defuse any angry comment that Evret might make, turning and holding a hand out.

The ground violently warped around us, and then metal was twisting out of the ground and into a crude box-like vehicle that rested on the train tracks.

Once it was complete we all clambered inside, with Evret and I taking opposite ends. Despite the space, we ended up rather close together.

I moved as far into one corner as I could to try and mitigate some of the physical contact. Dave took one side, with Alexandra on the other.

I put an arm in front of her to brace her as we lurched into motion rapidly, the rest of us able to compensate due to being used to violent stops and starts by now. Abraham had very nearly lost his balance, but had saved himself at the last second.

I smirked at him as we gained even more speed until we were hurtling down the tracks.

We're very close, I think. Patrik let me know. It should only be a few more minutes.

Perfect. I replied. I then started scanning ahead as far as I could, hoping to get more information about what we were heading into.

I very nearly flinched when I felt a shock of magic somewhere nearby. Stop, stop! I ordered in a panic, leaning forwards.

When we screeched to a halt, I bolted out of the vehicle and started running towards the burst of magic that I'd sensed. There's someone fighting near here, I sensed magic and it wasn't corrupt.