Elemental: Fire

Chapter 13

"Scarlett, Scarlett. Wake up." A voice ushered in her left ear.

"Now now, we don't want to disturb your pretty friend here," another deep voice called.

"Shut it you pig! I'm your girlfriend!" A female scolded, offended.

Everything was very blurry, and a pain could be felt at the side of her face.

Where are we? This all seems familiar, Scarlett contemplated.

"Oh look, she's awake now. Too bad, I thought she could've died," female teased.

Finn lunged forward, only to be pulled back by the clanking of chains. By now her vision was cleared, and her circumstances were as well. It was the chasers from the forest. Scarlett was confused about what they wanted, but also hoped they didn't find out about the prophecy. They probably already knew they were from Simul since they tried to fight them off with their elements.

"Well? What do we do with them now? We have what we wanted," red haired boy inquired.

"Well, let's use our new power and test it out. And looky here, we have test dummies!"

"Yeah, we do!"

"What? What are you talking about," Scarlett catechized.

"Well, you see, we were planning to snatch the book from the library ourselves, probably even burn the place in the process, but seems that you already did. So, why not just steal it from a bunch of dimwits? And we did: kidnapped you, knocked you out, and all that jazz."

"Let us go. Now."

Scarlett demanded through gritted teeth. The ruthless girl laughed and turned away, carrying something under her arm.

"The bestiary. What do you want with it?" Finn was desperate for answers and looked almost like he was going to break from the chains.

"Shut it and let me do my work. Jaxon, get over here."

The boy scurried over quickly, saying, "Need any help?"

"Hold the book in front of me. Let's begin."

At that moment she transformed into another creature. A ghoul stood in her place, bone-thin, and gray. In a raspy deep voice, the ghoul grabbed a yellow dust from aside and sprinkled it on the book, causing it to burst up in blue flames. Calming down immediately, she read from the incantation that appeared in the book.

"I don't know what she's doing, but we have to stop her," Scarlett reminded.

"Well, maybe I can do this thing..." Finn proceeded to produce vines from the ground. They slid under the chains, which burst open from holding in too much.

He stood up and did the same to Scarlett's chains. Now they were both free while the others were still reading the incantation.

"Take the book, Tawdrey. I'll take care of these buffoons."

His arms began to expand, and his height grew much over the two. Scarlett and Finn didn't react, aweing at the ogre above them. Snapping out of it, the Fire elemental sent huge flames at Jaxon, who wailed and dismissively swatted them away.

"It's not strong enough!" Scarlett ran to the side and dodged the mighty blow of the beast.

In disbelief, Finn raised vines from the ground, wrapping them around the ogre. With easy force, he snapped the vines right off him.

"Oh, crap!" Finn shouted, then flew out of the way when the ogre sent a flying fist towards him. "What do we do?"

"Uh," Scarlett contemplated, staring up at the beast. Jaxon looked right at her, and sent both of his fists crashing down, "STAY ALIVE!"

Running across the room, Finn had to think cleverly. The only thing that he could control were the walls of what appeared to be a cave. However, if he made a wrong move, the whole place could go crashing down on them.

"Finn, over here!" Scarlett tried to get Finn's attention.

She had a plan, but it would require intense timing. If she could just get to the other side of the cave. All of a sudden, a giant roar came from above. Looking up, Scarlett reacted to slowly, and the ogre plucked her off the ground. Immediately, the girl sent flames at its face, which resulted in being flung to the other side of the cave. Hitting the wall, Scarlett rolled along the ground, but stood up quickly from adrenaline.

Well that's one way to do it, Scarlett thought.

"Finn!" He turned around, a look of 'what do we do' in his eyes. "Go to the end of the cave and bring the largest boulder you can flying in here!"

"What about you?"

"Just go! Now!"

Sprinting, Finn ran to the end of the cave, hesitating slightly in finding the boulder. To buy him some time, Scarlett sent a constant flame at Jaxon, which he continuously tried to bat off.

"I've got it! Here it goes." Finn yelled from the opening.

Then, a large boulder that barely fit inside the cave came soaring in. Trying to retrieve the bestiary, the girl pushed Tawdrey out of the way, who seemed to have stopped reciting. Grabbing the book, Scarlett instantly began to run to the entrance, shooting fire at the boulder, which lit up like a giant fireball.

Faster than a arrow, Scarlett ran to the entrance of the cave, hearing a giant 'boom' from the inside. Whipping her head around, a deadly cloud of rock and flames began at them.

Since the cave was at the heights of a mountain, they only had one move now, which was to jump. Finn seemed to try to think of a better idea, but Scarlett grabbed his forearm and jumped, pulling him with her. It was as though in slow motion they began to fall into the forest, an uncertain death coming closer.

The pair both screamed as they fell, not knowing another way to react. Finn put his hands in front of him, and he accidentally caused something. The trees moved their branches, and the leaves at the end of the branches joined to form a nest shape.

With the force of the fall, the two landed in the nest shape, catching their breath for a few seconds. But since Finn stopped concentrating on the branches, they moved back to their original positions, causing them to free fall a few feet, but it wasn't dangerous because of such a short distance.

They laid there, tired and breathless. Flipping over, Scarlett set her arm on her stomach and looked up at the sky, thinking of absolutely nothing except on her breathing.

"We...have...to get...going," Scarlett managed between breaths.

"Aren't they dead? That seemed pretty lethal to me."

Scarlett looked back up, staring at the now cracked cave. Looking closer at it, something moved in there. A clawed hand appeared out of the side of the cave, then another one. Wrinkly, purple-ish skin bore giant red claws, and then a large thing jumped off the edge and into the forest.

Scrambling up, Scarlett stood as attentive as she could.

"Get up, we have to get going—now!" Scarlett tried to coax Finn up, who slowly got up with no worry.

From the trees, a giant creature appeared. It had six yellow eyes on either side of the head, about four arms, and six giant spider-like legs. Slowly looking up, Finn now realized the hurry to get out of there. The creature looked like an evolved ghoul: Tawdrey.

"Yeah, let's get out now."