Elementals: Book 1: Resistance

Chapter Four

As darkness fell, Nox ran. As he pounced over a fallen tree, his prey came into view again, it was close enough for him to see, but too far out for his powers to reach it. Beside him, a cloud of darkness wafted through the forest.

Nox was a black panther with the powers of Chaos, his bright green eyes shone in the night and allowed him to see his prey. He ran silently, an inherited trait of being a panther, etching closer and closer to his prey. He was chasing after a powerful elemental that Sirius wanted on his side, he couldn’t fail, not now, not after the last time. Nox shook the thought out of his head just in time to avoid colliding with a tree, as he rounded it, he lost sight of the elemental and it had run out of his sensory range. Anger boiled inside him, he couldn’t let this be a fail, he had to find a way to relocate the elemental. The shroud of darkness appeared beside him, he knew what was coming. From the darkness came a purple and pink creature with cream colored stripes marking its body. It had hooves on its front paws, and claws concealed by pink fur on its hind paws. A pink hooked horn rested upon its head.

“You lost him,” the creature spoke with a female voice. “Sirius is not going to be happy.”

“We both lost him. Give me a second, I’m sure he’ll reenter my range soon enough, I just need to focus,” Nox responded.

“Ugh, just admit it. You lost him and now you’re stalling. I’m going to head back and tell Sirius. Good luck.”

“Shade!” Nox yelled. “I got him.”

Without another word, the two of them jumped into action, Nox took the lead with Shade following. The hunt was on.

***

Voltier, Glaziel, and Tsubaki all walked through the forest, without a sound other than their footsteps to signal life. Ash flew above them, his legs still out of action. The three of them followed Tsubaki, unsure exactly of where they were going. The morning light streamed the occasional hole on the canopy, since the humans had retracted into their cities, nature was given a chance to flourish, now the majority of the non-inhabited world was covered in either dense forest or long-grass plains. As the four of them passed through an open grove, a wall of earth erupted out of the ground and blocked their path, laughter came from behind so they turned to see Sirius walking towards them with a pitch black creature and a white tiger.

“Well well well, look what we have here, the three runaways and the leader of the resistance, this is my lucky day,” Sirius spoke.

“Sirius,” Tsubaki replied as he stepped forward. “This is between you and me, leave these three out of it.”

“Glaz,” Voltier whispered. “Can you freeze the wall and create a tunnel for us to escape through?”

“I can’t, I’m sorry, my powers aren’t that advanced,” Glaziel replied silently.

A howl suddenly echoed through the grove, everyone looked up to see a black, white and grey wolf jump over head, go into a corkscrew and fire off a large shard of Ice at the wall. The shard twisted before opening up and smashing into the wall, encasing it in ice. The wolf landed, it needed no introduction.

“Jinx!” Ash, Volt, and Glaz said together.

“It’s good to see you’re all alright, I was worried I wouldn’t catch up to you. Had these two pesky elementals following me until I lost them deeper in the forest,” Jinx replied, taking a stand beside Tsubaki. The two simply looked at each other and shared a nod. “Go.”

“We’ll handle this,” Tsubaki added.

“But Tsubaki, I can help,” Voltier interjected.

“Not against an earth elemental. Volt, you know the way, take them back to base and I’ll meet you there. That is an order.”