The Elementals : The Dawn of Darkness

Chapter 5 - Smoke Me a Kipper, I'll be Back for Breakfast

I blinked several times, just to make sure it wasn't some trick of the light. But the flame stayed there, flickering in the slight wind. It was small, about the size of a lighter flame, but I'd made it; it was mine.

Flame stood next to me, staring transfixed. Even Ice was looking. Sheira looked like she was about to burst with pride. All my life, I had never been able to do anything right the first time! Sports, school, you name it, all a massive flunk.

But I did it.

Me! Little old me! The same kid who, when I rode a bike without stabilisers for the first time, took half the skin off his legs! I did it! Woohoo! I'd managed something as extraordinary as produce fire from thin air! It was going to baffle me for the rest of my life, but I didn't care. And from Sheira's shocked expression, I'd done something fairly impressive.

"How did you do that so quickly?" she gasped.

I lost all sense of time while I was standing with my eyes shut, so it felt like I was standing there for hours, but I reckoned that about ten minutes had gone by in real-time. "What's the average?" I asked. I was buzzing with energy.

"Hours," she said, hand pressed to her forehead and a brilliant grin spreading across her lips. "Possibly even days. No one in twenty years has produced the first spark like that."

"Really?"

"Yes! I may have been raised in an elemental family, but I passed out cold on my first training session. You're exceptional!"

In my life, I've never been called exceptional by anyone, except by my parents, of course. But they have to; it's the law. It felt pretty good, actually.

"Can I go further?" I asked.

She nodded. "If you're feeling up to it."

"I feel fine." Truthfully, I felt like I was up on cloud nine with the amount of adrenaline surging through me. I knew it was only a matter of time before I came crashing down to planet Earth, but God, the high was worth it.

"We'll see if we can get you throwing, but first, let's try to make that flame bigger. Summon up that memory again and repeat the process that you just did. Only this time, you want to be feeding that energy up into the flame you've created. It sounds complicated but trust me, it's a lot easier than it sounds."

Employ your yoga training Nick.

I closed my eyes again, steadied my breathing, and tried to ignore the pain. I opened my eyes and flicked my wrist around a few times, and a loud swooshing noise accompanied by a sudden increase in brightness. Orange light swirled from my palm. The tiny flame was gone and, in its place, was a fireball. The sort of CGI effect that you only see in the movies, but it was real.

A fireball the size of a tennis ball sat in the palm of my hand. A dark flickering glow cast over the four of us. I presumed that it was giving out a fair bit of heat as Sheira had to take a few steps back from it, and a few beads of sweat were beginning to form on her forehead. Strangely, I couldn't feel anything, just a warm tingling on my skin. I ran my other hand through the centre of the ball and hey presto, I wasn't even singed.

"Why doesn't it burn me?" I asked as Sheira showed me how to move the ball from hand to hand.

"It's simple. Your fire is part of you. It's your very essence, your life-force. Your soul won't let you hurt yourself. No elemental can harm themselves with their own powers because of that very reason. But other elementals fire can hurt you, so don't go wandering around thinking you're fireproof. I don't want to hear that you're in the hospital in a couple of weeks because you decided to play Chicken," she warned sternly, hands-on-hips like a proper angry school teacher.