Academy of Elements: Earth

Chapter 21: Mistletoe and Miracles

The day dawns bright, the sky clear and the sun shining. It's been two days since the main population of the Academy left, the population dwindling down to around 50 people. The temperature rarely seems to surpass freezing, the nights dropping to around -15°C.

Nora and I head towards the guest cottages, a group of twelve one-room buildings past the ice dorms. Snow crunches under our feet as we turn onto the snowed-in path. Ice elementals seemed to always forget to clear this path since it was rare for visitors to stay. I raise my hand making a channel through the waist-high snow. We pass through the gates and head into Nora's cabin.

It's a small log cabin with a tin roof and porch. Six of them are scattered throughout the area, each nestled in a bed of trees for privacy. Nora opens the door taking her shoes off and stepping in. A queen bed lies in the back, a door beside it. A small kitchenette lies beside the door with a sink, minifridge, and microwave. And armchairs are cozied up beside a crackling fire.

Nora quickly heads into the washroom which is located in the back of the cottage. Slowly we turn the chairs towards each other and lift up the coffee table.

I place some books on it beside two mugs of coffee. Nora places some paper down as well lighting a candle. And so the quest to get Ella's powers back began.

After the run-in with Rose, I had gone through the tragic last few years of my life, explaining the love triangle with Rose and Ella and how the later had lost her powers due to Kassadern's Life Stealer.

Nora and I plot out ways it could be possible to get them back all of them impossible or would probably end up killing Ella.

Along with this, we research Soul Stealers and Life Stealers. Back in World War 2, Kassadern Darath had thrown magic folk into ovens and burnt them. But because Magic Essence corrupts itself once the host dies it turned in Dark Magic Essence, from which Kassaderns Powers came from supposedly. The ovens were powered by Fire Elementals and therefore burnt hotter than most and as the Dark Magic Essence soaked into the bones and the fire melted flesh, the Soul Stealer was born.

It was a similar story for Life Stealers, which were a relative of the Soul Stealer. Kassadern was bossed with heightening the powers of Soul Stealers, which can render a magic user magicless for days by just touching their face.

He made three Life Stealers in the war since making them was so very difficult. One had to transfer Dark Magic Essence into a child since their body wasn't filled with very much Magic Essence yet and then burn 66 of them alive to create a single Life Stealer.

The monster would then be dispatched to steal a single person power and after they had done so would die.

The only reason Ella was alive was that of her heightened powers, the only reason there was an ember of a chance at beating Kassadern Darath.

And so the days pass as delve deeper and deeper into finding how the hell to get Ella's powers back. I still hadn't gone to the secret room under the library, part of me was scared to find something I didn't want to see. Like the likely truth that there is no possible way to get Ella's powers back, or at least to their extent last year.

After three days, we hadn't found anything. All we had learnt was that Magic Essence still flowed in her blood, there just wasn't enough to create fire. I had seen her try, all that happened was a low flicker of warmth in her hand that could so easily be mistaken for just a rise in temperature. Meaning that we had to find a way to boost her Essence enough that she could defeat Kassadern. The issue was that switching blood would kill someone else most likely, and she would just have a basic control of fire.

An Elemental can only process so much Magic Essence until they had an overload which could be fatal. And there was nothing, no artifact or drug, that could do such a thing, magic was a science, and the rules of science can't be broken.