The Elementals | Book 1. The Cliffs of Immensi

Chapter 25

"So, what's that pit?" Andrea raised one eyebrow and pointed into the depths of the gorge. The Elementals were all standing a few meters away from the edge of the pit in question.

Omar and Concord both shrugged. Why should they know? They turned to Cascade.

Cascade felt everybody looking at her, expecting an answer. "Oh. Um..." She paused. It could contain many things. It could contain riches. It could contain strange creatures. Or it could be empty. But she thought back to what she had learned about the cliffs, and what she had seen Sephtis do right before he had fallen.

"Well, Sephtis looked like he was considering jumping into it for a moment." Cascade spoke her thoughts aloud. "That would mean that there is something down there that he wanted." Cascade paced back and forth, though still limping slightly as a result of her injuries. "Sephtis was looking for the Monsters of Immensi - the Azenar - to recruit. Not the guards. The Iscoren, the Guards of Immensi, were just a way to get rid of us. Not that it worked."

Concord nodded. They had retrieved him from his ledge on the cliff after they had regained consciousness. "It almost worked, though."

"Unfortunately so. But I'm guessing that the 'pit', as Andrea put it, is the prison of the Azenar. They are kept there so that they don't... you know... try to take over the world and destroy it."

"Oh. So it's that pit." Andrea gave a sigh.

"Do you think he's really dead? Sephtis, I mean," Omar asked.

"I'm not sure. He could be. But Vespara is a different matter. Even if Sephtis dies, it's possible that she can just move 'homes', I suppose. So, in a way, it doesn't matter. We'll have to fight him- or rather her- again." Cascade shook her head grimly. "However, if Sephtis does survive, she'll stay with him. As far as I know, it's complicated to move people."

"How long do you think it'll take Sephtis- let's just assume he's alive for now- to recruit the monsters, bend them to his will, and come back up here to try and kill us?"

"I don't know! I'm not all-knowing, you know."

"Oh. Right. Sorry."

"It's all right. But I don't really know much else. Even what I've told you I can't prove until it happens."

They all stood in silence for a few moments.

"Perhaps... two years?" Cascade bit her lip. "But I can't be sure."

"What?" Andrea was confused. "Two years until who can do what?" She had lost focus.

Cascade gave a sigh. "Omar asked me how long I think 'It'll take Sephtis to recruit the monsters, bend them to his will, and come back up here to try and kill us'. I told him I don't have a definite answer. But now I have an estimate. Approximately two years."

"Is that a long or short amount of time?"

"What- I'm not sure. I mean... it's in a measure of years, so yes, it's a long time, in a manner of speaking, but it could also be a short amount of time, if you're considering how long a Homo Sapiens lives."

"A Homo Sapiens?"

"A human." Cascade wrote a mental reminder in her head not to use too many fancy words that she would have to explain to Andrea from then on.

"Oh." Andrea looked crestfallen that she hadn't known what the word meant. Then she straightened up once more and Cascade knew that she had a question on her mind.

"What's your question, Andrea?" Cascade raised an eyebrow, intrigued.

"I was just wondering... if your estimate is accurate, and it'll take Sephtis two years to come back... then what do we do now? I mean, we all left where we had lived nearly our whole lives to go to some random desert because we had a vision, then we discovered an evil guy, then we chased him, then we defeated him. Except now he's going to come back in two years. So... what are we going to do literally right now, and what are we going to do for the next two years?? We can't exactly go back to the orphanage."