“Are you sure?” came Augustin’s hesitant reply, echoing across the valley.
“Just get down here, already!”
Augustin’s cape billowed behind him as he plunged into a steep dive, a pelican diving for a tasty fish — or in this case, to avoid almost certain death. He righted himself as he touched the ground, landing expertly on his feet.
“We should do something about these dust devils,” he breathed, winded from his flight, and likely from being batted around like a cat toy by a very unpleasant elemental.
Augustin clapped his hands sharply, sending a burst of air rushing across the valley floor, dissipating the dust devils in an instant. Braiden threw his hands up. Sure, the wizard had been busy dealing with his own problems up in the air, but all that conjuring, all the dragging of those blankets? Augustin was the one flying, but Braiden’s arms sure were tired.
“I hope you have something extremely clever in mind, weaver,” Augustin said.
“I don’t know about clever,” Braiden replied, “but it has to be better than you falling to your death or me getting exploded along with the othergoats. Get behind me.”
Augustin cocked an eyebrow. “I must say, I’m very flattered by your protective instincts, but this situation calls for the best of both our talents.”
Glowering, Braiden took several paces forward instead, planting himself squarely between the wizard and the ephemeral thing still howling, whistling, and chortling up on the ridge.
“When I say go, unleash the strongest wind spell you can muster. At least something as powerful as when you sent out all those flyers.”
Braiden didn’t wait for a response, extending his hand and calling on a smaller, simpler form of magic, something familiar and easy. As bits of confetti, ribbons, and streamers emanated from his fingers, Braiden gave the order.
“Now!”
Augustin clicked his fingers, a roaring gale all but pronouncing his worthiness to the title of Wizard of Weathervale. Braiden tensed his muscles and dug his heels into the earth even as the wind yowled through his hair and threatened to throw him flat to the ground. He watched with breathless hope as Augustin’s spell carried the burst of color all the way up to the valley’s ridge.
“I think I understand now,” Augustin shouted, making himself heard over his still-rushing wind.
Braiden said nothing, his mouth dry as the confetti and ribbons swirled up and up — and then suddenly stopped, whirling in place, sucked into an invisible vortex. Braiden threw his fist in the air, loosing a triumphant yelp.
“End your spell, Augustin,” he cried out. “It worked!”
Their curious collaboration had actually worked, though not in the way of distraction as Craghammer had suggested. Where once the air elemental was completely invisible, it was now a swirl of confetti and color, having sucked Braiden’s rainbow of ribbon into its ever-spinning, ever-whirling body. It almost made the challenge seem surmountable, seeing this pretty tornado up on the valley wall. Almost.
Because rendering the air elemental visible had also revealed the actual size of the thing. Gargantuan, for a start, as big as a house, though mercifully not as towering as the giant ice elemental from the dungeon. It was a bizarre sort of organism, like six tornados joined together at vaguely humanoid angles, four to serve as rapidly rotating limbs, a large one for its torso, and the last one for a head.
Also unlike the ice elemental, this thing had no face. But Braiden knew that unveiling its position had upset it. He could tell because the creature had finally stopped laughing.
Augustin clapped him firmly on the shoulder. “Excellent work. I thought I could hear the confounded thing up there, but you can’t fight fire with fire, as it were. At least we know it has a whistle stone.”
That explained the whistling, but now the elemental was making an entirely new sound as it rolled down the side of the valley: a furious roar.
Braiden gulped. “We can talk about whistle stones later. Right now, we still need to figure out how to stop this thing.”
The great air elemental descended in a cloud of pink and yellow and blue, angrily spitting out and hemorrhaging ribbons and bits of confetti as it hovered down to the valley floor, closer and closer.
Braiden tightened his fists, flipping through his mental repository of Granny Bethilda’s index cards. What in the world could he possibly craft to help stop this thing? Building a blanket big enough to smother it would kill him.
Something butted against his back. Braiden glared over his shoulder in irritation, but it wasn’t Augustin. Something butted against his butt. Braiden looked down.
“An othergoat?” he muttered.
And another one, then another, two, four, until six of them were flanking wizard and weaver, staring dead ahead at the oncoming elemental.
Gone was their frenetic panic, but now a new panic was mounting in Braiden’s chest, the most rational parts of him wondering what would happen if the elemental happened to set off a chain explosion with him and Augustin sandwiched between two rows of othergoats. He looked back out at thevalley, concerned that even more of the silly creatures were filing toward them.
But no. The rest of the herd had stayed put, the dust having settled over the point of the afternoon’s biggest explosion. The strangest of the othergoats, the one from before, clambered over the edge of the crater, onyx eyes burning into the back of Braiden’s skull as it fixed him with its alien gaze.
The othergoat nodded. Braiden, by now certain that he was losing his mind, nodded back.
