Page 80 of Elemasters

Whatever happened here, clearly overwhelmed any official response before it had a chance to take shape.

The bodies had clearly been hit by something unforgiving and intense; their clothes and shoes had been blown off, their jewelry was melted to their skin, and what little recognizable skin was uncharred, was marked with strange branching red marks.

“Oh my god… w-what the fuck happened to them?” Dustin could barely even process what he was seeing as he spoke. Chloe placed a hand on his back and pointed at the body closest to them; what looked to be a larger man… possibly a father given the much smaller body curled up next to him.

“Those markings, we learned about them in science class last year, remember? Lichtenberg figures… from lightning strikes,”

“So, Qin Shi Huang did this? He fucking… murdered all these people with lightning?! Just for getting in his way?!” Dustin’s hands balled into fists as his gaze drifted upwards to the top of the Space Needle, which seemed to be the center point for the swirling clouds overhead, “we’re ending this. Right fucking now,”

“He’s probably up there, inside the disk,” Chloe replied, tapping her chin in thought, “but I’m sure the building is locked down. How are we supposed to get up there?”

Bailey stepped forward, rolling up her sleeves.

“I have an idea, but I genuinely have no clue if it’s even gonna work,”

“Any plan’s better than no plan. Whatcha got?” James wondered aloud, quirking an eyebrow.

Bailey didn’t reply, she just kneeled and placed her palm on the asphalt. The veins in her arms glowed bright yellow and a tremor ripped through the ground as cracks spread around the group in a circle. Bailey’s eyes squeezed tight in concentration as the small section of earth started to jostle itself loose from the street, lifting them into the air on a personalized Earth Sage Elevator™.

“Oookay, wasn’t expecting that!” Chloe shrieked, holding onto Dustin’s arm like she might die if she let go, “heights are not my thing, I must admit!”

“Sorry,” Bailey grunted through gritted teeth, “I’ll try to make it quick,”

Dustin’s stomach lurched as they hurtled through the air and the smaller buildings surrounding them began to fall away. They finally came to a shaky stop on eye level with the disk’s windows. He tried to look inside to see if he could spot Chris, but everything was obscured by an impenetrable mist.

“I’m getting us in there,” Chloe said before Dustin could think of a plan, already holding her arms out in front of her. The metal reinforcing the windows aggressively buckled inward, shattering the glass and allowing the group to hop off Bailey’s improvised hovercraft and into the SkyCity restaurant.

Dustin had only been inside this place once; when he and Chris were kids and their mom brought them with her to Seattle for work, she treated them to a nice dinner there. He remembered it being a bit touristy, but ultimately a really cool experience…

Nothing like it was now.

The mist rushing out of the room through Chloe’s makeshift entrance, allowed them to see the extent of the horrors Qin Shi Huang had unleashed inside this place. Bodies were strewn all over, many of them violently hurled against the cracked windows with wind, others burned right through by concentrated lightning blasts. Almost all of their faces were still warped into the horrific expressions they had at the moment they died.

In the center of it all, sitting atop a dining table with his legs crossed and eyes closed in meditation, was Chris himself. Still shirtless, now even thinner than Dustin, with his shaggy hair grown out so much that only the ends of it were still blonde.

But his physical appearance wasn’t what was the most alarming.

No, it was the absurdly long sword resting in his lap. The thing had to be several feet long, with a blade of solid steel, and a hilt made of a scaly greenish-blue material, emanating a soft glow...

The Dragon King’s scale. The thing that started all this so long ago.

“I was wondering how long it would take you all to arrive,” he spoke, the sound of his voice booming from the sky outside, and simultaneously gnawing into Dustin’s ear like a persistent draft, “it was not as though the effort it took to secure this place would not draw attention,”

“You sick fuck,” Dustin spat, “you did all this, killed all these people, just to get us to come here?!”

Chris chuckled, shaking his head. His hair finally moved out of his eyes, revealing a gnarly lightning shaped scar etched across his face as if it was growing out of the tiny one that already existed over his lip.

“Do not think so highly of yourselves. This space simply suited my needs. My new empire will require a seat of command, after all,”

“Enough of this shit,” Dustin rolled his shoulders, feeling both the icy rush of his water powers and the crackling heat of his fire powers flowing through him at once. The veins on his left arm black as night, while the ones on his right were glowing like the eyes of a stove, “we know the plan. Let’s get this done,”

Bailey, Chloe, and James stood at the ready behind Dustin as Chris finally stood to his full height, angling the ceremonial sword towards the group.

“I used this blade to kill a would-be assassin once upon a time. And now, it is time to do so again,”

With that, there was a sound like a ferocious roar as white-hot lightning arced around the sword and erupted from the blade, blasting straight at Dustin faster than he could even process the danger…

But not faster than Chloe could.