Free elemental 07 - lonely hunger by Larissa Ladd

to her, shouting to be heard over the gale force winds that were beginning to howl, to batter at the tall battlements of earth that had risen up. Aira grinned at him and he felt her airy energy flowing through him, driving the little bit of moisture in the air that he could gather toward the rampart. Slowly, but with increasing speed, water began to coalesce into drops of rain, driven by the wind into the base of the dirt that guarded the house. Dylan strained, pulling at his own energy, driving all the water he could find, could produce from the reserves of energy he felt deep inside of his core, into the maelstrom. 
    The earth elementals were trying to build up the earth ramparts even as the wind and water began to erode them, bending the soil to their will, pushing it up out of the ground as it crumbled. Dylan felt the wind whipping around them, focusing into a vortex as intense as any tornado, and squinted against the flying debris as sand blasted around them. He glanced at Aira; she was glowing yellow, the energy radiating from her body in intense waves as she brought her element to bear. She focused down harder and Dylan felt the wind directly around him die to an eddy even as the vortex of the gale she had pulled into being closed, finding its focal point at the base of the rampart. Dylan pushed all of his energy towards the barrier, driving water to crumble and erode the faltering, crumbling wall, wearing it away. 
    As the barricade came down, disintegrating under the onslaught of Aira’s potent wind and Dylan’s rain, Dylan saw his brother moving to cover them, a glowing fireball beginning to form in his hand. Aira was still glowing yellow next to him, exhibiting all of the strength that made it impossible for anyone to be the ruler of her element except for her. Dylan watched as the wall fell away, blasting the people on the other side with dirt and mud as the wind tore away at it. One of the elementals dropped down to the ground and began murmuring quickly; Dylan knew what was coming. 
    “Earthquake!” he shouted to Aira and Aiden. Aiden pitched his fireball into the vortex and Aira drove it with the howling wind she wielded towards the man crouched on the ground. He would have to choose between completing his spell and avoiding the fireball—he chose to evade the blast. Another elemental dropped down, closing her eyes and focusing on the earth under her hands. 
    “Aiden!” Aira’s voice filled Dylan’s ears, somehow magnified by the wind, and he watched as Aira extended her hand to her mate. Aiden’s eyes lit up and for a moment the wind died almost completely—down to an eddy. But then Dylan felt the tingling, the crackling energy that surrounded Aiden and Aira as their essences merged; he smelled the unmistakable stink of ozone, the less pleasant scent of petrichor from the hot desert earth mingling with the rain he had driven at it. Aira held out one hand and Dylan had to glance away from her, towards the group of elementals who had come outside to guard their safe house; the intensity of the electricity dancing at Aira’s fingertips was too bright to look at directly. 
    Underfoot, the earth began to shake—at first subtly, giving Dylan the impression that he was on a boat, and then harder, sending him off balance, almost knocking him to the side as he struggled to remain upright. “Stop what you’re doing!” Aira said in a shout that carried over the wind and crackling lightning, carrying the full authority vested in her as the ruler of her element, as one of the untouchable members of elemental society. “This electricity will kill earth elementals just as well as it can anyone else on the planet.” Aira was somehow using the wind that made up her essence to hold herself up in spite of the shaking ground underfoot. 
    The earthquake didn’t cease but instead intensified; Dylan tried to steady himself and looked at the collected elementals on the other side of the crumbled wall. Two of