Free Winter Warrior (Song of the Aura, Book Two) by Gregory J. Downs Page A

out in the shrieking gale the wind Strider brought to bear on his enemy. The sheer power of his attacks surprised her so much she slowed down, gaping at the scene with little comprehension.
     
        What Lauro apparently didn’t see when he threw the weight of his wind striding against the draik was that Gribly had almost reached the duel. The force of the wind knocked the Sand Strider down at the same time it flipped the draik on its back. Gribly fell and didn’t get up. Elia forced herself to go faster despite the burning in her lungs and the pounding blood in her ears. She had to get there- had to do something!
     
        A hundred feet between her and the deadly battle, she pushed herself to cross the last distance faster than she had run since her home was burned.
     
        Fifty feet. The draik seemed to be resisting the wind better. Lauro paused in his attack and the beast surprised him with its speed and resilience.
     
        Ten. The draik clung to the icy ground and withstood the wind Strider’s powers without injury and opened its maw to blast the prince with fire. On the far side of the combat, Gribly sat groggily up, and his eyes locked with Elia’s.
     
        She never knew afterwards just what in the boy’s face made her do what she did. Without thinking, riding on an instinct that had never been there before… she flung herself in the way. She hurtled forward, sailing through the air and landing between the monster and its prey. Flames gushed out of the draik’s open jaw, swirling in deathly patterns around her and rushing at her from all directions in a hypnotic display of light and heat.
     
        Cringing, she threw her hands up in front of her face, wrists crossed. Her arms and splayed palms burned like they had been dipped in molten rock, but the rest of her stayed strangely cold. Her chest heaved manically as the shock of the blast threatened to overwhelm her. Then, as suddenly as they’d started, the flames stopped. She looked up, shaking and frightened.
     
        The inferno hadn’t touched her. She was standing in a pool of steaming water where the fire had melted the ice, but the flames had left her unharmed.
     
        “How in…” Lauro gaped behind her, rattled at her sudden and startling intervention.
     
        She turned back to him. “I don’t… I… I don’t know.”
     
        “LOOK OUT!” he shouted, and she spun back to the draik, just as it leaned back and delivered another, stronger blast.
     
        With nothing else to guide her, Elia threw her palms outward again, crying “No!” in her shrill, frightened voice.
     
        Once more, the flames parted mere inches from her hands and spurted to each side, searingly hot on her arms and hands but ultimately harmless. The second burst lasted longer than the first, but she waited it out. Though it hurt her eyes she kept them open, to convince herself that she really was, apparently, stopping the flames.
     
        “Impossible,” she breathed, but there it was- she was staring death in the face and yet… not dying. She lowered her arms experimentally- no more than an inch- and immediately felt a fatal increase in heat. She quickly returned to her former position, wondering how much longer she could stand it.
     
        How was she doing it? She had no idea, but it seemed similar to… No, it couldn’t be. Could it?
     
        Was she striding fire like she did to water? Was it even possible to stride more than one thing? She could think of only one way to test it.
     
        When the draik lessened the flow of flames to see if she had succumbed, Elia kept her arms angled toward the last of the torrent as it shot off to either side. Squeezing her fists shut, she tried to imagine that it would obey her and stay lit where it was. For a moment the flames coalesced into two separate balls of fury, whirling in on themselves- then they went out. It had lasted only a second, but it had been enough to