Free Elementals 3: The Head of Medusa by Michelle Madow

us.
    “That’s it?” Kate asked. “We’re in the clear?”
    “Maybe…” I held tight onto my bow, just in case. I was about to lower it, when more horses with ice nymphs on them rose from the water and started galloping toward us—maybe twenty of them in all.
    “Crap.” I gripped my bow and glanced over at Danielle. “Can you hold off their powers, too?”
    “No.” She looked at them straight on, her eyes hard with determination. “There’s too many of them. But I have an even better idea.”
    “Great,” Kate said, her voice shaking. “What do you need us to do?”
    “Stand here, and don’t move,” Danielle instructed. “Use your swords to deflect their ice daggers
.
I’m going to let them get close. Just… don’t freak out, okay? I know what I’m doing.”
    “I can melt most of the ice daggers with my fire,” Blake said, his lighter ready. “If they get too close, I’ll fry them.”
    I nodded, even though I’d never seen him control enough fire to fry all twenty ice nymphs at once. Hopefully they wouldn’t get close enough that it would come to that.
    In the meantime, they were closing in on us, so I swung my bow over my shoulder and reached for my sword, ready to deflect any ice daggers that came my way. All I had to do was focus on feeling where the ice daggers were heading before they made their way there—like when Luke used the Force to deflect blasters off his lightsaber with his eyes closed.
    The nymphs kept throwing their daggers, and we moved so quickly that we would be a blur to any human looking on. But doing so took energy, and the nymphs were seconds away from reaching us. Whatever Danielle had planned, she better do it now .
    Just as I was preparing for onslaught, the ground shook and cracked open.
The gap
crumbled out toward the nymphs on their horses, until it was so wide that it would be impossible to jump. They screamed as they skidded forward, pulling on the horses to get them to slow down, their faces twisting in horror as they realized they didn’t have enough time to stop.
Together
w
ith their
horses
they
tumbled into the abyss, their cries echoing upward as they plunged down the dark descent.
    I stared down the ravine until the last of the screams were silenced. My heart broke for the lives of the horses lost, but I forced myself to focus. 
    “Was that the last of them?” I asked, glancing back up in preparation for more of them to surface from the moat.
    “I hope so,” Chris said. “Because I’m not going to be able to keep the air around us warm for much longer. We need to get inside—quickly.”
    “The horses from the first five nymphs are unharmed,” Blake said, looking at where the horses poked at the ground, as if expecting their riders to rise again from the snow. “We can take them and ride up to the palace.”
    “How are we supposed to cross this canyon?” Chris asked. “I can’t fly each of us across and keep the air warm at the same time.”
    “It’s hardly a canyon ,” Kate corrected him. “More like a ravine. But yeah, we’ll need to get across it. Danielle—you managed to open it. Now… can you close it?”
    “Not without expending tons of unnecessary energy,” she said. “But this continent is covered in my element. I can figure out a more efficient way to get us across.”
    With that, Danielle turned around, facing the expanse of snow behind us. She raised her arms, and when she did, the snow in front of her spiraled upward, as if caught in a tornado. More and more snow was pulled into it, until it was taller than a tree. Then it transformed from snowflakes to water, glimmering and sparkling under the sun. Danielle turned around, the water moving with her, and shot it toward the cliff. It molded itself into the shape of a bridge, freezing in an instant.
    “There you go.” Danielle brushed her hands off and admired her creation. “Our very own ice-bridge, complete with railings so no one slips off. After all, we don’t