Free elemental 08 - elements of war by Larissa Ladd

front of them were casting their way. 
    She heard shouts, the rumbling of more earth moving, the unmistakable noises of battle; Aira knew that just as she and Aiden were working on the assailants in front of them, Dylan and Leigh would be fighting off those members of the group that had come to defend the safe house. They’d have to wait and see if Dylan and Leigh could make it back to their direction; the stone ramparts were impregnable to Aiden’s fire, and impervious to her wind. Aira called the birds back to her and sent the predatory creatures after the elemental renegades, sending in a second wave of smaller birds as reinforcements. 
    “Let’s fry them,” Aiden suggested. Aira nodded, moving to close the distance between the two of them. She reached out and Aiden grabbed for her hand. It would be like the previous attack, she thought, taking a deep breath. Aira pulled Aiden’s energy through her, felt it crackling along her bones, through her nerves, before she directed it through her air focus, forming electricity in the palm of her hand. She took a deep breath and threw it towards the on-rushing team of elementals, aiming for the middle. A smile tugged at the corners of her lips as the shockwave cracked the air, the electrical shock taking out the ones in the direct path while the sonic boom threw the others aside. 
    There were more shouts—the ground beneath Aira’s feet began to shudder and move, rolling and throwing her almost off-balance as she appraised the situation. More people were coming out of the safe house. She and Aiden would need Leigh’s and Dylan’s help to break down the walls surrounding the compound; it would be easier to get the renegades all at once instead of in waves. 
    “Get the other two!” she shouted to Aiden; Aira sent another crackling jolt of electric fury at the ones coming out from around the walls. 
    “Are you sure?” Aiden looked at her sharply. 
    “Fast as you can. We have to crack this egg to get at what’s inside.” 
    Aiden released her hand and Aira felt the fiery energy of his essence leaving her in a slow ebb. She shot off the last of the electricity that their combined powers created and focused once more on driving them back with wind, calling on the birds to lend her assistance. Aiden darted off in the direction of the other group of shouts, moving quickly amongst the trees at the edge of the clearing. 
    Time slowed down as Aira reacted, driving back attackers, shooting arrows made of her own essence at any that looked about to launch an attack through their abilities. She had no way of knowing how long Aiden had been away—no way to count the seconds or minutes. It was a matter of reacting only—throwing herself completely into the fight, fending off defenders and trying whatever she could to push at the structure surrounding the building. 
    She was so absorbed in her task that she heard nothing from behind her. Aira called again and again on the deepest of her reserves, murmuring spells to confuse, casting the wind this way and that. A passing fireball barely missed her, almost singeing her hair as she used a gust of wind to send it on its way. She had to re-direct the hawks who had come at her call to attack wolves that had been summoned by some of the other elementals, she had to keep sending the wind this way and that, bringing it up to gale force, almost forming a tornado—certainly a wind tunnel—that she used to bludgeon the defenses of the safe house, the people guarding it. How freaking many of you are there? She thought angrily, trying to take a count of both the fallen and those still moving, still coming forward to attack her. The ground shifted again underfoot, fires crackled and roared around her, and she thought idly that if they managed to complete the sting on the house without starting an enormous forest fire, the whole mountain would be lucky.
    A glimmer of movement caught her eye and Aira glanced in her peripheral vision,