Aerien’s POV

 

The very moment I felt the terrible consuming suction of the void even out with the abundant energies flowing into me, I made a fist with my right hand. With my thumb braced against my fore-finger as though I was thumbing the guard of a dagger, I focused on the kata of wind and the image of blowing this threat away with a single well placed thrust. And then, I pushed the invisible dagger forward, and just like that the crouching red-veiled man was blown back. Blood smeared across the ground as he was tossed across the barren stone like a rag doll.

 

“Depletion of Earth!” I chanted out the name of my second spell, trying to change as much as I could about the situation before the reinforcements discovered they could move and come to the surface. I pointed toward Levin, and pulled all the Earth elemental energy away from the stone surrounding him. This was, unfortunately, a spell that decreased in effect with range. However, I simply did not have the time to get any closer to him, and even if I did it would only mean the fighting would get closer to where he was.

 

The stone holding him became brittle and weak, and as he struggled against it, it shattered under his pulling arms.

 

This did nothing about the fact he was still writhing in pain though. And now I was officially out of time to help him, because I was suddenly surrounded with red-veiled figures. I heard the sound of Gaerien launching herself with a furious burst of wind, a technique she had practiced in order to try and get close to my level of mobility. She couldn’t manage anything like me yet, it was more like she turned herself into a living cannonball.

 

And then, that was the last thing I heard before I felt the ground fall out from below me, and everything went dark.

 

I was falling. Somehow, all of a sudden, I was just falling. They did something! Those red gnomes! I didn’t know what it was at first, but I quickly pieced what happened together in my mind. First, they came up out of the ground. They made some kind of gesture in my direction, and then I felt like I was falling. It took me just over a second to get over the shock, but as soon as I realized what was going on, I knew exactly what I had to do.

 

Those clever little… they did something to me to make it so earth was the same as air for me!

 

Alright then! Full power! Depletion of Earth! I focused the negative energies around me in every direction, annihilating the elemental energies that were giving the stone it’s rigidity and form. I covered my mouth and closed my eyes as the stone around me collapsed into a fine powder, super-small grains of sand on such a scale they could float on the air and be inhaled. The sharp little things were hazardous too. They would rip a person’s lungs to pieces if the stuff got in there.

 

And here I was right in the middle of the stuff. Literally, buried in it. I scrambled as best I could with one arm and wiggling my legs as though I was treading water in order to push myself to the surface. This powder should have no form of molecular bond holding it up, meaning it will collapse to a state that’s more dense than the stone around it, so there should be at least a small air pocket above.

 

I took a frantic breath as soon as I crested the top, too panicked to even care about the fact that I was probably shredding my lungs by doing so. I immediately choked as the abrasive powder struck my tonsils and my entire body objected to the rough treatment.

 

I kept my hand clamped tightly over my mouth and tried to get control of my breathing. Well, the advantage is that this powder holds no Earth element. Those gnomes can’t manipulate it. I’m going to need to get some help from Gaerien in order to recover from this once I get out of this situation.

 

Alright, let’s see what my standard Earth element is capable of. I focused my mind on the image of sweeping upward in order to force the stone above me to rise up. I took a breath, and then I instantly started choking on the dust again.

 

Damn it! This is the problem with having a magic dependent upon breathing!

 

So, great. That doesn’t really help much. I might have spoiled what they were doing, but what good is it if I can’t fight back now?

 

I dared not open my eyes, I was certain the dust was everywhere in the air inside of whatever cavern my depletion of earth had hollowed out. It would only accomplish getting the dust in my eyes, and then I wouldn’t be able to see anyway.

 

So, that’s it then, huh? My only option is to stay here until someone comes after me. All I’ve managed to do is stall again, buy time until help can arrive.

 

Let’s face it though. Only a gnome can get where I am right now without killing me in a cave-in in the process. Logrim was here, but he’s a craftsman and he’d have to fight his way through an entire strike-squad of trained combat earth-mages of the highest tier.

 

What IS that spell that lets them just move through stone as though it was air, anyway? This really doesn’t bode well. Chances are just shy of 100% the first person to arrive will be an enemy, the enemy can arrive inside my little cave without so much as a sound to announce their arrival, and right now I’m too distracted with my self-created air hazards to keep the kind of sharp ear out necessary to catch them on their approach.

 

I silently chant the spell to consume the magical energies once again, and just hoped that I wasn’t screwing over any friendlies above.

 

If anything, their chances would be worse if those gnomes had free reign to use their earth magic. A part of me wondered what was going to happen to that girl from Earth who was with them, but then I had to harden myself immediately. She had attacked me, she was the first strike in the attack that put me in the situation I’m in now, and there was no doubt in my mind they really were going to kill Levin. If she turned up dead when I got out of this, well, it would feel like a missed opportunity but I would not harbor any ill will toward the one who killed her.

 

Well, I suppose I’d best focus on myself for now. It’s the only thing I can do. First, try to determine if somebody got in here before I cancelled the magic in the area. I couldn’t hear anything, so… either they were really disciplined and skilled at approaching, or I was really alone in this little cavern.

 

Next issue, in order of the severity of threats to my life, would be the dust I’d kicked up by destroying the stone in the area. This stuff really was damaging to the lungs, it already felt painful to breath. I had to get some method to filter my breathing. And, I only had one likely candidate.

 

I brought my free hand to the collar of my robe. I could feel the dust running down my chest inside my robe, and wrinkled my nose. This stuff had gotten everywhere. But, I was lacking the luxury of complaining about it right now. I stuffed the robe under the hand that was being held over my nose and mouth, and I worked up as much saliva as I could as I anticipated what I was about to do.

 

Oh, this is going to taste disgusting. Well, it’s not that bad, just a little dust.

 

After working through that bit of mental preparation, I stuffed the front of my robe into my mouth. The first thing I did as it passed my lips was to try and soak as much of it with my saliva as I could, hoping to neutralize the volatile nature of the dust before more of it could work it’s way into my airways.

 

Tasting this depleted earth was strange. I can’t exactly describe it as bad, per say. Really, it tasted like nothing. But it was quite powdery, and as my saliva turned it to mud it left a gross gritty feeling in my mouth. Still, I chewed on my robe and tried to stimulate my salivary glands to produce as much moisture to wet the cloth as possible.

 

Now that my mind was working through a task, I was beginning to work through the adrenaline high of having been in battle mode. Ultimately, this was not a good time for it because I was beginning to shake. I began going over everything that had just happened. Everything had just started happening so fast. I’d heard a lot about how engagements like this tended to go, but even with my world travel I’d stayed relatively safe. Plenty of theory under my belt, but this was my first real engagement, not counting that incident when I was a toddler.

 

Was there anything I could have done better? Logrim and those two elves he was with seemed to know this was coming somehow. How did they get tipped off? For that matter, how had these ATTACKERS known!? That was the real question. I had only made the decision to do this as I was watching Gaerien’s practice while I was coming in.

 

Let’s see. We had locked that imp in a dark earth pocket. Those gnomes move through earth, they could likely have learned something. It had been long enough, they could know about what kind of plan he was slighted for. It’s possible they might have had these agents lying in wait for any time I made a move.

 

Somehow I doubted they would have that kind of patience. It had been over a year since we locked him down there, and we did not inform him of what we had in store for him. They would have to also have someone on the inside on the fey court. No, they would have to have someone in the seventh committee. That… seemed extremely unlikely. They were a pretty thorough bunch when it came to information control. Aside from their changeling members, they never move in groups of smaller than three for the express purpose of watching each other. Not to mention the fact that they keep shifting the 3 person units around to keep them from forming any kind of conspiratorial unit.

 

Aside from myself and my mother, Kenra was the only one who knew the entire plan, and the other two shifting observers had constant eyes on her. She would have no chance to sneak away to tell anyone.

 

It couldn’t be the seventh committee then. But, somehow both these gnomes and also Logrim found out something was about to happen. And, with the timing with which they moved, it’s not likely for it to have been something they only noticed when I dug that imp out. They would have to have known from before I even arrived back considering the distance they had traveled when they were spotted, and somehow they’d been moving toward the exact location I was moving on for the experiment, a location I’d only decided on just after picking up the imp.

 

The more I thought about it, the more I didn’t like it. In the mean time, I’d managed to get one clump of my robe thoroughly soaked with my saliva, and I moved half the wet patch up, moving it just enough to stuff a portion of it up againdt my nose in order to create a make-shift filter against the hazardous dust particles while my mouth was hard at work expanding the area of usable cloth.

 

As I continued to ponder the problem at hand though, I was quickly arriving at the point where the only way for this to have all happened was for some kind of pre-cognition to have been at play. In the words of Sherlock Holmes, once you have eliminated the impossible then whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth. Back on Earth, pre-cognition would certainly have been in the realm of the impossible, but hey, we’re in a magical world now. I certainly couldn’t rule that possibility out.

 

The problem with this is, I’d never heard about any kind of pre-cognative magic from Sagel or anyone else around me. In a country with this kind of power, you’d think the monarchy would be well apprised to any tool it could use to it’s advantage. If they were aware of pre-cognition being a thing, shouldn’t there be some kind of royal seer employed somewhere in the capital?

 

Ok, so, maybe it is a thing and maybe it isn’t. That would mean about the only thing I can do now is get out of this situation and ask somebody. I honestly won’t be able to reach any kind of informed conclusion on how this all happened until I could get some more information.

 

I had grown somewhat satisfied with the size of my wet-cloth filter by this point, and was now holding the large patch of damp robe over my nose and mouth. Breathing was now covered, and I could reasonably presume that there were no threats inside my little cavern. If there is, then now that I am not having to concern myself with shredding my lungs with every breath I take I can dedicate a lot more of my mental energy to being on alert for approaching threats.

 

I guess there’s only two things left to do now. Assess my situation, and get in contact with someone who can help me out of this mess. Well, in my case, the only person I can contact in my present situation is Sagel. Spirit speech is based on spirit energy, and right now that’s all being sucked into the void. So, that line of communication is closed. Maybe someone might be able to send me a message that way and I might understand it, beings all that energy has to move through my body first, but I’m not going to be able to send a message back.

 

That being the case, our familiar bond is the only thing that can get a message out. But, if he was in any shape to spare a second to contact me, he would have done so already. He’s probably up there fighting off any of the enemy who remained on the surface, frantically barking orders at Rolwen and Gaerien while, I can only hope, trying to secure and save Levin. They gotta know I’m here by the fact I’ve opened the void again. Or rather,  removed it’s neutralizing factor. They know I’m down here, they can contact me when they’re ready.

 

Then, that just leaves assessing my situation. Well, I’m in a cavern that used to be solid rock, which is only open because I turned some portion of it into depleted powder stripped of all earth elemental energy. The dust is hazardous to the lungs, but I’ve temporarily found a solution to that. As for the size of this space. 

 

I rose a hand above my head and felt for the ceiling of the cavern. When I felt nothing, I started digging myself out of the dust a little more. Then, an idea struck me. My dark vision may not be doing me much good right now with my eyes closed, but there’s still the old fashioned way. A method that would be available to anyone in an identical situation. I took my free hand and snapped my fingers, and listened as I heard an echo back from it.

 

The soft dust made for an excellent sound absorber, so it did not reverberate long. However, while I’ve not practiced trying to echo-locate like a bat or anything of the sort, the basic intuition I’d built up from my 60 years in my former gave me at least a rough idea. I knew that the ceiling was not immediately above my head, I could probably dig my entire body out of this dust. However, it was not a huge cavernous space either.

 

Alright, well, let’s just see exactly how bit it is then. I set to work digging myself the rest of the way out, and then… ‘Your highness! Are you alright!?’

 

Sagel’s message came. It sounded rushed and there was a definite tone of urgency. Was he still fighting up there?

 

‘I am in no immediate danger.’ I answer, short and to the point. I don’t want to give him any superfluous extra information that might distract him if he’s still dealing with his own issues.

 

 

Yes, just as I thought. Well, I suppose it’s just a waiting game now, like a miner in a cave-in.