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  Fylarne was helpless. Completely unable to concentrate and rising ever higher above the terrace even as he tried to fight the spinning madness and nausea to cast some sort of magic. Any sort of magic. Just something to stop the chaotic spinning and tumbling. But he couldn't do that. And worse, even as he was tumbling around and was able to catch glimpses of the terrace far below, he could see fighting. Flashes of light and cracks of thunder.

  His companions were fighting. Battling for their lives. And like him, defenceless. They had no idea that the Temple's protective spells would no longer defend them. And though they were capable with their magic, it wasn't enough when they were facing an army of sprites and their accursed elementals. An army that was already prepared for battle.

  “Please!” he prayed to the Lady of Grace. To all the gods and goddesses. “Help them!”

  But even before he'd managed to organise his thoughts into anything coherent, he threw up. Sick went everywhere. And it kept coming. Acid burnt his throat and tongue. The taste was in his mouth. And it was all he could smell. Meanwhile the only thing he could think of was the need to get rid of the rest of his stomach's contents.

  And all the while he was rising higher and higher into the sky. Floating away from not just the terrace but the volcano itself.

  Soon he couldn't see anything. The world all around him was nothing more than a kaleidoscope of colour. Blue sky, grey rock and green forest all of them flashing past him too fast for him to even make sense of. But he knew he had left the safety of the Temple and the volcano. And he was somewhere over the endless forest. He knew it because the dark green of the trees was everywhere.

  All while his friends were suffering and dying. Being murdered. Because of him. He hadn't lowered the defences, but maybe the books he'd given them had shown the sprites how to.

  Some time after that he was falling.

  Fylarne screamed as he started his uncontrolled plummet to the forest far below. And then he screamed some more as he realised what awaited him. A painful death – if he was lucky. And yet it was what he deserved. Even as he could see the distant trees growing closer, he knew that this was as it should be. He should welcome death. Embrace it with his arms open wide.

  But he couldn't. Instincts wouldn't let him. And instead he opened his arms wide to embrace the wind rushing past him and made himself lighter. He had that magic at least. Not enough to float, but enough to not fall screaming and die smashing into the ground.

  It helped, a little. Enough that he wasn't racing for the ground at break neck speeds. But not enough that he could find his way back to the temple. Because when he turned around as the wind breezed by him, he couldn't see anything but forest. Trees getting closer and closer.

  Fylarne concentrated on his cast, pushing all the strength he had into it. Making himself as light as possible. Slowing his fall as much as he could. And it seemed to help. The breeze rushing past his face became ever more gentle.

  But still the trees came nearer.

  And then he hit them. He crashed into the top branches of one of them and the impact was anything but gentle. It was pain.

  The air was driven from his lungs by the impact. He was beaten all over by the branches. Smashed in the face as well as every other part of his body. And he felt every blow as if he was being pounded by a giant. By a horde of giants.

  Still his fall came to an end and at some point he found himself doubled over an outstretched branch, staring at the ground twenty or thirty feet below him, knowing that he was alive – and that he didn't deserve to be. Not when his companions were dying. His friends. His family.

  But he couldn't do anything he realised. He couldn't save them. He couldn't even reach them. Not when he was somewhere in the endless forest. When his chances of ever even finding his way out of this place were vanishingly small. And even if he did somehow escape – he was already too late. The sprites were invading the Temple already. Murdering his companions.

  The guilt and the shame overwhelmed him as he lay there. The horror as he thought of them dying. And the hatred of himself for what he had done.

  But still there was one thing to bring him comfort. One tiny spark of warmth in the bleakness. The sprites were going to try and claim the Temple for themselves. They were going to cast their enchantment to make the Temple theirs and theirs alone. And when they did, they were going to discover their own suffering and death.

  He smiled, perhaps a little madly, as he thought of that. Of the tiny little people with their gossamer wings suddenly discovering that they were truly helpless. That they had no magic. And that included the magical bindings that they used to command their slaves. And then he started laughing. They were going to die! They had to die! They whole damned race!

  Fylarne laughed some more as the blood dripped from his battered body and the darkness approached. It was all he could do.

  Chapter Nine

  Where were her friends? Her fellow guardians? Elodie found herself wondering that as she sat in the small dining hall in the Temple and drank her tea. Usually she had company when ten bells rang and it was time for morning tea. Normally in fact the little room was full and every seat taken. But today the dining chamber was empty. There was only her.

  That was odd. The Temple didn't have a lot of staff. Maybe only a score and a half all told, which wasn't much considering its size and its importance to the worlds. But when the time for tea rolled around they should normally be here. Gathering around, sharing a drink and maybe a snack, and chatting about inconsequential things like anyone else.

  When she had first come to the Temple years ago, and been shown around the parts of it that the worshippers never saw, she'd been surprised by two things. The first was the surprising size of the Temple. There was so much of it, so many passageways leading to so many different chambers, half of which were completely empty. The other thing that had caught her by surprise was the lack of people. She had known from having visited it as a younger woman that there was usually only one worshipper there at a time and maybe a few others sitting outside, waiting. Few were brave enough or desperate enough to come for a second blessing. But there had also been vast empty passages, chambers filled only with silence and air. You could go whole days in here and not see another soul. It was why times like morning tea were always well attended by the staff. People liked to see other people from time to time.

  But there was something more than that that disturbed her. There was something wrong. She could feel it. Something uneasy in the Heartfire. As if it was upset. She didn't know what it was. But it troubled her.

  So as she sat at the long table and sipped at her tea, Elodie kept staring at the door, waiting to see someone appear in it. But no one did. And the feeling of unease gnawed at her.

  Eventually, after she'd finished her tea and rinsed out her mug, she decided to go and find out where everyone was. She should have gone back to her work in the laundry, but it could wait.

  Elodie didn't have to go far before she discovered that things weren't as quiet as they seemed. She just stepped out of the dining chamber, wandered twenty paces down the hall and turned left into the common area – and there she saw the giant clay statue. Except that even as she stood there, staring at the massive clay sculpture standing in the middle of the chamber, she realised it wasn't a statue at all. Statues didn't move!

  It was an elemental!

  “Shite!” She stood there in the open doorway and stared at the creature in shock, and tried to make sense of what she was seeing. But the only sense to be made of it was that the creature shouldn't be here in the Temple. Elementals were sprite magic – and the Heartfire Temple was run by her people. More than that, that magic was dangerous. It wasn't allowed in the Temple at all.

  Then a diminutive figure with gossamer wings stepped out from behind the massive creature, took one look at her, and yelled “get her!” And at that point everything became completely clear. She had to run!

  Elodie took off like a startled cat, turnin
g and dashing on down the hallway as fast as her sandalled feet could carry her, while behind her the earth elemental turned and gave chase, its massive feet pounding into the stone. And all she could think as she ran was that this couldn't possibly be happening! There shouldn't be a sprite in the Temple, not without an escort. And they shouldn't be able to summon their elementals here. But no one seemed to have told the elemental that.

  No one seemed to have told the creature that it was a massive, lumbering hunk of dirt that was more suited to carrying heavy loads than running, either. But despite that it was fast.

  Thump, thump, thump – she could hear it getting closer as she ran. Which was why she dodged right into the line of bed-chambers. They had smaller doorways, and she hoped that the creature wouldn't be able to get through them. It would have to duck at the least.

  But it was there that things became worse. The elemental was slowed by the doorway, having to hunker down and practically crawl through it on its clay belly. That bought her some distance for which she was infinitely grateful. But then she spotted a blackened body lying at the far end of the section and she realised with horror that it was one of her fellow guardians. She could just make out the green stripe of the robe.

  The sprite had killed one of her friends!

  And it wasn't just one sprite either. She realised that at almost exactly the same moment she saw another elemental, one made of pure, flowing silver, appear in front of her. Two different elementals had to mean two different sprites. Casters, not even the most talented, could maintain multiple different casts.

  Panicking, her heart beating as fast as a hummingbird's in her chest, she stopped dead in her tracks, trying to work out what to do. She was trapped! The silver elemental was coming at her, flowing like a river at her from up ahead, and the earth elemental was running after her from behind. And there was no way out. Just a line of bed-chambers to her left and a stone wall on her right.

  Phase! The thought hit her as she stood there, and just as the flowing river of silver reached her she became insubstantial and passed through the stone wall leaving it behind.

  A moment later she was on the other side, back in the hallway, and breathing again. Until a fire elemental appeared from out of nowhere and started incinerating everything in sight. Even phased she was vulnerable to fire. So she had to sprint through the other wall of the hallway, and out into the summoning room. And she still wasn't quite fast enough, taking a scorch on her side and crying out in pain.

  But there she discovered more bodies lying on the floor and her cries died on her lips. Instead she screamed with an entirely different sort of pain.

  “Lady, no!” She screamed her denial as she saw two more of her fellow guardians lying dead on the floor, their faces blue and filled with horror. Drowned by the looks of things. There was a water elemental somewhere around.

  Elodie returned to the solid world and went to them, even knowing it was a mistake. But she had to go to them. They were her friends. She had to hope, to pray that life still lingered in their bodies. But then, when she saw their blue lips and sightless eyes, she wanted to weep instead. She wanted to scream. She knew them. They were Mariga and Sena, two of the most decent women she knew. And behind them, hidden by a massive oak desk, was Edorn, also dead, his face blue like theirs.

  Three of her fellow guardians, three of her friends – dead! Elodie stood there, unable to take the sight in. She'd known another of the guardians was dead, fallen in the attack. But she hadn't been able to tell who it was. But seeing these three, recognising them, it made it real somehow.

  This couldn't be real! It couldn't be happening!

  Yet, as she walked around the summoning chamber, going from one body to the next, closing those sightless eyes, she knew it was. Just as she knew that they had been murdered. As had been whoever had been lying in the line of bed-chambers, burnt black. The sprites had murdered them! And somewhere in her chest the anger and the pain exploded. This could not be!

  But how?! This was the Heartfire Temple. There were protections in place. Endless defences that should stop anyone casting hostile magic. That should prevent anyone with dark intentions from even entering it. And there shouldn't be any elementals in the Temple. It wasn't even possible!

  Yet as she stared around the great chamber full of desks and the bodies of her friends scattered among them, she knew it had happened. It was happening. She just didn't know what to do about it.

  At least she had a few seconds. The elementals couldn't go through solid stone walls, which meant that to reach her they'd have to all the way around the hallways and find the door. And they didn't know where she was, only which direction she'd headed. That gave her some space to think. To try and work out what she had to do. Or just to try and work out how to survive.

  And survival, she realised, began with not being seen. If they couldn't see her – if they couldn't find her – she would be safe.

  There was one place in the temple she realised, where they wouldn't look for her. Not because they wouldn't guess where she was, but because they wouldn't dare to check. The Heartfire terrace. No one mortal could stay there for long. No one that was, save for a guardian. No matter how powerful they were as casters, the sprites were mortal. They would not dare stay on the terrace for long. And their creatures, their elementals, might not work too well there. With so much raw magic burning there, the chances were that whatever limited intelligence they had would be burnt away. And their forms would not survive any better than that of their masters. Probably worse. They were magical constructs. It would be like a puddle of water trying to survive and stay together in the ocean.

  Even as she was coming to that conclusion, she was disturbed by the arrival of one of the sprites. The tiny little man appeared at the doorway and immediately spotted her.

  “Got you bitch!” He smiled, cruelly at her, and then cast, sending a spray of ice shards at her with a wave of his hand. But he was too slow. She was phased long before they reached her, and then watched them hit the stone wall behind her and shatter, just before she stepped through it.

  But this time she didn't go all the way through it. The rage wouldn't let her. She remained in the wall and started running along its length. Then she turned when she reached the corner and ran some more. In mere seconds she was behind him, while he was still standing there staring angrily at where she'd been, thinking she'd got away.

  Elodie didn't give him the chance to wonder. The anger burning in her chest suddenly had to be released and she couldn't think. Instead of hiding she stepped out of the wall, turned solid, grabbed him by the shoulders and pulled him backwards with all her strength. A moment later he had hit the wall so hard that his bones had broken. She actually heard them crunch.

  She watched as his diminutive form slumped to the floor, and the blood began to flow, and for a heartbeat or two she knew a moment of satisfaction. He was down. Whether he was alive or dead, he wasn't going to attack her again. He wasn't going to hurt her friends. And that was a good thing. She screamed her anger and outrage at him. Her triumph.

  But then, for some reason, she felt guilt. She'd never hurt anyone before. And a lifetime of compassion was telling her that she should go to him. Check on his injuries. Make sure he was alright. It was almost as powerful a need within her as the urge to breathe.

  Elodie overcame it though. There were others to deal with and maybe companions to save. So she left the summoning room and headed out into the hallway. But she didn't head for the Heartfire terrace as she'd intended. She had to find her friends and bring them to safety. And she had to find out what was happening. Why the sprites had attacked. What they were planning. She had to stop them.

  Beyond the summing chamber was the file room. Despite what people believed, the Temple was filled with records. The records of every mortal who had come to the Temple to receive the blessing of the Heartfire, how often they'd come and what seat they'd taken. A thousand years or more of records. It was these records that they used
when they called someone for each new blessing. A guardian like her would come here, go through the records, see who was next in line for a blessing, then bring the record next door and open up the summoning portal to call them.

  But no one was going to do that anymore, she discovered. Not for a long time. There were two more of her fellow guardians lying dead on the floor, both with massive burns running along the length of their bodies. Lightning strikes she guessed. Clearly from the looks of horror on their faces, they hadn't had a chance to defend themselves. Only to know the burning agony of their death approaching.

  Elodie bent down and closed their eyes, and did her best not to weep as she realised that one of them was Alur, her dearest friend. But she would never again be with her. They would never again talk. Share a meal together. Or perform their duties together.

  Alur's family would be destroyed by this, she knew. They were good people. Warm and loving. And Alur was their only child. This would destroy them. And the sprites had done this. Murdered her without cause or even hesitation. This was just so wrong! So evil!