How to Destroy a Nome in Under an Hour
Carter
In retrospect, running may not have been the best idea.
Sure, some of us managed to stall the storm horses, Dave tangled one up in ropes of water and Nikolas kept another busy with a tank-sized hippo, but whatever we tied them up in they managed to blast their way out of. Eventually, we regrouped in the Great Room. Nickolas, Alex and Natalia summoned giant blocks of wax, which they used to plug the doorways. They followed the wax with brick walls and, in Alex's case, spitting Kimono dragons.
"That won't hold them long." Zia stated.
"We make our last stand here." Natalia agreed. "Whatever happens, we can't let any mortals get hurt."
"What about us?" Kristen muttered under her breath. Everyone who heard her glared at her. Since she is not at all good at being quiet the glares were coming from everyone in the room. Surprisingly, Zia was the one to break the tension.
"I have an idea." she announced.
"Anything." Josh gasped, doubled over from running for so long.
"The elements." She stated. When almost everyone looked at her in confusion she sighed.
"Earth and Air, Water and Fire, opposites. The horses are Air so we should be able to defeat them using Earth." She explained slowly, like she was talking to kindergarten kids.
(That's Sadie, reminding me that all the kindergarten kids we know can practically do long division in their sleep. Thanks sis, I'm sure everyone listening was wondering where you'd gone.)
"How long did it take you to figure that out?" Kristen asked snidely. I think everyone's eyes were starting to get cramps from the amount of glaring we were doing.
"That doesn't matter." I said. "What does matter is the fact that we don't have an Earth elementalist, unless you're hiding one in the basement."
The Texas magicians shook their heads.
"If we work together we should be able to hit them hard enough with Earth to tear them apart." Nikolas speculated. A rumbling noise started coming from behind one of the blocked doors. One of Alex's lizards hissed.
"I hope to the gods you're right," Dave said, readying his staff, "because it sounds like we're about to have company."
"On three?" Alex asked.
Rumble.
"What do we do?" Josh asked, standing up with his staff aloft.
Rumble!
"Call on Earth" Natalia ordered. ", and hope he's listening."
Rumble, rumble, ru-crack! The door, wax, bricks and all, went flying into the back wall, nearly running over Alex and Zia. They dove out of the way and the rest of us readied ourselves for the attack.
The rust-coloured horse was leading the charge. All of the storms crackled with electricity and I knew that if one of them even brushed against someone we'd be dealing with electrocution as well as rampaging storms.
"Now!" Nikolas shouted. The floor of the Great Room rumbled and chunks of it flew into the air as eight magicians all called on the power of Earth to beat up four electrical storms.
Horsie number one went down with a "zzzist". It had been buried in an avalanche of rock called up by Josh and Dave. I watched and sure enough the unfortunate storm disintegrated into swirls of mist.
"It's working!" I called. The red storm came barrelling towards me. I shouted and a fissure opened up below its pounding hooves. The storm fell, surprised, and Zia took the opportunity to smash it with molten rock that she summoned, probably from the Lake of Fire or the middle of a volcano. The magma quickly cooled, trapping the storm horse.
"Two down, two to go." Alex blasted the third storm towards his aunt, who quickly used her wand to pull up a wall of stone. The horse smashed into it at full speed and burst like a water balloon. Nikolas has to duck very quickly to avoid getting hit by a stray scrap of lightning. After that horsie number four didn't stand a chance. I almost felt sorry for it as it fell under a combined attack from Zia, Natalia, and Alex.
"Well, that's that." Kristen muttered as the last storm fizzed into water vapor.
"What do you mean 'that's that', you didn't do anything?!" Her brother shouted.
Alex looked up and rolled his eyes. Then he frowned.
"Uh, guys. I think we've got a problem." Dave and Kristian paused their fight and followed his gaze. I looked to where they were looking. We watched as a crack splintered its way across the ceiling.
"Uh oh." Nikolas croaked.
"Circles." Natalia ordered. We all jumped into action. Calk and statuettes were brought out as the crack grew larger. Zia and I rushed to help Natalia and Nikolas finish their protective circles. Our group split into two and four people each crowded into one of the circles. Just in time. With a loud 'crack' the ceiling caved in. I tried to call up my falcon avatar, maybe stop the rock from burying us, but as Earth was not my element my magic was spent from fighting the storms. Josh wasn't having any more luck then I was. We stood, praying fervently, as the stone ceiling rained down onto us.
Carter
Fortunately we didn't die. After the circles stopped rumbling Nikolas, Zia, Josh and I worked on shifting the rock fall away from the top of our protective bubble. Once we cleared a large enough space we helped each other to climb out, letting the circle collapse behind us. Natalia, Alex, Dave and Kristian did the same. After everyone was present and accounted for we sat for a time and just stared at the destruction around us.
"This'll be fun to clean up." Alex said eventually.
"Very." Dave agreed.
"I hope you two are being sarcastic." Natalia told them. Nikolas stood up and dusted off his hands.
"Shall we get started?" He asked. Alex stood also.
"I'll see if I can find it." He said, and began carefully walking around.
"What's he looking for?" I asked Natalia.
"The fail-safe." She replied. Her eyes following the progress of her nephew.
"Pardon?"
Before she could reply Alex shouted in excitement. He flipped over a chunk of wall and, using his wand, tapped a hieroglyph on the chunk of stone. The destroyed room began shuttering.
"Duck!" Nikolas shouted. Everyone complied, crouching down. Chunks of the room began flying around, partially reassembling the walls, doors, and roof. Amazingly, none of them hit us. After masses of rock were no longer flying around, we stood up. I looked around in amazement. Aside from a few large cracks and fallen pillars, and the frozen magma mounded in the fissure on the floor, the Great Room was almost exactly the same as when Zia and I arrived that morning. The repairs that were left to do wouldn't take more than a day or two.
"Impressive." Zia admitted.
"Thanks." Alex muttered. Then he fell over in a dead faint. Nikolas quickly caught him.
"He just needs rest." Natalia informed us. She took Alex in her arms and walked out of the room. The rest of us began working on repairs. About half an hour in Natalia called me away to talk to Sadie and Walt, who had popped up in the slightly scuffed scrying bowl. We exchanged stories and eventually decided to regroup at Brooklyn House. After saying goodbye to them I called the other teams we'd sent out around the world. Over the next three days we all portaled back to Brooklyn, most of us bringing the members of the Nomes we had been visiting with us. Sadie and Walt were the last to arrive. We waited for them by our portal anchor. Right on time the tornado of sand appeared and spat out nine dusty magicians, one not-vampire and two ghosts.
"How was your trip?" I asked Sadie, who was rubbing sand out of her eyes.
"Brilliant." She said. I turned to face the members of the Toronto Nome.
"Welcome to Brooklyn House." I told them. "Who's ready for a fight?"
A/N: Short chapter again. I really have nothing else to say….Oh, slower updates from now till next year probably…..
-Cynder2013
