Chapter 27: Fire Mountain

Jessica and Toby used their methods once again to allow Nick and Lucas to go to Fire Mountain safely without hurting them. Jessica this time carried Lucas over while letting Nick travel on one of her tornados since he was too heavy to carry. Toby meanwhile decided to practice surfing on a couple of waves. Sure, it would take ages to practice it perfectly but it was his first try at it.

Jessica flew past by him with Nick inside her tornado. "You ok?" she asked him softly.

Toby simply just nodded and began to raise his arms towards the sea. Creating a safe space for him to comfortably sit on the waves, he jumped onto it and just focused on getting over to the fire nation. He felt the foam of the waves touching his feet as they guided him over. All the while, he kept his arms raised so that he wouldn't crash into anything along the way.

Meanwhile, Magmion was peaking out of his tower when he spied the four Lords heading towards his territory.

"Aaah, perfect," he expressed with glee. "Just where I wanted them."

Lavion walked over beside his master. "What shall I do with the rest of them while you're doing your thing?" He emphasised on the word 'rest' as he pointed the Gormiti tribes. All of which were tied up by ropes and some were placed in prisons with only one window.

Magmion simply replied: "Leave them be. The lords know that the tribes are missing but they don't know that they've been captured by me!" He let out an menacing laugh that reached towards all the ends of Gorm.

The group had just arrived at the bottom of Fire Mountain when they heard the laughter.

"I'm guessing from that laugh, it probably belongs to um…" Toby fumbled, instantly forgetting a specific name.

"Magmion?" Nick answered.

"That's the one!" Toby slammed his fist into his other hand in frustration.

"Well, if what you say it's true than we need to go find him!" Jessica declared. She was about to fly when Lucas grabbed her arm swifty.

"Wait!" he warned her cautiously. "Magmion's probably set out a trap for us. What if we fall into one of them."

Nick nodded in agreement with Lucas. "Lucas is right. There might be more than a couple of traps around here." He began to walk towards the main Fire Tower, eyeing the monstrous face. "We need to be careful in case we fall into one."

"Good plan, little bro," added in Toby with a thumbs up. "Let's keep an eye out for any other Gormiti as well."

Going further into the Fire Tower wasn't going to be easy for the group but they still kept their instinct to stay near each other at all times. Soon, they began to head towards the tower, pushing away the terror and fear from their hearts and mind.

Entering inside, the group was surprised to see how orange and crimson the whole tower was. The look of it almost felt dark in a way that was creepy and dangerous at the same time. A bubbling cauldron of molten lava was in the middle which went deep into the ground underneath the surface. Seeing the mixture almost made Toby feel queasy. He put a hand to his stomach to stop himself from throwing up.

A spiral walkway was surrounding the pool of lava. Jessica flew only a couple of feet high up to see how long it would take from them to reach the top. But when reached the top, the boys below her were like pins. There was no way they can get up there fast enough. Unless…

"I don't know how much I can carry on making tornados to lift you guys to safety!" she called to the boys as loud as she was able to. "But I'll think-"

"Shhh!" whispered Nick, putting a stone finger to his lips. "We don't want to be caught Jess!"

Jessica folded her arms in anger. "I was only trying to find us a way!" she called back angrily.

In this midst of this, one of Toby's tentacles suddenly lifted up quickly towards his ear. His eyes specifically focused on the tendril as the tentacle pointed to one of the doors. "Hold on," he noted, hearing the sound of mumbling.

"What do you mean?" Lucas answered back.

Toby listened again to the mumbling sound carefully with his tentacle. At first, he couldn't make out who was mumbling but it sounded like…

"I think I found the other Gormiti tribes!" he suddenly realised as soon as he figured out the source. "Come on!"

On Toby's command, the rest of the boys followed him straight up the spiral walkway, making sure not to fall into the lava pool in the process. Lucas stopped himself in front of one of the doors and peered through the rocky window.

"Hey!" he cried out to the others excitedly. "I found the Forest Gormiti!" He waved to them sneakily. "How did you get in there?"

From what Lucas can understand, one Forest Gormiti was waving its hands frantically. Its mouth was covered up by something but Lucas couldn't figure out what its was.

That was went he saw the chains around the Gormiti's feet.

"Oh. My." Lucas placed a bark hand over his mouth to stop himself from screaming or in shock.

Nick stopped running and swiftly turned towards where Lucas was standing. "What's wrong Lucas?" he asked in concern.

Before Lucas could answer the question, a threatening voice cut both of them off.

"It seems you all fallen for my trap!"

Everyone seemed to look up and the top of the spiral walkway at the sound of the voice. There at the top was…Magmion himself.

"Welcome. Lords of Nature," he announced, his voice booming across the entire tower's walls. "I have been expecting you for an extremely long time." He rubbed his hand and blaster with a smirk on his terrible face.

"Expecting?" Toby fumed angrily, almost raising a fist. "We've been expecting you to show up for a long time!"

Magmion laughed wickedly. "Don't be ridiculous young one! You do know how long the last Lords of Nature had shown up!"

Nick crossed his arms furiously. "Yeah. Well the previous Lords had defeated you before," he explained with a tiny bit of a growl. "We can do it again!"

"Again?" Magmion joked. "How can you be sure when you're just-"

"Please don't mention it!" Lucas interrupted the Lord of Magma pointing a bark finger at him. "We know what we are!"

"And we're going make sure you don't take over our home as well!" added in Jessica, swooping down to join the boys' side.

And for the first time, the group felt like they were no longer afraid of fiery creatures similar to the Lava Gormiti now. Throughout their entire adventures in Gorm, each one felt something a bit different about them that would hopefully remain when they return to Earth. Overall, in Gorm, they were no longer human kids. They were indeed, the new Lords of Nature.

Magmion instantly brought out his own army including Lavion, who rubbed his claw to make sure it was exactly perfect for the battle. Behind both of them were a range of devilish Lava Gormiti, preparing their weapons or powers.

Finally, with their courage inside their hearts, the Lords declared: "By the Orbs of Gorm!"

Then they and the Lava Gormiti charged towards each other and the final battle began…