Elemental Rush (Elemental 0.5) (12 page)
Read Elemental Rush (Elemental 0.5) Online
Authors: Elana Johnson
Tags: #elemental magic, #elements, #dystopian, #elemental, #romance, #fantasy, #young adult, #action adventure, #new adult, #futuristic
“I didn’t think it wise,” I said. “The Chief seems kind of…uptight.”
Hanai laughed. “You’re probably right. But in the future, I’ll be able to admit you faster if you come north by the stream, then go west for a hundred paces. There’s a knobby stump there that signals you to turn north again.” He continued rattling off directions to find the entrance point of the settlement, but I couldn’t remember them all.
I spent the day lashing sticks together to make snowshoes. At dusk, Hanai led me out of the camp, east to the stream. We followed it south, where he bid me farewell.
Felix didn’t drink that night. He questioned every guard at both gates. He collected food, and by dawn he was on his way. I followed him, being careful not to get too close. He didn’t seem concerned about leaving a trail, and his boots made large imprints in the snow as he headed northwest.
I stepped in his footsteps, my boots not quite filling out the impressions he’d left. I wondered if I’d forever be just a little bit smaller, a little bit behind, my brother. He only walked for a day before coming to a small city-state without an Elemental school.
Rhyss was ruled by Elementals, but only because the land surrounding the city grew and supplied almost half of the food the citizens of the United Territories ate. The railroad line went right through Rhyss, continuing both north to the border and south to Tarpulin.
Felix disappeared inside the city walls while I was still traipsing through snow-covered fields. Soaked from head to toe, I limped into the city hoping for a warm fire and a dry bed. The street continued straight into the heart of the city, and I followed it, scanning for Felix.
I didn’t see him, and the crowd thickened the closer to the city center I went. I found an inconspicuous spot that allowed me to see anyone and everyone entering the center, but Felix never appeared. The shops closed, the people dispersed. I left with the last of them, heading to the only establishment that remained open: the tavern.
Felix was seated near the back wall, engrossed in a conversation with another man. He looked furious and gestured with his hands. When he suddenly lurched from his seat and stomped toward the door, I had to drop into an empty seat at a table with three other men. I kept my face turned toward the wall until my brother passed, then I leapt up and joined the man Felix had just left.
“Tell me what you were talking about with the Tarpulin sentry,” I demanded before the man could ask who I was. I picked up the butter knife on the table and spun it around the back of my hand, catching it casually before looking into the man’s eyes.
The fear I found there was fleeting, replaced quickly by fury. “He is dissatisfied with the speed of our trains,” he said. “I assured him we are loading them as quickly as possible.”
“You ship wheat, correct?”
“Yes.” The man frowned. “He claims Tarpulin is not receiving its shipments on time, but my logs indicate they are.” He shoved a ledger toward me, but I had no interest in examining it.
Felix wasn’t here to burn the city to the ground. Could the Supremist’s personal sentry really be attending to wheat shipments in the remote city of Rhyss? I puzzled through why he’d bother—surely he would delegate this unsavory and somewhat degrading mission to someone else.
I thanked the man and left the tavern. The wind coming from the plains felt like ice, and I couldn’t warm it with my Element. I couldn’t sleep outside in this weather. I returned to the tavern and inquired about a room. Within minutes, I found a farmer who had a bed and I followed him home.
The next morning, I woke to the scent of bacon. When I joined the man and his family for breakfast, I asked, “Do you not have work today?”
“It’s the new year,” the man said. “One of our only days off.” He smiled as he pointed to a plate with eggs. “Help yourself.”
I ate as much as I could, paid the man with all the money I had, and faced the bitter winter weather. Since it was a holiday, the streets were bare. I assumed people had stayed up late celebrating and were having a bit of a late start to the morning—a fact I was grateful for, because it made spotting the sentry striding toward the city gate much easier.
Felix returned to Forrester by nightfall, but I opted to spend the night in the Outcast settlement. I needed the calm energy to reason through what Felix was doing. Why wouldn’t he simply return to Tarpulin? What was keeping him here in the northern part of the Territories?
Months later, I still didn’t have an answer. Felix had actually rented a room in Forrester, making the Unmanifested village his full-time home. He didn’t seem to be in any hurry to do much of anything. For a few days, I speculated that he’d defected the way I had.
Then he’d take a day trip to Rhyss, or even a two-day journey to Crylon. When I followed and investigated to learn what he’d been doing, it was Territory business. Supremist business. So the theory of him turning fugitive didn’t hold up. His movements seemed innocent, almost mundane.
Then one day, he took the hovercraft and sped north. Anxiety skipped through my system. If he was using the transporter, things must have escalated. I called on the air, icy as it was, and followed.
I found the vehicle abandoned just outside of Crylon. I determined to enter the city in the morning and find out why he’d come here again.
That night, fire painted the sky with orange tongues of destruction.
I discovered that the fire had been contained to a single building on the Elemental school campus. No one had seen Felix, and I left Crylon on a blanket of wind. I returned to Forrester, but Felix did not.
Once again, the darkness that night was not as black as it should’ve been. Though Crylon lay fifty miles from Forrester, the flames sprouting from the top of the hill shone like a beacon in the sky.
The whole city was burning.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Elana Johnson is the author of the
Possession
series, which includes full-length novels POSSESSION, SURRENDER, and ABANDON, and short stories REGRET (ebook only) and RESIST (free). She is also the author of ELEVATED, a young adult contemporary romance novel-in-verse.
This novella, ELEMENTAL RUSH, is the first part of a new futuristic fantasy series. Look for the full-length novel, ELEMENTAL HUNGER, and the last novella, ELEMENTAL RELEASE.
Elana wishes she could experience her first kiss again, tell the mean girl where to shove it, and have cool superpowers like reading minds and controlling fire. To fulfill her desires, she writes young adult novels. She runs a personal blog on publishing and is a founding author of the QueryTracker blog, a regular contributor to The League of Extraordinary Writers, and a co-organizer of WriteOnCon.
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ELEMENTAL RUSH
an ELEMENTAL novella
by Elana Johnson
Copyright © 2014 by Elana Johnson
Published by AEJ Creative Works
All Rights Reserved.
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental. No part of this book can be reproduced in any form or by electronic or mechanical means including information storage and retrieval systems, without the express written permission of the author. The only exception is by a reviewer who may quote short excerpts in a review. Please purchase only authorized electronic editions, and do not participate in, or encourage, the electronic piracy of copyrighted materials. Your support of the author’s rights is appreciated.
Cover Design by Erin Summerill Photography
Fonts used: Cinzel, Kontrapunkt, and DISCO - Fontsquirrel.com
Cover photograph © Krivosheev Vitaly - Shutterstock.com
PhotoShop Winter Breeze Brushes © Axeraider70 - Brusheezy.com
PhotoShop Lightning Brushes © - Brusheezy.com
Interior Design by AEJ Creative Works
Chapter headings done in Cinzel.
Table of Contents
