Fallen One (Book three of Alfireán age)

- Conflicted Emotions -

Derrick stared up at the scrying as the King of Merinia finished speaking. "I have secured the capital city," the king's deep, booming voice said from the image. "If anyone does attack, as my daughter has indicated, we will be ready."

The guardian known as the Endless Desert breathed deeply of the fumes rising from the braziers around him and nodded. "That's good to know," Derrick answered as he stood in the light of the pre-morning gloom and closed his eyes, loathing himself for having to ask the next question. Reopening his sharp blue eyes, he met the king's gaze. "What are your thoughts on a preemptive strike?" he asked.

A dark shadow passed over the king's rugged face, but as the muscles in his jaw twitched, he nodded. "I'll leave that up to your discretion," King Estevan Delavarian said, at last, rubbing his thick dark beard in discomfort. "Though we should wait until my daughter has returned and delivered her report."

"Understood," Derrick replied and bowed as the scrying dissipated and the king's visage disappeared.

"You wish to attack first?" Aster, otherwise known as the Ocean's Wrath, asked from behind him.

Derrick swung around and the sound of his boots scraping through the sand echoed in the salty air. "I would rather not," he said as a breeze from the ocean whisked across the island and through his short, military cut hair. "But I will not risk the safety of Merinia's civilians," he added. "Or worse yet, fight the enemy here," he said motioning to the mystical training grounds around them.

The Ocean's Wrath nodded as his black eyes trailed around the circular garden divided into five distinct sections. Built on the island the king's grandfather had pulled out of the sea, the training fields consisted of fire, water, earth, wind, and lightning.

"You are right," the dark-skinned man, wearing a set of scaled, crystallized armor, conceded. "Such a loss would devastate our nation."

Derrick nodded and gazed over the hot sandpit where he'd spent most of his childhood years training. Outlined by burning braziers and the molten rock statues of the guardians that had come before him, his own elemental field, fire, was a land of endless sand and porous rock.

Aster's training field next to his, however, rippled with life. Turtles and Koi fish swam through the shallow pond full of water lilies, and a single rounded rock lay perched in its midst.

Next to the water, earth's embankment butted against the pond's edge. The greenfield didn't appear to be much more than a grassy knoll with a lone Oak tree growing in its midst. Nonetheless, the serenity rising from the quiet scene only served to disguise the earth's dormant power hidden below.

Wind's training ground, on the other hand, blew turbulent and wild. A large, open pavilion, with a pointed roof held aloft by glass pillars, graced the marble field while raging tornadoes danced inside its clear columns.

And then there was lightning. Much like Valarinnia, the field of glass butting up against his world of sand housed a mass of energy racing underneath its surface. Sparking and crackling, the clear flat plain constantly resembled a stormy night sky.

And in the midst of it all, melding the five fields together, sat a glass sphere with golden light and black liquid swirling side by side in a never-ending dance.

"Are we certain there will be an attack?" Ferrous, the Willful Wisp, spoke up as she settled into human form beside the glass sphere. Her long golden hair billowed in the wind, and her green and white dress rippled in the shadowy light.

Derrick turned his eyes away from the training fields and towards the guardian of the wind. "You saw the images of Clithkirk Valerinnia sent back," he said to the older woman, noting the small tornadoes whisking about her feet: a clear sign Ferrous was agitated. "And there is only one reason why someone would destroy their own city."