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I made eye contact with Lux, who frowned but nodded.
A little pack of the gremlins looked ready to jump us, and two of the remaining demons fully dug themselves out of the churred earth. We had to act now.
I charged back into the fray of poison and gremlins.
“You want me, come and get me!” I yelled, pulling all four elements into a glowing ball in front of me.
Like moths to a flame, the gremlins and demons streaked toward me. The first one hit me in the chest, and the second my back. Unlike my dragons, I couldn’t stay standing, so I dropped to one knee. Something bit into my calf, and I screamed in pain. The ball of my mates’ elemental power exploded in my hands, sending a cascade of colors into the sky.
The air around me turned heavy, exactly as I asked, slowing everything. The remaining not-gremlin-demons trapped in Lux’s air magic melted, just like the one I hit with my fire club. I paused; these were the same demons who had just unburied themselves from Og’s earth magic… which hadn’t turned them into goo. I put that fact aside.
Once again, textured cabbages grew and turned into little gremlins. In my fascination, I forgot to protect myself. In stop motion, a gremlin head-butted my left eye.
I swore.
I tried to bring my hand up to push it off, but in slowing the gremlins, I’d put myself in the same trap. My next breath feltlike sucking cotton, and my lungs strained. Lux’s thick air magic made it hard to inhale.
Yeah. Maybe using yourself as bait was not a good plan.
In comparison, just beyond the gremlins, my mates moved comically fast, darting in and out of the thick air to cut down the little monsters like whack-a-moles.
They’re working together, so it worked?
The pressure around me popped, and the air returned to normal. Bodies fell like rain around me. I sucked in a harsh lung full of sour-tasting air. I’d been trying to punch a demon, and my arm suddenly moved so fast I impacted the ground and split my knuckle. The gremlin claw still hanging out of my bicep jostled painfully.
A new gremlin grew out of a pile of demon goo, and Rehan stomped it down before it had a chance to live. The ground to my left shook and then caved in. Tyson stepped toward it, fire flickering across his hand.
“No, wait.” I held out a hand.
Og dropped his scales, except for a pair of shorts protecting his vulnerable bits, and pressed his hands to my arm. His green healing magic sunk into my skin.
“Why?” Tyson asked as the demon’s hand rose above the dirt.
“Because it’s still a demon,” I said. “Tyson’s fire magic and Lux’s air magic reacted with the demons, and they became something else. But when Og’s magic churned the ground and buried them, they dug themselves out as demons.”
Tyson narrowed his eyes.
The dry white bone of the demon’s skull poked out of the ground, followed by the lines of Gorm’s fluorescent-green magic.
I looked at Rehan. “Douse it.”
Water drifted from a broken pipe, spilling onto the ground from the half-demolished kitchen building. Unceremoniously, the water dragon doubled its size, formed it into a ball, anddropped it on the demon’s head. The now-wet demon continued digging its way free, completely unfazed.
Although I wasn’t fully healed, the smarting from my wounds had turned into a dull throb, thanks to Og.
Still down on one knee, I brushed my fingers against the churred earth. “Og, crush it.”
Og pursed his lips but brought his hands together. The ground under us shook. The demon let out a hissing wheeze and quivered before its head popped off. It flew a few inches off the ground and landed, magicless, at Tyson’s feet.
“Gorm was here,” I stated, remembering the closing portal and possessed brown eyes at the back of our battlefield. “I don’t think he saw me, but he saw Tyson.”
“Then he fecking ran,” Tyson said, grinning like he’d chased off the god himself.
Something didn’t feel right about any of this. I hated to say it, but we won too easily. We’d obviously sprung a trap. Had it just failed? Or had Gorm gotten what he wanted?
Rehan offered me a hand up, and I took it.
“Demons are susceptible to pure elemental magic.” I didn’t voice my doubts. “Gorm’s trying to cure them of their weakness, and it looks like he’s figured it out for air and fire.” I didn’t look at Lux or Tyson. Tyson might not understand the implication that his father was working with Gorm, but Lux would be too aware of his father’s betrayal. “He can come on and off the island at will, which means he’s either taken control of the shield or built a second portal to get through it.”
