Page 94 of Elemasters

“If that’s really the Devil up there… kick his ass,” Pastor Nakajima said, clapping a strong hand on Dustin’s shoulder.

“Oh, we will. Just like… keep this between us, yeah?” Chris replied with a wink. Pastor Nakajima made a gesture like he was zipping his lips, before ushering his wife back into the building, closing the doors behind them and, by the sound of it, bolting them.

“They better not snitch,” Chloe said, crossing her arms and squinting through the torrential downpour, “I’m not trying to explain this to my mother,”

“Same,” everyone said in unison, before Bailey looked around at the debris and stated the obvious, “without the tower though, how are we supposed to get up there? I don’t think my elevator trick can get us up that high,”

Dustin thought for a moment, but the more he looked at just how high up the Palace was hovering, he knew none of their abilities would be sufficient alone.

Wait… not alone.

But maybe…

“James, baby, I’m gonna ask you to push yourself harder than you ever have,” Dustin began, and James immediately snapped to attention the moment he started speaking, “I need a tree. A fucking BIG one, right under our feet. Can you manage that?”

“Sir yes sir baobei sir,” James replied, mocking a salute as the veins in his arms charged with electric green light.

“Perfect. Chloe, the metal from the tower. Bring it with us, and brace yourself. I know you hate heights,”

Chloe nodded, reaching out with her powers to suspend the metal in the air as the asphalt beneath them cracked and tore apart. Massive vines erupted through it, twisting upward into a spiraling base of thick bark and leaves as the group ascended on the biggest tree anyone had ever fucking seen.

It wasn’t long before they’d completely surpassed the height of the now extinct belltower, but James couldn’t keep it up infinitely. Not only did his power have limits, but the tree would quickly become structurally unsustainable if they pushed it much farther.

“Alright James, you did great!” Dustin screamed over the whipping wind, holding onto the branches around them, “everybody get in close! This is gonna be the stupidest fucking thing I’ve ever done!”

Without hesitation, the group huddled around Dustin, feeling the immediate temperature drop as his powers activated. The onslaught of rain gathered around them, pushing them even closer together before swirling like an airborne whirlpool, launching them even higher into the air. The higher they climbed, the more Dustin had to push down the backflips his stomach was currently doing, focusing more on adding more and more water to this insane spinning deathtrap before he dropped them all to their deaths by accident.

“Alriiiight!” he screamed out, voice sounding like he was on the world’s worst roller coaster, “Chloe, the metal! We need a place to land!”

Chloe was clinging on to him, her nails nearly snapping from how tightly she was digging into his shoulders, but her veins were still beaming as the metal debris collected just ahead of them; sturdy in the air like a hovering platform.

They hit it with a very wet crash landing as Dustin finally released control of his element, panting and completely drained of energy, but thankfully alive.

They were fully in the clouds now, unable to even see the town beneath them anymore. But the Palace was clearer than ever; its silhouette repeatedly illuminated by flashes of violet electricity arcing around them.

“Alright, final push!” Dustin put his hand on Chris’s back, “bro, I need you to launch us forward like this is Midnight Club Dub Edition and you’re trying to cross the finish line. Bailey, the Palace is close enough now for you to pull some rocks to protect us from getting fried up here!”

Chris grinned like Dustin had just given him the greatest honor of his life, his eyes lighting up red as he cracked his knuckles.

“Let’s fucking go,”

He braced himself, hanging his open hands behind him. They sparked a few times, before exploding with an outward eruption of flames so big that it looked like a rocket launch. Chloe forced some metal to snake its way around their legs, keeping them firmly planted as they went flying through the heavens like a bat out of hell.

Bailey did just as Dustin commanded, forcefully ripping chunks of shining moonrock away from the Palace exterior as they approached, coating the front of their makeshift hoverboard like a battering ram just in time for it to deflect a lightning bolt that would’ve ended their battle before it started.

It seemed like an impossible task, but a few moments later they were crashing through the outer walls of the Palace, being thrown to the ground from the sheer force of it all, and rolling to a stop in front of the very pentagram-shaped altar where they first found their rings.

That altar… and the hulking, antlered stone body of Qin Shi Huang himself.

“The strength it took to arrive here is formidable,” his voice sounded like a chorus of thousands speaking in unison, some within the room, others booming in the clouds outside, “I am impressed! A pity to be struck down here. This new empire will need enforcers with such grit. Such tenacity. Perhaps I will harvest the rings from your corpses and bond them to my faithful,”

“Ayo shut the FUCK UP!” Chris immediately snapped, rising to his feet and exhaling a breath of flame from his nose as he stared up at the monster the emperor had become, “you used my body like a god damn puppet, you forced me to almost kill my brother, and now you think you’re just gonna talk shit to our faces? Enough of this, we’re ending it right now,”

The stone mask of Qin Shi Huang’s face cracked ever so slightly as his features morphed into a condescending smirk.

“On that my dear descendant, we can agree,”

Chapter 37