Chapter Four

Noah woke up feeling a thousand times better than he did before. He began to think everything that happened to him was all a strange dream; when he saw a card floating in the air slowly spinning around. He took the card and found an illustration of the lightning ethereal on one side. A moment later the voice spoke inside his head again, “I will keep a telepathic link open at all times between us so that we may communicate and so I can guide you,” Primordious said.

Noah let out a large sigh then put the card away, now he knows at least it was not all a dream. He also found a small palm sized stone in his bag with a glow just like the rock. “What is this?” Noah asked out loud.

“That is a piece of the ever life stone that I broke off. If you are sick, wounded, or even on the verge of death touching that stone will heal you. But it has limited uses and will fade more and more with each use.”

“You’re really serious about this unknown thing you want from me aren’t you?”

“Destiny calls and we answer, even if it means working with people we don’t know or like. We answer its call or heed its warning.”

“And what if we don’t answer its call?” Noah asked as he put the stone back into his bag.

“Destiny called on Bran to prepare you so that our meeting could occur. If he had not answered that call what do you think would have become of you?”

“How did you know about Bran?” Noah demanded.

“You would have been living your worst fear; you would still be in Rasoras trying to find a way to learn magic and tame wild Elementals. He answered the call and was rewarded with a companion, his loneliness began to make him slowly kill himself, but destiny brought him to you to make him remember what life is.

“Destiny called you as well, it gave you the dream of the ever life stone and guided you to it. You answered its call and have been rewarded as well. Those who don’t answer destiny regret it and those that do find where they belong through their journey.”

“So what my reward is being stuck with you the rest of my life? Where the hell are we going now anyways?”

“We are going south or your left.”

“Why?”

“Because we still need to gather your forces, the other Elementals; you only have thirteen remember?”

Noah said nothing more but he did go south. He could feel Primordious inside his head like a gentle presence, the ethereal was guiding him. He allowed it for now, since he didn’t know where to go.

After a couple hours of walking, Noah came across two more electric unicorns. He went to use a wind spell to trap them like he did the tigers but something else happened. A strong gale of wind burst forth, and like a hundred daggers slashing, it tore the unicorns up weakening them tremendously.

Noah was too mesmerized by his spell to capture the Elementals right away. Looking at his hands, that still had a faint glow of silver, in awe he asked, “What was that?”

“Capture them before they heal themselves, their regeneration rate is high.”

Noah knew what Primordious was talking about, he read it in the Elementals archive; electric unicorns had the same regeneration speeds as even some of the top end nature elementals. He quickly pulled out a couple blank cards and pulled them in.

After Noah put them away with the other captured Elementals Primordious spoke, “That spell was one of many that I have been implanting naturally into your memory core. The process has taken me weeks to give you all that I know about lightning and wind spells. I expect the false memories of you learning them will fully mature in a month and it will be like you spent years practicing them and you will be able to do them at will. For now listen to your instincts and let them control you.”

“What the hell were you trying to take control of my mind or something?” Noah shouted ignorantly.

Annoyed Primordious said, “No, I was giving you the tools you will need to fulfill your destiny. Time is not on our side child, we don’t have thirty years for you to train to master these spells!”

“I’m not a child!” Noah shouted back. Then after a moment he asked, “What do you mean we don’t have a lot of time?”

For several minutes Primordious was quite, and then he finally said, “Further west do you see that mountain off in the distance?”

Noah looked out west for a long minute until finally seeing the edged outline of some sort of flat toped mountain. “Yes,” Noah said.

“Go towards it, we will find more Elementals to capture there, powerful ones.”

Noah was annoyed that Primordious was avoiding his question, but he did help him acquire two more Elementals and seems to be helping him get more so he didn’t complain. The flat mountain was a two days trip away before Noah got close enough to see how absolutely massive it was. It may not be shaped liked normal mountains, jutting out into the sky with a peak, but it did have the size and mass of one.

He encountered no problems on his travel, the lightning didn’t strike at him anymore and he didn’t see may Elementals nearby. It wasn’t until the third day of heading to the mountain while eating that something happened. The ground started to shake violently in a pattern and Primordious said, “Good, he is still around.”

Noah got up and quickly packed his food away and asked, “Who is here?”

A moment later his question was answered when he saw a colossal beast with blue colored skin, and electricity bouncing around it. It almost looked human but more deformed and ugly; a thunder colossus. “Remember let your instincts take over.” Primordious said as Noah starred in awe at this beast.

“Are you mad?” Noah asked, “I cannot fight that thing!”

“If you cannot take that one single Elemental than how can you expect to fight ones ten times its strength!” Primordious yelled in Noah’s head. “You have to believe in yourself, and trust in me otherwise neither of us will make it anywhere!”

Part of Noah told him to turn around and run, and don’t stop until he was out of this place for good. But another part told him to stay and fight; that part was wining. After several deep breaths in and out Noah finally mustered the courage to face the massive Elemental slowly walking towards him.

Like Primordious told him to he let his instincts guide him and began gathering in energy around for a powerful lightning attack. When the spell was ready Primordious said, “Aim for its right knee.”

Noah did as he said, launching out a large stream of lightning that nailed the Colossus knee in half a second; bringing the creature down on that knee. His instincts flared up again as the colossus slammed its fist into the ground and a shockwave erupted from it, racing towards Noah. Using a wind spell to propel himself like never before, he leaped far out of the way of the attack and landed on his feet skidding through the dirt several yards before stopping.

Noah’s overshooting of his spell gave the colossus a moment to start recovering, but Noah ignored it and began gathering energy. He was still gathering energy for his next attack when the colossus was back on its feet and swiped with its left hand sending out a wide arc of lightning at Noah.

He used some of the energy he was gathering to launch himself in the air above the attack, then he floated back down slowly and continued to draw in more energy. The colossus got in a couple more attacks, which Noah dodged fairly easily given there was still some great distance between them, before his spell was ready. Using all the energy he gathered he summoned a tornado bigger than the colossus that crackled with energy and raced to the Elemental.

The colossus tried to slow the tornado down but it was in vain and it soon picked him up and spun him around in it. The lightning tore at him and the winds cut him up as he spun around helplessly in the tornado.

Noah admired his spell from afar while catching his breath back, it was an exhaustive spell but he could still fight if needed. But as his spell calmed down and faded away he saw the thunder colossus lying on the ground defeated. Noah started jogging to it when Primordious said, “Be careful Thunder colossus are known to fight until the very end and they are not always fools; this one may be faking defeat.”

He kept jogging at the same pace, but took heed and pulled out a blank card, never taking his eyes off the elemental. It didn’t move much but he could tell it was still alive and began sealing it away in the card. The process took a few times longer than all his other Elementals but without any trouble he sealed it up nicely and put it away in his bag.

After that Noah continued on towards the unnatural shaped mountain. It was three more days before Noah reached its base, by then though he realized he had run completely out of rations. All that was left was a small drink of water, and no more food. When he told Primordious about this the ethereal said, “The fragment of the ever life stone will supply you with the necessary energy in place of food and water for the time being. We are not done hunting yet, so simply hold the stone for a minute when you start feeling the need for food or water.”

“That’s rather cool, I could probably save myself a lot of money on food if need be by just using that stone.”

“The stone is not made to skip meals and has limited use, so only use it when necessary!”

Noah scoffed and said, “Relax alright, it was a joke. Besides if it really does heal wounds I wouldn’t mind a second chance at life if I get in too far over my head, which seems to be what I’m doing listening to you; anyways where to now?”

“Travel along the side of the mountain until you find a path leading up, there should be numerous ones around.”

Slowly Noah started walking by the side of the mountain looking out for a path to lead him up. It didn’t take long until he found a wide one that touched down all the way to the ground at his feet. He walked up it and began his hike up the mountain.

It was slow and uneventful, but along the way he kept hearing clashes of thunder nearby but absent of the lightning strike and wondered what it was. He kept going up and only stopped once to rest. Primordious complained a little but then Noah said it was either an hour of rest or a minute of holding the ever life stone. Primordious told him both time and the stone were of utmost importance for this quest but let Noah rest given the minor circumstance.

After his rest Noah continued the hike and eventually came to the source of the thunder clashes. Part way up the mountain was a large flat ridge extending out nearly a hundred feet. Two thunder rams battled it out on this ridge and Noah saw that the only way to continue was to go into the cave past this ridge as the trail ended here.

Primordious said nothing but Noah somehow felt his annoyance at this obstacle so he said, “Well good news is I can get a couple thunder rams while we are here.”

There was a minute of only the sounds of the thunder rams clashing with one another when Primordious spoke saying, “Use lightning on them. They are a durable type against all other forces besides fire and gravity.”

Noah gathered energy into two balls of crackling lightning energy the size of his head. When they were ready he waited until the thunder rams were about to collide again and hurled the lightning balls at them both. The Rams collided and his attack hit them at the same time and exploded in a brilliant blast of electricity that hurled the Rams right into the side of the only wall.

As they struggled to get to their feet Noah pulled out two blank cards and sealed them inside. Noah than continued on after putting the cards away as Primordious said, “Send out small constant illuminations of silver winds ahead of you in the cave to light your way. It won’t be as efficient as a light spell would be but it’s all I could teach you and works better than lightning.”

Noah did so as he went through the cave, it wasn’t a straight cave passage it curved and twisted here and there but there was only one path. He went on until he saw a brilliant blue glow further in the cave and stopped sending out his wisps of silver winds. Just up ahead seeming to guard the exit of the cave passage was two electric serpents floating in the air that were nearly three times the size of Noah.

He was taken aback by them and quietly whispered, “They are a lot larger than I expected.”

“They must have been absorbing the lightning from the storms for decades to have gotten so large,” said Primordious. “Use the gale winds to keep them distracted and hammer them with rock shards. As long as you don’t let them attack this will be an easy battle.”

Noah began gathering energy and first used it to gather and harden the minerals around him for the rocks, then prepared a gale of winds for the serpents. But just as he did the serpents let out a loud shriek simultaneously and shout out twin bolts of lightning at him. He dived forward in a roll as the lightning grazed his back. He came out of the roll on his feet and summoned a gale of winds to throw the serpents off just as their next attack was coming.

The winds whipped around carrying the serpents violently in swirling pattern that always forced their attacks to miss Noah. Noah kept up the stream of winds and took a couple seconds to get his breath back, he had to use a lot of his own energy for that attack, and the serpents were playing dumb and knew he was there the whole time just waiting for him to make his move.

When he got his breath back Noah slammed the serpents against the walls a few times, mostly out of spite, and then hurled the rocks into the serpents which got stuck in their bodies and after a few moments began to start melting from the raw energy coursing through the creatures veins. Noah was about to create more rocks when Primordious said, “Let the rocks melt then widen the wounds using the winds to cut them open, now that the rocks have weakened them they will be vulnerable to the gale winds.”

Noah did as Primordious said changing the winds from a violently tossing the serpents around to a sharp cutting force. The serpents seemed to anticipate the changes and used the transition of the wind spell to attack Noah with more lightning. This time Noah was more prepared and managed to summon a shield of electric energy which took most of the blow but his arms still got a little scathed by the attack and went half numb.

He kept up the spell though until the serpents finally flopped down to the ground. Then he quickly pulled out two cards and sealed them away as fast as he could; not daring to take any more chances with those two. When he finished Primordious said, “Use the stone to heal your wounds and then continue on.”

Noah muttered something under his breath then grabbed the stone and immediately felt the pain from his wounds disappear. When he felt good enough to continue he put away the stone and moved on. The trail outside the cavern kept winding up and up until finally he reached the top of the flat baron mountain.

He walked around to the center of the top of the mountain and asked, “Alright what now?”

A couple seconds after the question Primordious appeared in front of Noah. Noah took a step back startled and asked, “How did you do that?”

“I can summon myself as I please. Do not worry; it draws nothing from your strength.”

“Okay then what are we doing up here anyways?”

Primordious kept his head tilted upwards starring at the storm above and said, “First you need to start communicating mentally stop using your mouth so much, just think what you want to say and I will hear it.”

Noah tried thinking what he was going to say a bit more until Primordious answered him that he was doing things right. Next Primordious told Noah to leave his bag there bring only one card and start to levitate. Levitation was simple enough for Noah but Primordious wanted him to go higher in the air than a foot.

Now slowly but surely Noah elevated higher and higher into the air. When Primordious thought he was ready he grabbed Noah by the wrist and said, “Keep holding on to my arm tightly and keep up with me. This will be a very dangerous trip.”

“Where are we going?”

Primordious began pulling Noah along as they flew higher and he said, “We are going into the endless storm.”