Gerhold and Celaina had just found a defensible position when the mountain shook. They exchanged concerned glances, wondering if the earthquake had anything to do with the ceremony they were trying to interrupt. Tremors weren’t typical in this area, so they couldn’t imagine what else it could be, but they also didn’t have time to think about it as they saw the first group of supplicant warriors approaching.

The paladins had picked an elevated spot that limited the number of attackers they would ever have to face at once and allowed for an initial ambush. Their previous position on a ledge overlooking the temple entrance was defensible, but they would eventually be overrun and had nowhere to fall back. Now, as they eyed up the half dozen fighters that drew close, they knew they would be able to take out two quickly in a surprise attack, and then if the other four proved to be too much, they could retreat along a path that ran further down the mountain. Years of snow melts had carved numerous trails and routes through the mountains, and if they weren’t careful, they could get lost easily.

The approaching fighters grew cautious as the ground shook, and the mountain reacted with uncharacteristic groans and creaks. A few minor avalanches fell as drifts already weakened by the warming weather slid down the incline, often impeding the approach of the warriors. They had no choice but to trudge through the snow and were cold and soggy when the older paladins jumped out of hiding.

The supplicants were mainly volunteer fighters, capable of wielding a sword or axe but not proficient to the level of a trained soldier. They desired status with the Supplanter and the benefits that would entail, so the seasoned knights took down the first two men with ease, delivering debilitating wounds and knocking them back into the fresh snow the others were still working through.

One of the men in the back had a loaded crossbow hanging from his waist, and he brought it up and fired once his fellow combatants had fallen out of line. Gerhold saw the bolt aimed at him and quickly dove back for his cover. The shot ricocheted off the stone above him as his old frame collided hard with the rock at his feet. He wondered for a moment if it wouldn’t have been better to chance the shot glancing off his armor, but old instincts die hard.

Celaina sprang to defend her fallen husband, taking on the next two in line, deflecting one attack with her short sword and blocking the other with her buckler. She needed to find an advantage quickly against the younger and faster enemies before their friends behind overwhelmed her when another tremor rocked the mountain, nearly throwing everyone from their feet. Gerhold had just struggled to his knees, and Celaina dove back on top of him as she heard the ice pop and crack above her.

A tremendous wave of snow slid off the slope above them, wiping out the path toward their position and burring the six men who had stood before them. The snow swept down the mountainside, filling the trail they had just traversed like mortar in a cracked brick wall. Had Celaina not dove behind the small outcropping they had been using for cover, she would have been buried too. As it stood, only her feet were covered, and she quickly extracted them as her husband let out another groan.

After untangling himself from her, he didn’t add any complaints as he saw the fate she had saved them from. He felt sorry for the buried men but being instantly crushed was preferable to bleeding out from a sword wound. They saw no point in staying there and noticed their fallback route had been sheltered from the avalanche by the same outcropping they had used for cover. With only one direction open to them, they sheathed their weapons and quickly made their way down, hoping to avoid both enemies and further avalanches.

Persephone and Terrance slowly worked their way down from the upper levels, creeping through the halls of the building. The distraction the older paladins had provided effectively drew most of the available fighters to the front of the temple, and the intruders met little resistance slinking through the complex. A few women moved about the temple but weren’t armed and didn’t appear to be fighters. Persephone was able to intimidate or incapacitate them without drawing her weapons or sounding an alarm. At least, nothing that would be heard over the commotion below.

They had made it to the balcony overlooking the vast entry chamber when the first tremor hit. It was subtle but, as cautious as the pair were, they immediately noticed it. The fighters racing about below, preparing to repel an attack, were less aware, but several stopped and looked around. Without any immediate effect on the temple, they didn’t contemplate the strange occurrence long and were soon scurrying about again, collecting weapons, passing out shields, and filling quivers.

The two intruders didn’t see a safe way down to the entry, which was the heart of the temple from which all the major arteries and hallways proceeded. They would probably need to pass through that chamber if they were to find the dungeon or chapel.

The second earthquake had a more profound impact on the people below.

“The mountains are collapsing!”

A large woman standing directly beneath them in the arched entry to the temple screamed the announcement, and now everyone dropped what they were doing and raced outside onto the ledge. Terrance saw that a window looked out onto the front of the temple further down their balcony, and he led Persephone in that direction. They looked on in shock as the peaks standing before the building shed their snowbanks like soapsuds in a shower. It did look like the mountains were crumbling before them, but both observers understood it was just the snow. Still, anyone caught on those peaks would have little chance of survival. They knew that was where Gerhold and Celaina were and silently prayed they would be okay.

As mesmerizing as the scene in front of them was, they couldn’t pass up this opportunity to make their way into the temple proper. They sprinted for the stairway to the lower chamber and swept over the few distracted women like the avalanches that stole their attention. Neither attacker felt the need to deliver fatal blows, and soon half a dozen supplicants lay about on the floor.

Terrance was convinced they would evade this potential roadblock with little difficulty when Quarton stepped out of a hallway and moved before them. Persephone and the fallen paladin had never seen each other before, and Terrance felt that each was about to vastly underestimate the other. He was only half right.

The tall woman ran up to the enforcer, his sword out and ready, already seeing that this islander was someone to take seriously. Persephone side-stepped back and forth as she closed the distance between them, alternating from Quarton’s right and left. He refused to be fooled by the repetitive feints, and as the woman centered her charge right before contact, he braced himself and brought his massive sword sweeping in to cut her in half.

The acrobat was ready and dropped to the floor, rolling the last few feet and leaping straight up before him after the sword swept over her head. She still hadn’t drawn a weapon but led with the palm of her right hand and found the strong chin of her opponent. Quarton’s head snapped back from the violent attack, and his feet left the stone before he flopped to his back, motionless on the floor.

Persephone didn’t even give him a second look as she continued to race passed him, having barely broken stride during the attack. Terrance added a kick to the head of the paladin traitor and continued after his partner. Now nothing impeded their penetration deeper into enemy territory.

Sera scooped up her axe as she charged the floating prince, the diamond embedded in her palm pressed against the weapon’s handle, giving her a solid grip. She leaped as she attacked, expecting her enemy to try and dodge upward. He did, and Sera felt suddenly weaker with her feet leaving the cool stone beneath her. Her attack still blasted into his legs, but they were suddenly insubstantial, her blade passing through them as if they were mist.

Dantell laughed and extended his arms toward the leaping woman, sending forth a tremendous burst of lightning. She wasn’t holding the heart weapon, and the axe gave her no extra protection in the air. The attack struck her hard and rocketed her back into the floor, cracking the stone dais. It hurt, but her body was as strong as the stone she hit, and Sera popped back up, her eyes never leaving the prince as he continued to soar upwards. She once again felt the stability the mountain gave her on her feet. Let him have the air, she thought. I have the earth.

Extending both arms downward, Sera beckoned to the stone floor and snapped her hands up into the air as if flipping an imaginary table. The stone responded to her call, and a stalagmite rose from the ground, as wide as a tower spire. It shot into the air directly below the prince. With his eyes on the woman, he almost didn’t see the attack, but he adjusted, releasing the torrent of wind he was preparing to the side, sending him in the opposite direction and allowing the stone pillar to rise unhindered until it crashed violently with the domed roof shaking the entire cavern, and sending dust and debris falling from the ceiling.

The prince was difficult to see in the haze, but his coughing fit soon marked him for the aggressive young woman, and she sent a gout of flame in his direction. It had little effect on the water joined human, but the intensity of the attack had a dramatic impact on the rock above him. The heat bubbled and cracked the stone, large chunks falling around him. He still couldn’t see well, the flame adding more confusion to his disorientation. As the hot rocks pelted him, he lost his concentration on the air and was forced to the ground unceremoniously, hitting hard. A pile of debris covered him quickly, and Sera ran forward to inspect her work.

The pile of rocks didn’t stay in place for long as a mighty wind picked up and spun them around him with hurricane force. Sera nimbly dodged the first three stones hurled in her direction, but the next 20 took her off her feet and slammed her into the post where she had been shackled. The pillar broke cleanly off, and Sera tumbled back off the raised platform as the rocks flew over her head. Ethan was lying just out of reach of the attack, and Sera realized she couldn’t just destroy this cavern to defeat the prince, or others would die as well.

She jumped effortlessly back onto the dais, not a scratch on her. Before her, Dantell stood bruised and bloodied but seemingly unaffected by the wounds as he continued to build a massive storm around himself. And as severe as the injuries looked on him, they healed so fast that Sera couldn’t even count them all before the first ones were gone. One of them was impervious, and the other was immortal. This would be a trying battle.

As Sera wondered how she could combat this powerful enemy, she noticed that the storm he was building was about at its climax. The center of the whirlwind had moved away from him and now filled the center of the domed cavern, with ever-increasing lightning jumping out from the dark mass and illuminating the carvings on the ceiling. She felt the hair on her arms stand upright before the ultimate strike and was able to toss Ethan out of the way before the bolt struck.

The lightning was as if the Divine Creator Himself had stabbed a massive sword into the stone floor. The mountain shook even more than before, and Sera disappeared from view as a chasm opened, splitting the dais in two and ripping the entire cavern in half, swallowing up many of the dead islanders inside.

Prince Dantell floated gently up and over to the remaining platform, looking pleased with himself. He glanced over at Ethan huddled at the feet of Emoyen, who looked like she was still holding on to a spark of life she wouldn’t let go. He looked over at Quinsha and saw the pregnant woman had fainted and was out cold.

Returning his eyes to the spot where Sera had just been standing, he watched in awe as the young woman climbed slowly out of the crack in the floor. Her clothes were torn, and she had a weary look on her face, but she wasn’t out of it yet, and still didn’t have a scratch on her. She might be impervious, but she didn’t have an endless supply of life energy, and he felt he would eventually be able to knock her unconscious, and then he could take the time to use the weapons to steal the Elementals from her.

With the storm still raging in the center of the cavern, he called lightning down on the woman, tossing her about the vast chamber as if she were a marble in a children’s game, constantly being flicked back and forth by each strike. None of the attacks were as powerful as the one that had sundered the floor, but they effectively wore her down.

Sera tried to dodge the strikes, faking one direction and then leaping in another, but a surge of electricity coursed through her without fail, no matter where she went. Often, they impacted her without her feet touching the earth to ground her, and those attacks rattled her teeth and sent pain searing through her mind. Dantell laughed at her futile attempts to dodge his strikes. “Stupid girl. I can read your mind. I know exactly what you are going to do. There is no escape. Admit defeat.”

Well, if there is no point in dodging. . . she thought and picked herself up from the last strike and leaped toward the prince. Lightning met her again in the air, and she crashed down violently to the raised platform but popped back up to give the would-be storm god a deathly cold stare. She had lost her axe a while ago and stood empty-handed before him. He responded by sending another bolt straight through the top of her head. The sight from only a few dozen feet away was terrifying. He saw the electricity flash through the young woman, her clothes barely more than tatters blowing about in the static burst, and the stone floor exploding at her feet as the energy crashed into the ground.

“My turn,” she said, and the ground under Dantell’s feet turned instantly to lava.

True to his word, he read her mind and floated off the ground to avoid the liquid trap. He also sensed what she was going to do next but wasn’t prepared for the speed of the eruption that shot up in a fountain all around him. The water elemental protected him from the heat, but the liquid rock turned to hardened stone around him, entombing him before he could escape. Sera poured more and more energy into the trap, building a cylinder over a dozen feet thick but careful to keep it confined and away from the mortals nearby.

When she thought the prison was as large as she could safely make it, she relaxed and ran over to Emoyen and Ethan. Somehow, the paladin was still alive, and Sera easily broke off her restraints and prepared to carry her and Ethan over to a safer section of the cavern if such a thing existed.

“Seraphima,” Emoyen gasped, and Sera stopped. “You must . . . “ but she didn’t have the strength. Sera noticed the dagger was still impaling her and hastily removed it, covering the open wound with her hand. With her connection to the body Elemental now powered by passion, she was able to close the hole, but as she tried to call down additional healing to bring back the paladin’s strength, she felt a tug of war going on inside the dying woman, and any life-giving force she added was sucked away into oblivion.

“No,” Emoyen managed, finding her breath once the knife had been removed. “It’s no use healing me. He will just steal it. You . . . you need a fresh life.”

Sera held the dagger in her hand, trying to understand what the woman was saying. Fifty feet away, the volcanic tower she had created vibrated violently, ready to burst apart any second. She looked back to Emoyen and could see the woman was fading fast. “He gave his life to save you,” she said, barely whispering. “You need to accept it.”

Sera thought she knew what the paladin was saying, but she hated the mere suggestion of it. “No, there has to be another way!” But Emoyen didn’t answer as her eyes finally closed. Sera could tell that the woman wasn’t dead yet, but she wouldn’t last long. As long as she lived, Dantell would not have secured the mind Elemental inside him, and she might be able to disrupt him. But to wrestle that away from him, she would need another life. As the stone pillar across the platform finally exploded in a violent display of sparks, Sera moved to where Ethan lay, barely conscious. She absentmindedly shielded him and Emoyen from the explosion as massive chunks of rock burst against her back from a storm that was even more massive than the first one the prince had summoned. She ignored it, focusing on the young man before her.

“I love you,” she said, knowing he didn’t have the strength to respond. And then, as a whirlwind of hatred prepared to detonate her position with an attack that would blow a hole through the entire mountain, she stabbed the dagger deep into Ethan’s chest.