Leera opened her eyes.

Her hands swam in palm-shaped pools of melted snow. In the reflection of the clear water, she saw Aelar with a twisted look on his face, swinging the sword in a wide arc.

Leera blinked. She saw the gleaming surface of the edge, and how it consisted of tiny black spheres, strung together in triangular formations. The beauty of the endlessly repeated pattern, shaped by the master smiths of ancient time, flashed through her mind – so hard and sharp, yet so delicate and smooth.

The blade connected with her neck. But instead of rupturing her flesh, the steel liquefied and splashed off her skin. A river of molten metal rolled over her shoulder and down her right arm. It felt soft and cold as it coiled around her wrist. She willed it into the shape of a bracer and elbow-guard, inspired by the one Maya wore. The amount of control she had was astounding. She shaped the edges into leaves and painted the steel with clouds and snowflakes, which turned into engravings when the bracer solidified.

Felthorne, who was in the middle of a drawn-out cackle, suddenly lost his voice and started coughing instead. Aelar stumbled backward, slipping on the snow, and, for a moment, losing the buoyant grace that he usually carried himself with.

Leera filled her lungs with the icy mountain air and turned her face toward the churning clouds. Just like with the steel of the sword, she could see the texture of the wind and all the multi-colored particles – the tiny building blocks of the world. Everything suddenly made sense. It was all connected – the wind, the snow, the mountainside, even the tiny flame that had appeared in the fire-bender's palm, were all made up from the tiny spherical elements.

She held out her hand in front of her – it shimmered and shifted in a palette of dazzling black, white, red, orange, and green. Aelar’s skin was the same as hers and the Sky Knights’ – it was the same as the earth-bender’s and the fire-bender’s, and the same as Felthorne’s.

“We are all the same…” she whispered, and her feet left the ground.

I need to see them all, she thought and rose on wings of sparkling light – the tiny particles of the air collaborating and conjoining, carrying her upward. She had to know every element – touch them with her hands… feel them in her mind… bend them.

“I must find Quick…” Leera mumbled.

“Kill her!” cried Felthorne. “Kill her now!”

The Ignis woman’s eyes turned into globes of swirling flames. She held out her palms, and torrents of liquid fire roared into the air.

“No more killing,” Leera said and threw out her arms, pulling the air apart around the firestorm, instantly smothering it.

The fire-bender fell to one knee and groaned, completely drained. The earth-bender flexed his muscles, the veins in his thick neck swelled, and his eyes lit up like emeralds.

“Die, Caelica!” he bellowed and hurled the stone casket at Leera.

“I said…” Leera split the rock in half, letting the two shards sail past her before taking control of them, sending them straight back down, “NO MORE KILLING!”

The casket shards hit the center of the plateau with a deafening crack, drowning out the thunder above. A deep fissure from the impact split the mountain in two, leaving Aelar and Felthorne on opposite sides of a steep chasm.

Felthone whispered something to his exhausted companions, and together they retreated down the far side of the broken mountain. Aelar, however, took Claria in his arms and looked up at Leera.

“Get her,” he said.

The Sky Knights shifted uncomfortably.

“What are you waiting for, you imbeciles!” screamed Aelar. “Get her!”

The knights stirred and drew their blades in unison.

“The wind shall not carry you,” Leera said and thinned out the air above the Sky Knights.

Their running starts took them only a couple of feet upward before they twitched like jumping fish, and flopped headlong into the snow.

With the wind blasting through her hair, Leera set course back toward Oceanpeak. A smile touched her lips for the first time in days.