Nuthea screamed shrill and high on reflex.

A creature made of earth had just risen up out of the ground next to her. It was humanoid in shape, with no facial features, but it had hands bunched into fists.

It took a swing at her and Nuthea jumped back out of the way, screaming again.

“Bolt!” she yelled, instinctively reaching for her lightning projection, and thrust her hand out.

But no bolt came. She didn’t even feel the play of energy along her arm.

No! Not again!

The creature ran towards her, pulling back its earthen fist for another strike. She wasn’t going to have time to get out of the way.

Earth and stone clanged against metal as Sagar interposed one his blades between Nuthea and the attack.

The skypirate pushed the golem (of course Nuthea knew the proper name for these magical creatures) away with his sword and it stumbled back a couple of paces.

“Wind!” Sagar yelled, pushing his other hand forwards.

Air rushed from Sagar at the golem, but it just dug its feet into the ground, fusing with it. The wind rippled over the golem, riffling the leaves that were stuck to some of its body, but it remained completely unmoved and unharmed.

“Uh-oh…” said Sagar when his wind attack was spent.

Sense returned to Nuthea and she drew her own sword from its sheath at her side--a straight Manolian blade with a golden hilt and a wicked point. If lightning and wind weren’t going to work on these creatures, they would have to resort to steel.

The golem ran at Sagar, its feet easily detaching from the earth when it needed them to, and this time it was Nuthea’s turn to step in and block its punch with her sword.

Her blade bounced off the golem’s fist, each knocked away by the other, sending a shudder of vibrating pain down Nuthea’s arms. Whatever combination of earth and stone they were made of was tough, tough enough even to turn away Manolian steel.

The others were yelling and shouting behind her. In her peripheral vision she could see more golems moving around, but for now she had to focus on the one in front of her and Sagar.

“Thanks for the save, princess,” Sagar said. Did he have to make it sound so sarcastic? The pirate lunged forward, pressing the attack against the golem, trying a thrust with his swordpoint.

The golem didn’t respond quickly enough and this time Sagar’s sword went in to its chest area, puncturing it and sticking out the other side…

...and doing absolutely no harm to it.

The golem punched Sagar in the face with a clay fist and he fell backwards with a shout, losing his grip on his sword and landing in a heap on the floor. He did not get up.

“Sagar!” Nuthea called in concern.

There wasn’t time to tend to him now. The golem kept its momentum and strode towards Nuthea, throwing more punches at her, Sagar’s sword still embedded in its torso.

Nuthea blocked the blows with her sword, but it was so strong, and now that she saw no way of fighting back, her heart began to pulse rapidly in her chest as she began to panic.

“Someone! Help!” she cried.

The golem forced her backwards. She lifted her sword to block a particularly vicious strike, and the golem hit it so hard that it knocked it out of her hands.

Nuthea stumbled from the impact and fell backwards.

The golem stood over her and raised its two big earthen fists above its head, ready to crush her.

Nuthea raised her hand to cover her face and winced, crying out indistinctly in terror.

“Fire!” yelled Ryn’s voice from somewhere nearby.

A blast of orange flame engulfed the upper part of the golem. It stopped in its tracks at once, batting at itself to try to extinguish the flame, but its hands only caught fire. It collapsed to the ground, black smoke pouring from it, burning rapidly and writhing around. In a matter of moments it was a pile of ash--entirely consumed by the fire.

Nuthea sighed with deep relief, then retrieved her sword and stood up.

“That worked well!” she said, turning to where she thought Ryn was.

But Ryn wasn’t paying attention to her. He was ten paces away, manically throwing fire at more golems, shouting focus words one after the other but sometimes not even having the time to do that. There were so many of them, closing in in a circle around the party and, seemingly seeing Ryn as a threat, now the majority of them were advancing on him. He was struggling to keep up with the onrush of earthen warriors, blasting them with fire one by one, some of them getting dangerously close to him before he sent a barrage of flickering red and orange into them. Nuthea was sure he would not be able to keep this up forever.

She looked for the others. Huld was fighting a pair of golems with his hands. Elrann was unloading her pistols at them one by one, blowing chunks of earth out of their bodies, but the holes she left only reformed and the golems came on. Cid had his sword drawn and was desperately trying to fight his way to the fallen Sagar, whom the golems now ignored, and so was Vish, currently occupied with fighting four golems at the same time, slashing and cutting at them but unable to do any lasting damage to any of them.

Ryn was the only one who was going to be capable of halting the golems with his fire projection, but he couldn’t fight them all on his own, and he would surely run out of mana soon.

Nuthea had an idea.

“Ryn!” she yelled.

The young man turned his head to look at her as he continued to throw fire at the onrushing creatures.

“Can you localise some flame projection around my blade?”

“What?” Ryn called back.

“Can you hit my sword with a fire spell so that it lights on fire?”

“What?!”

“Just do it!” Nuthea called impatiently. “I know you can do it!” She held out her sword to him with one hand, blade pointing up.

Ryn’s brow furrowed, but all the same he sent one of his fireballs in her direction. “Fire!”

Flame leapt from Ryn’s outstretched fingers--two pointed fingers, in this case, rather than a whole thrust-out hand, perhaps because he was holding back, or perhaps because this is how his body instinctively shaped and controlled the fire to aim it more precisely.

The flames hit Nuthea’s raised swordblade…

...and settled on it. Her whole blade became enveloped in flame and glowed red hot. The fire stopped leaping from Ryn’s fingers, but it continued to burn on her blade, red and orange covering it in a leaping, incandescent aura.

“You did it!” she called. “I knew you could!”

No time. A golem was coming for her.

Nuthea sprinted towards the golem, met it head on, and brought her flaming blade down and then up in a deadly arc from right to left across its torso. Orange trailed in its wake.

The blade tore through the golem’s body with barely any resistance at all and passed out the other side of it, severing it in two. At the same time, the earth golem caught fire.

It collapsed to the ground in two halves, and both halves thrashed around uselessly while they burned.

“It works!” Nuthea cried in elation. She turned. Ryn was still desperately throwing fire at the golems, sometimes missing, sometimes hitting, while the others were struggling to fend them off. “Ryn!” she shouted. “It worked! Do the same thing for the others!”

“They’re a bit busy right now!” Ryn called back.

Nuthea looked for them. They were losing ground to the golems, getting forced backwards and closer together. Huld was now dealing with three at once, catching their fists with his palms or blocking them with his forearms, throwing back punches and kicks of his own, but with little effect. Elrann stood behind and to one side of him, still desperately trying to slow their advance with her pistols, apparently not knowing what else to do and unwilling to try her whip on them. Cid was now fighting off two together with his sword, only barely managing to defend himself, but not to retaliate. But Vish had about six on him now, dancing and weaving around them as he held them at bay.

Him first.

“Shadowfinger Vish!” Nuthea cried. “To me!”

The Shadowfinger looked up from his combat, saw her, then bent his knees and kicked off from the ground, executing one of his astonishing leaps, soaring upwards, twisting round in midair, and landing smartly next to her.

“What?” the Shadowfinger said irritably, as though he had been interrupted from doing something he enjoyed, though it may have also been from frustration at the golems.

“Hold up your blade! Let Ryn season it with fire!”

“What?!”

Why don’t people just listen to me? Nuthea thought. I’m clearly the most intelligent and knowledgeable member of this adventuring party. And I’m royalty.

“It won’t hurt you,” she said hurriedly. “It’s a cooperative elemental projection technique. I’ve seen it done with lightning back home in Manolia, though I’ve not learned how to do it yet. But it works with fire too. Look. She held up her own flaming sword by way of explanation.”

Vish slitted his eyes at her, but then held up his black sword in front of him without saying another word.

“Ryn!” Nuthea called. “Over here!”

Ryn looked over mid-spell, then hurriedly threw a hand out to perform the same technique on Vish’s sword that he had done for Nuthea’s.

Fire jumped from his pointed fingers to set Vish’s blade alight, too.

The Shadowfinger’s eyes went wide as he held it up to look at it, the fire now continually burning on his blade reflecting in his grey irises.

“Try again now!” said Nuthea.

“Argh!” Ryn cried out.

He had dropped to his knees and doubled over from exhaustion, putting both hands out on the ground. He must be out of mana, or almost out of it. His eyes were shut in pain or concentration.

The flames coming from Nuthea’s and Vish’s swords died down momentarily, but then Ryn grunted with exertion and they returned to their former intensity and brightness.

Of course. He needs to concentrate to keep the flames burning on our swords.

“Hold on, Ryn!” Nuthea called. “We’re coming!”

She ran towards the golems about to plough into Ryn, even as Vish leapt into the air. He came down before she reached them, setting upon them as a vicious streak of black and red, slicing earthen arms and legs from bodies, severing their heads, or just cutting them in half entirely. Nuthea joined him, and together the two of them tore through the golems, their swords making streaks of red and orange in the air. In no time at all they had made their way back to Ryn and the others, and Nuthea pierced the back of the golem that was nearest to Cid, then ripped her sword out of it by kicking it to the floor. Vish made quick work of the golems besetting Elrann and Huld.

In a matter of moments, all the golems lay in pieces on the ground, burning up into nothing but dust and dirt.

Nuthea and Vish had defeated them easily with their flame-assisted weapons.

Cid ran over to the fallen form of Sagar at once and knelt down next to him, placing both his hands on the skypirate’s head. “Cure,” he said.

“Urrrrrrrggghh,” said Sagar as he came back to consciousness. “What the hells happened?”

“One of them got you,” Nuthea called over from where she stood. “I don’t think wind attacks are going to be very effective against earth elementals.”

“Rrrrr,” growled Sagar quietly.

“That’s a cool trick, princess-girl,” said Elrann closer by, pointing at Nuthea’s sword with one of her pistols.

Nuthea looked at the still flaming blade. “Wait...Ryn!”

Her eyes found the flame-wielding farmboy nearby, still kneeling on the ground with both hands on it, hunched over, his eyes scrunched shut, concentrating hard.

She sprinted over to him.

“Ryn, it’s alright!” she said. “We beat the golems! You can quench the flames on my and Shadowfinger Vish’s swords now!”

Ryn whimpered, and the flames around Nuthea’s swordblade died down. His arms trembled, then gave way completely, and he fell face down onto the earth, lying flat on his front.

“Grandfather!” Nuthea called out at once. “I think he’s hurt! Ryn needs help too!”

Cid ran over as quickly as he could and knelt next to Ryn now, putting a hand on his head.

“He’s spent all his mana…” Cid said. “Cure.”

Ryn sighed a note of relief. He opened his eyes, and shakily pushed himself up, then rearranged himself so he was sitting on the ground.

“That’s better, he said, rubbing his hands. Why did that hurt so much?”

“If you keep projecting when all your mana is spent, it causes you physical damage and pain,” said Cid. “The magic draws its energy directly from the body’s physical resources, rather from the spent mana pool. I will need to give you some of my mana too. He placed a hand on Ryn’s shoulder. “Esuna.”

Ryn shut his eyes again for a moment and his head rocked back. “Woah. I can feel my projection powers are back. Thanks Cid.

“That’s alright, lad. It seems that we are going to be relying on your abilities quite a lot inside this Shrine… I have a larger mana pool than you, as I’m more experienced and have been at this longer, but I still only have a finite supply.”

“It feels like I have...more than before,” said Ryn. “Is that because of you?”

“No,” said Cid, “that’s because you just pushed your mana beyond its limit, so your capacity has grown now that you’ve been healed. It’s a very dangerous but nonetheless a, aha, very sure-fire way to increase your mana capacity. It’s a bit like forcing a sustained limit break. I just topped up your newly increased reserves; I can’t increase your capacity for you.”

“What’s a limit break?”

“I’ll explain another time.”

“Oh. Well, thanks, anyway.”

“No problem.”

The others came over too.

“That was good thinking there, princess-girl,” said Elrann. “Your little trick probably saved our lives.”

“It was nothing”, Nuthea said, completely sincerely. “I’ve seen a similar thing done with lightning in Manolia, so I just had the idea to repeat it with fire.”

“Yeah,” said Sagar, “well done and everything, I’m sure we’re all glad that’s over, but it doesn’t actually help us get into the Shrine, does it?”

“Er,” said Ryn, “actually it does.” He pointed.

At some time while they had been talking, the doors to the Earth Shrine had opened, inwards, revealing an earthen corridor beyond which receded into darkness.

“Well that’s creepy,” said Elrann.

“Most peculiar…” said Huld.

“Looks like we’re going in then,” said Sagar.

“Wait!” said Nuthea. “We need to talk about our strategy. It would appear that wind and lightning attacks were ineffective against these golems. No need to tell them that I didn’t even get a chance to test my lightning on them. What’s happening to me? I’ll have to ask Cid about it later.

“Where did those things come from, anyway?” said Ryn. “Huld?”

“I… I’m not sure, said the monk. I have never encountered such creatures anywhere in Farr before…” He seemed somewhat shaken.

“Cid?” said Ryn.

Grandfather stroked his beard. “My best guess is that they were created by the Earth Emerald itself. The Jewels have a...habit of making themselves difficult to be found. It doesn’t mean that they are impossible to obtain, as we know, but they can be very difficult to get hold of. My guess is that the Emerald quite enjoys being shut up here, surrounded by all this Earth, and so raised those guardians with its magic. This sort of thing does happen. But we appear to have passed the test, because they have stopped appearing.”

“Great,” said Captain Sagar. “Well, thanks for the warning, Old Timer.”

“I did not know if such things would happen here or not…” Grandfather said defensively. “I have only encountered them happening on a few occasions before…”

“Never mind,” said Ryn, “like you said, we’ve beaten them now. Let’s go inside and get this jewel.”

“That’s easy for you to say, farmboy,” said Elrann. “Your fire worked well on them. The rest of us are a bit more defenceless.”

“That’s a good point,” Nuthea said. “Ryn, it seems we will need to rely on you if we encounter any more...earth enemies. You should conserve your mana as much as possible.”

“That’s right,” said Grandfather. “I topped you up, and I have a bigger mana pool than you due to my experience, but I don’t have infinite reserves and I’m starting to run low. Make sure you don’t burn through yours too quickly, or we might really get into trouble.”

“That cooperative technique you had him perform was useful,” said Shadowfinger Vish unexpectedly. Vish almost never spoke up in the group. Everyone else looked just as surprised as Nuthea. “Make sure you save enough ‘mana’ to do that again, if we need you to.”

“I’ll do my best,” said Ryn with unforced sincerity. Nuthea decided she liked that trait of his. It was growing on her. “Come on. It’s time to enter this Earth Shrine.”

And in they went.