Chapter Nineteen

Elysia turned toward her sister with a bright smile, almost making her regret not going with Ione. “How confident are you in filling up a ravine?”

“A ravine?”

“I figured you wouldn’t remember that geography lesson. Didn’t you ever wonder why the south side of town always flooded in a heavy storm?”

Realization dawned Sereia’s eyes to wander toward the south. From their vantage point, they could see over the mayor’s house, toward a section of town flooded a little further than the rest. However, after a moment, her gaze snapped back to her sister. “You want me to flood the rest of the ravine? Do you have any idea how much water that would take?”

Elysia’s smile turned smug. “Of course, if you had to flood it on your own.”

Her twin narrowed her eyes as she willed her to explain. Which after a few moments pause to create suspense, Elysia continued. “Apparently you didn’t pay attention in history class, either. This wasn’t the first time the town flooded. When the town outgrew its original boundaries, those in charge in the 40s decided to expand into the old mine which created the ravine.”

Elysia scowled. “Of course, as with all shortsighted ideas, those who implemented the problem were long gone by the time their mistake became apparent. In the 80s, a massive storm pummeled the area, eroding the last strip of land blocking the ravine from the ocean. Like their predecessors, instead of abandoning the flooded section and moving to the high ground forest land, they created a levy and pumped the water out.”

Catching on, Sereia cut in. “So you want me to create a wave large enough to destroy the levy?”

Worry needled at Elysia as she stared in the direction of where the levy should be. “That’s the plan if it still exists.”

Despite knowing the answer, Sereia asked, “what if it doesn’t exist?”

“We will have to abandon Umbra. Of course, we would stop her from sinking, but there would be no way we could sneak her out of town. Unlike you, I don’t want to play keep away from a bunch of water elementals. Even if we escape through the ravine, I’m not sure we will escape the elementals. They, for sure, have a way to track us.”

Instead of initiating the plan right away, Elysia sat down and dangled her legs over the edge unafraid of the massive fall if she were to slip off. Her twin followed suit, both watching Ione toy with the raft which barely reached a quarter of the way toward the fleet.

Ione just had to play with her prey. Not that she could blame her. Compared to the hunting playground of Mezo, their current environment was boring. At least to a young feline like Ione.

She wondered if the elementals even knew about Ione. The only ones who saw her in action were either dead or back at Mezo. Despite their rather rude expulsion, she doubted Alex, or any changed ratted them out to the elementals, either.

Even though Ione played a bit with her prey, she never showed herself above the surface. Though they probably assumed it was Sereia who saved the humans.

At that thought, Elysia suddenly stood then jogged toward the collapsed lighthouse. If they assumed Sereia performed the rescue, then they wouldn’t expect waterworks somewhere else. Time to test if her sister had at least Olympic level human athleticism.

Once past the collapsed lighthouse, she took off in a sprint, though not with the boost from her lightning. Plodding of feet behind her told Elysia her twin followed, so she picked up the pace just a little.

Annoyed images flashed through their bond, but instead of slowing down, she took that as a cue to run faster. Worst case, if her twin fell behind, she could always use their bond to find her.

In fact, that was an excellent idea. She doubted her twin could keep up at her full speed, anyway. The faster she reached the levy, the faster they found out if their plan might work.

She sent a catch me if you can image to her sister before taking off in a full sprint, leaving sparks of violet lightning in her wake. Far faster than any human could follow, she wove through the trees, spearing through the road in the levy’s direction.

A shiver ran through her as she thought about the last time she ran in that direction. She really should’ve looked in both directions before crossing the road. To be fair, she ran down that old logging road dozens of times and saw no one at that intersection. Still, she should have known better.

What would’ve happened if the semi didn’t kill her? Would she still be a lightning elemental? Going by what happened to Sereia, she probably would’ve ended up as a lightning elemental, anyway.

She couldn’t change the past, so she may as well not dwell on it. Not that it was easy to disregard lessons from the past. If she ignored the lessons from the past, she was doomed to repeat them. Though at the same time, those who learned from the past were also doomed to watch others repeat the mistakes they avoided. Really one was doomed either way.

Distracted, she nearly face planted into a tree, just barely dodging it with a sidestep, then a spin to avoid another tree. Before she turned into an elemental pinball, she slowed herself to regain control, hearing the sound of footsteps behind her.

Pride filled her upon finding her sister almost keeping up, but with it came a desire to be first. Sereia maybe her in the water but no way would she allow her to win on land. Her veins shined under her armor as lightning pumped through her body. With a trail of sparks, she shot off faster than before.

Her vision slowed, allowing her to weave through the trees despite her ludicrous pace. Soon she crossed reached the ravine, finding it half flooded, but on the side toward town not the ocean giving her hope the levy still stood. Though just the fact it wasn’t flooded already didn’t give her confidence. If the levy still existed, how did it survive the massive wave that swallowed half the town? She supposed she would find out soon.

The forest covered road grew denser as she ran along the county road which ran parallel with the ravine. It was the very county road the semi traveled along that night. She tried her best to not think about it, but then she reached the intersection. Despite being obscured by dense forest, her eyes locked onto the lumber road now more like a narrow path. Her mind flashed through the maze of lumber roads she ran down, causing her to remember a shortcut. She planted her left foot, turning on a dime toward the lumber road only to regret it seconds later. The paved and gravel roads resisted the growth of trees, but the dirt lumber road didn’t. It couldn’t even be considered a path anymore, just a forest.

Without thinking twice about it, she skidded to a stop, almost crashing into a tree, then shot back out onto the county road. Even if it was a shortcut, there was no way she could navigate in the dense forest. It was hard to avoid getting lost before the merge. There was no way she would pull that off now.

Despite knowing there wasn’t any vehicles, she stopped at the intersection and looked both ways. To her left, she caught sight of her twin sprinting toward her, using her water to bounce off any tree she failed to avoid physically.

Maybe she should have told Sereia to swim to the levy. Though if she didn’t know it existed, she probably wouldn’t find it without her help.

Done with her twin watching, Elysia took off down the county road once more, reaching inhuman speeds within moments. As she remembered, the county road curved to the south, running along the coast, forcing her to turn right off the county road. Upon looking down, she spotted remnants of a gravel road, but even before the merge, the road was poorly maintained.

Fortunately, unlike the logging road, she didn’t need to follow the road to avoid getting lost. All she needed to do was follow the coast and she would eventually reach the levy. At least that was the plan until she heard a growl. Right in front of her was an absolutely massive bear, forcing her to skid to a halt. The bear took a swipe at her approaching form, forcing Elysia to slide under the razor-sharp clawed paw.

On instinct, she released a single-strand lightning bolt aimed at the bear’s chest, then jumped back. The smell of burned flesh hit her nostrils as the lightning bolt tore through the bear like it was nothing, killing it instantly.

Curious, she checked the notification.

Killed Grizzly Bear Level 10.

Poor bear, it never stood a chance. Maybe that was why she hadn’t ran into any wildlife outside of towns or really inside the non-dungeon part of towns. Since they didn’t scale to the dungeon, they avoided the area near dungeons. That was just a guess, though.

A rather uneducated guess, as she didn’t venture far from the shore. Even where she was now was at most a couple hundred meters from the ocean. Maybe one day she would explore what laid in land. To the annoyance of her family, as they preferred water.

There was so much left to explore it would probably take her years to even scratch the surface, and that was just counting the changed sections of earth, not the new land.

Since she wasn’t human anymore, how long would she live? The last coming-of-age dungeon island was fifty years ago from what she heard, yet Thrazk was still considered fairly young by his people, so maybe leveling increased lifespan. That could just be their race, though. Even pre-merge, there were several reptile species who lived longer than humans.

Still, somehow she doubted an elemental would only live a century. That meant she had plenty of time to explore the world once she got the pesky elemental council off her family’s back.

Before she fell down that particular rabbit hole, she took off in a sprint once more. This time she couldn’t go as fast with the dense forest in her way. Not that she had to go far as the gravel road suddenly ended at a surprisingly intact garage.

Core pulsing with anxiety, she circled around the garage then laid her eyes on the mound of gravel and dirt that was the levy. It survived, but not unscathed. The ocean lapped at the top of it, sometimes splashing over based on the pond in the ravine.

If they didn’t take the ravine out, she doubted it would last much longer. She wasn’t even sure how it survived the wave as it was. Though, according to Sereia, a water elemental directed the wave toward the town, so maybe it missed the levy.

She walked up and down the levy, examining if her weaknesses and the ravine beyond it as she waited for her twin to arrive. As she remembered it from her runs, the ravine itself was pretty deep at least a five meters, giving her hope Umbra would fit if they flooded it, though it would be difficult to avoid the submerged trees and buildings.

On the fifth pass along the fifty meter long levy, her twin showed up. A blast of annoyance and various creative ways of torturing her all involving water pumped through their bond, though it stopped soon after as Sereia scanned the levy, then the ocean.

Sereia nodded to herself, then jumped into the ocean, turning into a mermaid midair. Several seconds passed before a green tinted wave appeared a couple hundred meters from shore, building size and speed as it approached.

Elysia’s eyes widened at the size of the wave, creating seemingly without effort by her twin, causing her to almost forget to get out of the way. Just before the wave crashed down, Elysia sprinted toward the garage. Then she turned back to see the aftermath, only to receive a blast of water sending her sprawling.