Mercedes Lackey - Phoenix and Ashes

Real fire, physical fire, suddenly sprang up in a circle around them, following the line of the shields and setting fire to the undergrowth. It was a waist-high perimeter of flame that kept Alison and her minions from getting at her victims physically.

Reggie couldn't do exactly the same thing—but he could call a storm-wind, to lash at their adversaries with the branches of trees and bushes—and he did. Carolyn shrieked with indignation, and Warrick Locke ducked.

"Get them!" Alison shouted furiously over the howling wind, as her hair escaped from its pins and whipped in tendrils around her head, like the snakes of a Medusa.

Reggie expected another attack on their shields, and indeed, one came, a dull blow that actually drove the shields back a little. It didn't matter; the Elemental Fire devoured the rest of the attack, and the line of physical fire simply followed the shields, and Locke shook his head, when Alison gestured furiously at him.

And the glow of power faded a bit from the megaliths. He felt his heart leap—either she was losing control of it and it was sliding back into quiescence, or else she was draining it with her attacks. In either case, unless she found another source of power soon, she would be reduced to her own resources—

That was the moment when she seized Warrick Locke's wrist, shouted something incomprehensible—

And Locke screamed in fear and pain, falling to his knees, as he aged fifty years in a handful of seconds. A few seconds more, and Alison dropped his wrist, and the lifeless, withered hulk of what had been a man fell to the side, no longer moving.

Where did she get that? He knew what it was, in theory. Earth Masters healed—and so could harm. They grew—and so knew how to destroy. They could give life—and take it. It was what made them so dangerous when they went to the bad. Shocked to the core, Reggie just stared.

Both her daughters were equally shocked, and as a consequence, didn't react quickly enough when their mother seized both of their wrists. "No!" he shouted—not that he cared for them, and they had certainly been ready to consign him to whatever fate Alison had prepared for him, but no one should die like that—

But Alison was evidently not ready to kill her own flesh and blood. Quite.

Though the creatures she cast aside, first Carolyn, then Lauralee, were never going to attract anyone's attention again, except as objects of pity.

Alison turned towards them again, her eyes glowing with rage and power, her hands crooked into claws. And all around her, the stones were incandescent with terrible power.

She gestured with a crooked finger, and the earth rose in a wave and crushed out the physical fire over half of the periphery of the shields, leaving behind only the shields of Elemental Fire and Air themselves as protection.

Eleanor swallowed down fear and nausea, and tried to think. Their shields weren't going to hold, not for long, since they were feeding off nothing but her own strength. There had to be a way to stop her!

She held onto Reggie's arm, and backed up a step, so that he did the same. A slow, terrible smile stretched Alison's lips in a dreadful mockery of pleasure. She gestured again, and this time it was a horde of those horrible gnome-things that rose up out of the raw earth and flung themselves at the shields.

Eleanor gathered her wits, and called her Salamanders.

Once again, faithful and protective, they came, leaping out of the flames of the dying fires, dashing towards Alison's gnomes.

But they were joined by something Eleanor had never seen before; slender, sinuous things like legless dragons. They didn't seem to have much in the way of attacking ability, but whenever they whipped themselves around a Salamander, the Fire Elemental grew markedly larger or brighter—or both.

The Salamanders reached the line of gnomes, and this time, the gnomes didn't run.

There were more of them than there were Salamanders, and they swarmed the Fire Elementals, threatening to pull them down. But whatever the Salamanders came into contact with burst into flame.

The Salamanders weren't getting off unscathed, however; the gnomes had heavy clubs and spears, and they were perfectly prepared to use them.

Then a dozen of them got through, and Reggie lurched forwards to interpose himself between them and her. Two frantic Salamanders raced towards them, and a Sylph, a delicate, winged creature, suddenly popped into existence, hovering in midair. The Salamanders got one each, and the fairy-like being might have looked delicate, but she accounted for the other four with her bow and arrows.

But not before two of the got to Reggie, and while he was fending one off with his staff, the second ducked under a blow and smashed into Reggie's bad knee with his club.

Reggie toppled over with a choked-off cry of agony, as the winged girl filled the evil creature with three swift arrows in succession.

With a wordless cry of fury, Eleanor reached for more power—in what might have been an unexpected place. Not to the physical fires being extinguished by more gnomes, but down—down past the layer of Earth where Alison's power lay, down past the planet's stony skin, down into the place where the Earth itself gave way to Fire, and the molten rock showed which of the Powers was stronger—

"No!" It was Alison's turn to shout, as she concentrated all of her anger and fury on Eleanor.

The fury began to take shape, rising out of the earth before them.

A Giant.

Not the sort that Jack had met at the top of his beanstalk. That Giant, uncouth as he had been, was a paragon of intelligence and sophistication next to this thing.

It was made of the earth that it rose from. Near-shapeless, it had a blob of rancid clay for a head, with two holes gouged out for eyes, at the bottom of each of which glowed the same, sickly-yellow light as suffused the stones. A misshapen lump defined a nose, and beneath that, was an empty yawn of a mouth. It had no neck to speak of; the head seemed to grow directly from the moss-covered, massive shoulders. And as yet, it had no discernable arms or legs—

That changed in a moment; a club-like arm with undifferentiated mitten-hands reached out, snatched up a battling gnome and Salamander together, and tossed them both into its gaping maw, devouring them both with a single gulp.

It grew a trifle, and reached out for another pair of fighters—

Horrified, Eleanor looked away for a moment—and caught sight of Alison.

Her stepmother was transfixed by the battle; partly because she was pouring everything she had into her creation, and partly in mesmerized pleasure at the carnage.

But she had forgotten something.

She had dropped her additional protections, relying only on her old, unaugmented shields.

And Eleanor now knew how to unweave those—she had used the same key on her shields as she had on the spells binding Eleanor to the hearthstone.

Reggie had struggled to his good knee and was staring in horror at the giant, shaking in every limb, his eyes wide. She grabbed his arm and shook it. He wrenched his gaze away from the giant and looked up at her. His face was so pale he looked like a corpse.

"We have one chancel" she shouted, over the bass growls of the giant. "Help me!"

From somewhere, he dragged up the final dregs of his courage. Life came back into his eyes.

"Her shields!" she cried, "Forget about the giant—drop our shields, then come in, Air and Fire together, and follow my lead—

He nodded; he dropped the staff and she crouched beside him; they clasped hands and let their own shields go.

Alison howled in triumph; the giant echoed it, and wrenched himself up further out of the earth.