hadn’t caught up. I must have been hit by a stone missile of some sort, he decided. He slowed down to look back again and saw the elemental launch another rock in his direction, a stone the size of a man’s fist. This time, Will stopped it with a point-defense shield.
But he couldn’t run fast enough to stay ahead of the elemental while continually looking backward. Meanwhile, his enemy was high above, beyond easy reach. It looked to be roughly seventy yards from the top of the cliff to the base. For a sorcerer, it was an ideal setting against an opponent without elementals. The stranger’s elemental could attack Will with impunity while Will could do little to respond at such a range.
The light-darts could reach his enemy, but he didn’t have any prepared, and it didn’t appear likely that the earth elemental would leave him unmolested for the scant seconds he would need. A force-cage would solve the problem. Will had seen Ethelgren use it against Laina’s elementals with great effect, but he didn’t have that spell prepared either.
He sent several force-lances at the elemental, which did little to slow or impede its progress. It launched a few heavy stones at him in return, and he deflected them without trouble. Throughout the exchange, it continued to close the distance between them.
How strong was an earth elemental? How much abuse could his iron-body transformation take? These were questions high on Will’s list of things he wished he knew, and it was becoming very likely he would soon discover the answers. There were a lot of spells that could solve his problem, but he couldn’t reflex cast any of them.
With a snarl, he turned and summoned his falchion and a silver coin from the limnthal, then activated the last spell that he did have prepared, Ethelgren’s silver-sword spell. Argent flames erupted from the blade as he met the massive stone snake’s charge.
Despite being so large, the earth elemental wasn’t slow. Will barely managed to dodge its snapping head as he turned to bring the sword down across the elemental’s neck. The silver-sword spell was excellent for dealing physical damage—it could cut through almost anything with enough strength behind it. Will managed to cut through several inches of stone before the blade stopped.
Not that it mattered. Even if he could have cut completely through the thing, it wouldn’t have made a difference. Elementals were beings of pure magic and spirit, the remnants of a wizard’s will and source. Their bodies were things of convenience, and damaging one was merely a temporary setback. Will’s attack had been little more than a symbolic sign of his resistance.
The elemental continued forward, pulling the sword from his grasp as it turned and encircled him with its body. What would follow was certain to be painful.
Will attached a source-link to the elemental and tensed as the rock and stone spiraled inward and tightened around him. The pain came sooner than he expected as the elemental began to constrict, crushing him within its coils. The iron-body transformation effectively protected his skin from laceration, but it didn’t do nearly enough to save his bones and innards. It was only skin-deep, after all.
The air escaped his lungs in a rasping scream as he simultaneously began ripping the turyn from the elemental through the source-link. The vast and rapid rush of turyn brought a faint sense of nausea that was quickly forgotten as he felt his ribs begin to pop and crack. The elemental continued to squeeze, and Will continued to pull on its turyn in a fool’s race toward impotence or death.
Seconds passed in agony as he wondered how long he could last before his skull cracked or his eyes popped out of his head. It took him a moment to realize that the elemental was no longer tightening around him. He had drained it to the point of being unable to move, but he was still under a tremendous amount of pressure and trapped within a stone prison.
Closing his eyes, Will began using some of the turyn he had stolen, firing force-lances from his hands. Sharp pains exploded against his palms, but the stone began to crumble and fall away. As his freedom returned, he was better able to direct the force-lances and in less than a minute, the last of the elemental’s body fell away to join the rest of the rubble pile at his feet. Blood dripped from his hands where the first force-lances had torn even