The Chilling Change Of Air (Elemental Awakening, Book 3) (28 page)

But the rules of this world I'd only just started to understand had shifted. Changed. I could no longer count on
Gi
coming to my aid, just because
Aeras
had protected me from its rage.

"You let me know as soon as they begin to hurt," he ordered, clearly reluctantly.

But the first hurdle we came to, a fallen tree that required climbing, proved how much he'd need both his hands. Carrying me was impossible until we made it to level ground. And by the looks of the city, just before we left that panorama behind, it seemed that "level" was no longer a word associated with our streets and pathways. But perhaps forever attached to our buildings, because those were almost all flattened now.

The walk down the mountainside took an eternity, the sun already beginning to set and we hadn't even made it back to the city proper. Theo kept flicking glances at me from the corner of his eyes, checking to make sure I wasn't limping. I kept the pain of my bruised and cut feet from my face by sheer force of will.

I hobbled when he turned his attention to an obstacle. I bit the inside of my cheek until it bled when he was more able to look my way. It felt like we were walking through hell.

And then we came across the first sign of civilisation. Houses at the base of the winding Palliser Road that led to the viewing platform on top of Mount Victoria. A skeletal landscape of flattened rubble with the odd incongruous bare tree sticking up in the middle. There was still evidence of a roadway, but only barely. The debris strewn across paths and accessways with equal lack of discrimination.

A child's stroller lay buckled and bent on its side. I held my breath as we came up to it, but there was no infant inside. A cast iron pan sat up in the naked limbs of a tree, next to an inflatable paddling pool which hadn't burst despite its hazardous journey. Match-like sticks of wood lay in piles that seemed bizarrely square, as though following the footprint of a house despite the force needed to crumble it. A solitary stone wall defined the edge of a property, on either side only the memory of houses existed.

People scrambled forlornly over piles of rubble. Calling for loved ones, while they bled from wounds all over their bodies. An old man sat rocking back and forth on a recliner... in the middle of his destroyed living room. Glass and china shattered all around him, the walls demolished, the wood splintered and ragged. And yet he didn't look like he had a scratch on him. Other than the fact he was clearly not psychologically or emotionally there.

We pressed on. Picking our way through the detritus of a city neighbourhood. Feeling the chill in the air as people who struggled to comprehend reality began to realise our world had turned completely upside down. They'd shown such strength after the earthquake, but there was a despondency here, a hopeless, dispirited, broken atmosphere. I could almost taste it. I could certainly smell it, like old socks and mildew, mixed with ammonia and decay.

I knew it would be nothing to the smell that would rise from this horror, as the days passed and essential facilities were not brought back on line, and humanity gave up entirely on the world.

Who would fight for a world like this?

Even
Aetheros
was silent in my mind. No cry of
Oh, my Aether
, just a stunned silence that echoed in the faces of mankind.

The only saving grace for us was that Mount Victoria sat behind Oriental Bay where the house was. We didn't have to walk the entire city, from one side to the other, an option that I was acutely aware I would not have made. My feet were bleeding freely now, but even Theo was so absorbed in the ruination of so many lives that he'd stopped checking. Numbed and shocked and utterly crestfallen.

Had they done this? The
Ekmetalleftis
of old. Had they turned their back on their god, forgotten their vital role in balancing the Elements, and caused this drastic response?

It was a question that would have to wait to be answered, but I couldn't help feeling it was important.
Aetheros
was beaten, his desperate pleas for help attested to that fact. And the world was suffering alongside him.

There had to be a way to stop this. There had to be way to right this wrong. But the battle seemed indomitable. Genesis had begun, and I'd only experienced three Awakenings.
Gi, Pyrkagia
and
Aeras
. Forget about the fact that we were all cut-off from our
Stoicheio
right now, even if we weren't I still lacked two of the five.

Nero
and
Aether
itself. The Elements and the Elemental God may call me
Aether
already, but I wasn't truly
Aether
yet. And now this had started. This terrible, unstoppable End of Days. How was I to battle this? To fight this? How?

I didn't have an answer. I felt broken and lost and utterly defeated and the war had only just begun.

How did I combat this?

The gates to our property were gone, that's the first thing I noticed as we approached through the rubble strewn street. The stone wall strangely still standing. The house, though, was nothing more than a pile of broken sticks and crumbled tiles and crushed bricks and twisted metal and shattered glass. We stood on what had been the driveway seeing only shadows in the twilight, praying for a candle to flicker, a sound to emerge, or a shift in the darker patches to indicate a survivor.

But nothing moved. No one called out.

And when my eyes landed on the pulverised remains of the Moreton Bay Fig Tree I knew,
I just knew
, that we were doomed to fail.

"OK," Theo announced into the heavy air around us. "We start digging for survivors."

My eyes flicked to his face, he turned slightly and looked down at me. The cuts on his cheeks all healed, just smears of blood and dirt marring his stoic façade.

"What,
Oraia
?" he asked. "Did you think you were the only one who could be stubborn?"

God, in that moment I truly loved him.

I smiled, it felt like it fractured my tight skin. His hand came up and with fingers curled stroked my cheek.

"They are
Athanatos
," he reminded me. "And your brother has borrowed some of our strength as well. There is hope, Cassandra."

Yes, there was. But for how long? The world was dying, there was no doubt of that fact. We were in a race against time itself and weaponless to fight it.

I sucked in a deep breath, nodded my head and set off toward the side of the house that was nearest the living areas and back rooms we'd commandeered.

While we dug, throwing bits of rubble over our shoulders and out of the way, we called out. The rhythm of our movements almost lulling; bend, pick up, chuck. Yell. Bend, pick up, chuck. Yell. Light vanished as the moon rose in an eerie looking sky. Somewhere, more fires burned because the usual white orb hanging low over the horizon was bathed in an orange and yellow glow. I prayed to any god who'd listen, that those fires wouldn't catch
Pyrkagia's
eyes.

We'd had a breather after the earthquake, I wasn't sure if we could rely on one again.

First things first, we needed to determine our friends were still with us. If not, then we moved on to the next part of our plan. Survival. Shelter. Provisions. And finally, once our immediate needs were met, our
Stoicheio
and Genesis. It seemed so easy to list it like that. I knew it was anything but.

There were no sirens in the air this time, I noted, as I threw another piece of debris behind my back. The odd scream, or wail, but no authorities rushing in to re-establish order. My mind returned to the thugs with bats and in an inhumane moment of weakness I hoped they'd been the first to be culled. I almost wanted to gag once I realised I'd had that atrocious thought.

The air felt thick with menace, but whether that was because of my current train of thought or just the after-effects of such devastation, with the knowledge there was more to come, I don't know. My skin prickled with goosebumps, the air chilled, but that could have just been me. I felt chilled. Desperate and doubtful, and utterly iced to the bone.

We made good but slow progress, not stopping to rest to tend to the injuries we were sustaining. My feet no longer hurt, unless I stood on a sharp point or twisted my ankle on the uneven surface beneath me, and then suddenly I came across some shoes. Not mine, probably Sonya's and that thought, the reminder my human friend was inside this mess, made me slump down on the rubble and gasp for breath.

How could I have overlooked Sonya? How could I have been such an awful friend to not consider her fragile form in amongst the supernatural beings that surrounded her? How did I forget she was with us?

We'd been through so much and she'd been sheltered from it. But no longer. Now she was in the thick of it with us, but not as well protected as her companions. Oh dear freaking God, what had I dragged my best friend into?

"Casey?" Theo called. "What's wrong,
Oraia
? What have you found?"

My eyes lifted to Theo's across the moonlit space and I saw him blanch.

He scrambled over the distance between us and crouched down at my side, grasping my hand in his.

"What is it?" he demanded, then noticed what I had sitting innocuously in my lap. "Sneakers," he remarked. "Good, you should put them on."

I nodded and let him take them from me, lifting first one foot and then the other and doing the laces up. Sonya and I were about the same size, without socks they seemed a little bigger than usual, but they kept some of the chill out.

"They're Sonya's," I said, swallowing past the lump in my throat.

"Ah," he replied, understanding in that one sound.

"I have to keep digging," I announced, needing to desperately pick up the pace and find them now.

"Then we keep digging," Theo offered, helping me stand, watching me for a second and then moving away to do the same.

No more calls were made. No more conversation about hopeful outcomes. Just a deadly focus that made us keep going until finally the sun crested the sky.

I was a mess. Ripped and torn clothing, dust covered and sweaty skin, scratched, cut and bruised all over, chipped nails and cracked lips, parched throat and empty stomach. But still I kept going until we'd practically pulled apart the living area that had been, and each bedroom we'd all seized to sleep in.

And they weren't there. They must have gotten out. But where did they go?

"Where are they?" I demanded Theo, feeling panic swell and threaten to consume me whole.

"Maybe they're looking for us," he suggested, which actually made a lot of sense.

"But wouldn't they have left someone behind in case we came back?"

"What for? We can't communicate with each other," he pointed out.

"A message then," I suggested, looking about the newly cleared rubble; just small piles of debris and the lower floor of the house now, where we stood. I stared at the wooden beams visible in places, the still intact flooring in others, and then the overall footprint of the house that I could make out.

"What are you doing?" Theo asked, not in an accusatory tone, he sounded worried and tired.

"Wasn't there a basement level?" I asked. "A cellar you said Aktor had stored the wine inside?"

"Yes," he replied, perking up and scanning the area with me. "But not back here in the rear of the building, where we'd been living. Over the other side," he said, pointing to a part of the destruction we hadn't yet tackled.

"Oh," I said, aware we were nowhere near done.

We'd cleared most of the area but the far edge, enough of a distance away for the group to have not been caught in it, had they remained inside at all. If they'd tried to get out, they'd have used the door by the front of the property, or the side of the house by the makeshift lavatory, well away from the - what appeared to be, after a night as long as that one - mountain of debris and rubble on the other side.

"OK," I added, staring warily at the behemoth before me.

I was so exhausted. Aching all over. But nothing time wouldn't fix and the DNA of an
Athanatos
. We had to keep going.

Our movements were steady and measured, not for safety's sake, but because we were severely lacking fuel. Both our
Stoicheio
and that part of us that is human. We needed sustenance, in the form of food and water, a moment's rest to heal and recuperate, and communion with our Elements to feed our soul.

At least for me. I wasn't so sure about Theo.

But until we checked every single inch our hearts would never be whole, so onward we pushed.

It must have been after nine in the morning by the time we reached the doorway to the cellar itself, set in the floor, like a tornado shelter, weighted down until we uncovered it by at least a tonne of debris and detritus.

I swayed on my feet as I stared down at it, willing a knock to sound out, or Aktor to appear pushing it open and announcing, "It's about time."