The Elemental Warriors: Chapter 9

## Chapter 9- Sky

Great.  Because of Ember, now *I’m* getting the weirdest chapter in the book.  Well, here I go…

Thursday in September.  We were in the forest sitting down on tree
stumps (except Sage, who had figured out how to turn hers into a small but
sturdy oak tree), like all the other nights since the first day of school.  Only this time, Luna wasn’t alone.  She was joined by a woman and a man about her
height.  The woman was hard to look at,
because she literally glowed.  Really
brightly.  She wore a lot of yellow, and was
probably the personification of the sun (versus Luna, the moon).  The man was harder to describe.  He had purple skin-and not that stupid
magenta-y purple people could mistake for pink, it was *dark* purple.  He was wearing
one of those hats from Aladdin, like a super wide, super short cylinder with
the bottom cut off.  It had crazy,
colorful zigzag patterns in bright pink, blue, and purple.  It had a tasseled string coming off the top
like a graduate cap.

“Hello,” the woman in yellow said.  “I am Sola, the day queen.  I realize you have never met me before, even
though you started on Tuesday.”

“Well, you never came to this
place.  You never even mentioned meeting
the Warriors,” Luna reminded her.

“It only would have been polite
if you had asked me,” Sola explained.

“Well, you were always asleep
when I came to your palace to ask you!” Luna countered.

“Hey, break it up,” the purple
guy said, coming between the two women. “I don’t think this would turn out good
if you kept going.”  Luna rolled her
eyes. “Show-off,” she muttered.

“Sorry about that,” the man said
to us.  “We don’t always get along
well.  I’m Intu, Luna and Sola’s younger brother.”

“*Much* younger,” Sola added.
We gaped at them.  So that meant…
they were all siblings?  They looked
nothing alike.  “Yes,” Luna said,
seemingly reading our minds. “We are the Sky Siblings.  I am the moon.  Sola is the sun.  And Intu… is dusk and dawn.”  Sola snickered.  I guess Intu had to be something to make them
the Sky Siblings, but he did *not* look
like either dusk or dawn.

“A lot of people think Luna and
I are twins, but Luna is much younger-“ Sola started, but Luna interrupted,
“Look, the Guardians are finally here!”
I saw four… things appearing out of some portal in the sky and falling
down to the earth with sonic speed.
There was a huge *oomph*, and I
winced.  There was no way they couldn’t
have gotten injured.

“Well, I hope they’re okay,”
Ember said, her eyes wide with fear. “They’ll be fine,” Intu assured her.  “I’m sure Jake will heal them.”  We raised our eyebrows.  It had definitely sounded like bones had been
broken. “Heal broken bones?  Ohh… that
must be one of his abilities.”

Sola and Luna were asking the
same question.  “You’re saying you think
he can heal *broken bones* after a
month of practices?”  Sola asked, raising
an eyebrow.  Intu frowned. “They’re
progressing a lot quicker than I anticipated.
Maybe it’s because they might be the ones that-“

“Shh,” Luna told him.  “They’re not ready to know yet.”

Upon that sentence, four boys appeared
in the (now much larger) clearing.  I
recognized most of them.  Paul was in
that group.  So was his angry friend
Ethan, and a boy I recognized from my fourth grade class… Allen, I think his
name was.  I didn’t know the last kid’s
name, but I recognized his face from homeroom and science.  Then I remembered that Intu had mentioned
someone called Jake.  *That must be him,* I thought.  He looked exhausted.

“Hi guys, what did we…?” Paul began as they
sat down. “Whoa.  This is huge.”  He noticed us. “See Ethan, it *is* tensions rising.  I told you!”
Ethan rolled his eyes.  “Yeah,
that’s what *Intu* thinks.  It might not actually be ‘tensions rising’.”
He made air quotes around the last two words.

Sola interrupted their bickering
by introducing herself and Luna to the boys. “Now, I know that things have been
very tense between your two groups of children.
So I want you two to be able to stop keeping secrets.  Elemental Warriors, these are the four
Natural Guardians.  They each have very
unique magical powers:  of healing, teleportation,
telepathy, and… well… Allen’s power is hard to describe.  You’ll see for yourself.”

“I call it charmspeaking,” Ethan
volunteered.  “Why?” Sage asked.  Clearly she hadn’t read the Heroes of
Olympus.  Oof.  I did *not*
*like the idea of charmspeak.  I was*
not going to cross paths with Allen anytime soon.  He was the prankster of the crew, if I
remembered fourth grade correctly.

“Anyway,” Sola continued.  She introduced us Warriors and our
elements.  “Now, I want you to work
together in your partnerships.  I’m sure
you could find out some way to combine your talents.”  Most of us were extremely confused.  Partnerships?
Who was our partner? We realized that they were sitting right next to
someone else.  For me, that person was
Allen.  I mentally groaned.

We looked at each other
awkwardly.  Finally, Allen broke the
silence by telling me, “Slap your face as hard as you can.”  Before I could register what he said, my hand
hit my face.  It stung harder than a nest
full of bees.  “I hate charmspeak,” I
grumbled.  It would be a long night.

And so it was.  We trudged through several ideas to no
avail.  Finally, just when it seemed like
we were getting onto something, Sola said, “I think that they have done enough
work today, don’t you?”  Luna and Intu
agreed, and the world faded away once again.