"So we're setting a trap?" Omar asked.

"Yup," Cascade replied. "We're the bait, and Sephtis thinks that he's got us all in one shot. But Concord sneaks up from behind him and takes him by surprise."
"But I thought you said all of us need to attack him for him to die," Omar said.

"Yes, we do. But all Concord needs to do is trap him. Then we can all work together to defeat him."

"I don't know. It all looks too simple and easy," Andrea said suspiciously.

"Simple plans are less likely to go wrong."

Andrea shrugged. "If you say so. But I still don't like it. We've just met this guy, Concord, and now we're trusting our lives to him?"

"I'm sure he's trustworthy."

"How can you be so sure?"

Concord looked uncomfortable. "Everyone will be at risk if we don't deal with Sephtis."

Andrea glared at Concord and crossed her arms.
Cascade threw her hands up in the air. "Can we just focus on the plan?!"

Andrea was shocked at Cascade's sudden outburst. Cascade had always seemed so calm and composed from her point of view, to the point of driving Andrea crazy. The fact that it had only taken a few sentences to get Cascade to start shouting showed a lot about her mood in the moment, and what parts of her personality she had been hiding from Andrea, and from others.

Cascade was definitely stressed out and frustrated about the situation. And when Andrea really thought about it, she realized Cascade had every right to be. It was a stressful situation by itself, planning something that put their lives in danger. Andrea's pushback, trying to make Cascade recreate her well-laid plan, would probably be incredibly frustrating to Cascade.

"Sorry." Andrea shuffled her feet sheepishly, looking at Cascade and Concord.

"It's all right." Cascade seemed surprised. Andrea seemed to suddenly have this bubble of respect for her that had never existed before. I never expected that to happen.

"I think the plan's good," Omar said. "I trust Concord well enough. There's no reason for him to betray us. I'm pretty sure he's trustworthy."

"I think it's a good plan. Only thing is, Sephtis will know I'm here afterwards." Concord seemed tense as his hands clutched a stone that he had picked from the ground.

Cascade nodded. "That's fine. Because, probably, by that time, we'll have him defeated. At least, if the plan goes the way it's supposed to."

Omar crunched down on a nut that he had found. "This is a good nut."

Andrea frowned. "What? The plan is a good nut? I've never heard anybody call a plan a nut before."

"No, no, I mean the nut. Not the plan. The nut. From the vine that I found growing on one of those pillars over there." Omar pointed towards where he thought he had found it.

"Um... there's no pillar over there," Andrea said.

"Oh. There isn't? Well, I only had a one in seven chance of pointing in the right direction anyway. But there is a pillar over there somewhere. In fact, I believe there's multiple."

Andrea sighed. "We're getting off topic. Have you all memorized the plan?"

"Well..."

"It was a rhetorical question," Andrea quickly said, an exasperated frown on her face. Then she sighed again. "But if you don't have the plan memorized, you each have a sheet of paper that has the plan written on it."

"I can't read."

"We made yours in braille."

Cascade noticed that Andrea's voice was becoming strained and that she could explode with exasperation at any moment now. She took over for Andrea. "Now, do you all have this sheet of paper?"

They all nodded.

Cascade stood. A mischievous smile spread across her face. "Then let the hunt begin."

They had made it back out of the desert, simply by using the secret network of tunnels that the temple of Omnistherus contained. It turned out that the "nut pillars" that Omar had remarked upon earlier marked the entrances to the tunnels.

Now they walked through the streets, attempting to look normal. They had all bought new clothes from various shops along the roads, as their previous ones had been torn and ripped by their experiences in the temple. Andrea had decided to wear her usual color of black, Cascade her normal azure-like blue, Omar a dark red, and Concord a simple brown. They all wore dark brown, hooded cloaks. They seemingly blended into the crowd, the wide assortment of colors they wore being normal for Moraindia. Each of them wore cloaks with the cowls pulled down low to hide their distinctively foreign faces and hair - with the exception of Omar. But he didn't wish to draw funny looks towards them because of the unusual coloring of his eyes. The four were purposefully trying to hide the fact that they did not want to be found, but were sure that Sephtis would not be fooled by a simple disguise and a blending into the crowd of the Moraindia market.

But it seemed to work. Other people didn't notice the three strange teenagers wandering the streets of a market all alone. But there was a person who did. And it was just the person that the trio wanted to notice them.

Sephtis watched the three "Elementals", as he had taken to calling them, since they could control the elements, from his perch on a rock. He shook his head.

They should've known such a futile attempt at a disguise wouldn't fool me. They're so easy to track. So easy to catch. So Sephtis set off in pursuit of the Elementals.

The Elementals wandered into a small side path. It wended between the buildings until it opened up into a small, empty, abandoned square. It was a dead end; the perfect place for an ambush.

Sephtis raised an eyebrow. It certainly seemed as if they were trying to be fools. Sephtis stopped right before he entered the square. He felt somebody watching him, and somebody, or something, behind him.

As Sephtis spun around on his heel, his long, oily black hair swung around and smacked him in the face, blurring his vision. He didn't have enough time to regret not cutting his hair before the wall hit him.

The wall of earth slammed into Sephtis, sending him skidding backwards. As he fell to the ground, a pyramid of stone built itself on top of Sephtis.

In that moment, Sephtis realized that there was another one. Another Elemental. But he had a way to solve his predicament. Something they didn't quite know he could do. First, he changed the gravity of the area around him. The stones came out of their positions and crumbled under the immense pressure. Then Sephtis ran out and used an illusion to render himself invisible.

The Elementals couldn't see Sephtis any longer. "Where'd he go?" Andrea asked.

"He used a reverse hallucination!" Cascade told Andrea.

"A reverse hallucination? What kind of scientific name is that?"

"It's... it's not. I just made it up in the moment. If that's what you call it, then that's great. But... I just made it up."

A grin spread across Andrea's face. "Wow. You don't have the proper name for it. Never expected that to happen."

Cascade was about to respond when their conversation was interrupted.

"HEY!" Concord shouted.

Andrea and Cascade both jumped at the sudden noise. "What?"

"Are we going to do anything about Sephtis?"

"We can't. We don't know where he is when he renders himself invisible. We lost this round."

"Oh."

"You did the best you could, Concord. But he was more powerful than we expected. The fault does not lay on your shoulders," Andrea told Concord.

"Oh... thank you." I didn't stop him, but... I wasn't cowardly! Finally!

Andrea smiled at Concord, one of her rare genuine smiles. Concord smiled back.

"But this does bring up a problem," Omar said. "We no longer have the element of surprise on our side. Sephtis knows about Concord. And there's nothing we can do about it."

They all nodded. It was going to be a lot harder to defeat Sephtis than they had originally anticipated.

"Let's set up camp somewhere, then procure our plan," Cascade said.

The Elementals each lay tiredly on the soft ground of the cave.

"Can someone remind me why we're in a cave again?" Andrea asked. Her eyelids drooped sleepily.

"We're in a cave because we need to be somewhere where Sephtis can't find us. So we had Concord send us deep underground so that we could stay safe in this cave that he's made for us," Cascade told her. She yawned. Andrea's sleepiness was contagious.

"We need a training ground," Omar said suddenly.

"Hmm? What?" Andrea asked, waking from her sleep.

"I said that we need a training ground. We couldn't respond fast enough to stop Sephtis from getting away today. We need to concentrate hard and really have nothing else on our minds to use our powers. And we all need to do more than we think is possible with our powers."

Cascade nodded. Andrea attempted to keep her eyelids open. Concord remained in his calm sitting position. He appeared to be meditating, but at the moment, in their sleepy state, they couldn't be completely sure.

"I can't make water out of thin air," Cascade said. "I can only take it from places, like fountains or lakes. Andrea doesn't need a fireplace or lantern to take her fire from. She can create it in the palm of her hand. I need to learn how to do that."

Andrea propped herself up in a less comfortable position so that she would stay awake. "I can't summon fire all the time. Even when I can, I need to concentrate for several seconds without interruption, usually. If I don't, I can't maintain it and it flashes on and off as fast as you can flick a light switch," Andrea admitted. "Basically, it takes a long time to create fire, and then I can't keep it lit for long."

Omar nodded thoughtfully. Concord remained still. Andrea looked suspiciously at him.

"If you're sleeping, then that's not fair. If I don't get to sleep through this discussion, you don't get to either."

Concord didn't move.

"Are you awake?" Andrea now was seriously doubting that Concord was awake.

Still no response.

Andrea sighed. Then she suddenly leapt forward and tackled Concord, being careful not to knock him over completely.

Concord's eyes snapped open. "I was awake."

"You should've told me so, then." But Andrea's eyes were laughing, and Concord could see it. She was simply joking around.

"But if I had told you, then you wouldn't have been fooled into thinking that I was asleep," came Concord's response.

Andrea was shocked for a moment. That hadn't been the answer she was expecting. Then she began to laugh. "I didn't consider that." She continued laughing.

In the meantime, Cascade turned to Omar.

"What was your plan?" she asked.

"My plan was for us to build a kind of training ground, a place where we could hone our powers until we're ready to face Sephtis again. He's obviously got more control than we do. It makes sense, he's older and hasn't been restricted by where he lives. He probably escaped wherever he came from much earlier than we did."

Cascade could see what Omar was talking about. "A training ground. That's a good idea, actually."

"The only problem I ran into was where we could put the training ground."

"The Cascade Range."

Omar was confused for a moment. "What's the Cascade range?"
"A mountain range. In Northern Armain."
"I've never heard of it."

"I found it one day when I was looking for all the things on Zenaria that had the word "Cascade" in them." Cascade chuckled. "That makes sense, doesn't it?"

"Yes, that makes sense." Omar grinned at Cascade. He was glad that Cascade researched such random things. One never knew when it might come in handy.

Cascade smiled back. Then she stood and turned to Andrea and Concord.

"Andrea? Concord?" They both turned towards Cascade, stopping their side conversation about fooling people as they heard their names being spoken.

"Omar and I have just come up with a plan. We are going to build a training ground for us to hone our powers in the middle of the "Cascade Range" mountains. And we are going to practice until our faults are nothing but memories." Cascade smiled confidently. It was a fake smile, but it seemed to fool the others.

Cascade's sure tone and confident words spurred the excitement of the others. They felt their own confidence rising and were suddenly excited to start training.

"Let's do this!" Andrea grinned.

"Let's do this," Cascade replied.

"Wait!" Concord interrupted.

They all turned towards him.

"Whatever happened to sleep? I don't know about you, but I'm tired." Concord emitted a huge yawn. Of course, it spread around the room.

"Heh. I suppose you're right," Cascade said. She had gotten so caught up in the events that she had totally forgotten about sleep. At least Andrea and Concord remembered it at some point, she thought.

Concord and Andrea fell asleep immediately as they lay down on their soft pile of leaves. Omar fell asleep soon after. But Cascade took a little longer.

Cascade lay in bed, thinking about the days and weeks to come.

Traveling, training, planning. So many adventures to come. And so much to do.

Cascade was still thinking about it late into the night, when she finally fell asleep.