Chapter 1: Introduction
Chapter Text
Podfic cover art by Annapods
Read by AirgiodSLV
When I began to brainstorm for this project, I knew immediately that I wanted to work with some of the amazing artists who create for this fandom.
Annapods, inappropriate_happiness, minnabird, mousydentist, shubaka, snickerdoodlles, and TheCookieOfDoom generously offered to jump in and make this collaboration a reality. Each of them brought different art styles, techniques, and approaches that enriched the work as a whole.
I started with characters and prompt imagery for each chapter. The artists chose the ones that most interested them, contributing their own ideas and designs. Along with those early concept sketches, they shared what they wanted to convey with their art. Themes began to emerge, along with common threads that tied different pieces together. I shared some of my ideas based on the art designs, and the artists responded to my thoughts and to each other’s work.
Annapods proposed and created an audio recording of the text, adding another dimension to the multimedia experience. The podfic makes it possible to enjoy the story text and voice acting while examining all of the wonderful details in the accompanying art.
The result is a collaborative project that truly demonstrates what I love about this fandom and the people in it. Thank you to everyone for the creativity, talent, and generosity of spirit that made this possible.
- AirgiodSLV
Chapter 2: Aries
Chapter by AirgiodSLV, Annapods, snickerdoodlles
Chapter Text
ARIES
Art by snickerdoodlles
Read by Annapods
Ride has never been able to resist a heist.
Something about a well-executed plan, the timing and teamwork involved, thrills him like nothing else. His specific talents make him a valuable asset in the criminal world, although he never reveals the whole truth. There’s no better getaway driver than one who can control the explosions inside a combustion engine.
Ride works well under pressure, especially for the right payout. This one promises to be worth the effort.
He’s recruited by a con artist who calls herself Em. The score is a cache of jewels: small, expensive, and portable. Within the first few days, as Ride’s energy and confidence go head to head with Em’s calculating leadership, he’s sure they’ll be riding out the adrenaline behind closed doors after the job is complete.
Ride doesn’t realize what they’re really stealing until it’s too late. Not until the safe is cracked and the case is opened, when Em is in his arms, giddy with the thrill of success.
Not until he feels the heart of his own fire manifest into a brilliant red ruby.
By then, Em has already driven in the knife.
Ride can’t catch his breath to ask her why, but she must see it in his eyes.
“There’s a corporation. Catalyst Industries. Harnessing nature to usher in a new golden age of humanity.” He thinks her eyes shimmer, but it might be a trick of the light. “They’re paying well for captured elementals. More than I could walk away from.”
His heart gleams in her hand. It might as well be across the world, for all he can do to reclaim it.
“I’m not the only one they have hunting,” Em tells him. “I just got lucky. They gave us a manual for how to identify you. How to capture you once we did.”
Ride is fire incarnate: A raging inferno and the wild hunger of flames. And that power is currently out of his reach. It’s hers now. So is he.
He’s hooded, cuffed, and thrown into a van. Ride lies bleeding on the cold metal floor, and he burns.
He doesn’t realize there’s someone in the back of the van with him until they tug the sack from his head. Another elemental crouches on the floor of the van to study him. They have the blue eyes of a deep river, and pale hair like sunlight bouncing off water.
“I can’t get you out of here alone,” the other elemental muses. “But you and I might do it together.”
Ride grits his teeth. The absence of his fire is a deeper wound than the one in his gut. “How?”
“You’re not going to like it.” The other elemental smiles widely. He reaches out to touch Ride’s face.
In his elemental form, Ride is a flame that cannot be quenched. Without his heart, he’s trapped in human shape. And the human body is mostly made of water.
Sunshine seeps into him, filling up all his nooks and crannies. His power saturates Ride until they merge to become something else. Someone new.
“They already know we won’t go down without a fight,” Ride warns, as his consciousness is submerged in the deep, flowing stream of Sunshine’s water. “They’ve fireproofed the van.”
It’s the last clear thought he has before Sunshine closes over his head like a breaking wave, pulling him under.
“They prepared for fire.” Moonshine opens eyes as dark as the ocean before a storm. “They’re not prepared for us.”
Chapter 3: Taurus
Chapter by AirgiodSLV, Annapods
Chapter Text
TAURUS
Art by Annapods
Read by Annapods
Ghost enjoys farm work.
He takes satisfaction in working with his hands. He likes tending to things and putting them in order. He likes watching things grow.
He’s hired on by a homesteader who guarantees he can stay through the harvest. It’s a remote location; there’s no satellite signal at the farmhouse. The last news he hears, on his way to the farm, is that Catalyst Industries has successfully launched their first rocket into space. The press conference declares it a scientific breakthrough; something to do with engine design and burning propellants.
The farmhouse is outfitted with electric lights and appliances, but none of them have power. Ghost volunteers to look at the generator to see if he can repair it, but the homesteader tells him she’s gotten used to life without it. She likes the simplicity.
The homesteader’s name is Pyrrha. She tends the garden and farm animals, tossing scraps to the chickens and collecting honey from the apiary. She grows fresh herbs in window boxes just outside the kitchen. She cooks breakfast for them in the early mornings before Ghost goes out into the fields. He likes to sit at the kitchen table with a cup of coffee, watching her pinch leaves from the plants to mix into the bread dough and scrambled eggs.
Pyrrha does most of the household chores, but she asks Ghost to chop firewood. He’s happy to do it. He enjoys the burn in his muscles and the meditative labor of swinging the axe. He likes the way Pyrrha will watch him sometimes from the back porch, when the sun is out and his shirt sticks to his skin, transparent with sweat.
The first time he goes to chop wood, Ghost realizes he hasn’t seen any stumps or logs around the property. He asks how she’d gotten firewood before, and she smiles with flour on her cheek and tells him she’d made do.
Ghost falls in love with Pyrrha and the farm in the same way: over time, gradually building trust and care, which roots deeper as it grows. It blooms in the evenings, when Ghost plays the piano in the sitting room and persuades Pyrrha to sing. It blossoms when their hands brush as they pass dishes to set the table.
Ghost’s heart is a slow, patient thing. There are elementals whose hearts manifest all at once, crystallized into gemstones or silvered glass. Ghost’s heart emerges in green shoots that become sapling twigs. He twines them together into a ring.
When he slides it onto Pyrrha’s finger, he’s never been happier.
Ghost goes upstairs the next morning while she’s feeding the chickens. He’s never entered Pyrrha’s bedroom, respectful of her space, but he’s picked a bouquet of wildflowers to surprise her.
It’s only chance that he bumps the box on the bedside table as he sets down the vase. Chance that the lid is askew and knocked aside. Ghost goes to replace it, and stops when he sees what’s inside.
A wedding photo. A boutonnière of dried flowers that match those pinned to the groom’s lapel.
A metal wedding band.
Ghost knows before he even touches the ring. It’s smooth and unblemished, forged in fire. An elemental’s heart.
Unfamiliar noise draws his attention to the window. A white truck kicks up dust on its way down the dirt road to the farmhouse. Ghost hears the creak of a floorboard behind him and spins around.
Pyrrha stands in the doorway. Her eyes are glassy with tears and her chin wobbles, but she looks calm. Resolved.
Ghost’s heart is on her finger.
When the men in lab coats wrestle him down and sedate him, all he can think is that he’s not the first to fall into this trap.
Somewhere out there, there’s another.
Chapter 4: Gemini
Chapter by AirgiodSLV, Annapods, inappropriate_happiness
Chapter Text
GEMINI
Art by inappropriate_happiness
Read by Annapods
Icarus follows where the wind blows.
He never takes the same path twice. There are too many people to meet, too many things to see and do along the way. Life is full of experiences, and Icarus savors every one.
He doesn’t notice the lack of familiar faces at first. It’s a hazard of traveling the way he does: choosing new routes, never sticking to a schedule. His friends keep an eye out for him. Sometimes they still pass in the night.
The feeling that something is wrong grows with each place he visits. There are no air elementals in the mountains. No earth elementals on the plains. No water elementals along the rivers. No fire elementals in the cities, energized by the thrum of electricity.
Icarus resists the wind tugging him onwards. He begins to search.
Ride is missing. So is Ghost. And Jay. Even Sunshine has vanished without a trace. Icarus can’t find anyone at all.
Panic mounting, he abandons the wind and follows his pounding heart.
Every year, Black waits for him on a stone staircase. He’s always there when Icarus arrives, no matter how long it takes Icarus to wind through the countryside along his way. Black craves companionship, but he never tries to hold Icarus back when he wanders.
He’s the one point Icarus will always return to. The one person who feels like home.
The air hangs heavy and still on the broad steps. No breeze rushes down to tangle hair and scatter loose pages, tugging napkins from fingers and stirring leaves into a gentle whirlwind. No shadow of feathered wings haunts the wall.
Black is gone.
Icarus screams. He barrels through the city, slamming doors and shutters, snapping tree branches too weak to stand against him. Grief and fear form a tight band around his chest. For the first time in his life, he feels like he can’t get enough air.
He storms out of the city. The pressure around his ribs builds into a typhoon. He rages until his energy is spent and he falls panting onto his knees in a forest. Broken branches litter the ground around him, along with a few black feathers.
Icarus doesn’t know how to be alone. The thought terrifies him.
When he looks up, someone else stands among the trees. He wears a long trench coat. His hair falls to his shoulders. He looks at Icarus with too much understanding and pity to be human.
“Where are they?” Icarus’ voice rasps, hoarse from screaming. “Where have they gone?”
“They’ve been taken. Captured, one by one. As far as I know, you might be the last.”
“And you,” Icarus says. Hope rises in his chest.
The other elemental shakes his head. “No. They caught me too.”
Icarus goes still. He cocks his head, a bird trying to see more clearly. “You escaped.”
Again, the other shakes his head. “I created a golem to take my place. I left my heart behind.”
Icarus recoils. Without a heart, elementals are trapped in human form. They’re no more than empty shells, cut off from their own power.
The pressure begins to build inside him again. He is air. He is wind and storm. He will find whoever has done this, and he will make them pay for it.
His intention must be clear in his expression, and the spark and crackle of energy around him.
“You can’t fight them. They’re too powerful.”
Icarus bares his teeth. “I’ll kill them all.”
The man who used to be an elemental looks at him with haunted eyes. “You’ll lose yourself along the way.”
Icarus ignores him. He stands, gathering the air currents to him. They swirl around him in a whirlwind, responding to his will, eager to gain force and wreak destruction. Black feathers are tossed in their grip and drift to the ground.
“Tell me where they are,” Icarus says.
When he leaves the woods, the man calls a final warning after him.
“Even if it isn’t stolen, there are other ways to lose your heart.”
Chapter 5: Cancer
Chapter by AirgiodSLV, Annapods, TheCookieOfDoom
Chapter Text
CANCER
Art by TheCookieOfDoom
Read by Annapods
Rain stands vigil.
He’s careful never to be seen by those who might recognize him. He scatters himself in droplets and hides in puddles, disappearing whenever a splash breaks the surface. He slides in rivulets too small for most people to notice, seeping through cracks in pavement or into the hungry embrace of parched earth.
He takes calculated risks. He watches, and he waits.
“I’m going after them.” The words vibrate against Rain’s chest; he almost feels more than hears them. “Catalyst Industries. I need to do something. I want to help.”
When the words register, Rain’s head jerks upright. He finds Sunshine already looking back at him. His gaze is steady, chin resting over Rain’s heart. Sunshine’s body is liquid poured over Rain’s, sinking into him. Only now does Rain feel the tension in Sunshine’s muscles.
He’s braced for a fight. He already knows Rain will give him one.
“We know they have Jay and Lost, and now they’ve taken Black. This isn’t coincidence or opportunity. We’re being hunted.”
“What are you going to do?” Rain’s arms tighten around Sunshine, as though he can physically hold him there and keep him safe. “If you seek them out, they’ll only take you too.”
Sunshine’s eyes gleam. His fingers trace Rain’s lips. “I have a plan.”
Catalyst Industries maintains several facilities. One of them is a compound surrounded by warning signs and an electric fence. Rain never crosses that line of wire. He’s seen too many elementals go in and not come out again.
Some of those captured have been put to work. Rain had once caught a glimpse of Jay in the back of a truck, being driven out to a launch pad. Others have disappeared without a trace.
Rain knows how they’re being controlled. It’s all too easy for an elemental to lose their heart.
What he doesn’t know is whether there are other safeguards in place to keep them trapped.
That’s what he’s here to find out.
“You can’t… immerse yourself in someone else. It’s impossible.”
Sunshine slithers onto his elbows and knees, shifting over Rain to straddle his hips. He’s chosen his battleground well. Rain feels helpless, and Sunshine has the literal high ground.
“Why? You and I have done it.”
Rain flushes as warm as a summer shower. They’ve experimented together, pushing the boundaries of what it means to truly become one. Rain’s body is a cloud that Sunshine has saturated with himself, filling him to the brim until he overflows.
That’s sex. This is a rescue operation.
“We’re both water elementals. How will it work with someone else? Are you going to douse someone’s fire while trying to save them? What if it doesn’t work, and they burn you up?”
“If their hearts have been stolen, they’ll be in human form. There won’t be any fire to burn.”
Rain’s hands close over Sunshine’s waist, digging into his hips. He’s going to leave bruises. He can’t bring himself to let go.
“To get them out, you’ll need to recover their hearts. You can’t leave them behind.”
“And when I do, I’ll leave their bodies.” Sunshine’s gaze is understanding, but there’s firm ice beneath. Rain won’t be able to break his resolve. “I’m going to do this. You could help me.”
Rain closes his eyes. Sunshine gives him time, still resting lightly on Rain’s hips. Rain wishes he wouldn’t. He wants Sunshine to weigh him down.
“Fine,” he says at last. “Tell me what you need.”
Rain watches the compound where their friends are imprisoned. He makes note of every guard, every vehicle, every piece of equipment. When the time comes, he’ll be ready.
Until then, he never gets too close. What he carries is too precious for him to risk capture.
Cradled in his hands, safe at the center of a storm, Rain holds Sunshine’s heart.
Chapter 6: Leo
Chapter by AirgiodSLV, Annapods, snickerdoodlles
Chapter Text
LEO
Art by AirgiodSLV and snickerdoodlles
Read by Annapods
Passion stands on top of the world.
In reality, it’s a transparent glass walkway atop the highest skyscraper in the city. The smell of exhaust and scorched pavement rises from the streets below. Metal benches gleam in the late afternoon sun, hot enough to burn skin.
Passion should feel exposed, standing in plain view and surrounded by tourists snapping selfies. Instead he feels powerful.
There are electricity and gas lines all through this building. No one from Catalyst Industries will be able to take him down here.
If anyone could even get close. Passion’s contact chose this rendezvous for a reason.
Fade saunters across the skywalk with his hands in his pockets. It’s a good illusion; he looks like he’s walking on air. The breeze plays with his hair, although that might be Fade playing with the breeze. It’s hard to tell.
Fade pulls out a pack of cigarettes and taps one loose. Passion raises an eyebrow.
“I thought you’d be more into vaping.”
Fade answers around the cigarette pinched between his lips. “Then I couldn’t do this.” He bats his eyes at Passion. “Light me up?”
Passion rolls his eyes and snaps his fingers. Fade cups his hand around the end of the cigarette like he’s protecting a flame from the wind, hiding the spontaneous flare as it catches.
“Careful,” Passion warns, amused. “Trinity might have something to say about you flirting with me.”
Fade blows a stream of smoke over his shoulder. “You know she’s hot for you, especially when you get going on social justice. She’d probably just want to watch.”
Passion lets the teasing smolder between them for a moment longer before he smothers it. “You said you’ve found the compound.”
“They took another earth elemental from a farm outside the city. I followed the truck there and back.” Fade holds his cigarette loose between his fingers. His eyes burn brighter than the cherry at the tip. “Are you sure about this?”
“We need someone on the inside.”
Fade snorts. “We’ve got plenty of people on the inside. The problem is getting them out again.”
“They all went in without their hearts.” Passion flashes his teeth. “I plan on keeping mine.”
“So I should stop flirting with you, then.” It’s a halfhearted attempt at banter. Fade isn’t even looking at Passion anymore. His gaze is distant, fixed somewhere across the horizon.
Passion plucks the cigarette from Fade’s hand and raises it to his own lips. There’s no point in letting it go to waste. “You’re not that charming.”
“Says you.” Fade’s eyes cut back to him, calculating. “How long do we wait before we go in after you?”
“Give me a week. If I need you before then, I’ll send a signal.” Passion smirks and tucks the cigarette back into Fade’s mouth. His fingertips linger on Fade’s lips. “You’ll know it when you see it.”
Passion waits one more day before he lets himself be caught. Catalyst Industries has clearly handled fire elementals before. The van they use to transport him is fireproof and they’ve modified the engine.
They lock him in a stone cell that he can’t burn his way out of, underground where he can’t gather even the static from a passing storm. They search him, but they’re not bold enough to take his clothes.
Their mistake.
A breath of air stirs the lock of hair against his cheek. Passion looks up at the ceiling. A strip of paper slips through the narrow vent overhead, fluttering down into his hand.
Passion reads the message. Then he smiles.
It looks like he’s not the only elemental in here with their heart intact.
Chapter 7: Virgo
Chapter by AirgiodSLV, Annapods, mousydentist
Chapter Text
VIRGO
Art by mousydentist
Read by Annapods
Lucid is being hunted.
He stumbles through the woods, catching himself against trees. The bark scrapes his palms raw. Instinct urges him deeper into the woods, but the moon is full tonight, and branches snap beneath his rushed, clumsy steps. There’s nowhere for him to hide.
A house looms up ahead. No light shines from the windows. Everything is dark and still.
It’s the last place they’ll look for him.
With the last of his energy, Lucid persuades a wooden window frame to bend until he can slide his fingers into the crack. He heaves the window open and tumbles through onto the floor. The sense of temporary safety is his undoing. Exhaustion grips him, the last desperate adrenaline that had fueled him draining away.
It’s the last thing he remembers before he falls into darkness.
When he wakes, it’s with the tingling awareness that someone is reaching out to touch him. Alarm floods through him, a burst of energy strong enough to push him off the floor and away from that grasping hand.
He sees a shocked face above a white nightgown before he plunges back into the night.
He’s too weak to go far. His whole body is one aching bruise, and his limbs feel like lead. If he stays out in the open, the hunters will find him.
Lucid isn’t social by nature. He doesn’t trust easily. He returns to the house in the grey light of dawn to find the window still open, welcoming him inside.
The woman’s name is Taai. She cleans his wounds and wraps them with thick cobwebs of gauze that taste like dandelion fluff. He’s wary of being bound, even by something so soft.
Taai cuts the tangles from his hair and gives him clean clothes to wear. The shirt has pearl buttons and long strips of fabric down the front. Lucid is careful never to tie them. He examines his reflection in the mirror: the curling strands of his cropped hair and the scab across his nose.
He doesn’t look much like an earth elemental anymore. He looks human.
The hunters visit the house in daylight, while Lucid dreams with the sleeping earth. They see the fruit Lucid has coaxed from the trees, and the flowers on the table. Taai hides upstairs with Lucid that night, listening to them prowl outside.
Taai must know what Lucid is, but she never says a word. She disguises him in human trappings so he blends in. She teaches him to understand the human things around him.
When Lucid’s heart blooms into a sprig of blue forget-me-nots, Taai lets him tuck it into her hair. She’s so careful with it, she never bruises a single petal.
Lucid doesn’t leave the house. He looks out at the full moon shining over the woods. He’s losing track of time. It’s measured here in calendar dates and clock chimes, not the earth’s slow orbit around the sun.
Taai finds him in the woods one night, sleeping under a tree. Lucid doesn’t remember leaving the house, but the window is open, curtains billowing in the breeze. He feels sluggish and heavy. It’s hard to keep his eyes open.
Taai kneels in the dirt at his side. She touches his face like she’s memorizing him.
“The hunters came to the house yesterday while you slept. They offered so much money that for one second, I thought about taking it. I can feel that temptation corrupting me. I don’t like knowing I have that power, to sell your life at someone else’s price.”
Taai pulls the sprig of forget-me-nots from her hair. Her fingers are gentle where they pinch around the stem.
“I lied to them. I’ve told so many lies about you, I think I’ve started to believe them.”
She takes his hand in hers, closing his fingers around the fragile blue sprig of his heart.
“It’s time to set us both free .”
Chapter 8: Libra
Chapter by AirgiodSLV, Annapods, shubaka
Chapter Text
LIBRA
Art by shubaka
Read by Annapods
Black exists in darkness.
His captors can’t seal him in a vacuum, but they ensure the air that reaches him is inert and stale. He’s kept in a cell underground, occasionally visited by scientists in white lab coats. They bring him up to their laboratories sometimes. They hook him up to machines and ask questions he doesn’t answer. They study him, but they haven’t found a way to control him.
They don’t have his heart. It’s locked away inside his chest, held in trust for someone else.
If Catalyst Industries has other air elementals, Black never sees them. It’s a wise precaution. Black doesn’t know what his power could do to help another air elemental whose heart has been stolen, but he knows he’d try.
He tracks the seasons through overheard conversations and the clothes the scientists wear under their lab coats. Alone in his cell, he closes his eyes and maps out Icarus’ progress in his mind: his descent from the mountains, his meandering path along the river. Black tries not to calculate how little time is left before Icarus reaches their staircase and finds him missing.
The hunters had found Black and been unable to capture him. Black is a master of misdirection, and it’s difficult to cage the wind. They didn’t have anything to tempt him into revealing his heart.
They’d kept watch over him, though, and Black had known it was only a matter of time before Icarus arrived. Icarus, bright and joyful and curious, who wears his heart on his sleeve; who gives it away to Black every time they meet.
Black could have eluded the hunters, but they’d have had Icarus, instead.
He catches glimpses of others sometimes. The one he sees most often is an earth elemental who seems to be tasked with maintaining the stone cells. Black watches him fade, becoming more of a shell each time he’s marched through their dungeon and forced into acting as their jailer.
One day the earth elemental walks by with lighter steps. He smiles at Black through the bars, young and kind. His fingers brush the stone wall without any sense of power behind the touch.
Black thinks: At least one of them got out.
The scientists try coercion exactly once. They bring him up to a laboratory and chain him to a metal post. They send a fire elemental dressed in a Catalyst Industries uniform to threaten him. The scientist that accompanies him makes a speech about not wanting to hurt Black, but having no other choice.
Black raises an eyebrow at the sparks of electricity that dance on the elemental’s fingers. The fire elemental’s mouth quirks, and he gives Black the tiniest nod.
Black harnesses the electrostatic gathered in the air and discharges it into all the electronics in the room. He hopes the resulting catastrophic failure costs Catalyst Industries several months of work.
They leave him in his cell after that.
He’s still there when they bring in someone new. Black tastes the air and catches a trace of smoke on his tongue.
He sends a message through an overhead vent, using the fresh air that accompanies the new elemental’s arrival. His answer arrives a few days later.
A water elemental pools on the floor of Black’s cell. He surges into physical form, a confluence of droplets leached from sweat and damp stone. Black recognizes him by his smile alone, even before he sees the shock of pale hair and startling blue eyes.
“Hello, Black,” Sunshine purrs. “Want to get out of here?”
Chapter 9: Scorpio
Chapter by AirgiodSLV, Annapods, snickerdoodlles
Chapter Text
SCORPIO
Art by snickerdoodlles
Read by Annapods
Red does not exist, and then they do.
The part of them that was Sunshine flounders. That part remembers being Moonshine, fully absorbed and in control of Ride's body.
The part of them that was Black remains calm. Of course it's different this time. Black still has his heart.
A muffled bang echoes off the stone walls. Passion strolls into view. He plucks long strands of fur from his red coat and twists them together, sticking them into the lock on their cell.
“Should we…?” Red hooks a thumb over their shoulder, offering to stand clear of any fireworks.
Passion snaps his fingers. The lock ignites in a silver-white flash and falls open with a weak screech of twisted metal. “Give me some credit. What’s our next stop?”
Red leads the way to a drain grate near the stairs. They crouch down and rap it with their knuckle a few times. The echoes fade away into silence, and then the grate pops off and is shoved aside.
“Can’t believe I’m breaking into this place,” Ride mutters as he hoists himself out of the drain. “Any intel on our target?”
Ride and Sunshine had agreed the hearts of captured elementals were likely being kept onsite by Catalyst Industries. This compound has the best security, and it would give them a psychological advantage over their hostages. Anyone who saw an opportunity to flee would be choosing to leave their heart behind.
“Wherever they’re being kept shouldn’t be hard to find.” Red ignores the look Ride gives them at the evasive answer. It’s the best one they have.
“This is the whole team?” Ride asks. “Two fire elementals and a prayer?”
“Three, hopefully. And…” Red pauses to taste the swirling mist of their power: a spray of water blown by a gust of wind. “Us.”
“We’ll have help from the outside as well,” Passion adds. “They’ll keep the guards busy. Can we get to an external vent?”
“There’s a courtyard up one level and fifteen meters east.” Ride rolls his eyes when they look at him. “Building plans. I’m a professional.”
Red leads the way. The fire elementals fall in to flank them. Passion clearly wants to cover them, accustomed to being the vanguard, but Red is confident now in their abilities.
Human bodies are water and air. Red knows how to make them dance to their tune.
Scientists in lab coats slump to the floor as Red passes by. Frost creeps across their equipment, riming the delicate instruments they use to study and exploit. Red reaches out for their glass lenses and mirrors and monitor screens, and shatters them all.
Passion gathers heat as they go, building it up until Ride pushes open the door to the courtyard. A fireball blooms from his upturned palms, hot air billowing upward.
Wind whips Red’s hair into their face. They turn toward it, instinctively seeking out the source. A storm thrashes the treetops, heading their way and moving fast.
Icarus.
Red walks to the center of the courtyard and spreads their arms wide. The storm is more than wind alone. Red can feel a static charge in the air, the pressure and humidity of brewing thunderclouds. They embrace it as a lover, coaxing the water from the sky, welcoming and inviting.
“What are you doing?” Ride asks.
Red opens their eyes as the first droplets fall onto their upturned face, their parted lips; a splash of water on their tongue. A kiss.
Red smiles and answers: “Calling down Rain.”
Chapter 10: Sagittarius
Chapter by AirgiodSLV, Annapods, inappropriate_happiness
Chapter Text
SAGITTARIUS
Art by inappropriate_happiness
Read by Annapods
Jay is still getting used to having fire at his fingertips again.
Solar panels on the space shuttle had converted energy into electricity, but only enough to power its systems. Once the rocket boosters had jettisoned and the main engine cut off, Jay had been adrift. They’d needed him to get into orbit, but afterward, they’d mostly kept him sedated. Fire is too dangerous in microgravity.
Jay had believed in Catalyst Industries once. He’d fallen in love with one of their scientists who’d shared the same dream. Elementals working in harmony with humans for a better world. Human technology that could solve environmental problems. Elementals who could integrate with that technology to accomplish things none of them could do alone.
He’d signed on willingly. He’d given away his heart.
He doesn’t know where it started to go wrong. When it became about money rather than science. When ideals became secondary to results. When Jay himself, with all his power and possibility, became a means to an end.
When he returned from space, he was no longer a valued team member. He was an asset.
He wasn’t the only one. Catalyst Industries had ‘acquired’ an earth elemental, and used him to bioengineer plants for pharmaceuticals. When Lost’s projects suddenly began to fail, they brought in another one.
They used Jay’s wife to do it.
Pyrrha has her tablet out to take notes when Jay walks in. They don’t meet each other’s eyes. She no longer wears his ring.
Ghost is chained to a familiar metal post. They’d tried to use Jay to torture someone in this lab once before. It had backfired spectacularly, but they’ve learned their lesson now. Ghost can’t fight back the same way. Just like Jay, Ghost has given Pyrrha his heart.
Jay crouches down to meet Ghost’s eyes. The spark of defiance in them has been dulled by heartbreak. Jay needs to kindle that fire again.
Electricity crackles at his fingertips. He’s been told to ‘encourage’ Ghost to cooperate, by whatever combination of threat and pain is most effective. Jay lays his hand against Ghost’s cheek and leans in close.
He whispers in Ghost’s ear, “Do you know where our hearts are?”
Jay’s is no longer on Pyrrha’s finger, but neither is Ghost’s. If she’s put them into her keepsake box, carved from one of the trees that grew on their land; if she’s kept them with the boutonnière Jay wore at their wedding, made from wildflowers picked on their farm…
Ghost is an earth elemental. He’s buried his hands in that same soil.
Ghost’s gaze darts back to him. Jay sees the spark of hope catch in his eyes.
Pyrrha moves behind him, coming closer. She doesn’t trust him anymore.
Jay doesn’t trust her, either. And that breaks his heart.
He draws back a little and smiles, putting on a show. A spark dances on his fingertip where it caresses Ghost’s cheek. Ghost flinches away.
“I’m here to convince you it’s in your best interests to cooperate. And to give you a little taste of what will happen if you don’t. You’re an earth elemental, right? Have you ever felt a lightning strike?”
Ground it, he thinks, and prays that Ghost will understand. He can’t risk another whispered message. Pyrrha is too close and too suspicious. Channel it. Disperse it.
Ghost swallows. He leans, just a little, into the pressure of Jay’s hand.
Jay shocks Ghost with enough current to make his heart seize. Enough to melt the delicate mechanisms in the manacles around his wrists, which fall open with a clink.
Ghost sends the lightning into the ground. It passes harmlessly beneath Jay’s feet: fire recognizes fire. Pyrrha isn’t so fortunate. Jay hears her hit the carpet as she’s knocked unconscious.
Ghost looks dazed when Jay slides his hands under Ghost’s armpits to lift him up. He’s shaking, but keeps his feet.
“There’s more help on the way,” Jay tells him. “Let’s go steal some hearts.”
Chapter 11: Capricorn
Chapter by AirgiodSLV, Annapods, shubaka
Chapter Text
CAPRICORN
Art by shubaka
Read by Annapods
Lost haunts the woods.
He doesn’t pretend he’s doing anything else. He’s a ghost: no longer an elemental, unable to be anything else.
Lost clears away the wreckage of the windstorm by hand. He wishes he could do more to help. The trees will recover from their splintered branches and gouged bark, but they’ll have to do it without him.
He can’t do anything for the flowers dangling from broken stems. Irises no longer bloom where he walks. He hasn’t seen one since he left the compound.
Lost finds footprints in the mud on the riverbank. The fear of hunters drives him deeper into the woods. His ears strain for the snap of twigs and absence of birdsong.
Then he sees the forget-me-nots.
They bloom at the base of tree trunks and crop up in sun-dappled clearings. They grow too quickly to be natural, appearing in the space of a few hours. Another earth elemental has taken refuge in Lost’s forest.
He should be glad there’s someone to care for the woods in his place. It shouldn’t taste so bitter; poison coating the back of his tongue.
Lost follows the forget-me-nots. He eventually finds the earth elemental in a tree. Lost wants to tell him these are his woods, but that isn’t quite true anymore.
The other elemental clambers down onto a low-hanging branch. His movements are clumsy and uncertain. “I’m Lucid.”
Lucid’s hair is a bird’s nest of snarls and loose strands. He has a smudge of dirt on one cheek. Lost feels his sense of responsibility stir. He grudgingly offers his own introduction. “I’m Lost.”
“Me too.” Lucid sits down on the branch, nestled against the tree trunk. “I had to be human for a while, to hide. I’m trying to remember how to be me.”
Lost feels his chest twist around the hollow, empty ache inside it. He’s too heartsick to soften his own sharp edges. “I can’t help you. They took my heart.”
Lucid covers his chest with both hands. It’s an exploratory gesture, not the flinching horror the air elemental had shown. “I have mine again. It isn’t quite…settled, yet.”
The ache of loss is too much, and Lost turns to walk away. Lucid can stay if he wants. It’s a big forest. They don’t have to run into each other.
Lucid calls after him. “Are you going to get it back?”
Lost turns around. Lucid watches him with wide, curious eyes. As if that was a genuine question and he’s awaiting an answer.
Grief clogs Lost’s throat like thick mud. He’d made a choice to leave his heart behind. Second-guessing his decision now won’t change that. “How could I?”
“I’ll come with you.” Lucid slides down from the tree. He stumbles when he hits the ground before catching his balance. “When I hid, I wasn’t alone. You shouldn’t have to be alone, either.”
The thought of returning to the compound paralyzes him. Lost can smell the dank stone when he closes his eyes. He can feel the pebbled texture of the walls where he reinforced Catalyst Industries’ prisons.
He’d left others behind when he left. The air elemental in the cells. The fire elemental they’d sent into space.
The clay golem he’d shaped, around the last iris he’d coaxed into bloom.
Lost doesn’t know if the past can be undone. He’s only one person. He’s up against a corporation that feels, in his fear of it, as vast and powerful as the earth itself.
But he owes it to all of them to try.
“Do you know the way?” Lucid’s cool hand slips into his. Lost wonders if Lucid ever doubted, even for a moment, that they’d go back for Lost’s abandoned heart.
Lost feels a tug inside him. The golem or his heart, or both of them together. He feels like it’s been there all along, just waiting for him to notice.
Lost grips Lucid’s hand and nods. “I know the way.”
Chapter 12: Aquarius
Chapter by AirgiodSLV, Annapods, minnabird
Chapter Text
AQUARIUS
Art by minnabird
Read by Annapods
Fade feels the shift as soon as it happens.
It's an updraft, a sudden gust of hot air rising from the compound. Fade knows that energy. It has Passion written all over it.
“That’s it, that's the signal.”
Trinity's on her belly in the dirt next to him, a pair of binoculars in one hand. It’s risky for her to be here. Catalyst Industries will consider a human more expendable than an elemental, and much easier to kill.
Fade knows she wouldn’t be anywhere else. She’s his mirror. In Trinity, he sees his own ideals reflected back. Trinity challenges him. She holds him to a higher standard. When they found out what Catalyst Industries was up to, she’d been the first to say they had to fight back.
Trinity turns to grin at him. “Kiss for luck?”
Fade presses his lips to her warm cheek, and feels his heart skip where it's held safe against Trinity's chest.
“Wait for Passion to set off your explosives, or…?”
His words are drowned out by a thunderous boom as half the compound goes up in flames and thick black smoke.
For all that she’s his mirror, there’s a lot of Passion reflected in Trinity as well.
“Subtle,” Fade mutters.
There’s no one to hear him. Trinity is already up and running toward the fence.
Apparently they weren't the only ones watching and waiting for an opportunity. The guards grapple with vines that snake out of the tall grass to coil around their ankles. Wind rises from the opposite direction, building speed. Through it comes driving, blinding rain, the kind that stings like tiny blades.
The electric fence sizzles and shorts out. That's a fire elemental’s work, but it isn’t Passion. They must have help from inside, as well.
They'd planned for Fade to handle the guards while Trinity worked on the gate, but someone else has beaten them to it. A man in a khaki shirt swings the gate open from the inside. He isn’t an elemental, but he isn’t human, either. In his hand is a purple iris: an earth elemental’s heart.
The yard outside the compound is in chaos. Slashing rain has done little to quench the fires caused by Trinity's explosives. Fade feeds them fresh oxygen to stoke the flames.
Ahead of him, Trinity runs for the compound doors to free any elementals trapped inside. Just like Fade, she needs to see that Passion is whole and unharmed.
A storm of black feathers whirls into her path. The expression on the air elemental’s face is twisted with hatred and fury.
Time seems to slow. Fade sees the branch thrown like a javelin by the violent wind. It drives into Trinity's stomach with such force that she flies backward to land hard on the ground.
Fade’s knees buckle. Agony wrenches away control of his body. He falls onto his hands and drags himself through the pain toward Trinity's body.
“Trin.”
The familiar scent of smoke and hot metal envelops him. Passion crouches above him, trying to protect Fade from the storm.
The air elemental bares his teeth. “She's one of them. She's taken a heart.”
Fade moans. Passion’s hands are brands on his shoulders, grounding him against the anguish of his heart shattering into pieces.
“It's mine,” he gasps. “It's my heart.”
There are no humans left in sight. Only their own kind, divided on opposite sides of an invisible line, with Trinity lying still and silent between them. No one has moved to help her. Fade isn’t sure anyone will.
Black feathers drift toward the ground like falling leaves where the other air elemental stands. “If she dies, you’ll get it back.”
If Trinity dies, Fade won’t need his heart back. It will be broken beyond repair.
Chapter 13: Pisces
Chapter by AirgiodSLV, Annapods
Chapter Text
PISCES
Art by AirgiodSLV
Read by Annapods
Sunshine resurfaces.
Just as Black is pulled toward Icarus, Sunshine swirls like a whirlpool around Rain. He pours himself into the storm in Rain’s hands, taking shape around the carved black naga of his own heart.
Sunshine turns to survey their little band. Catalyst Industries is finished, the compound in ruins and their technology destroyed. All of the captured elementals are accounted for, reunited with their hearts.
At the center of it all, a human woman is dying.
Wind still rages around Icarus. Black stands at his side, dispassionate. Lost is with them, holding tight to a clay golem. Their hands are tangled together around Lost’s heart.
On the other side of the divide, Fade drags himself toward the woman on the ground with Passion crouched over him. Lucid has joined them, his hands fluttering with the desire to help.
The others stand apart, witnesses choosing not to interfere. Jay has placed himself in front of Ghost, on guard against anyone else getting too close. Ride’s hands are shoved into his pockets, a deliberately casual stance at odds with the tension in his body.
Rain waits to see what Sunshine will do.
Three votes in favor of this execution, and three against. Sunshine will be the one to tip the balance.
Nothing will change human nature. This isn’t the first time greed and prejudice have led to corruption, and it won’t be the last. As much as humanity seeks to explore and understand, they also crave dominance. That extends to power over nature and the elements.
At the same time, nothing will change elemental nature either. So long as they’re free to live and love as they choose, they’ll continue to give away their hearts.
What matters is the intention. A stolen heart traps an elemental in human form, stripping them of their identity and power, binding them against their will.
A heart given freely doesn’t diminish that power at all. Having someone else to guard the most vulnerable and tender part of an elemental only makes them stronger.
Sunshine knows what Fade has chosen.
Icarus’ hands clench into fists when Sunshine walks forward. “They hurt us,” he says, cold as winter wind. “They’ll hurt us again.”
“They will,” Sunshine agrees. He glances pointedly back toward Fade. “Does that mean we should hurt each other?”
A long black feather whips into the wind. Sunshine catches it in a pool of water so it won’t escape. The edges are ragged; barbs torn out in clumps, the vane nearly stripped away.
“We can’t live without trusting anyone,” Sunshine says, holding onto the cracked shell of Icarus’ heart. “There has to be a balance.”
He dissolves into droplets, flooding into the broken body at his feet. Trinity’s nearly beyond saving, but Sunshine has done this before. He’d healed Ride’s knife wound. He understands bodies and blood.
Fade gasps when Trinity does, the heart she carries in her pocket surging back into rhythm with her own. He crawls to her side, Passion half-carrying him the rest of the way. Trinity is still weak, but her fingers lace with Fade’s and squeeze when he takes her hand.
Beside them, Passion’s heart crystallizes into a string of brilliant black gems.
Sunshine doesn’t know which of them that treasure belongs to now. It doesn’t truly matter.
Everything in balance, he thinks again. A cycle ready to start anew.
snickerdoodlles on Chapter 1 Sun 10 Aug 2025 07:36AM UTC
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SABandBAB (BABandSAB) on Chapter 1 Fri 15 Aug 2025 01:00AM UTC
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