Elementally Bound: Part 4
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Kievaa didn't look up from her pad. "Exquisite! The power levels are remarkable! You do, indeed, exceed much of my calculations. I certainly didn't expect you back so soon. How did you power up so quickly? This wasn't in the established parameters!"
"Shove your parameters," Ember tried to say. Only a soft groan squeaked out.
"Well? Speak up! What do you have to say for yourself? You can speak, can't you? The inhibitor isn't stopping you from speech (although such a thing would be extremely amusing)."
Ember took in an excruciating breath to say, "I'm going to pull your ears off and burn your eyes."
Kievaa laughed at the threat. "How amazingly short-sighted of you! I only have two ears and two eyes; such a thing would be done too quickly. No… No. What you should have used for intimidation are my fingers and toes. Those numbers are much higher, thus taking much longer. Perhaps I'll show you, after the extraction. Fire-bookah, you really are not that bright are you?" Kievaa suddenly burst into laughter at her unexpected pun.
Ember summoned all the strength she had left, in an attempt to ignite and slam her fist forward, pushing her magic out in what would have been an explosion to send the Asura flying. The action caused only a fraction of what she'd expected and was little more than a cantrip; wasted energy.
Kievaa looked up from her readings, a perplexed look as the small sparks came from the woman's fist. "Oh no, we can't have that!" She tapped on a few buttons on the pad. "There. That should put a stop to that. You do indeed hold much power in you, don't you, fire-bookah? It will be fun extracting it."
"You underestimated me," Ember managed a grin, seeing the Asura's surprise at her light show. "That will cost you dearly."
"Yes, yes, yes… I'm sure you'll do horribly vile things to me, and hurt me, and torture me, etcetera, etcetera…" Kievaa said nonchalantly waving her hands. "Come now, puppet. Time to drain you." She began walking toward the lab.
Ember gritted her teeth, the insult hitting hard, yet reluctantly followed. Kievaa was already yelling as Ember entered the lab behind her. And after ascending the stairs, she saw to whom she spoke: It was the ice queen, Valandra.
The woman stood, clad in a suit similar to her own, with the exception of the hologram collectors. While a few were present, most were laced within the suit itself, creating a vivid fluorescence which flowed throughout. The entire thing was blue, almost icy in spots. The woman's signature ice crystal wings protruded from her back. Ember hated the sight of them, and of the ice queen.
Valandra stood, arms crossed, expectantly irritated. "What took you?" she growled at the Asura. A quick glance behind Kievaa revealed her answer. "Oh, I see." Her expression changed to a half-curved grin at the sight.
"Asura have superior ears, you know; we can hear the slightest whisper from afar. I heard you the first five times you called out to me. It's really irritating!" Kievaa complained.
"You're irritating. Can your superior ears hear that?" Valandra scoffed.
Ember would have laughed had it not been so annoyingly painful to do so.
Valandra turned her attention to Ember, approached the weak woman. "So this is what has come of you? Stripped of your power, of your freedom, and," she looked over the woman with an inspecting eye, "stripped of your dignity."
Ember had no reaction, though internally she screamed. The pain of attempting to gather her power was almost overwhelming, but it would be nothing compared to the pain of the upcoming extraction process. With luck, Ember hoped to gather her remaining strength and channel it at the machine. The result may be not as satisfying as Ember wanted, based on her sparks from before, but it was all she had the ability to do. Thus, she remained uncharacteristically silent.
"And she must follow your orders?"
Kievaa nodded wildly. "Oh indeed! She's quite docile! Albeit a bit resilient, but it's nothing the extraction suit and inhibiter can't handle. I really outdid myself with this; any krewe would be lucky to have me."
Valandra raised an eyebrow, decidedly not engaging in more banter with the cocky Asura. She instead returned her attention to the suit, unscrupulously inspecting it. "And the extraction is working, then?"
"Indeed, it does! Although…"
The ice queen flashed an icy look to Kievaa. "Although what? I thought your 'genius' calculated everything? What is it? Is this the reason you called me hear before the final extraction; wrapped me in your warped technology?"
Kievaa fixed one of the buns atop her head, a clear look of irritation for being interrupted and purposefully waited before continuing, the silence making the point of annoyance for her. "Warped tech… No, no; just because you cannot possibly comprehend it doesn't mean it's warped technology! Now, as I was about to say: You are needed for the duration of the extraction process, not simply the last. This fire-bookah here has more power than estimated; the capacitors simply cannot hold it all, so we'll have to put it directly inside you, as it were."
Valandra looked suspiciously at the Asura. She didn't trust her; would be ignorant if she ignored her instincts. Yet, Kievaa clearly wanted Joko's secrets. With that leverage, it wouldn't be prudent for the conniving Kievaa to double-cross her.
"Or, we could just let all that power go to waste. It is your call to make. I'm fulfilling my obligation either way, so I'll be sure to get what I want. You're the one with… power envy." Kievaa snarked.
Ember let out a quick dry, dark laugh. Kievaa raised a veiled eyebrow at the chuckle and faked a louder one. Ember rolled her eyes.
Valandra raised an eyebrow at the laugh, took a step closer. Her face inches was from Ember's. "So you can speak, and yet you have nothing to say? On the eve of your death, you haven't a word?" Valandra shrugged undamaged shoulders. "You really are not worthy of the powers you possess."
Ember faked a mocking laugh, similar to Kievaa's only much darker, guttural.
"If you two are done with the posturing, we have work to do," Kievaa said, already at the console entering calculations. "Fire-bookah, into the extraction chamber," she commanded. "Ice-bookah, get up there in the receiving receptacle."
Ember obeyed her master. Valandra begrudgingly did so as well.
Kievaa pressed a few more buttons. The machine began whirling, humming, and buzzing to life. At once, both cylindrical holograms around the respective chambers began to rotate. A switch was flipped calling forth a bolt of electricity which struck the base of Ember's neck, traveling down her spine. Red glowing pulses began to travel up the bolt, remained for a moment above the receptacle, then traveled over and down into the adjacent chamber. Several crystals surrounding Valandra's chamber sparked to life as each red pulse ran through them. Arcs of electricity flew from each crystal, attaching to various points of Valandra's suit. The red pulses traveled into her in a brilliant glow of power. Valandra cried out in both pain and pleasure.
Ember screamed from the intensity. Had she not had the mental preparation time, she would have blacked out instantly. Instead, in the time her foes bickered, she'd channeled her remaining power, compressed it, formed it directly at her core. She barely managed to enact her plan. Head back, she pressed it to the electrical extraction beam and unleashed all she had built up.
Unprecedented in scale, a large red orb of energy shot out from Ember, raced up the beam, over to the other chamber, and drove through the crystals, finally striking Valandra. At once, the ice queen screamed, dropped to her knees from the intensity of the power. She fought back, instinctively sending her own energy to stop the onslaught. Three beams suddenly reversed, sending blue pulses from the ice queen. They used the same path, traveled the opposite direction, and down into Ember.
"What are you doing! What… What is this?" Kievaa immediately began checking the readouts, turning knobs and flipping switches on the console. "This… This shouldn't be possible! It's not possible to receive from the extractor; send from the receiving chamber. What have you done? Stop this at once!"
With each pulse, Ember felt her strength returning, only something was different. She felt power, but it was foreign power… ice power. It seemed to intermix with her internal fire, she felt hot and cold at the same time.
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And suddenly, she wasn't Ember. The woman looked down at her body. Her hands were not her own, but she immediately recognized them as Valandra's. She looked around. Bones of every size were built into hideous structures around her. Above her, the bone spikes towered, and she watched helplessly as her hands grasped onto an arch of bones, pulling her onto and overlook. Attached to the arch was a wall that stretched as far as she could see. Below her, awakened minions going about their orders in the desert landscape.
She stood on the precipice looking down, a wave of insurmountable dread and indescribable sorrow filled her being. The situation was impossible, hopeless. She was bound under the God-King's thumb and there was no end in sight. She'd been forced to do things… terrible things in his service and in his name. She's lost her home, her family, her love Demitra, and now Palawa Joko had taken her innocence in the bowels of his harem sanctuary he called a 'Bone Palace.' She had willingly sacrificed herself to this fate, to spare her village. Yet, she just learned it all to be futile, as Joko revealed her family to her, presenting the awakened putrid versions of their former selves. The lich had done this after he'd had his way with her, taking all that remained of her innocence.
Tears streamed down her cheeks as the overwhelming situation moved her feet toward the edge. She smiled at the sweet comfort of death as the weight pulled her down, and into the only escape possible.
Except death wouldn't come…
Her fall abruptly ended as a sharp shard of ice pierced into and through her shoulder. She cried out in agony, attempted pull herself from the glacier, failed. She dazedly and bewilderedly looked around. A glacial bed of ice had formed under her, freezing the desert in every direction. All life around was frozen solid: dead, just as she longed to be. Blood poured forth, trailing down the ice shard. Perhaps she would bleed to death at the summit of the inexplicable iceberg. Perhaps this was what death was like.
She closed her eyes awaiting to accept her passage into the mists, when the sound of the God-King's scratchy voice disrupted her passage. Ember, who was not Ember, opened her eyes. Palawa Joko's decrepit vile face filled her vision. He smiled a crooked smile. "Oh you ARE a special one, aren't you? I have need of powers like that! Come child… Come with Joko." He effortlessly pulled the woman from the spike and carried her back to the bone palace.
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Valandra felt the power being pulled from her, and at the same time heat intermixed with her own cold core. When suddenly, she wasn't Valandra any more: she was a small child… She was Ember. A quick glance down revealed her attire was that of rags. She sat on a small swing, surrounded by a large mansion. She hummed softly to herself as she rocked back and forth in the seat. It was a peaceful time, and the girl wished she could live in that moment forever.
Until she couldn't…
A slurred shout called out from behind her, drunken and barely understandable. Instinctively, the child ran from the approaching man. She ran into the house, into a room, hiding under the bed. The man sloppily found his way into it, began pacing around, babbling incoherently. One definitively clear speech came from the drunkard. "You… You little shit! You killed my Nora!"
The bed suddenly flew away and the man immediately picked the little girl up by her hair and slung her. The four-year-old flew across the room and slammed into a wardrobe. "D- Daddy?" she whimpered.
The man raised his hands, palm outward to the little girl. "Burn! Burn like you burned her!" he snarled. Fire promptly shot from his hands, in an attempt to incinerate his child.
Ember blinked, bewildered as the fire flowed into her, absorbed. She suddenly felt a power surge inside her. The man's eyes grew wide as Ember stood, her very skin glowing. She clenched her fists and with a scream of rage, pain, and fear, she exploded.
Her father flew through the wall as the flames engulfed, created a crater where the young girl stood. All plantlife, all walls of the room, a nearby drake nest, all decimated.
"You… You monster!" her father shrieked before retreating.
Ember stood in the room, panting. Her eyes were dots of red, an aura of fire, her fists still clenched.
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Kievaa's shrill voice was heard over the electrical whizzing of the machine and the subsequent rumbling created by the exchanging power. "The feedback's overloading the machine! You two have destroyed my precious work! You damned bookah! I'll come collecting my payment, ice-bookah! Your Joko owes me the secrets of the Awakened!" She waddled quickly down the exit corridor and vanished.
Smoke began billowing from the various components of the machine, the control panel sparked and caught fire. Pipes connecting the two apparatus began to freeze and melt. All sound from the room was replaced by a rumble, which grew exponentially louder with each pulse. A final pulse of red and blue found their way to their opposite receptacles. Both exploded as they entered the women, sent them flying. Both landed simultaneously, and both scrambled to their feet, bolting for the exit.
Among the chaos of the imminent explosion, the two exchanged quick glances of worry, fear, and an uncanny understanding neither quite understood yet. They approached the exit and leaped as the lab detonated in an enormous fireball, with ice shards behind them.
To Be Continued...
