Chapter 9: Meant for Grander Work

With the planet on lockdown, I sought out the aid of smugglers to get me and my family off-world. In hindsight, probably not the best decision, but I was certain that something horrible was on the horizon, and I didn’t want my family to have any part of it. My wife was concerned, but she agreed tentatively. I told my son and my daughter that we were going on a trip across the stars. Having spent their whole life planet bound, they couldn’t have been more excited. Maybe I should have been more honest with them, but I didn’t have the heart to tell them that there was a chance that all of humanity was about to be killed by an angry Space Dragon.

“Run, precious one. Run!”

Éclair heard a voice from her past that beckoned her. It was a voice of comfort ... a voice of love; the two things in Éclair’s life that seemed to be diminishing.

“Run now, precious one! Look around you! You’re free! Now go quickly! Flee!”

The voice was much more insistent than Éclair remembered. She figured that it must be another dream, that it couldn’t possibly be the man she thought. But then there was only one man who ever called her “precious”. Éclair’s mentor had always seemed so powerful to her, like nothing in the universe could outmatch him. And yet the fear and anxiety in his voice was unmistakable.

Éclair opened her eyes. She was still in the white torture chamber, the once perfect white walls stained with the blood of countless victims. All the wicked torture tools shimmered in the light with deadly luminance. Everything was the same as Éclair remembered. The door remained closed, the room stank of decay and Éclair’s head still throbbed from Lord Gregory’s constant visits. Just one thing differed. Someone had deactivated the paralysis field on the table that bound Éclair in place.

“The Lord Caretaker works in the most curious of ways,” said Éclair quietly to herself.

The only thing keeping her on the table were the metal bindings on her wrists and feet. However, with the paralysis field disabled, Éclair regained free access to her Elemental powers. After everything she’d been through, no way would she let a bit of iron stand between her and freedom. Éclair concentrated her psions to her hands and feet. Icy clouds of mist soon enveloped her limbs, and she put all of her strength into freezing the iron bindings.

Iron was much more difficult to freeze than most materials. It was hard and more durable than fire, earth, or wind. Metal wouldn’t bend easily to any force, making it naturally superior to ice, the solid form of water. However, if Éclair summoned cold enough ice, she could alter the molecular structure of anything, compelling any substance to become brittle. Liquid nitrogen and dry ice possessed such qualities. Although, conjuring temperatures so close to absolute zero was easier said than done; more importantly, it was dangerous.

With ice being her natural element, Éclair could resist the cold more than others. However, that didn’t mean that she was invulnerable to it. If she miscalculated, she could cause instant frostbite to her limbs, rotting them away with the subzero temperatures that she inflicted upon her metal bindings.

However, Éclair had been taught well. She knew how to direct the flow of her ice so that it targeted only what she wanted. But just to be safe, she also laid down a thin layer of frost over her skin for protection. The frost acted much like an igloo and it contained the heat within her body.

It took a few minutes of intense concentration, and a none-too-little amount of discomfort, but Éclair finally felt the metal bindings loosening as they crumbled into fractals of ice. With a laugh of triumph, Éclair easily broke free of her frozen restraints and rubbed her sore, bloodied wrists. Summoning her Medical Elemency, Éclair healed her wrists as a bluish light leapt from her fingertips. Medical-types may not have been as flashy as physical-types with their superior speed and strength, but being able to heal one’s self and others offered a great many more avenues. Shapeshifting also lay in the Medical Spectrum, so one day, Éclair might be able to change her form as easily as the Goblins did.

“Not so helpless now, am I boys,” said Éclair, thinking of Ryan, Grafael, and Leon.

Éclair leapt towards the door in a single, graceful bound. She briefly went to the floor to inspect the shattered remains of her medallion. Damaged, but not unrepairable. Besides, the real power of the medallion lay within every piece. Éclair carefully gathered up the pieces and placed them in her pocket.

It might still be of some use yet.

After collecting the remains of her medallion, Éclair took a moment to ascertain her situation. Judging from the way that Silvia had carefully avoided touching the walls earlier, Éclair suspected that they were now lined with energy shields. Just to be sure, she picked up one of the bloody surgical knives and threw it at the wall on the opposite side of the room.

As expected, the knife exploded into a thousand shards with the sound of voltage and a flash of yellow sparks. One shard almost hit Éclair in the head, but she managed to duck so that it buried itself in the door behind her.

That’s good, the door isn’t shielded; however, it will still be difficult to break through.

At that point, Éclair could have done a number of things. She could begin slowly freezing the door as she had with her metal bindings; however, the door was a much larger target, and thickened with reinforced titanium. Éclair simply didn’t have the skill or power with ice Elemency to pull off such a feat, not in a short enough amount of time.

She was certain that Galzar would come in any second to check on her; he struck her as being the cautious type after all. She might try summoning all her psions at once to force her way through with an ice blast, but that would cause too much noise. Plus, there was no guarantee that it would work, or that she would survive the blast if it did.

The room was far too confined. If Éclair resorted to power alone, she would likely end up killing herself with the shields in the room bouncing her ice right back at her. No, subtler methods took precedence over brute force in this type of situation.

Since Éclair could stand on the floor, the ground didn’t have shields on the surface. However, the tiles probably had shielding just below the surface to prevent Éclair from burrowing through the floor. Even if they didn’t, Éclair couldn’t be sure what waited for her underneath. She could fall right into the office of Galzar Slithe himself for all she knew.

Then Éclair had another idea. She could wait for Galzar to come and then surprise him by placing herself above the door, and then ambushing him once he walked through the threshold. But then that seemed even less likely to succeed than the other two options. From what Éclair knew of the Goblin, he was much more experienced and skilled than his daughter, and she defeated Éclair easily. The memory alone filled Éclair with bitterness and embarrassment.

I want to be acknowledged as a great Elemental, but I can’t even take on a scrawny little Goblin girl, let alone her father. What am I to do?

With a puff of frustration, Éclair banged her head against the control panel on the wall. The door suddenly slid open a smidge. Éclair stared at the crack of the sliding doors, bare of any personage. The door had been unlocked this whole time. Éclair almost laughed out loud at the ridiculous irony.

I can’t believe that someone as cautious and careful as Galzar Slithe would leave the prison door unlocked like that. This is almost like something from a comedy. But then Éclair thought of a possible explanation besides mere incompetence from her adversaries.

Looking up as if expecting to see his face in the ceiling, Éclair said, “Thank you, godfather.”

Praying silently for protection, Éclair took a deep breath and burst through the door. Éclair now stood in a large room that was obviously Lord Gregory’s personal chambers. There was a golden bathrobe draped over a massive couch lined with luxurious tiger fur, no doubt real based on Lord Gregory’s tastes for poaching.

All around the room were various animal heads and antlers of all shapes and sizes from every corner of the Empire. Some of them looked to be a mix of different kinds of animals, like a reptile head that resembled a wolf, or a shark that had claws instead of fins. There were also a great many insectoid-looking creatures, with giant mandibles and pinchers that made Éclair’s skin crawl.

Éclair had always been uncomfortable around bugs, especially spiders. She knew it was silly since she actually met a few sentient insect races and they had been polite enough, but even so, bugs still frightened her. That was mostly due to the mines. Bugs infested the mines, big bugs the size of rats. Éclair remembered the crunching sounds that the bugs made as they feasted on the bodies of dead slaves.

Éclair quickly shook herself to her senses and spread out her psions, probing the room for threats. She had been practicing her sensing abilities, a secondary ability of many medical-types. Although she wasn’t nearly as proficient as others, she had been getting better and could at least detect the presence of most beings within a twenty-meter radius. Galzar wasn’t in the vicinity. But there was something else close by, something not nearly as strong as Galzar’s residence, and yet it still manifested danger.

Éclair heard a grunt behind her. She spun around, crouching low and summoning a blade of ice to her hand. The noise came from the bed. The bed looked big enough to be its own room. Silk curtains covered the bed on all sides. The red trimmings on the top were lined with profane and crude pictures of a man harassing women in a sensual manner while laughing cruelly. Éclair guessed they were depictions of Lord Gregory and his past ‘conquests’.

Pervert, thought Éclair to herself as she edged closer to the bed.

From beyond the silk curtains lay Lord Gregory himself fast asleep, dressed in a golden sleeping gown and snoring like a chainsaw. Éclair received the mighty impulse to kill the pig right then and there.

He deserves it, right?

Right, replied the dark voice in the back of Éclair’s mind.

If I don’t kill him now, he’ll live on to do even greater harm. I would be doing a service to the Ministry.

No doubt they’d regard you as hero, and all you have to do is slide your blade in between his ribs. Couldn’t be easier.

“It couldn’t be easier,” repeated Éclair as she inched closer to the side of the bed, holding a firm grip on her knife.

For all the pain that you have caused the Elementals ... all the pain you have caused me ... I’m going to kill you now and I won’t shed a single bloody tear.

Your actions shall be vindicated.

Some will call it murder. Some will question my sanity.

But if the roles were reversed, they’d do the same. In the end, morality is just another word for hypocrisy.

Yes, hypocrisy. They’ll see I’m right eventually. But until then, I could never live with myself knowing that I left such a creature alive.

Éclair now stood. She was uncertain as to why she agreed with the dark voice. In the past, it had told her to do some things that she found to be unimaginable, Things of the worst nature and evil that could possibly be committed by a sentient being. She thought that sheer madness was trying to overcome her senses, so she blocked the voice out. But now, she found that she had no problem with what the voice suggested. No one would miss Lord Gregory; more than that she would stop him from doing even greater evil ... save all those future victims that would die from his influence.