Original Stories Fan Fiction ❯ The Chronicles of Estra: Elemental ❯ Unleashed ( Chapter 1 )

Chapter I

Unleashed

 

Krenya. An empire founded through the fantastic PR campaign of invading a neighbouring country, slaughtering their soldiers until the local leadership surrenders and then helping to rebuild the economy and infrastructure you destroyed in the first place to cripple any resistance. On a good day, it seems, your new subjects praise you for your wisdom and just nature—and don't mention anything about how you devastated their families and communities by ordering the mass murder of their friends and relatives.

 

That was how “Emperor” Muar did it, three hundred years ago—rumour has it he was attempting to follow in the footsteps of some Grandcestor hero by the name of 'Alexander the Crepe.' Granted, it was only due to hyper-advanced technology his subjects found that Krenya was ever able to become anything more than just another pimple on the arse of history, but it was that same fantastic technology—not to mention unstoppable weaponry—that helped 'persuade' those he conquered of the many merits of not rebelling.

 

Something about having searing holes of pure energy-based agony burned straight through your body by laser blasts, not to mention the threat of bleeding to death from one of many bullet wounds, just might have had something to do with it.

 

These days, few in the Empire care much about the past. Those that do are usually nationalists, and very few of them refuse out of principle to use any of the life-changing, labour-saving technological discoveries that Krenyan scientists have been busy reverse-engineering and mass-producing with the aid of Durrol Heavy Industries.

 

Krenya's a fantastic place to visit—there's always something new being constructed, invented or discovered—but I certainly wouldn't want to live there, as when I went there looking for a job it all seemed very alien to me. No doubt by now it'll only end up seeming even stranger and more outlandish.

 

I grew up in a small village that still held onto many of its tribal customs and traditions, such as the veneration and worship of our regional deities—especially Orcus. Being on the outskirts of Mancurian territory, all but forgotten as anything other than backwater villages that produce food for the 'important citizens' to enjoy, we knew little of technology and science.

 

In those circumstances, superstition and paranoia naturally take over, as people strive to explain bizarre situations using what little knowledge and observations they can glean from the world around them.

 

I was never the most religious person who ever lived—the older orcs are far more likely to praise Orcus; the way they complain about us 'young'uns,' they seem to think we're all a bunch of godless heathens destined to ruin whatever rose-tinted ideals they have of the civilisation they practically claim to have invented without any help from any other generation whatsoever.

 

Despite my apparent status as some sort of pagan Anti-Christ, I made damn sure not to insult anyone else's faith. That would have been a sure-fire way to wake up in the middle of the night with a spear embedded in my chest or my arms lopped off by a machete or something else along those lines.

 

As for Krenya, the people there are just like any other type of people I've met in my time. They have pretty much the same sort of culture as people in Mancurio and the Council do, just with a focus on technology instead of magic. When you stop caring precisely how your shower works, though, you tend to stop noticing the differences.

 

It's a little disconcerting though, I must admit, knowing that you can't help fix something that goes wrong, but I suppose the advantage of having a lift that doesn't work on magic is that a Spellbreaker can't just touch the damn thing and disrupt the spells preventing it from falling straight down the lift shaft and crushing the unfortunate people within into a bloodstained pancake of metal, flesh and bone.

 

While I hate having to use such a clichéd expression, I really do remember that day as if it were yesterday... although presumably that has something to do with replaying the events of that day onward in my mind constantly.

 

-

 

The office was nothing special to look at. It was clean—sterile, even—and sparsely decorated, little more than a large yet simple work desk and a few chairs for furniture. The walls and ceiling were all beige, that most boring and uninspired of colours. Presumably it was the cheapest colour available, given how it just looked like someone had smeared cold porridge all over the place.

 

I sat in a chair at one end of the table; a few well-dressed humans in impressive and presumably expensive suits sat across from me. One of them—an old man, probably counting down the days until retirement—had been writing furiously on a sheet of paper for the past few minutes.

 

I was sweating uncontrollably, yet I dared not react to it in case they took it as a sign of weakness—after all, it's a well-known fact that them corporate types can smell terror. I decided to focus my attention on a particularly interesting part of the wall behind them. At the time, I thought doing so made me look alert and focused. Instead, it made me look like a psychopath attempting to stare them into submission.

 

“I'm sorry, Mr. Oren,” one of the others said, all but wringing her hands as she practiced the ancient business martial art of getting her point across without actually being able to be accused of saying anything at all, “I know the chance of it happening is infinitesimal, but you really don't have any magic whatsoever.”

 

I was stunned, to say the least. There I was, a genuine orc—a magical being, damn it!—being told by some corporate monkeys in the business of studying fucking magic that I had nothing at all to offer them. “It just doesn't make sense,” I pleaded. “I'm a damn orc, what's up with that?”

 

The old man looked up from his frenzied writing. “We don't know, but it's not worth wasting good time, money and effort on,” he said, making no attempt at facial expressions at all. “Thank you for your assistance; you can pick your cheque up from reception.”

 

That's when it happened—an overwhelming wave of nausea and what felt like stomach cramps hit me like a cannonball, accompanied by a blinding headache and a strange sensation of being entirely too warm.

 

Someone said something, but I couldn't hear them. I started to feel dizzy, felt the contents of my stomach lurch and my mouth flood with vile liquid, felt the warmth grow into an incredibly uncomfortable prickly sensation as my nerve endings went into overdrive. I knew I was going to vomit...

 

I clenched my eyes shut and gritted my teeth, trying to block everything out. It didn't work—sort of. I couldn't feel the nausea or pain any more, but the ever-increasing feeling of being far, far too hot just kept growing in strength.

 

I wobbled, and hit something with my right arm—I think I fell off my chair and crashed into the floor. Somebody screamed; a horrific, stomach-churning wail that quickly and mercifully faded away. It doesn't matter who it was—were this a terribly-written work of fiction, the one who screamed would actually have been me. What does matter is that I opened my eyes then, and the world around me had changed completely.

 

Everything was yellow, differing shades from almost gold to pale and sickly. I raised my arms to prop myself up off the floor, only to notice they were the brightest of all. I looked at the rest of my body, and it was all the same—a bright, shining shade of yellow that made all the others in the room look faint by comparison.

 

It was then that I noticed I was alone in the office, and that the table was slowly... melting?! Sweat poured down my face, and it was all I felt I could do just to stay conscious. I felt the burning sensation all over my body, and watched in abject horror as the room itself began to melt.

 

The yellow that was everywhere quickly grew brighter and brighter, to the point where I was sure it was actually white. It was when I saw the quickly-dissolving remains of several people—I assumed they were my interviewers—that I just couldn't hold the tide back any more.

 

Seeing their corpses just lying there, halfway between cremation and melting... I vomited, the purged liquid and small chunks of food mingling with the fleshy, gooey substance that was collecting underneath the corpses and slowly expanding outwards.

 

I laid there like that for several minutes, meal after meal coming back for an early reunion with me. When the last chunk of carrot—the strange thing was, I hadn't even eaten carrot in about a month—had made its appearance, when even the disgusting liquids began to run dry, I slumped forward and closed my eyes. I felt drained, sore, almost impossibly hot... and just wanted this all to end.

 

That's when I felt it—at the time, the strangest sensation I'd ever felt... almost as if it was something that shouldn't belong there. I opened my eyes, and saw the air shimmer and shift hue, changing from bright yellow to a deep green... and then to a brilliant shade of blue.

 

The blue air swirled, formed a large circle, and solidified. The blue turned to black, and a man stepped out of the circle, pushing reality aside as if it were his bitch. I don't remember much of him, but he looked human. I think he had short hair, but that's as far as my memory extends. I certainly couldn't tell you his hair colour—everything was yellow at the time.

 

Yeah, Magesight can be a bitch sometimes; really fucks you over until you start to get used to it. You never quite realise just how important differentiating between different colours is until you can't do it any more.

 

“Yezzik Oren,” the man said, looking me over with an... oddly disturbing cross between a smirk and a glare on his face. I couldn't hear him, but for some reason I knew what he was saying. I think he was speaking into my mind. “The Council requests your presence.”

 

He helped me to my feet—damn near dragged me up, actually—and I walked with him through the circle. The next thing I knew I was in a corridor—but like no corridor I had ever seen before. The ceiling, walls, floor... everything was a different shade of blue, the colour itself swirling around me in a fantastic display of light.

 

It was my first time seeing Summoning magic. I was staring so much I probably looked like a slack-jawed yokel. The man walked past me, smacking me upside the back of the head as he passed. I shook my head to clear it and glared at him, and looked behind myself to see a wall of flickering yellow flames. I hurried after him, falling into step alongside him.

 

“Sheamas Wander,” he introduced himself, turning to look at me with a grim smile and an extended hand. “Enforcer. I trust you've heard of us?”

 

“Who hasn't?” I replied disbelievingly, gesturing wildly with my hands and trying not to trip over my own feet while walking and talking to him. After all, even a slack-jawed yokel like myself knew of them, even back then. “You guys are legendary! The best of the best!”

 

The Enforcers are the Council's elite troops; the last word in countering international magical terrorism. As I said to Sheamas at the time—rather enthusiastically, I might add—they really are the best of the best. Highly trained warriors in the peak of physical fitness, taught to suspect treachery and deceit from everyone—especially from each other, in case one of their number ever goes rogue.

 

Logically, they also extend that same... service to their superiors. As I came to learn for myself, politics is one fucked-up business.

 

The Enforcers are also some of the most powerful and cunning spellcasters this world has ever seen—then again, when your job is to subdue, capture and kill the most dangerous and unstable magic-users around, nothing less will suffice.

 

Naturally, a lot of magical beings—half-lizard salamanders, my fellow orcs, even the formerly-stone dwarves—find employment working for the Council, to the point where humans are clearly in the minority.

 

The few human Enforcers tend to be Spellbreakers, genetically-altered warriors whose very bodies repel magic. I've met some of them myself. Nice people, if a bit moody—then again, they have ample reason to be.

 

But as fantastically useful as anti-magic specialists are to the Council, four people in particular had the power to overshadow every other Enforcer in terms of raw power...

 

-

 

“We call them the Elementals,” Sheamas said as we walked. I glanced behind myself once again—the tiny light that was all that remained of the flickering yellow flames in that burning Krenyan office had long since vanished into the distance, leaving just swirling blue in every direction.

 

Now that I'd had the time to think about things, rather than just going with the flow as a stranger yanked me through a hole in reality—hey, I wasn't going to argue with a man who offered me the sweet deal of 'not burning to death'—I didn't know why this Sheamas guy came to meet me. Or how he knew my name, for that matter.

 

“I... think I've heard of them. Just rumours, though,” I replied, racking my brain and trying to recall distant memories. “Something about them being the 'living embodiment' of a particular type of magic. Didn't think they were real, though.”

 

Sheamas grimaced. “Well, they are,” he said, “and the poor bastards have it rough. Every time one dies, they're reincarnated.”

 

“That doesn't sound bad,” I remember muttering, confused. “In fact, it sounds excellent.”

 

“You'd think so, wouldn't you?” Sheamas grinned. “The thing is, you see, when an Elemental is reborn into a new life, that life already has a soul—an identity. In order to help power themselves, the Elemental's soul obliterates and consumes their victim's soul and takes over their body.”

 

I froze in place, shocked. I'd always considered reincarnation to be a magical, beautiful thing—sure, I never knew until then that it actually ever happened, just that entire religions were based around the prospect of good people enjoying better future lives and bad people wallowing in nothing but suffering and misery for actions their past selves performed.

 

“And you can't just be telling me this for the hell of it; you couldn't have just come to pick me up for the hell of it. That means...”

 

Sheamas nodded, stopping alongside me and placing a hand on my shoulder. “We have reason to believe you're a reincarnated Elemental—the Elemental of Fire, to be precise. Haven't you been wondering what happened back in that office?”

 

“You've got the wrong guy!” I almost shouted, aghast at the possibility. That certainly wouldn't have looked good on my curriculum vitae.“Those scientists ran tests on me—I'm completely, one hundred percent magic-free! There's no way I could be the reincarnation of some... some baby-killing soul!” I shuddered.

 

“I'm afraid your theory doesn't hold water, Mr. Oren,” Sheamas continued. “Everything about you—mind, body, soul—is the purest Fire magic. The only reason you didn't discover this fact until today is because your body simply couldn't handle all that magic before now.”

 

I glared at my human companion. What he was saying didn't make sense at all. The only reason I didn't just assume he was having me on about this whole affair was because it seemed a rather excessive amount of effort to go to for a mere prank or trick. “You're telling me that a being of pure magic showed up as magic-free on the most advanced magic detection hardware known to man?”

 

Sheamas shrugged, clearly bored with the conversation. “I don't see why not, nothing's infallible. Weak Illusion spells can trick even the best equipment. It stands to reason that a source of magic as powerful as your body could at least mask its presence.”

 

“Anyway,” he continued, reaching out and pulling apart a section of the magical corridor, revealing a pitch-black nothingness behind it. “We're here. Stay close.”

 

Before I had time to ask him where 'here' was, he'd grabbed me by the arm and pulled me through the hole after him.

 

-

 

I found myself in another corridor, albiet a more mundane one than before. People of all ages—some dressed in robes, others in more normal and utilitarian attire—walked and ran in both directions, a veritable maze of motion and side-stepping that inevitably led to a number of 'corridor dances' where two people kept attempting to bypass each other in the same direction.

 

The smell of magic pervaded the air. I inhaled deeply, letting the heady, heavy scent of the arcane flood into my nostrils. It took a few seconds before I realised that my eyesight had returned to normal; that nothing was all one colour any more. Finally, I could see properly—and some of the women I saw walking around there made having eyes worthwhile, I can tell you.

 

Two of the human women in particular caught my eye, sauntering casually down the corridor towards me and talking animatedly. The first looked slightly older than me, a golden-haired beauty with pale skin and almost sinful curves. Her companion looked a couple of years younger, most likely still a teenager. Dark-skinned and skinnier—but definitely more toned—yet no less attractive, she was chuckling over some unheard joke.

 

Both were dressed plainly; from the look of their sweat-slicked hair and the way their clothes stuck to their bodies, I estimated they were students who had been training. Oh, I thought, to teach that class...

 

As I watched them walk, time seemed to slow to a crawl. For an instant it stopped, then before my very eyes everything suddenly changed colour. Blues and greens and yellows danced around my vision, currents of magic pushing and pulling the different shades around. In the centre of it all, however, the two women shone the brightest yellow I had ever seen.

 

Their light dwarfed everything else by comparison, and I felt my body heating up for some reason that wasn't—shockingly—perversion. I raised an arm to eye level, and noticed it was as yellow as those two women were. Is this what I think it is? I asked myself. Are those girls who I think they are?

 

Someone placed a hand on my raised arm, and the colours receded. I shook my head and looked over, recoiling in horror at the sight before me. The man's face was a mess of scars and seared, ruined patches of melted flesh. I couldn't tell how old he was just from a glance, his face was that heavily damaged.

 

“Careful there, kid,” he said in a voice so deep it was almost growling, digging his fingers into my skin as if he was trying to impale my arm on them. “You want to be careful with that power. You might kill somebody.”

 

“Easy, Magran,” came Sheamas's voice from behind me—I didn't even know he was there. “He's just Unleashed; he hasn't had a chance to learn how to control it yet.”

 

Out of the corner of my eye, I saw the two girls eyeing us up and whispering to one another. Gotta learn how to lip-read, I thought. Could come in handy.

 

As they walked by, the younger girl stopped and turned to face me, staring at me with a strange expression. She reached out and poked my arm, frowning. “Bit scrawny fer an orc, ain'tcha?” she asked. “You th' runt o' th' family?”

 

I frowned back, recalling the disparity between myself and Ahma. It wasn't a sticking point between us, but many of my peers back in the village chose it as an excuse to pick on me. “You... could say that,” I said. “Are you an Elemental too?”

 

Her eyes widened in surprise, then she laughed—a loud, derisive, mocking howl that just kept going... and going... and going. Her fair-skinned companion stopped, turned, and walked back over to us.

 

“Excuse me,” she said, flicking the younger girl in the back of the head with a finger, ignoring the glare she received in return. “Vae here needs to learn some tact. We are indeed Elementals. My name is Ayanna; I am the Elemental of Air.”

 

“An' I'm Vae!” the other girl said with a smile, seemingly having forgotten about both laughing at me and getting reprimanded with a flick. “I control water! It's awesome!”

 

“Indeed,” Ayanna muttered, patting Vae on the head and ruffling her hair. “And unless Jozam has died since I talked to him half an hour ago, that would make you the Elemental of Fire, correct?”

 

“...Yes,” I said, recovering my wits. “I'm Yezzik—as you guessed, seems I've got Fire. I'd offer you a handshake, but, well...” My sentence trailed off as I shook my arm for mock effect, the scarred man's grip on my flesh tightening painfully.

 

“Quite all right,” Ayanna replied, smiling softly. My underpants became just that little bit tighter. “And don't mind Magran; he's a Spellbreaker.”

 

Spellbreakers. Their bodies implanted with bizarre magic-repulsion devices based on ancient Grandcestor technology and genetically altered to fuel those artefacts like any other part of their body, theirs was a title to be feared.

 

True to their name, they broke spells. Hell, they broke mages. It was no wonder that—despite my innate power—this one Breaker was more than capable of suppressing my magic. I simply didn't have the training, knowledge or skill at the time to overpower the suppression, nor the physical capability to break his hold on my arm.

 

“Before you ask,” he growled again, “I will not let go—not until you are contained within a training room.”

 

“A training room?” I asked, looking back at him—only to regret my decision once I realised he was exactly as ugly as before. “Why's that?”

 

“The training rooms are where students practice their spells,” Sheamas said, walking into my field of vision and passing Magran an opened drinks can. I could smell the revolting—yet distressingly delicious—mixture of sugar and completely unnatural ingredients. “Anti-magic runes protect the students within from having their spells supercharged to dangerous levels, and protect us on the outside from anything that goes wrong inside.”

 

“The only people in danger of training accidents are those inside the rooms,” he continued, “and Training Room S4 is the only one of those designed to handle anything an S-Rank can throw at it.”

 

I must have looked confused, because young Vae jumped in with an explanation of her own. “We're th' S-Ranks,” she said, looking like she was about to explode from a sugar high. I did my best not to look, but I could tell from her... vibrating that she wasn't wearing a bra under those clothes. “We're so powerful we get our own trainin' room!”

 

I chose to execute a stunningly brilliant diversionary tactic—at least, I thought it was stunningly brilliant. Others would more than likely disagree—but I'll tell you now, those bastards are wrong.

 

“So,” I asked nobody in particular, “What now? Do I live here now? Where do I go for food? Oh, and where's the toilet?”

 

Hey, don't judge me—they were entirely sensible questions. Just because a person might have just become one of the most powerful beings in the world, that doesn't mean they aren't at risk of accidentally shitting themselves at an inopportune moment if they don't take care of their body's basic needs.

 

Looking shocked, Ayanna blinked once, then twice. She and Vae traded glances, then burst out laughing, doubling over. Though I appreciated the... view, I couldn't help but feel like she was mocking me. Sheamus and Magran remained silent. I'm not sure which was more uncomfortable to endure—the laughter or the silence.

 

Finally, gradually, Ayanna's hyena-like laughter subsided—which was a shame in a way; the laughter caused her shoulders to shake in a way that had quite a... hypnotic result. I made a mental note not to be caught staring; at least not until I knew how to protect myself from her wrath with magic.

 

“Well?” I pressed. She held up a hand, straightening up and chuckling while wiping stray tears from her eyes. “What's so funny?”

 

“Oh, nothing,” she said, clearly trying not to laugh. “It's just... you're the first initiate I've met who didn't immediately ask when they'd start learning how to cast. It's ironic, is all.”

 

Was it really that funny? I asked myself, perplexed. Oh well...

 

“I grew up in one of the nearby villages,” I replied, “so it's really not that strange that I'd know a little bit about how things work around here. There's what, a year of studying theory before even starting to cast?”

 

“At least!” Vae said. “Took me two!”

 

“Now, now,” Ayanna admonished Vae. “It didn't take you two years at all; you were kept back.”

 

Vae huffed, crossing her arms in front of her chest. “Not my fault th' last trainin' room blew up.”

 

“I still don't know how you did it,” sighed Magran. “You're a Water user; how that fire started is beyond me.”

 

I should have been concerned with how a training room—presumably also one designed to contain an Elemental's powers—could have blown up. If I had spoken up at the time, perhaps I would have saved us all a great deal of grief later on.

 

Regardless, Magran made his excuses and led me away—well, more like he almost dragged me along the floor—towards a solid-looking wooden door covered in fancy-looking ink squiggles. As we approached, the squiggles began to glow a bright blue.

 

As the squiggles shone brighter, I felt something within me shift and change—something that felt repulsed by their very presence. The sensation was slightly uncomfortable, and also a little unnerving. “What the hell is this?” I asked. “Something doesn't feel right...”

 

“That's just the anti-magic,” Magran said, chuckling darkly as he pushed the door open and led me through. “Just be glad you haven't been using your powers for years like some of the other trainees—apparently it hurts like a bitch.”

 

I think I muttered “I can imagine,” but I'm not entirely sure—as I passed through the doorway the strange squiggles began to shine like small suns, and they drew my attention more than any of my weak attempts at wit. I lost all feeling in my legs as they quickly became numb, and I crashed to the floor in a heap.

 

“Welcome to Training Room S1,” Magran said. “This is the first anti-magic training room.”. I looked around me. The room was decorated blandly, beige vomited on the walls and ceiling like it was going out of fashion—not that such a thing was actually possible; beige was never in fashion to begin with.

 

“What do I do in here?” I asked, perplexed. “Is this where I study theory? I thought I'd be in, y'know, a classroom with other students.”

 

“Not just yet,” Magran replied, turning to leave. “You didn't think that little display in the office was the end of your Unleash, did you? Why did you think I made sure I kept hold of your arm?”

 

I was shocked. In hindsight, I shouldn't have been. Then again, I wasn't the most perceptive of people back then. “You mean... there's more to come?”

 

“Lad, you're the living embodiment of all Fire magic.” At the time, I could have sworn Magran was pitying me. I've yet to find out whether or not that was just a fluke; if he just had a facial tic that made him grimace at that moment. “What happened in Krenya was a tiny portion of what you're going to experience over the next, say, five hours or so. Good luck.”

 

And with that, he left, closing the door behind him and leaving me alone in the darkness.

 

-

 

I must have fallen asleep, though I don't know how long I slept for. Regardless, my sleep was fitful and fruitless—it's rare that I remember my dreams, but on that occasion I found myself wishing I could forget.

 

I was in the middle of a crowd of people. Not much out of the ordinary, you'd think—but these people were burning alive, flames searing their clothes to their flesh and melting both into a semi-liquid that slowly moved down their bodies towards the ground, scalding and burning their skin as it went and sending them into fits of panic and terror.

 

They flailed their limbs wildly, screaming and crying out for help, for their gods, until the molten flesh in their mouths burned a slow-moving trail of agonising fire down their throats and reached their vocal chords, searing them beyond use. Their screams faded, replaced by sobbing and coughing from their destroyed throats that only served to exacerbate the problem, sending them into even more fits of sobbing and coughing.

 

I alone seemed untouched by the flames, yet I couldn't move—I tried, but I couldn't move my body at all. I could do nothing but watch as the people around me were reduced to a fleshy slag.

 

I just stood there, petrified, staring. Then I noticed the piles of liquid flesh had started to move... towards me. I still couldn't move. I was powerless to do anything but watch the piles of flesh ooze onto and over my shoes, covering my feet.

 

The texture of the fleshy blobs warped and changed, until I could clearly see human faces staring up at me, their mouths frozen open in a collective silent scream as they started crawling up my legs, oozing upwards slowly.

 

I tried to push one off, but it just engulfed my hands and kept moving, pinning my hands in place. With my arms now stuck, it crawled over them and towards my face...

 

-

 

I woke, startled and terrified by that nightmare. Though most dreams fled my memory once I woke up, this one lingered with horrifying clarity. My hands shook as I ran them through my hair and wiped the sweat off my brow.

 

I looked around, though there was nothing to see—the room was pitch-black. It is a testament to how gullible and stupid I was at the time that I didn't even consider that they hadn't just kidnapped me. Nor, it must be said, did I consider that they had just arrested me. I was entirely too busy thinking about the two beauties I had met in the corridor.

 

I'm probably just as hormone-addled and lust-driven now as I was back then, but I find my sex drive nowadays somewhat tempered by an all-consuming rage that refuses to let go of my mind. This is the danger of being an Elemental—we may have access to incredibly powerful magic, but we are that magic.

 

Have you ever heard of the stereotype of having your powers based on your personality? That is, for example, when in fiction the tough, dependable character gets the Earth-based powers and the emotionally unstable berserker gets the Fire-based ones.

 

Couple that with certain emotions being stereotypically tied to certain elements, and you've got yourself a self-perpetuating stereotype since magic reacts to thought and intention—and few things are more widespread than a cultural stereotype, as reinforcement by repetition is really all it needs—and can effectively alter reality.

 

In other words, we Elementals have our personalities dictated by our powers.

 

Thus, Fire Elementals have always found themselves becoming increasingly prone to anger as they develop their innate powers, because their magic alters them to fit the stereotype—and the mere fact that other people see them becoming angrier and angrier causes them to reinforce the stereotype, which causes magic to alter them more.

 

Whether magic is doing it to further its own designs and plans, or whether it's doing it to bring about the results we expect from far too much bad fiction, I don't know. But I ask you—who's really in charge here? Can we ever really be sure that our magic isn't controlling us to help maintain its own existence? Arcane magic does alter the bodies of those who can wield it, creating extra organs with the sole purpose of producing itself, after all.

 

Who knows how else magic controls us? Is Archmage von Parfu really in control of herself? She might be the most powerful spellcaster of all—she's certainly the only one I know of who can use all three types of magic—but if us Elementals can be manipulated by our powers, then she can too.

 

I don't know the answers yet. I doubt I ever will, especially as I'm stuck in here. Still, I can't let that stop me—an old friend of mine has a lot to answer for, and I refuse to die until I've had my revenge. I may not be in a fit state to fight, but I'm going to do so anyway.