Elm was giving me regular grumbles of discontent as we walked through the rain that night. There were a lot of things probably going through his head as we walked towards Galen’s office. It was time to start work, but we had a bigger mission in mind.
“You sure about this kid?”
I turned to him and smiled.
“Absolutely not. But it’s the best option I could think of.”
It was a lot harder to hear other sounds due to the heaviness of the rain. The downpour deafened out the voices of the guards who were hiding under any cover possible to not get consistently soaked. As I took a closer look at many of them, they looked slightly off and were struggling to stand up right.
Thanks Twig.
I got up to Galen’s door and took a deep breath before knocking. I was barely prepared for the events but I knew that if we wanted to win, this needed to go right. I was about to be on a warpath, and entering this man’s office was the first step.
“Come in!”
***
Galen smiled at us as we both entered through the door and into his office. The shutters on the window had been closed, which blocked out a lot of the sound. There was no vision in or out of the room. For a man of such importance, he never once kept a guard with him. He was confident in himself enough to the point that he never thought it was necessary.
“Sorry about the weather. Hope you two don’t get sick because of it.” He was wiping off his hair with what looked to be a small towel. For a small moment, I could have sworn that I saw him almost reach over to his cabinet and attempt to offer Elm a drink. “Well, we have you all here. I assume this is about my proposal?”
Elm sighed before he responded. He was a much better actor than me, but keeping his composure in this situation was a lot more effort than usual.
“Yes. But I wanted to talk with you about a few things before then. First, can you give me that towel? I’m soaked.” Galen happily threw Elm the towel which he began to use to wipe his face down.
“Go on.” Galen goaded him to continue. He was enjoying this a lot more than anyone reasonably should. For him, he was getting to watch a person who he saw as a hero of the empire essentially bow down to him.
“I didn’t pick the kid just because I saw some potential in him. It is true that he’s a fantastic technician and could easily help the empire, but there were some other motivations.”
“Is he your son?”
Both of us took a pause. I had remembered Galen mentioning that it wouldn’t surprise him, but I didn’t expect him to be so direct about it.
“Roy, no. I went around a lot back in my youth but never in Corith.” There was a smile on Elm’s face now as he appeared to temporarily reminisce on some promiscuous part of his past. It was something I didn’t care about, nor did I care to hear any more about it. “I took interest in the kid because he showed me something about my work that I hadn’t known back when I created it.”
Galen leaned forward on his desk, his curiosity now peaked. The two men were in completely different worlds as they spoke.
“It was before Sera got injured. One night, when I was getting back to the bunks after doing the tech work, I found him using magic.”
Galen’s eyes immediately widened.
“What?”
“Turns out there was a flaw in my design. The cuffs are meant to block out all of the aptitudes that are tied to humanity. The ones you hear about the most often. But this kid was able to work around them somehow because he has one that doesn’t follow the normal rules- a light attunement.”
The captain looked at him in bewilderment. It was enjoyable seeing a man who prided himself on being well informed to be so flabbergasted by new information. It was a lot of work to hold myself back from smiling.
“You knew this? Why didn’t you tell me this when you discovered it?”
“Because you would have killed him. I took him as my apprentice because I wanted to make sure he didn’t get himself killed. Just look.” Elm gave me a soft pat on the back. “North, show him.”
I nodded in response and walked forward, closer towards the desk. I raised my right hand with my palm facing upwards, and the soft light began to emanate out of it. Galen leaned forward, studying the soft glow I was releasing.
“Holy shit.”
As he inched closer, I turned to see Elm covering his eyes with the towel. I took a deep breath and placed all of my focus in front of me.
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The entire room went white.
***
In that single second, it felt as though time had slowed down. The adrenaline rushing through my body made every single moment felt like it lasted forever, and I needed it.
I could feel all of the energy rushing through my body at once. Just as I let the light rush out of my hand I quickly stopped the flow and dashed forward. Galen had been temporarily blinded, and I needed to use that small window of time as best as possible. Elm dropped the towel from his face and ran at Galen. We needed to take him down and get to the key if we wanted even the slightest chance of winning against the guards.
I stepped forward and started my sprint, until I noticed something around Galen’s body. Despite still recoiling from the sudden flash, there was an odd flicker around him. I could hear the faintest sounds which resembled the crackling of a large fire, and it was growing louder. As it did, I started to see small bits of light appear and disappear around his body.
They were sparks.
Captain Galen had a lightning aptitude.
***
Another second passed, and the crackling around his body was growing, the sparks increasing in size. I took another step. Elm was just behind me, also in his own sprint towards Galen. Elm had started to step to the side and was planning to go around the table to get him, while I continued my dash forwards. Galen started to raise his hands forward, his eyes still unable to open. He was still blind, but he was going to just hit as much area as possible in front of him. The sparks began to focus around his palms, brighter and more frequent as he raised them directly towards me. I was moving forward already and wasn’t able to dodge.
The next second, lightning struck my body. I was launched backwards by the force as an overwhelming sensation of heat surrounded me and felt as though it were burning my entire body at once. My limbs all spasmed as I slammed against the wall, knocking down a few of the many knickknacks he had placed, some of which hit my head. Elm was continuing to move forward, having avoided the initial strike and was only a small step away from the man. Elm had raised his fist and winded it back, ready to slam directly into Galen’s jaw.
Another second passed. Elm’s fist connected with Galen’s jaw, smashing into it and causing it to bend unnaturally. Galen was pushed backward by the recoil, still confused and unable to see. Elm continued, pulling up another punch and aiming it for the man’s gut. Galen attempted to reorient his hands to fire off another blast in the direction from where he had been hit, but Elm had already moved out of the way.
Another second. Elm’s fist landed in his stomach, causing all of the air within Galen’s lungs to rush outwards. He stumbled backwards and began to fall, and Elm continued the assault.
He landed punch after punch on the man who was now on the floor, writhing in pain. It was a brutal display, but I could still hear that soft crackling of electricity. As he continued to be beaten, Galen raised his hands and grabbed onto Elm’s arms, focusing as much energy as possible into them. The older man stopped and spasmed as his body was flooded with energy. He took the moment to sit up and tackle the man to the ground, keeping up the flow of power. Even as he spat up a bit of blood, Galen smiled.
“I’d hate to kill you, old friend. But I can’t let this go unpunished.” Galen grabbed onto Elm’s chest and let the electricity flow into him, scalding his skin and causing him to convulse more and more. When Elm finally was starting to slow down and stop fighting back, Galen stopped and stood up. His eyes were still wet with tears, but he had regained his vision. Looking down at the beaten man, he laughed.
“Your apprentice on the other hand, I’d be very happy to kill.” He finally turned to look at the wall where my body was launched, only to find it gone. His smile immediately faded.
“Where the fuck did he go?”
As he turned to his side away from Elm, he found his favorite igniter pointed directly at his face.
It was floating in midair.
I gave the trigger a soft pull and all of the tension that had been built up released, slamming the two pieces of magore together. A bright blue beam shot out of the front and directly through Galen’s skull, right between his eyes. It melted the entirety of the top of his head and even burnt straight through his wall. When the energy subsided, the only thing left intact was his jaw.
Galen’s body collapsed onto the floor, dead.
That was for Corith.
***
I let the invisibility subside as I moved back over to Galen who had burns all over his body. He turned to me and smiled.
“I’m ok. Just let me lie here for a moment.”
“You sure?”
“Yeah, Galen went easy on me. If this shit was enough to kill me I would have died on the battlefield years ago.”
I nodded as I moved to grab the key from the drawer, finally getting to study it in my hand. The odd movement of energy throughout it was mesmerizing as the flow of mana made what looked like incomprehensible patterns. I moved over to Elm and searched his ankle, finding the small hole which the key slotted into. Putting it inside, I could hear a small click as the cuff snapped open and fell off of his leg. The skin below it was a completely different color from the rest of his body. I was about to do my own cuff before I stopped and realized it was pointless.
“Elm, can you move?”
“Yeah, I can. Feel a lot better now that the fucking cuff is off of me. You not removing your own?” He had sat up at this point and was starting to move his limbs. The spots which were burned on him looked bad, but they were shallow.
“There’s other things to focus on. More importantly, can you fight?”
Before I could talk with him anymore, a guard slammed open the door to the office and had his burner in hand. When he spotted us next to Galen’s corpse, he began to aim his weapon at us and started to pull back on the rod. I prepared to let off another blast of light, but just as he was about to finish pulling back the rod, a small piece of rock pierced through the floor of the office and flew through the bottom of the guard’s jaw all the way to the top of his head. His wrists went limp and he dropped the burner, collapsing onto the floor while blood began to pool. I turned back to Elm to find a wide smile on his face.
“Don’t you fucking dare doubt your teacher.”
I smiled, giving him a hand so he could stand up. His balance was still off, but he was able to reorient himself quickly. I played around with the key in my hand before looking outside. The heavy rain was still pouring down all around us.
My part of the plan was complete. It was up to everyone else now to help me tear this place to the ground.