Distant Elemental

The nearest chamber was labelled “Pressure Chamber”. The rest were blocked from view by various people that walked past, for the most part wearing white coats. Some of the others looked younger, some mere children, and these dressed in normal clothes such as jeans and plain coloured t-shirts. Blinding light scorched the massive room, shining down from a high ceiling at least three storeys high; higher than a church ceiling.
More chambers were set out in rows behind the first. They varied in size; the first row being small, the ones behind that were towering giants, the next row of similar size and so on. The pressure chamber seemed to be made of glass and resembled a glass cup as it was cylindrical in shape though the difference was it was much bigger and had a lid of glass on top. The girls could see no visible entrance to them but presumed there was one. Along the left wall of the almost completely white room were a set of treadmills with scientists scrambling around them carrying various equipment and studying the people running on them. The wall directly behind them, from which they had come in the corner of the room, had wide glass windows set high up in the wall as a sort of viewing station for the scientists. The girls had an inkling that if ever they had access to that area, they would find lots of studying equipment and such various materials. The two girls were borne through the doorway into the room and drew the attention of every pair of eyes there. The adolescents who had stopped to gawk at them were hustled along by the scientists to another doorway which they walked through in single file. As they walked through, the girls saw the handcuffs chaining their wrists together behind their backs. An uneasy feeling spread between the two of them.

“Look at me,” said Fulgora, shaking Nova’s shoulders lightly, “what are you so afraid of?”
“They do… horrible things,” he shuddered, stood up and looked away. “If you plan on going in there, I can’t go with you.”
“Alright, looks like it’s just us three. Let’s blast this place!” said Blaise. Autumn nodded and Fulgora looked over at Nova who stared defiantly in another direction. Fulgora stood up, frowned at Nova, and dipped her head in his direction before turning away. The three elementals walked down the sloping hill in amongst trees that appeared suddenly in the dark, and down towards the towering, interlocking mass of thin metal that was the initial barrier to the friends.

“Okay we’ve gotta be careful now,” said Autumn, “there will probably be security of some kind.”
They snuck down closer to the twining metal fence and peered out at the building. There were two entrances on the side of the warehouse facing them and, as they watched, a truck appeared from the right. It reached the gate in the fence, was admitted by two guards, and drove through to the back of the building.
“Look!” cried Autumn, pointing.
High above them, strolling about in a lazy manner, armed guards walked across the building of the warehouse. The all held AK-47’s and wore bullet-proof vests on the outside of their padded outfits. They strolled in lines and it was clear they were well trained from the way they walked and carried their weapons.
The three elementals noticed a slight breeze pick up from where they stood but thought nothing of it as they conversed. Deciding on somehow sneaking in, they knew they first needed to get through the fence without being seen. If they could pull that off, they would then need to sneak right up to the side of the building, where they wouldn’t be seen by the guards patrolling the building top, but would have to work out a way to get in that wasn’t through the main entrance where there would most likely be more guards. The two entrances on their side of the building were bolted iron doors that didn’t look very promising.

“I say we dig under the gate,” suggested Autumn.
“Nah, we should go over when the guards aren’t looking,” said Fulgora.
“Screw that, I’m going straight through!” growled Blaise, slamming a fist into the palm of his other hand. Blaise grabbed the metal in between his hands and caused only his hands to flare up, hoping not to attract the attention of the distance guards. Slowly but surely the metal started glowing a dull red colour and Blaise pulled it apart, twine by twine.

With a whining noise, the barking of gunfire started.

The three elementals pulled back, wide-eyed, before realising the bullets weren’t aimed at them. The guards were facing the opposite direction, guns up at their shoulders, firing at a distant target.
“Now’s our chance!” hissed Autumn. Roots from underground burst forth and swivelled beneath the fence, creating a hole leading under the metal. With a roar, Blaise set alight, working furiously at the metal.
“There’s no time for that,” Fulgora whispered, watching intensely. As the other two ignored her, she sighed, and grabbed hold of a different section of metal. In seconds she was scaling the fence like a professional, slinking to the top and jumping down to the other side with a massive head start on the others. She flitted across the wide area to the shadows of the warehouse wall and was met there minutes later by an irritated Blaise and a dishevelled-looking Autumn.
“How did you learn to do that?” she asked, clearly annoyed.
“Never mind that, we’ve got to focus on the here and now.”

Skye sobbed, staring at her wound. She had come to land somewhere far off in between some thickets that stuck from the ground like unnatural appendages. She stared down at her leg, frightened of what she must do. The bullet that had struck her had gone almost the whole way through, and was hanging out the other side of her leg and causing her a serious amount of pain. Every time she moved, she felt an agony so intense she wanted to scream. In the pale moonlight she could see the metal sticking from her leg, next to her bone as she could feel, and she tried not to think about what she’d have to do. She made to grab hold of the bullet but as she touched it she screamed and whipped her hand away. This was going to be difficult. She bit her tongue, swore, and as quick as she possibly could she grabbed hold of the slippery capsule and pulled. She screamed as the bloody bullet tore from her leg, and she clutched the wound quickly, putting as much pressure on the gash as she possibly could. Blood flowed across her fingers and dribbled across the leaf-strewn ground. After a minute of restless agony, Skye tore (with some difficulty) the sleeve from the jacket she wore, and wrapped it around her leg, tying it tightly to prevent added blood loss. She found it difficult to walk on that leg, but it didn’t really matter. Hell, she could fly.

Andromeda and Nayru found themselves floating across towards one of the bigger chambers behind the pressure chamber. This one was labelled “Endurance Chamber”. The most eerie and unsettling feeling passed between the two elementals; they could almost feel the dread this area held, as though they had suddenly transformed into the air elemental, Skye herself. As the clacking of heels reminded them of their captors behind them, the two started squirming with all their might, trying to escape the invisible hold upon them.
“Enough,” said a masculine voice. Once again, they were unable to move. More than that, they felt themselves go completely limp, and hung loosely in the air. Nayru clenched her teeth as she felt herself separate from Andromeda and waft over towards the entrance to this much larger, more spherical chamber. A platform rose up from the ground as she neared it, and she was placed on this. She found herself sinking down into the ground, and then she was sliding backward before a light appeared above her and she rose up into the chamber, the ground closed underneath her, and no way out.
As suddenly as she had gone limp, she had control back over her body. She pointed automatically at one of the smirking men, and attempted to choke him with the water inside his body. His smirk widened; nothing happened. Nayru saw Andromeda appearing in the chamber next to her, eyes wide and mouth open. Nayru then attempted to create a ball of water in the palm of her hand- that worked. She frowned at her hand, wondering how it had worked in the chamber and not out. She guessed it had something to do with the chamber itself and the glass it was made of. She heard laughter and saw the men thoroughly enjoying themselves. Nayru glared at them, before wondering exactly what she was supposed to do. Why was she in this chamber? Endurance for what? Were they going to see how long she could go without food or something? Well, she wasn’t going to let them watch.

As Nayru was preparing to use her powers, she saw one of the men mutter something to the other. On cue, Andromeda started screaming with pain. Nayru looked over, and gasped in horror. Some sort of crackling energy was rending through her body, searing through every inch of her. Andromeda screamed again, in terrible agony, hardly able to bear the pain. As suddenly as it started, the energy stopped, and she fell to the ground, sobbing. Nayru could not feel the tears slide down her cheeks but saw them, and anger burned inside her.

“Screw you!” she screamed at the captors, who merely watched on and laughed. Nayru was simmering with rage, hardly able to contain the serious emotions she felt. She wanted to burst from the chamber and tear their heads off- or better, choke them with their own body fluid, crush them with a tidal wave of pure fury...
Nayru gasped suddenly. Something had clicked for her. She understood right then what it was that she had been missing. Her emotions flowed over her, dominating her, mingling inside her and giving her sweet, sweet understanding. Nayru looked down at her hands, and instead of making water flow from them, she made water flow through them, as they were no longer flesh and bone. Her hands were water, her arms were water, her whole body was water, and what kept her together were her emotions as an individual. She saw her hands disappear and a clear rippling take over them- not blue as the ocean but almost invisible to her. It looked as though the ground beneath her rippled instead of what was actually there- her hands. She knew instantly this could work very well to her advantage.

The laughter had stopped.