Chapter Thirty-Four

Elysia turned back to the head trainer, confused by his outburst and slightly defensive. Her lightning sparked off her armor as she stared at him, waiting for him to explain.

His gaze flicked between Elysia and the cube before stopping on Elysia. “Do you have any idea what you did? You could have blown us all up.”

He seemed overly dramatic. How could she blow herself up with a single strand lightning bolt, let alone a half strand? Sure, cutting up her strands probably wasn’t the most efficient way, but it didn’t seem dangerous.

Upon seeing Elysia disregarded his warning, he clenched his fists at his side, his lightning aura leaking through his tight control. Through gritted teeth, about ready to explode in anger, he spoke. “Never split essence siphoned off a core. Despite what you think, you aren’t splitting it cleanly in half. All you create by ripping apart a stable thread of elemental essence is a highly unstable ticking time bomb. Did no one teach you the basics of elemental magic? This is something even a newborn should know.”

Elysia mirrored the head trainer, her elemental pride rearing its ugly head as she glared at him, eyes glowing with violet lightning.

Sensing her mother’s mood, Ione blurred between her and the head trainer from her spot laying in the middle of the training room. “I’m not some pampered elemental who received training from birth. I had to fight for my life ever since the merge. No one taught me how to use my magic. I had to figure out everything myself.”

The head trainer released a long sigh, clenching and unclenching his hands in an oddly humanlike way. “I’m sorry, lady Elysia. I forgot myself for a moment. Divine elementals like you don’t follow the same rules as the rest of us. Still, I insist you stop ripping your elemental energy apart. Nothing good could come from it. I’m sure you noticed how it reacted in the cube. Just because it has less energy, that doesn’t mean it is easier to control. It is always best to siphon the amount of essence you need directly from your core, as your core will separate elemental essence without damaging it.”

Elysia’s pride became silent, allowing her to regain control of her emotions. She was growing tired of her unstable, elemental side. Why couldn’t she act like an adult? Though now that she thought about it, was she even an adult elemental? She was barely an adult in human standards. Something told her that her elemental age wasn’t the problem. If that likely ancient earth elemental had emotional control issues, age didn’t help.

“What do you suggest I do then? The smallest strand I can siphon off is what you saw. Anything smaller refuses to leave my core. It doesn’t help that I have to resist my divine essence.”

Any previous annoyance vanished in favor of curiosity with a bit of confusion. “Resist your divine essence? You shouldn’t need to resist your divine essence. From the records I’ve read, it should come naturally. Though it’s been millennia since the last of the divine elementals were young, so maybe the records are wrong.”

Frustration flashed across her face. “Well, my divine essence definitely comes naturally. The problem is, I don’t have enough charge to use it, so I have to resist the divine essence in order to use regular lightning.”

His eyes traveled up to the ceiling, where her lightning bolt impacted in thought. “That’s regular lightning to you? I felt divinity from the lightning, though it seemed diluted. What counts as divine lightning, then?”

Unsure if she should reveal the divine core within her elemental core, Elysia fell silent for several seconds, then sent images to Sereia asking for her input.

Sereia paused, floating in the middle of the pool in mermaid form as she sent questioning images to her twin, wondering what she meant by a divine core.

When Elysia related an image detailing the makeup of her core, Sereia tilted her head in confusion, then sent an image detailing her own core. Unlike Elysia’s core, her divine essence appeared evenly distributed throughout her elemental core.

How did she use divine magic then? If her elemental essence merged, she shouldn’t be able to use one or the other. Instead of speculating, she sent images asking the question.

Confusion radiated through their bond as Sereia questioned how she didn’t know herself. It came naturally to her, so she assumed Elysia knew as well. After Elysia insisted by sending the same image several times, Sereia relented.

With a series of images, she detailed how she gathered up her divine essence to increase its potency when she siphoned it off her core. Unlike Elysia, where her divine essence forced its way to the front, Sereia had to manually use her divine magic.

Though going by the head trainer’s comment, even her so-called regular lightning was partially divine. Was merging her cores the key to her control issues? Or would she just blow herself up? It couldn’t be safe to mess with her divine core.

Unlike the head trainer’s worry about slicing up strands, messing with her divine core had huge potential for disaster. She was impulsive, but she wasn’t suicidal. Still, they had to have some connection to each other if they both ran off her charge stat and her divine core knew when she wanted to use regular lightning.

If she found a connection, could she gradually merge the two cores? There had to be a reason they were separated in the first place, though. This was something she couldn’t do on our own. She needed help, but who could she ask?

The two ancient elementals weren’t trustworthy. Even if they knew her divine essence, she couldn’t trust them. What if they took advantage of her and did something to her core? She couldn’t take the risk, but she also didn’t know how to do it herself. Maybe if she investigated Sereia’s core, it might give her clues.

On that thought, she sent images asking Sereia for her help while relaying her worries about trusting the elementals. Of course, Sereia instantly agreed, while also sending thankful feelings through their bond for not trying something so dangerous on her own.

With a potential plan of action set, Elysia returned her attention to the head trainer, who was staring at her, confused by the long silence. “Could we take a break from training? My family and I need to have a meeting.”

The head trainer opened his mouth to protest before suddenly freezing. He stared off into space for several seconds, then nodded his head. “Very well, my Lord will transport you somewhere private.”

A moment later, a familiar elemental appeared. He smirked, then Elysia’s surroundings shifted. The next thing she knew, she was standing in a penthouse like apartment with Sereia and Ione standing next to her.

“You may use these lodgings until you earn the right to keep your personal dimension. Also, don’t worry about your human companions. I transported them to the guest rooms on the floor below.”

Before Elysia could question elemental, he was already gone, leaving the trio alone in the modern designed penthouse. It wouldn’t look out of place in some overpriced city. Hardwood floors covered the expanse of the mostly open layout penthouse with a loft style bedroom area.

Leather seating and a massive flat screen TV took up the center of the main floor with a fancy kitchen in the corner opposite towering windows displaying the city below. More seating allowed them to relax while staring down at the peons below. Or whatever the uber rich considered the people going about their daily lives on the streets.

As nice as the place was, none of it really attracted her. They grew up in a small town surrounded by forest. If she were to settle down, it wouldn’t be in the city. Still, it would do for now, but the sooner they had Umbra fixed, the better.

She really didn’t feel comfortable so close to those elementals. Even if they didn’t want to kill them, they still wanted something from them. She just needed to grow strong enough to resist them. If divine magic was so sought after, there had to be a way to break free from everyone. The first step, at least for her, was improving her control over her magic. There was no point in more power if she couldn’t control the power she had.

First, she needed to check on Eva and Joe. Elysia strode toward the double doors near the center of the wall opposite the windows. There were only two doors on the main floor, one of which she assumed was a bathroom. Another reason why she didn’t want to live in a place like this. It was too open. She loved being out in nature, which was as open as possible, but she felt overwhelmed by such an open floor plan.

When she touched the door handle, she felt a momentary suction before a light above the handle flashed violet, followed by a click. Upon twisting the door handle, she found it unlocked.

On the other side was a lobby area probably meant for meetings with visitors, but she ignored it in favor of another door on the opposite side of the room. The same suction and violet light unlocked the next door, this time leading to an elevator.

However, a problem presented itself upon looking at the floor buttons. How was she supposed to find the humans? He said they were on the floor below them, but what floor were they on? With how high up they were, they probably were near the top, so she should be safe to select the second-highest floor.

With a shrug, she did just that, causing the elevator doors to close. Thankfully, the elevator was big enough for the three of them.

The elevator dinged and opened to reveal a hallway filled with doors like a hotel. Worry flashed for a moment only to disappear as she noticed instead of door numbers a screen displaying names told her who lived in each apartment. A dozen doors down on the right, she spotted a door with Joe and Eva displayed on the screen.

After knocking, the door opened to reveal Joe with Eva hiding behind him. Relief filled her as she saw they were fine. “I’m sorry about leaving you two. We sort of got abducted by some elementals.”

Joe silently nodded his head, but Eva jumped out from behind her boyfriend and hugged Elysia. “Thank you. This place is amazing. I can’t wait to go shopping later. There has to be a ton of awesome things to buy!”

Excitement flooded through her bond with her twin as Eva spoke the magic word, causing Elysia to stiffen. To save all the poor store owners and her sanity, Elysia grabbed Sereia and dragged her back down the hallway.

She glanced over her shoulder when she reached the elevator, taking in the confused humans. “If you need us for anything, we are staying in the penthouse one floor up.”

As fast as she could, she traveled back to her penthouse with a pouting Sereia and Ione who appeared content just being near her family.

The door closed and locked automatically as soon as they entered the penthouse. She scanned the penthouse for a suitable spot to meditate in their attempt to fix her divine essence problem, but with the windows taking up an entire wall, there wasn’t much privacy, even though only a handful of buildings stood as tall as their building.

Curious if there was a way to darken the windows like she saw in some TV shows, she scanned for a control panel finding a tablet on the coffee table at the center of the penthouse. She trotted over and picked it up, then poked it to light up the screen.

After a few seconds, she found an option to darken the windows, as she hoped. She slid the slider all the way to the left, causing the window to turn black. At the same time, lights turned on, ensuring the penthouse remained brightly lit. She slid the sliders on the lights down as well, to the point the entire penthouse was dimly lit.

If she were still human, it could have been hard to see, but she wasn’t and she doubted her family had any trouble either.

As private as she could be in a city watched over by powerful elementals, Elysia once again scanned the penthouse looking for somewhere to sit, finding a padded section of the floor near the windows, probably for some yoga or something.

It should work for their purposes.

Elysia directed her still pouting twin to the pad and sat down cross-legged. Sereia and Ione joined her a moment later with Sereia sitting within arm’s reach of her twin and Ione laying behind them providing a backrest. With Ione’s size, there was plenty of room for both twins to relax into the silky soft fur which vibrated with a deep purr.

Now to figure out how to merge her cores or find another solution to her control problem. Maintaining a collection of standby lightning strands wasn’t the solution.