Chapter Forty

Elysia focused on the first orb as she released a single-strand lightning bolt. Unfortunately, as she feared, the lightning bolt struck the orb, melting it instantly. With a wince, she cut the strand down to a tenth and released it at the next closest orb. This time, the orb didn’t melt down, but her control cut as it entered the orb like it would if she struck a creature.

Undeterred, she tried again while focusing on the orb, looking for anything she may have missed. Her eyes widened in realization as the lightning connection cut. Unlike what she thought, it didn’t cut the moment it entered the orb. Instead, there was a blink of time she retained control.

With that knowledge, she targeted the orb once more. This time, the moment it entered the orb, she yanked it back out only for the lightning to destabilize and dissipate when she tried to direct it to the next orb.

Teeth gritted in frustration, she blasted the orb, then jerked her lightning directly at the next orb. Her lightning followed her wishes, jumping to the next orb, but in her surprise, she failed to send the lightning to the third orb.

Now that she knew what she needed to do, her next attempt reached the fourth orb, where she ran into the next problem. Well, actually two problems. The first issue was each orb weakened her lightning, which wasn’t much of a problem on targets she planned to kill as she didn’t have to hold back.

She wasn’t sure why the orbs weakened her lightning so much, though. The lightning bolt she used was at least on par with a six strand regular lightning bolt. Maybe the orbs absorbed more lightning than normal or she was too slow, losing more lightning than she should have.

That thought brought her to the other problem. It took her a fraction of a second longer with each jump. By the time she reached the fourth orb, she couldn’t react in time to send it to the fifth.

Hopefully, with practice, she could mitigate the delay, which was what she did. The fourth orb barrier remained present over the next dozen attempts, but each time the lightning bolt retained a little more power as it reacted a hair faster.

On the fifteenth try, her lightning escaped the fourth orb, but fizzled out before it reached the fifth. Still, progress was progress, so she kept at it unaware of her steadily decreasing charge in her single-minded focus.

Elysia swayed as a lightheaded spell hit her just as her weak lightning bolt reached the fifth orb. She stumbled back into a metal pillar, head spinning. When her vision cleared a few moments later, she checked her charge to find it dropped under 500.

Despite a desire to keep training, she had no choice but to stop. If only they had a recharger in the training room. Maybe they did, but she didn’t know what it looked like.

Curious, she expanded her senses out, looking for anything with a high concentration of lightning. The moment she did, her eyes locked onto the crystal like orbs she practiced on. Each one aside from the one she blew up glowed with her lightning, prompting her to approach the nearest orb.

She rested her hand against it, finding it warm to the touch. With her senses, she locked onto the lightning essence within. A resistance impeded her as the crystal didn’t want to give up its prize, but resistance proved futile as she yanked the lightning free. As it was her lightning to begin with, it freely flowed into her body, sending warm tingles as it passed.

Upon checking her charge, she found it raise a thousand still far from enough to continue training, but she no longer felt weak. She extracted her essence from the other four orbs, gaining less essence from the second and third one. The fourth orb, however, shot her charge up 2000 on its own while the fifth gave her a measly 20 charge.

Now sitting at nearly 5000 charge, the temptation to continue training grew. She didn’t retrieve all her essence, but as long as she stopped when she got low, she should be able to do a couple more sets of training.

Elysia did just that proved unfortunately like the fourth orb, the fifth orb proved to be a difficult barrier to overcome. When she stopped the next set with a thousand charge left, she failed to reach the sixth orb, though she hit the fifth almost every time. It was progress. Sure, it wasn’t as fast as she would like, but she was now confident she could chain her lightning between five targets.

At least she hoped she could. The orbs were stationary. Five moving targets might be more difficult, plus the orbs maybe gave her help. Though they felt fairly similar to when she targeted creatures. The orbs didn’t attract her lightning. She had to target them herself.

After retrieving her lightning raising her charge to 4000, she tried again only to earn the same result, but like the last set, there were slight improvements. While she failed to reach the sixth orb, her lightning jumped between the first five a hair faster, which could prove vital if she were to fight moving targets.

With her charge at 3000, she eyed the orbs wanting to reach the sixth orb, but after a moment of thought she shook her head. She didn’t want to leave herself vulnerable by over training.

As she was, she had enough charge to defend herself, but that wouldn’t be the case if she did even one more set. Something was limiting her past the fifth orb and continually forcing her lightning past wouldn’t do her any good.

She didn’t understand why she couldn’t reach the sixth orb when she could jump her lightning between the first five in a few blinks. It wasn’t the speed or power that was limiting her. Maybe it was distance. Despite her previous thoughts about stopping, she tried one more experiment.

Instead of targeting the first orb nearest to her, she shot her lightning directly to the sixth orb, which, now that she paid attention, had a larger gap from the previous orb than the rest. Her theory proved correct as she effortlessly zapped the five other orbs near the sixth orb, breaking her record.

As she retrieved her charge, she eyed the orb groupings to find the first six, well five, after she destroyed the first one, appeared closer to one another, same as the back six. If she had to guess, there were two forms of chain lightning. She doubted she would have any trouble hitting even 10 targets if they were grouped together.

Her problem was she couldn’t jump her lightning to the next group. She wasn’t sure how she would solve the problem, but at least for now, it would stay as a problem. Her previous thoughts about not wanting to drain herself too far were correct. It was too risky to leave herself vulnerable just to figure out how to jump her lightning further.

Elysia walked away from the orbs with a bounce in her step, buoyant from her progress. Done with training, she didn’t bother to examine any of the other equipment, especially on the left side of the room, which contained mostly water elemental training devices meant for her twin.

Instead, she eyed the room, looking for an exit, finding an elevator near the center of the wall on the side of the easier training devices, like the first cube.

Upon reaching the elevator, the doors opened automatically, revealing a familiar interior. When she examined the control panel, her thoughts proved true. She appeared to be in the basement of the same building as her penthouse. At least, she thought she was. Figuring there was no point in guessing when she could confirm it, she pressed the penthouse button and leaned back against the wall to wait.

Unlike pre-merge elevators, the doors opened a few seconds later to display a familiar meeting room. At least she thought it was familiar. For all she knew, they made multiple buildings with identical rooms and furniture. She must have trained longer than she thought as no one sat at the table, though the scattering of chairs proved it was used recently.

A prodding of her bond told her Sereia was on the other side of the penthouse doors, solidifying the fact it was her penthouse. She trotted to the door, followed by Ione, who silently followed her wherever she went. Inside, she found Sereia, along with Eva and Joe, sitting on the couch watching something on the TV.

With her excellent vision, she saw what they were watching from across the room. It showed a high vantage point of view of a familiar turtle floating next to the smaller, but still massive, turtle without a city.

Now side-by-side the sheer size of Urus was on full display. She was at least double the size of her younger brother, taking up a massive chunk of the harbor. Fortunately, both turtles floated in an out-of-the-way corner so that didn’t impede boat traffic. Elysia spotted humanoids of various colors diving off Urus’s shell and swimming toward the piers.

Her eyes drifted to the window, wanting to visit the many Chrotile she knew only to freeze upon seeing what lay out in the ocean barely visible beyond the skyline. Countless ships floated in the ocean, surrounding the secluded harbor.

A shiver ran through her as she realized if she could see so many ships from her limited vantage point, there must be many times more out there. She was too far away to make out any identifying markings, but she had a feeling about who they belonged to.

They arrived already? She thought she would have more time to prepare. Was she ready to fight off the elementals? Could they fight off that many?

He wasn’t kidding when he said they would have no chance against the full force of an elemental council. There might be more ships out there than people in the city, and this was a massive city. They really wanted them that bad? There had to be more to it than simply hunting down some divine elementals.

Before she could warn her sister, a portal opened up in front of her, grabbing her and Ione. The next thing she knew, she was standing at the base of a desolate mountain, lightning sparking all around them.

Elysia spun and tried to reenter the portal, only to find it block her entrance but remain open as the space elemental spoke. “Open the divine vault at the top of the mountain. It is our only chance of defending against the forces of the Elemental Council. You are the key to the vault and the reason they risk leaving their home vulnerable to capture you.”

The portal slammed closed a moment later, cutting off any questions she may have.

She stood for several more core pulses before anger sparked. Why couldn’t he warn her ahead of time? She was sick of him teleporting her around to his whims.

It wouldn’t surprise her if he didn’t care about his city. His goal was probably the divine vault all along, just like the elemental councils. He just went about it in a slightly less hostile way.

Even if she could reach the vault, should she open it? She had a feeling whoever sealed them had a good reason to do so. What if she opened the vault, then he swooped in and stole everything, leaving her stranded? She needed contingencies to protect her.

Elysia’s face hardened as she glared up at the towering mountain taller than what she imagined Mount Everest would be.

This was the last time she played to his whims. From now on, she would take control of her life. She was a divine elemental and she would make sure they remembered that. She wasn’t some pushover she would smite them with divine lightning.