Prophecy Road

Chapter Four

The bones were broken, a number of his muscles had been punctured by the many impacts against the debris he'd taken as he'd fallen. Too young and too fragile, he was nearly beyond natural healing; if a skilled doctor could've intervened, Luke might've survived as a cripple. But no man of medicine was present. In under an hour Luke's entire life as he'd known it had been taken away from him.

But that was only the state of things before he'd fallen into the mana conduction fluid. Deadly to most, the long ago expired, purple muck drew something out of the boy. He should've been drained of any undeveloped mystical energy within seconds, but... more and more power just keep leaping and sparking from his tiny body.

His bones burnt and seared themselves back together. His skin cauterized itself off of the heat of his sparks, scarring horrifically across skin-torn arms.

The ancient crane, for what it was worth, eventually managed to get into the conduction fluid. It was heavily insulated against mystical discharge and, yet, it's ground seemed inefficient at fully dissipating the entirety of the energy. Flashes of static discharge could be seen peeking from out of its gaps almost immediately upon its submerging into the vat.

Before long, the power began dispersing throughout the complex in its entirety, unable to be held in by the crane. At first, it was just the lights and long dead alarms that roared back to life, but eventually the very air began to crackle with the force; there was simply too much power coming from the young child and the overflow was now going airborne.

Luke remained unconscious, bubbles drawing out from his mouth, as the machine lifted him from the sludge.

Dozens of elves had gathered in the ceiling above, yet even they hesitated, and watched on with agape awe. Their ever-hungry bodies screamed at them to absorb the power for themselves. They had forgotten all about the silver pod. In their warped vision, all they could see was the swirling energies filling the very air itself—and there was so much of it.

One of the elves reached a hand out into the mana infused room below. The silver latticework of veins across his gaunt knuckles immediately began to swell and seemed to almost engorge themselves to popping.

The man-elf's eyes grew large. He watched as his sickly, sweating skin, powerful and yet clammy, began to change in hue. The metamorphosis began at the finger pads, but quickly spread to the nail beds and then up the knuckles. The silver was becoming gold. The hand began to shake and the elf, having only the basest of its higher thinking still available to it, closed its eyes in momentary relief.

The others saw what was happening, however, and they were still entirely under the sway of their condition. The two nearest of their number lunged without mercy and in a great greed; their bodies intertwined with the elf with the semi-cured hand. The spasming trio bit and clawed against and among one another; where they punctured, cells turned black and dried out entirely.

The three slammed with a metallic echoing into the grated walkways beside the many vats. Alien machines whirred and sparked all above them. The flesh of the individual elves began to grow gold, bit by bit, only to quickly be sucked dry by their own compatriots.

It wasn't long before the other elves lunged down after the trio. They fell in thumps, one after another in great, squirming and self-destructive heaps.

The rusted grate walkways began to whine and strain at the bolts.

A number of elves rolled off of the walkways, slamming into the floor, as the metallic pathways had become too full of writhing bodies.

Half assembled creations too began to move on the factory floor that many of the elves now fell down onto. Robotic arms squirmed and crawled erratically, legs kicked, cyclops droid's with exposed guts hovered aimlessly, and programming pods hissed open as they depressurized.