The Etherealites

8: Lillian - Incantor

As soon as I reach the suite, I hear the man talking in a low voice to someone. I peek around the corner, and see the big cage in his office, one which contains a hawk. The hawk is big enough that I know immediately that she isn't just a hawk. She is a trapped Chimera.

The man is talking to her, his absent-minded speech letting me know he does this a lot. But she, the hawk in the cage, chuffs. He turns to her and laughs. The sound is mirthless. He is not one to be happy about anything most would be, I realize.  He's happy that she's suffering.

Raw anger fills my heart, and I clench my fists. He is staring up at the hawk, her feathers twitching as she moves her wings like she might fly away. If only she was free. I realize then that there's a thin but heavy looking chain around her leg, and more rage boils in my blood. He's kept her trapped in a triple cage.

The first cage is her own bird form, the next the chain on her leg, the last is her actual cage. And he is fucking laughing at her misery. Suddenly, the door on the other end of the room I had failed to notice until now is thrown open. A man runs in, taking heaving breaths in and out.

"Roderick? What the fuck?"

"The .... guards.  They're... dead. Most of the ... girls .... escaped."

"What?!"

Shit. How did they find out so soon? I need to act now, before those poor girls are tracked down. I can't let either man leave this room alive. So, I summon ice to my hands once more, and I walk into the room. Both of them look at me, eyes wide.

"How'd you get out?" demands the evil, fat man before the birdcage.

"Doesn't matter, she's going back in," says Roderick.  He draws a sword, and I flick my wrist. He is pinned to the wall as a flurry of icicles stab him in several places, and he drops the sword. The man by the cage draws a fucking gun.

"Back to your cage, girl," he says.

"I don't think so," I hiss.  "Your days of hurting people are all fucking done."

"Oh? And who are you to say that?"

"No one. Just your judge, jury.... " I cast the icicles forth, and blast the gun from his hand. He screams as blood gushes from the wounds in his hand from the icicles.

"You motherfucking bitch!"

"And I'm your fucking executioner."

His eyes widen, and I blast him with freezing wind. The hawk in her cage screeches as I advance on the man who kept her imprisoned. Roderick tries to break free, and I whirl around and blast him with a plume of blue fire.

Once the flames fade, he is nothing but charred bones and ash. The smells of burnt flesh, hair, and clothes fills the room. I would gag. But I'm too focused on this monster before me.

"You like to put girls in cages?" I demand.

The room trembles, and I raise my hands, and watch as stone and ice bars of a cage form above him. Then, they snap down and trap him inside a small, ever shrinking cage.

"Ah! I'm sorry, please, don't!" he cries.

"I have no mercy for monsters such as you."

I allow the cage to shrink more. Then I turn to the hawk trapped still in her cage. I open it with a few lockpicks and as soon as I open the cage, her wings flap hard. She screeches loudly.

"Don't worry, I'm setting you free."

I break the chain off her leg, and she flies into the room. She shifts back into her human shape, and starts to cry. I rush to her side.

"Are you alright?"

She shakes her head.  "No. I'm not."

"Do you want to do the honors? Or should I?"

The girl turns to the man with horror and rage on her face. She looks at me with dead, pale green eyes. Her dyed blue hair looks very long, and her pale skin is so sunken in, she looks almost hollow. The girl looks to be medium sized, and I realize something about her. She's wearing what looks like cheap maternity clothes.

"Where is your baby?" I ask her.

She sobs. "He killed her."

"What."

Nodding, this poor Chimera looks away from him. "She wasn't a healthy baby.  So he ....."

"You don't have to finish," I whisper. "Not unless you wish to."

She looks at me. "He fucking killed my daughter! And when I was obviously enraged, he .... he locked me in my hawk form, in that cage. I've..... oh, gods. How long was I in there?"

The evil monster behind us laughs. I shrink the cage once more, and he cries out. "A year and a half wasn't long enough to break this one!"

Horror leaches her face of all color. She sinks to the floor. Sobbing.

I kneel beside her. She wipes her eyes and looks at me. "I want to kill him, but.... I don't know if I can."

"Do you wish me to do it, for you?" I ask. "For your daughter?"

She nods. "Yes. Do it."

I stand up, grabbing the sword Roderick had tried to use on me.  I stop right in front of his cage.

"Make him suffer," she says.

"As you wish," I say.