Elemental Empires

{Chapter 18}

They slaves were woken up with the harsh ringing of a bell, it's piercing sound drilled into everyone's brain and brought them back from dreamland to the nightmare that was their lives. As Mia left her cell she put down Ivory behind a haystack where she slept soundly although a voice in her subconscious told her not to do that but she did.

She could be a nuisance if she wakes up and finds herself in a strange place. She'll be fine. It's not like the movies here, she won't be killed. She's smart.

Mia petted Ivory and followed the line of half-asleep people. They were immediately led outside into the glare of the sun.

"I wish death upon whoever came up with the brilliant idea of sounding the bell," Mia grumbled, rubbing her aching temples.

"That'd be the Dark Prince. I fully support you on your wish," Kira rubbed her eyes.

They were led into an isolated forest faraway and given appropriate tools. Mia and Kira were handed identical cubic boxes.

"Slaves! Get to work! No fooling about! Ye get that?!," a guard said gruffly, pointing the metal weapon at the people."Men with the wood, women and children with the sowing! Start!".

The people trudged to do their jobs with tools and hopeless faces. Mia and Kira started walking to a desolate part of the forest.

"Kira, what are those pipe-thingies in the guards hand and what is Amberin and the substances coming out of it?," Mia asked curiously, stroking the plants as she went.

"Woah! Easy there tiger. One at at a time! Those thingies are Eleknons, they contain the essence of the elements. The Dark Prince has the essence of all the elements he stole and transferred them to the weapons thus giving the guards the power to control every element. The Amberin is the essence of the element fire and so it is molten fire and vapours and has the ability to bind everything it comes in contact with but once it is released it'll dissolve to vapors," Kira explained patiently as she shook the box as she walked.."There are many others like this too with different properties".

"Oh, everyone here has elemental powers right?," Mia asked and Kira nodded.

"So why don't they try to escape?".

"We are all weak and most of our powers have been absorbed to be put into the Eleknons, if we did anyways, the powers would backfire on us. There was this silly man who tried to direct fire on the exit guards instead he himself got burnt to a crisp. An unintended suicide," Kira replied, shaking her head.

"Did the guards kill the man yesterday? I hid and watched everything," Mia asked, shaking her head in sympathy.

"Oh nah, that's just Tuslan, he has a habit of spraying sweat everywhere and that annoys the guards. They just blasted him with Cerulin, which froze him. He's quite alright, although I doubt that he'll ever sweat again now. Just if you don't know, Cerulin in our language means To be encased in ice which translates to frozen in English" Kira laughed as Mia sighed in relief.

"You know a lot! What I don't understand is why you speak English when you have your own language?," Mia asked frowning.

"It's outdated- like wearing corsets is- it is very difficult to learn and so everyone preferred English over Elgrique -which is our language- I picked up a few words from the ancient books my grandparents had," Kira said.

"Oh," Mia said as she watched a young, starved child make castles out of the dirt before a guard trampled them over and pushed the child, ordering him to work.

"Why do they force us to do this when they could easily use their powers?," Mia sighed.

"I don't know that. Maybe he just wants to be all dominating and superior. Hoo hoo haha look at me! Fear the Dark Prince!," Kira mocked.