As they had done before they rented out another room at a rundown motel when they reached the outskirts of Indianapolis. Valentine would not explain why but he wanted to be close to the city without being too close to the heart of the city itself, he also seemed to be on edge as they approached. The moment night hit the three of them were out the door and they ventured to an abandoned building they noticed not far from the motel they were staying in. It was large, old, and the reasons for it having been abandoned and most likely condemned were abundantly clear the moment you saw it. Half of the back walls, made apparently out of poorly laid bricks and cement were hanging by iron rods and the windows all broken out at one point were covered with wooden boards that were rotting away and falling off in most cases. Ty, Bre, and Valentine went in through the broken half of the double doors at the rear of the building and into the structure they knew could fall in at any moment without warning possibly killing all three of them. Valentine had chosen this building insisting to his friends that it was best to stay as far away from prying eyes as possible while steering clear of the main city itself still obviously on edge but not willing to share the reason. He also reassured them that should a problem such as the building collapsing happen to occur that he would have no trouble getting them all out safely.
The large room they found themselves wandering through was in even more disarray, its condition was worse off than the building’s exterior were. Looking as if it might have been a storage room or at least a decent sized shipping area for machinery or other goods at one time, but now it had only three quarters of the floor remaining, with a large hole in the far right corner that looked like it led to a bottomless black pit. Whatever designs had been painted on the walls were all faded now, and cracked, a mere semblance of their once distantly modern artistic design most likely a depiction of workers or something of the product that was shipped or manufactured in this building. Ty strolled over to the center of the room kicking aside a once sturdy piece of machinery with ease. He tossed the book down and as it had done every time before the book vanished and the elemental was standing in its place.
It bowed its head to them curtly “Good evening pupils, I am glad to see you are all well tonight.”
Valentine snorted at the elementals politeness “If you say so, but I personally think that any evening spent in a dust covered, rat infested place like this is anything but a ‘Good evening’ as you so politely put it.” He was obviously irritable and willing to take it out on the almost emotionless elemental.
The elemental gave him a vaguely annoyed look before he continued politely speaking to the others “That aside, I am happy to have yet another pupil to teach.” Gesturing to Brenda he said “I may be an elemental of the Wild element but I believe I can still assist you with at least the basics of magical practices in accordance with your own element. For anything beyond that you will have to summon a Flame elemental to assist you. If you would like, I will be happy to assist you in summoning one when you are ready to further your magical education. They are as rare as you are so it may be difficult, but I believe we will be able to come up with something.”
She bowed to the elemental and smiled sweetly “I will be honored to have you as a teacher, and even more honored to have your assistance in furthering my tutelage once you are done with my lessons.” She then turned to Valentine “You should also show respect to elementals, especially the Wild elementals, they are the ones who maintain and keep magic alive in the world and if it were not for them you would not be here today.”
Ty laughed at the dirty look Valentine was now receiving from her “Be careful Valentine, I think this ‘stray’ might bite if you do not watch what you say around her.”
Baring his fangs Valentine looked at Brenda “I think she should worry more that I might bite her.”
Miming a yawn she turned away from Valentine ignoring his idle threat, which made Ty bust out in full on laughter, and Valentine pouted a bit in silence. Then raising its hand for their attention the elemental spoke “Enough with the jokes, it is time to see what you remember Ty, and Valentine, as well I would like to see what you” it looked over to Brenda with a polite nod “understand thus far about magic. So I can best decide what you each still have to learn from me.”
It took only a few minutes for Ty and Valentine to show what they had learned, both from the elemental and from personal discoveries. Once they were done they stepped back to give Brenda room to perform her magic. The moment she tapped into her magic and spoke a simple light spell, all hell broke loose in the room where all eyes were now on her. The ball of light formed with ease, then without warning grew brighter and brighter, turning a deep blood red, then collapsing the part of the spell that held it in the air as the ball of light fell to the floor with a resounding thud. In moments it began to light the old wood on fire, but quickly the elemental stepped forward and snuffed out the magic before too much damage could be done to the surrounding floor.
Brenda stood there with her hands to her mouth in shock “I… I didn’t mean to…” She said in a terrified whisper.
Completely out of character the Elemental wrapped its arms around her and calmly soothed her “It is ok, Flame as I said before is very wild and hard for anyone to control. We can work on your control of Flame together, but unless I am around don’t do any magic we have not already practiced and you have re-mastered, or you could end up hurting yourself or these two.” It let go of her “Do you understand me Brenda? It is exceedingly dangerous to use this magic without the proper training in its use! But I know that you can handle it, only with time and practice though can you gain full control of this magic. Now I want you to try again, and this time instead of tapping into the magic as you normally would, I want you to just dip into it ever so lightly, like testing water with your toe to see how cold or hot it is.”
She obeyed closing her eyes and focusing, she found the magic bright and pulsating it’s normal crimson color, and ever so slightly as instructed, she touched it gently. Immediately it flared up demanding to be unleashed in its full glory, but she ignored its demands and grasped the smallest amount of magic she could. “Ready for the next step” she told the Elemental not opening her eyes out of fear that she might lose her concentration and the magic would unleash itself on her friends.
“All right,” it replied “Now doing the same spell, you must strengthen the containing portion of the spell, as well as the hovering portion reinforcing each portion of the spell with stronger demands and phrasing. I would say at least twenty times more so than you would normally use for this particular spell.”
Eyes still closed Brenda did what she was instructed, reformatting the spell, altering it as the Elemental told her to do, and enhancing as well the flowing link to the spell from her magic. She spent a few minutes reconfiguring the spell, and several other minutes checking it over before deciding it would be safe to unleash it. Opening her mind up for the Elemental to access it she said “Will you make sure this is correct I do not want to burn anyone or worse blow anyone up?”
The Elemental gently probed her mind until it found the spell that was not yet set free from its confined space in her mind. The spell was a tangle of words and numbers in her head, each with an important job to do, each word or number was linked with a thin line of blood red magic holding it together like a thread in an article of clothing. The Elemental looked it over, unraveling it from its knotted form and as if holding it in his hands felt and saw every part of the spell from one end to the other. Perfect, as he had suspected, including the parts she had thought herself to alter to make it more stable and safer to use around others. Knotted up again into the spell form it would need to cast the spell the Elemental slipped out of her mind “I could not have done a better casting myself also the parts you yourself thought of were exceptionally genius ideas, strengthening the power supply was something I completely forgot to do.”
With a whoosh, she opened her eyes as she unleashed the spell. It flared to lif
e as if excited to finally be free, crimson in color but otherwise as a spell for an orb of light should react. Brenda was excited and let loose her concentration just a little too much and it began to fail. She quickly grasped her control and focused on it, then placing a tether from a part of her subconscious to the spell itself she let go of her conscious control of the spell altogether letting her subconscious take control and maintain it.
She breathed a sigh of relief when it held and didn’t do anyone harm “What should I work on next?”
It took hours for her to reconfigure the few spells she had in her arsenal that were non offensive, the whole time Ty and Valentine worked on their own spells, practicing the ones they already knew several times and trying out new ones they had previously thought of. Every now and then they would both look over at the Elemental working with Brenda, and see it either confirm her reconfigurations or fix the parts she didn’t think of, the whole time silently speaking to her in her mind.
Now that the Elemental thought that she could handle more it got the attention of the two young men waving them over “I believe it is time to work on more sensitive spells, as a group.”
They all gathered in front of it and waited for the Elementals instructions “I overheard the two of you talking about a powerful destructive spell that Ty had used back in Nevada.” It said to the two young men. “It was well formed, but you don’t want to blow everything up that you face in the future, there may even be a time when you need to sedate a person or people to gather more information from them. You can’t get that information if their brains are a boiling mush in their charred skulls.”
“That is absolutely true,” Valentine replied smugly “but that also means that the person or people who become extra crispy can’t do us any harm.”
Ignoring Valentines remark the Elemental continued “What you need to work on are spells to stop or slow down an individual without killing, or maiming the individual so that if you need information from them you can retrieve it with relative ease.”
“So what do you propose we should do,” Valentine asked “as well what information would we really need from any individual who might otherwise do us harm? I’ve already devised a paralyzation spell as well as one that constricts movement of the subject at hand.”
“You might need to know who to talk to when you reach the Council,” it then looked at Ty “or you might need to know where your mother is, if she is indeed still alive. Also you may need to know who to avoid or how to go about your business in New York to best achieve your goals.” It then continued looking at the others as Ty contemplated its words. “As to the how, it’s quite simple depending on how you go about the work at hand. The easiest way is to put them to sleep with a knockout spell, or to paralyze them as you’ve done so in the past or using a petrifaction spell. The more difficult part is getting the truth out of them. There are truth spells but I advise against the use of them, because you will be forcing the person you use those spells on into doing something against their will, and that is highly looked down upon by all beings of good magic. I do believe that you will be able to find a way around that though without causing any damage to the person or your reputations in the magical community.”
Ty put aside the thoughts of his mother and spoke now though without raising his hand “Valentine having created a paralyzation spell, and a sleep spell would be easy enough to create, but how are we supposed to get an answer out of them if they are asleep, and if they are awake how do we know that what they say is the truth? I won’t torture the truth out of them or sit by and allow someone else to torture any individual.” He looked over to Valentine as he spoke about torture.
The Elemental was taken aback by the question “Of course I do not suggest that you torture anyone, but instead find a way to create something that can detect a lie when you speak to someone.”
“That makes sense, and although I am not like my bleeding heart friend I see more sense in a lie detecting device of some sort then the torture of a possibly innocent person. What would your personal suggestion be to remedy such a situation Elemental?” Valentine chimed in looking both annoyed and assured by Ty’s statement.
Brenda looked at Ty with respect then spoke up gaining their immediate attention “Why can’t we alter a light orb spell to flash different colors for different meanings. Have it set up to pick up truths, lies, and half truths. Like green if the person is telling the truth, red if they are lying and yellow if they are not telling the whole truth. We could add more like blue if they don’t know any more about the question asked or orange if they do know more but aren’t telling you.”