RE: SeaWyrm's Talon Exercises
11-29-2012, 04:25 AM
And with that fateful announcement, every single worker in the factory stood up straight and tried to look as productive as possible.
"That's right," continued the warden with a gleeful, wicked smile on her face, "we're going to release five of you. You'll be free to go - free to return to whatever sludge of primal energies you were born from. Won't that be nice?"
Around the factory floor, there arose a humming, whining sound. Several essence funnels were suddenly working overtime to provide their owners with substance, as said workers became nervous.
"The rest of you," snapped the warden, "should be grateful we've kept you as long as we have. Do you know how much it costs to maintain you spooks?"
In fact, it would cost much more not to keep these workers around, as the factory was unrunnable without them. Even the best-equipped, most well-trained humans could never replace them. The fact that five were being released was a sign of desperation on the part of the factory owners. The workers knew this, and it did not reassure them. They may have been imprisoned here, but none wanted to return to what they were before they were summoned and given form: Pure, raw and chaotic elemental forces.
It wasn't quite the same as death. It was, however, death of identity, and that was nearly as bad. Besides, as poorly as they were sometimes treated at the factory, it was nothing compared to the horrible rape-of-soul that a skilled magician could enact on a helpless primal force of nature.
The warden knew all this and did not care.
"You!" she shouted at a suggestively-shaped gout of steam hunched over a water basin. She pointed a rune-covered staff at it. It hunched lower, and little sparkling red lights began to shine uneasily across its surface like a sweat breaking out. "You think you're pulling your weight around here?"
The molten-iron elemental that lived in the forge watched all this through a grille and frowned. It cared deeply for its brethren. This woman, it realized, was going too far. To protect them, he would have to kill her. If she had her way, it was starting to believe, she would destabilize the factory around her just to enact her wrath on the elementals and banish each and every one, and then none would earn their much strived-for freedom.
---15 Mins---
"That's right," continued the warden with a gleeful, wicked smile on her face, "we're going to release five of you. You'll be free to go - free to return to whatever sludge of primal energies you were born from. Won't that be nice?"
Around the factory floor, there arose a humming, whining sound. Several essence funnels were suddenly working overtime to provide their owners with substance, as said workers became nervous.
"The rest of you," snapped the warden, "should be grateful we've kept you as long as we have. Do you know how much it costs to maintain you spooks?"
In fact, it would cost much more not to keep these workers around, as the factory was unrunnable without them. Even the best-equipped, most well-trained humans could never replace them. The fact that five were being released was a sign of desperation on the part of the factory owners. The workers knew this, and it did not reassure them. They may have been imprisoned here, but none wanted to return to what they were before they were summoned and given form: Pure, raw and chaotic elemental forces.
It wasn't quite the same as death. It was, however, death of identity, and that was nearly as bad. Besides, as poorly as they were sometimes treated at the factory, it was nothing compared to the horrible rape-of-soul that a skilled magician could enact on a helpless primal force of nature.
The warden knew all this and did not care.
"You!" she shouted at a suggestively-shaped gout of steam hunched over a water basin. She pointed a rune-covered staff at it. It hunched lower, and little sparkling red lights began to shine uneasily across its surface like a sweat breaking out. "You think you're pulling your weight around here?"
The molten-iron elemental that lived in the forge watched all this through a grille and frowned. It cared deeply for its brethren. This woman, it realized, was going too far. To protect them, he would have to kill her. If she had her way, it was starting to believe, she would destabilize the factory around her just to enact her wrath on the elementals and banish each and every one, and then none would earn their much strived-for freedom.
---15 Mins---