Fire {Elements of Power 1}

Chapter Seven: Roxy

"Oi! That's my chair. Who do you think you are, coming into my house and moving around my furniture?" He didn't, I noticed, offer any thanks for the fire, though he must have realised it was there, since he removed his dressing gown to reveal the pair of orange and green pin-striped pyjamas he was wearing beneath it. This trip kept getting better and better. I rolled my eyes at Vincent, who had come into the room behind him.

"But Dr Scott, you couldn't possibly mind where I sit." I concentrated on keeping the honeyed edge to my voice and his expression went blissfully blank. "Why not take a seat yourself?" He sat down without another word.

The trick to using Control, so Vincent was always saying, was to keep your voice as light and kind as possible. That way, your victim wouldn't feel like they were being commanded, which meant that their minds offered far less resistance. For the same reason, negative commands, "Don't do this" or "You can't think that" were much easier than direct ones: "Get me a drink" or "Jump off that cliff over there." Slipping the word "not" into a Control had a dramatic effect. Of course, the more the power was used, the stronger it became, making it easier and easier to manipulate the people around you.

A lot also depended on the strength of the mind you were working on and how frequently Control had been used on it before. Your average Helian wouldn't do anything extreme unless you were incredibly powerful and only someone who had been Controlled continually for many years would ever jump off a cliff if they were told to. In fact, there had only ever been one recorded occurrence of someone killing themselves as the result of Control and that was centuries ago. Death was a difficult thing to force the mind to consider.

Dr Scott had clearly been placed under Control more than a few times though, his mind was already quite weak. But that was unsurprising, given the time he has spent in the army, under Protector command. However, it could also be because he had lived alone for so long. Seclusion wasn't good for anyone; it made you forget how to protect yourself.

Control is actually a lot harder than most Protectors expect: there's a lot of psychology behind it that has to be considered carefully if you're going to make any breakthroughs. I guess that's why I found it so hard to do. I never paid much attention in the early theory lessons, so I had to pick up all the rules as I went along.

I looked at the doctor, my face a picture of mock disappointment. "Aren't you going to get us a drink? You're not being a particularly good host, you know." It took the few seconds that he looked at me, confused, to realise that I'd let the tone in my voice relax too much, so the Control hadn't worked.

"I mean, Dr Scott, won't you get me and my tutor a drink each? And one for yourself, of course." Of course, I'm so considerate. That time the Control registered and the doctor left the room, the vacant expression back on his face.

"You're doing well," Vincent congratulated me as soon as the sound of the doctor's footsteps had retreated down the hallway. "It's not as hard as you think when you put your mind to it, is it?"

"I never said it was hard," I protested defensively. "I said that it was unnecessary and required way too much effort. Why should I concentrate on injecting sweetness into every word I say, when shouting at people gets the same result with far less effort?"

"Because, as we saw at the door, when people don't know who you are, they're not going to respond well to being treated badly."

"So I'll make sure that they know who I am before I tell them what to do." I smiled, knowing that I was winding him up.

"What if you don't want them to know who you really are?" Vincent retorted.

"Why the flames would I possibly want to keep my identity a secret?" Being a Princess (and next in line to the throne after my father, as long as I got married) was a good thing and not something I would ever want to hide.