Downpour

As Amelia’s feet carried her forward, she tugged at her hood to keep the rain from pummeling the top of her head. When her foot came down on a patch of rain-slicked earth, her foot slid, causing her to stumble. As Amelia fell, she reached out and kept herself from collapsing to the ground. With a steadying breath, she reclaimed her feet and stood to survey the field. With her path chosen Amelia probed at the swatch of earth to find a sturdier tail.

As she traveled the firmer ground, Amelia raised her hand to let the raindrops fall upon her palm. As each droplet collided with her palm, her skin rippled absorbing the drop like a stone thrown upon a clear lake. Each strike upon her skin drew excitement and joy into Amelia’s feature. Water, specifically rain, rejuvenated the grim woman stalking across the field. As the ripples spread across her body, Amelia shoved the hood back from her face and looked up into the heart of the downpour. Standing there Amelia let the rain renew her body, filling her slender body with the power of the storm.

“Hey, there,” a male voice cried out over the pleasant thumping of raindrops.

Cracking an eye, open Amelia rolled her head, searching for the disturbance. When she found nothing in front of her, she slowly turned around and glared at a pack of four leering men. “Go, away,” she ordered as she began stalking away from the disturbance.

One of the fools whistled at her as another spoke with harsh words. “You’re the one, trespassing.”

“I think you need to make up for that,” one of the four said.

Without turning, Amelia clenched her fists and ground her teeth. Letting her eyes soak up the men she murmured, “Morons.”

Extending her senses outward, Amelia sensed their approach. “It’s your last chance. Walk away.”

The defacto leader of these group sneered as his friend’s laughed.

“Very well,” Amelia retorted as she spun to face them. “You had your chance!” She threw her arms out into the storm as if trying to block their path. Snickering, the men charged her. And as reached out to grab the woman, their fingers passed right through her body.

The lead goon cursed as he tried to tackle Amelia, but he sailed through her body, colliding with the ground. Amelia ignored the others and leaned down next to the leader and whispered. “I tried to warn you.” She placed her watery hand over his face, and the man began thrashing against her stoic arm. “I warned you twice to leave me alone.” Looking up from the goon, Amelia offered a sorrowful smile. “I pleaded with you to leave.”

Suddenly two of the thugs tried to flee, but they were lifted from the ground by their throats. Their limbs spasmodically flailing as water surrounded their mouths and noses. Standing Amelia turned from the first attacker and stalked towards the remaining goon. “But you all had to throw your weight around. You had to try and terrorize someone who felt like ignoring your pathetic lives.”

The remaining man watched frozen as his friend’s stopped twitching. The knife he’d used to pick at his nails fell to the ground like an anvil plummeting off a cliff. A moment later, the man’s knees raced to beat the knife’s journey to the muddy ground. Planting his forehead into the ground, the man wailed, “Don’t hurt me?”

“I thought you and your friends wanted to collect from a trespasser?” Amelia growled her mouth a scant inch away from the cowering man’s ear.

“Please, don’t kill me!”

A pair of loud thuds and cracks trumpeted cries of agony and a gasp of relief. The kneeling thug risked a glance back to his compatriots but found Amelia’s cold and swirling blue eyes instead. The man tried to backpedal through the sluicing mud but slipped to the muddy earth. When the impact of the ground never came, he opened his eyes and found himself floating in the air. Thrashing his head, he caught sight of watery threads stretching from Amelia’s hands to his body. She stood up and kept the panicked eyes next to hers and spoke with absolute certainty. “People used to know, never to cross a Storm Warden.”

“A… a… Sto… Storm…” The goon stuttered as he absorbed the destruction done to his compatriots.

Clutching his shattered legs, one of the men on the ground, cried out, “You… can’t… exist!”

“Ahhhhh but I do. And I’m a full Strom Warden,” Amelia said as she glanced over her shoulder. Returning her attention to the man hanging before her, Amelia spoke with disdain. “Those three are starting to grate on me, what about you?”

“We…”

“Didn’t know,” Amelia spat. Pulling the man closer to her, she quietly warned him. “You should be respectful to people you don’t know; you never know what you’ll run into.”

Amelia dropped the man to the ground and returned to her journey. Before she could walk away, the first man croaked, “Who are you?”

Amelia stopped at the question and turned her head to stare at the frightened man, “Excuse me?”

Flinching at the screams of pain from his companions, the man climbed to his feet and asked, “W… Wh… Who are you?”

Amelia threw her head back and started to cackle. As her laughter died down, she deliberately turned and lifted her arms palms raised to the sky and cried. “I am Amelia Rein.” The woman let her toothy smile linger as lightning struck the ground behind her. “Last of the Storm Wardens.”

“No…” the man cried out as he collapsed upon the ground.

With another bout of laughter echoing in the field, Amelia vanished, leaving her attackers broken in the storm.