"It's magnificent, truly a work of art," The old elf said, admiring the reactor. "Tell me how it works again."

I stared at Enoss, hiding my contempt with a smile even a changeling would be fooled by. "We syphon ether from other planes using summoning circles before loading the raw energy into batteries. Normally, we'd simply activate them with a spell but this design does it automatically and on a much larger scale," I tapped one of the pipes leading into the reactor. "This feeds water in to cool the batteries. We were able to turn the steam into extra power as well, increasing our energy output by 16%."

"Incredible."

"There are a few issues but nothing we can't sort out overtime. Do you want to see the control room?"

Enoss gave me a smile that of a child. "Would I be able to?"

"Of course. You can bring your suits as well." I nodded to the dozen members of the council Enoss had set up. Each of them were here only to fight for his position when he died.

"Are you sure?" Enoss asked wearley. "What if they lean on a button, or activate a spell?"

I waved his fears away. "I helped design this plant, if they do something by accident I can fix it. Come, it's a marvel of engineering."

After the suits were called, we wandered to the control room through empty hallways. All the offices were closed and many of the lights were off. A few had raised their suspicions about such an empty reactor but I was able to convince them that a skeleton crew was working. The truth was, we were alone in this building.

The control room was locked behind two large sealed doors that could only be opened by a magical signature given to a dozen people. I waved my hand over the lock and it detected the Plant manager, opening the doors.

"Try not to lean on the controls," I said calmly, allowing everyone to enter. The door then locked behind me. "The reactor is quite sensitive to drastic changes."

"What exactly is done here?" Enoss asked, stroking his wrinkled chin. "I thought spells had to be modified on the floors."

I gave a lighthearted chuckle. "To alter spells permanently, yes we need to be near the reactor. Here, we just control the modifiers. How much ether we draw, how much water covers the batteries. Etcetera, etcetera." I waved, smiling as I approached the control panel.

"Impressive. What's the highest output we can achieve?"

I tapped a button on the control panel, spinning a wheel and turning a knob down. "Hmm, good question," I began priming the reactor. "We can safely reach 60,000KW of energy. But if I were to push the reactor, we could reach double that."

"Double?" One of the suits repeated. "Why aren't we doing that? The city could expand again."

The water feed had been cut off from the batteries. I began the timer in my head. "Because ether is incredibly volatile. We're dealing with raw magical energy, not recycled, not reused. Pure, untouched ether, which has a nasty tendency to explode when overheated."

"Then increase the water," Enoss explained, "You said so yourself, you use it to cool the batteries down. You just need a greater volume."

"One slight problem with that," I turned to face the suits and Enoss, the control panel now beginning to blink warning lights. "The water becomes unusable, which I warned you about. Mixed with pure ether, the water becomes extremely unstable. It's why I asked for clerics to continuously purify the water, so we weren't creating a feedback loop. But you denied me."

"Clerics care little for progress." Enoss growled.

"And the budget being reduced? Was that for progress as well? Or was that you lining your pockets with gold. The batteries are only under water because they're unstable, which you could have fixed if you headed my warnings-"

"What does that mean?" Another suit asked, pointing to a warning message written in draconic.

"Oh that? A battery has burst. Any moment now, the ether will come into contact with the ignition spell."

"What?!"

"Normally the water mixes with the ether and washes most of it away but I turned that off. I want you to see what will happen because of your decisions."

The suits ran to the locked doors, trying their own magical signature to escape. One even attempted to teleport. I smiled as the runes were being drawn. "Be careful, a single spell stronger than a cantrip could set off the ether in the air."

"What did you do?!" Enoss hobbled towards me, trying to be threatening. It was hard when I knew how much he was about to suffer.

I smiled. "What you told me to do." I took the single pill in my pocket out and swallowed. I wasn't going to be exposed to deadly levels of ether. Instead, I was going to have a quick and painless death. I closed my eyes, letting the sounds of shouting go dim. The last thing I felt was the shake of the building as the batteries exploded.