Damon pushed his perception around the room's interior as he stood against the door. His whole body turned rigid, and the pounding continued.
The disembodied hand had reformed, but to his surprise, a second hand now banged against the surface alongside it.
'Could this thing be slowly putting itself together...?!'
Damon squinted as he noticed a pair of slender forearms begin to take shape at the wrists.
Just as the thought crossed his mind, he sensed the pressure behind the door increase. The cold began to spread too, seeping through the gaps above and below the door.
The frosty air rushed at Ms. Windu and Vincent indiscriminately, in a way that reminded Damon of the monstrous hare.
'If this thing is also an elementalist, then a soul attack should work better than a physical one....'
After thinking it over, Damon's tension eased slightly, and he looked toward Vincent.
"I'll handle this. You take Ms. Windu to the infirmary..."
But the moment the words left him, the cold presence lurking in the room behind him suddenly vanished. Even with his perception amplified, Damon could no longer sense any trace of it.
He and Vincent exchanged looks of relief as Ms. Windu began to catch her breath.
"What was that...?" Her eyebrows twitched as she pressed a hand to the bruise at the side of her head.
Although she didn't look a day over thirty, a few strands of her brown hair had gone white, and she looked visibly shaken.
Damon raised a hand to his brow but didn't respond. Another painful spasm shot through his temple, and the spiritual energy faded from his eyes.
'This is... It's just like that time the resonator was targeting my mind...'
With that thought, he pushed spiritual energy into his eyes again and searched for the source.
His gaze was drawn, unexpectedly, to the book Ms. Windu had dropped on the floor. He knelt down at once.
The scarlet text on the yellowed paper seemed to pull him in, the cover lying open, and yet this only left him more puzzled about what it was.
Picking up the book, he felt a grainy sensation against his palm, then a hole suddenly opened at the base of his thumb.
Hiss!
Damon flinched from the pain and slammed the dark brown book shut. He caught a glimpse of a pair of needle-like fangs retracting into the leathery cover before they vanished.
"Are you sure you're alright, brother?" Vincent asked, noting the blood on his hand. He swept his gaze between the two of them and added, solemnly, "I should take you both back to the—"
"No!"
Ms. Windu cut him off before Damon could gather himself to respond. She raised herself up to stand on her own and snatched the book from his hands.
"I... I thank you boys for saving me. But I cannot go to the infirmary." She frowned. "I still have much work to do."
As she spoke, Damon's eyes caught on her ankle. The skin around it had gone a dark, bruised blue. He shot to his feet at once and took her hand before she could turn away.
"Wait, you won't be able to walk properly, let alone work, with that injury. At least let us put some ointment on it and wrap it."
Ms. Windu sized him up for a couple of seconds, her eyes narrowing sternly. "Are you perhaps discriminating against women, young man? I'll have you know I'm not as weak as I appear."
Before Damon could say more, she pulled her hand free. "While I appreciate the concern, the director mustn't be kept waiting. She expects this book delivered to a porter below the mountain, and I'm already late."
'But that doesn't make any sense... When she's not teaching, Ms. Windu works in the garden on the roof. Why would Mother leave a task this important to her when there are attendants still available...?'
'Why didn't she ask Keene or Jacob, since they rarely leave? Or did she mean for this to happen...?'
Damon's mind raced with speculation, but he couldn't settle on a conclusion with so little to go on.
'Was this really meant to be a message?'
That thought settled on him like stone as the woman walked away with hurried strides. He felt the urge to follow but held himself back.
Vincent looked at his brother, thoughtful. "That was oddly forward of you..."
"She's been our substitute alchemy teacher for a while now. Is it that weird for me to be nice to her...?" Damon smiled in response.
Since contact had been necessary to place spiritual energy around her leg, he didn't think he'd done anything inappropriate.
"Right...?" Vincent chuckled. "Maybe I'd believe that if you were in a good mood..."
'Okay, that stung a little...' Damon's lips pressed into a line as he turned from Vincent and felt around for the book he'd dropped.
He rose back up and retorted, "Even if I do have a bad attitude, it's not like I'm the only one. We live in seclusion at the top of a mountain, where half the adults we know are former army members, and just about everything is tied to fighting. It's probably why nobody ever came looking for us."
Damon's words hung in silence for a second. Then Vincent just smiled. "Should we check inside? Whatever was attacking her might not be gone."
Looking toward the door, Damon cut the flow of spiritual energy to his eyes and said, "It's too dangerous to go snooping around Mother's stuff. We should also warn the others."
"Good idea. I'll contact instructor Jacob and have him make an announcement, since the others are on a forest outing with him. They probably won't be back for another ten minutes or so." Vincent nodded as he reached into his trousers and pulled out his chrome-covered Riod.
He was honestly eager to reach the instructor. Ever since the day he'd received the device, he'd made a habit of collecting the frequency identifications of every attendant.
Still, the two combat instructors, Jacob and Diana, were the only ones who consistently responded to his messages.
A smile tugged, unconsciously, at Vincent's mouth as he raised the device to his lips to record a short message. He turned one of the dials on top for a few seconds, then pressed it inward.
'It's such a strange device...'
Damon watched with interest. He was tempted to ask to see the screen but felt it was a little too childish.
"By the way, how'd you know where to strike? I couldn't see a thing..." Vincent muttered, almost in passing.
Damon shrugged, as if it were the most natural thing in the world, and pointed to his eyes with two fingers. He then amplified his eyes again and said, "It's hard to explain, but when my eyes are like this, I can see it."
"Ha? But your eyes look the same..." Vincent looked up at once, and the words caught in his throat.
For a moment, he felt as though he were being watched by something far more cunning than a boy. The pressure behind Damon's gaze went beyond that of any martial arts practitioner. A calculating coldness bled through it that left Vincent speechless.
At the same time, his heart began to race.
He'd sensed something had changed the moment they met outside the infirmary on the first floor, but no matter how closely he watched, he hadn't been able to place where the feeling came from.
Not until now.
Noticing the blue colors around his brother had suddenly shifted to bright red, Damon's expression soon became smug.
'I figured he wouldn't be able to see spiritual energy, but it looks like he can't see my eyes turning red either.'
He felt now would be the perfect chance to redefine their relationship, and an arrogant look appeared on his face as he said, "How about we go a round in the circle? If you win, I'll tell you everything that happened."
Upon hearing this, Vincent narrowed his eyes. "And if you win?"
Damon gestured to the book in his hand and responded in a poised tone. "You'll help me scour through sections of the library."