Every soul in the crypt was frozen, dread and confusion painted directly onto their faces. Cythera's eyes didn't leave Alya's body; she frowned, a cold fear blooming in her chest at the thought of what would happen if the princess died right here on the stone floor.
"What the heck is going on?" Damon whispered. His hands hovered inches above her, trembling, as if he could somehow push the life back into her seemingly dead frame.
The silence was too much. Damon snapped, turning toward the heavy door to chase after Klaven. Cythera's hand clamped onto his wrist, anchoring him. Damon shook her hand off with a snarl. "What are you doing? We have to go after him or she'll die!"
Cythera didn't flinch. She looked Damon square in the eyes. "We can't go after him. He would destroy it the moment he sees us. Besides, even if you do go after him, what will you do? Fight him? Yeah, you could probably kill him, but what are the chances he doesn't destroy her core before that?"
She stepped closer, her voice dropping to a grim whisper. "If you stab a person with raw Eterna and it touches their core, it'll destroy them. If the core is outside the body and you harm it with anything heavily made out of Eterna, it would explode."
"But the only way he was even able to bring out her core was by coating his hand in Eterna first!" Damon argued, his face in frustration.
Cythera's gaze sharpened. "I said harm, not touch!"
Silence stretched as they looked each in the eyes. Damon facepalmed, letting out a long, ragged breath that echoed against the damp walls. "So what are we supposed to do?"
He looked back at Alya. It was sickening. Her body slowly was shifting from a pale grey to black; it almost like she was becoming a skeleton, the skin on her hand began clinging too tight to the bone.
Damon pressed his palms to the cold stone, he felt Daichi quietly tugging in his pocket as if silently supporting. Alya's skin was darkening by the second. He thought to himself "If I don't think clearly now, she'll die, and Sunspire would likely blame us before even finding her killer."
Cythera knelt beside her. "We still have 24 hours to return her core before she dies. I don't want her to die either. If she does, the King of Sunspire will blame everyone in this crypt because we're the only ones around her."
The weight of that statement hit the other students like a physical blow. The crypt went dead silent. Then some of the boys Cythera had brought started to panic. "What? I don't want to be blamed for this! We have to—"
Crack. THUD
Nyra's fist connected with the boy's jaw before he could finish the sentence. He fell silently to the floor. "Please just shut up," she muttered.
Damon and Cythera turned to look at her, and Nyra just shrugged. "What? He talks too much, even in class."
Cythera turned her attention back to Damon. "As much as I hate to admit it, we can only assume Klaven is working with Doran."
"Or not," Damon countered, his mind racing. "He only took the core after Alya had admitted that it held the cores of the past ten kings of Sunspire."
"I suppose that's why Doran wants her," Cythera mused. "There are too many things we don't know. I remember that Doran was dead, but now he's alive in a robot body." She paused, her eyes drifting to the boy Nyra had punched—who was now bleeding from his nose and seemingly trying to argue with Nyra.
A memory flashed in her mind: Doran's metallic voice echoing through the classroom.
"YES! YES! I LOVE THOSE REACTIONS. IT'S ALMOST AS IF I CAN SMELL YOUR FEAR AND RESENTMENT IN THE ROOM!"
She turned to Damon, her expression grim. "Damon, there's something you should know about Doran."
She explained the history "There was a rivalry between Doran and Tolrex. In my eyes it was kinda childish but it sparked the last war with Kagarth. They were both trying to become the 'best' versions of humans. Tolrex had focused on helping the beasts outside Woewyn in a way that would directly help Woewyn, but Doran on the other hand…" She paused for a moment.
"What did he do?" Damon asked.
"Doran killed and tortured 112 fairies in an experiment to gain the ability to sense emotions."
Subtle horror washed over Damon's face. "What?"
"That's why he said he could sense our fear and resentment in class, and why there was a war, because he used fairies from Woewyn. But he's in a robot body now, so I don't know how he can still sense emotions like that."
Damon's voice was hollow. "He killed fairies? I never thought anyone would harm fairies."
The silence that followed was suffocating. Nyra was the one to break it. "Damon, that was in the past. What are we going to do about Alya?"
Damon looked over the six students in the room. His eyes were now almost analytical. "Assuming the worst, we would have to fight Doran ourselves. But first we have to figure out what's up with his blasts."
The boy with glasses raised a trembling hand. "Can I speak?" Damon nodded. "In my class, Doran shot a boy and his entire body kind of disintegrated. He's probably dead now. I don't know why, I just thought you should be careful if you're going to fight him."
"That's true." Nyra added, "Each time he shot the blast, most of the students' ears began to ache like a sharp noise in our heads. I had ear bleeds but I feel fine now."
"The same thing happened in our class too. To Damon and I." Cythera confirmed.
Suddenly, the heavy thud of metallic boots sounded in the midst of trees. Damon reacted instantly, lunging for the door and pulling it shut. The boy Nyra had hit formed fire, igniting the lamps in the crypt making shadows against the stone. It was practically bright enough.
"Each time he fired the blast, there was a noise in our ears," Damon whispered, his mind connecting the dots. "And when he shot Kael, the wound kept on… spreading, slowly."
"What do you mean?" Cythera asked.
"If you noticed, Kael's wound was spreading. Imagine if you put the middle of a sheet of paper on a lit candle and it spread, but it was slower. And for some other students, when he shot the blast, it expanded faster and faster."
Cythera's eyes widened. "So we can assume that the more Eterna you have, the slower it spreads."
"If that's true," Nyra realized, her voice trembling, "doesn't that just mean that it hurts worse either way? If you've got lots of Eterna, it's practically torture, and if you've got little Eterna, it still kills."
The boy Nyra had punched wiped his nose. "Well, that doesn't explain the ear bleeds." Nyra's fist flared with orange fire again, but Damon stopped her. "Stop, Nyra, let's hear him out."
The boy shot a mocking look at Nyra. "There's a pretty mute girl in our class. When Doran shot the blast, I noticed she didn't scream but blood came out of her ears."
"I think people with high Eterna in general bleed from their ears when he shot the blast because that's what happened to You and I. And Kael" Cythera added facing Damon.
A different boy sitting cross-legged asked, "But why?"
A student who seemed to be floating slightly off the ground spoke up. "If I had to guess, it'll have something to do with energy conservation. Or transformation. I dunno how to put it."
"What's he talking about?" Nyra asked.
Cythera's brow furrowed. "I think what he's trying to say is... remember when Doran shot his blasts, his hand glowed on the outside."
"Isn't that normal?" Damon asked.
"Yeah, but this was almost like when you're making a sword or melting metal."
Damon went quiet. He closed his eyes, his eyes wandered as he processed the physics of the suit. Suddenly, his eyes snapped open, a literal light bulb of realization appearing in his expression.
He thought to himself It's the sound. The blasts were meant to torture people with high Eterna, rather than kill them. Then he spoke out "When Doran shoots a blast, a natural outcome is the friction in his suit which could cause additional heat energy, and the blast itself has sound energy."
"Where exactly are you going with this?" Cythera asked.
"Think about it. Sound is the most dangerous part of his suit. There's a sound the moment he fires a blast and there's a sound right after it hits someone or something. And that's when the noise in our ears happens. The effect that the blasts create when they touch a person will need Doran to have some sort of like..."
"Cooldown," Cythera whispered.
"Yes, cooldown. Also keeping it from wear and tear in long term battles, especially since there are strong people in school."
Cythera leaned in, her voice intense. "So he would have combined all that wasted energy from things like heat to focus directly unto sound, because energy can't be destroyed but transformed from one form to another."
"That's why it hurts our ears," Nyra said, her eyes wide. "Because we have enhanced hearing."
Then there was silence again. Damon and Cythera slowly turned to each other and shared a look that chilled the room. Nyra looked between them. "What's wrong?"
"Cythera… Doran infiltrating the school, is it possible that the King sent him?"
Nyra gasped. "Huh?! How did you get to that assumption?"
"It's possible," Cythera admitted.
"Urrm. Hello? Do you mind carrying the rest of us along?" Nyra asked, gesturing to the confused boys.
Damon turned to them. "When we were in my class, Doran didn't shoot any Kagarthians. Only Woewyners and Sunspires. Did he shoot any Kagarthians in any of your classes?"
They all shook their heads. "No."
"As Nyra said," Cythera explained, "the only reason we were hurt is because we have Eterna to the point that our biology is enhanced so much that we have enhanced hearing. The Kagarthians have the lowest amount of Eterna. And in our class," she gestured to Damon, "only people with high Eterna had ear bleeds. The lower guys didn't have ear bleeds."
"So are you saying that Doran structured his suit or his body so that the effects of his attacks hurt Woewyners and Sunspires the most?" Nyra asked.
Damon nodded slowly. "Yeah. The expanding wounds would hurt Woewyners and Sunspires the most because we have more Eterna so it'll spread slower and hurt more. The noise thing would hurt those with more Eterna too, which are also Woewyners and Sunspires."
Damon paused. His next statement sounded almost like a fact. "If this is true… Kagarth didn't just infiltrate Trineum. They declared war."