Realm of the Sun

Chapter 18

Nicholas was still skimming through books, but gave a nod, acknowledging Sylas' presence.

"Do you two need any help?" he offered. "I do have to change first, but I thought I'd stop by."

"Don't you have bombs to build?" Nicholas interjected, snarkily.

Both Yue and Sylas blinked in surprise. "You know about that?" they both said in unison. The Reactor and Sylas' work down there was not common knowledge.

Nicholas didn't look up, but tapped his chin. "Not denying it? Huh. You're a worse liar than I thought. And yes, you make it a little obvious. Like, say-" he pointed to one of the charcoal smudges. "That. You come from outside the palace like that pretty often, and it's not hard to send anyone from House Arachnos to follow you. Of course, I chose my esteemed general, but please be glad it wasn't some random Ng."

Slight revelation, large effect. Yue continued to stare in silence, and Sylas sputtered some kind of garbled excuse before excusing himself and running upstairs.

She turned to him. "That was kind of mean, Nicholas."

"Oh."

Only an oh, quickly followed up. "I'm sorry. I didn't realize it was important to you. I assumed you did not know."

An apology, from the prince? "Err- yes, thank you. That's alright. Pe- People make mistakes!" Yue stuttered, taken aback. When did the prince apologize to subordinates like her? "We should go back to looking," she quietly added, and as soon as she sat back down onto the carpet, she grabbed a random book from their unread pile and buried herself in it. Stupid, stupid, stupid.

Minutes pass, Sylas returns slightly flustered, but dives into reading nonetheless. Surprisingly, Jin stops by a little later too, and they all look into who or what could be the missing link from the prophecy.

It was quiet for the next hour. Solarie and Roza were due to arrive back tomorrow morning. Gwen was hell bent on preparing more young Elites to enter the advanced program, and the rest of the group was stuck trying to figure out the prophecy, which Yue had delightfully and very originally dubbed The Daybreak Prophecy. It just sounded nice. There was no other reason why it was called that.

All good things must come to an end at some point.

The alarm- not the one for monsters, but the one for rebel attacks. Bells ringing out, and House Kim expanding its reach. Everyone in the room stood up immediately, and Sylas grabbed Yue's hand. Simultaneously, so did Nicholas, before quickly letting go and drawing his sword instead. Yue hadn't even noticed the sword before.

"The bunkers. Now." Nicholas ordered, while running towards the hall. Yue and Sylas obliged, and Jin scrambled to his own designated route.

They almost made it to the stairs, but were stopped by a small group of rebels in the next hall. "We have orders to seize High House members," one of them seethed.

"Then you don't want us. House Zheng. The only thing we can do is regenerate ourselves," Sylas lied calmly. What were the chances they would recognize them? Two High House members, one that would completely end with the death of its only scion.

At first, they seemed to believe them. Two of the rebels looked at each other, each asking the other what to do. They must be the leaders, Yue deduced.

Unfortunately, these rebels did not care whether they were Lai's and Chang's or Zheng's. Like feral, rabid animals, they charged, wielding their swords and screaming dissonant battle cries. Sylas reacted quickly- by of course, sprinkling sparks of electricity like some kind of glimmering purple rain.