Acteon: Starlite Secrets

Episode 7: Clean-Up Duty

Heya, so this is a long chapter but it gets spicy halfway :>! I'm sorry for the wait, enjoy!

"Wow, Xia, you're going to read all this?!" Silkver exclaimed as she flipped all the way to the back of the bulky, hardcover history book. "It's got like, a thousand pages!"

Xia giggled. "I may not look like it, but I can read extremely fast. I could finish that by tonight."

Silkver looked up at her, her jaw dropped. "Are you gonna do that?"

"Yes, but I won't read all of it. Only the ones that I think I'll need to read for this specific task."

Some minutes ago, Xia brought Silkver home with her and let her read the books she had borrowed from the library. Silkver was now at her house, excitedly flipping through hundreds of pages of text about Sarandiel's history and elements. Xia at the moment was setting up her computer and other writing tools to write the article she talked about with Silkver earlier that day. Though Silkver knew that she would be too busy to talk to her, she was still glad to come over. She felt one step closer to her original objective for the day, even though she could not remember exactly what it was.

As Silkver was flipping through the book, a certain page filled in violet and black caught her eye. Her brows raised in interest. She did not look up as she asked, "Hey, Xia, can I read this one for a while?"

Xia waved a hand dismissively at her. "Go ahead, but please give it to me when I ask for it later."

Silkver nodded. She opened the book to the page she had wanted to take a closer look at.

"The Dark Element" the heading said.

Her insides bubbled a little. She somewhat looked forward to what authors of the modern time had to say about dark elementals even though she expected hate speech of some sort. Everyone on the face of Sarandiel was told to hate dark elementals, a race that was assumed dangerous and extinct, gone forever.

And small smile crept onto Silkver's face as she began reading the text.

"This element is thought to have originated from night skies where millions of stars are visible. As beautiful as it looks, it is the most deadly and unknown of the six elements. Abilities in this element can include illusion, hypnosis, possession, life drain, sleep spell, and many others. It also has the most abilities than any other elemental categories."

Silkver was immediately interested. She knew she could do two abilities listed; illusion and life drain. She wondered if she could do more.

"Dark elementals were identified by dark wisps attached to a body part. However, light elementals also had this trait, with lighter-coloured wisps instead."

Silkver quickly checked herself out in Xia's tall mirror that was conveniently on the wall right beside her. There were not any dark coloured wisps. Not visible ones anyway.

"Dark elementals became extinct five hundred years ago-"

Silkver laughed, making Xia glance at her. She definitely wasn't extinct.

Silkver suddenly became interested in what the book had described her kind as. Savages? Monsters? She wouldn't be surprised. Her kind murdered hundreds back in the day, which led to their alleged "extinction" She skimmed the pages until she saw the section for it.

"Dark elemental's abilities were abstract and were mainly used to destroy or manipulate the mind, making them greatly feared by most of Sarandiel. Many dark elementals saw this fear and took advantage of it. They saw fear as power and made it useful. Those who abused their abilities kidnapped, enslaved, and tortured people for power. The kingdom that ruled this group did not prevent this."