A brief, almost crazed laughter expelled from deep within the dorm. Kayne, Ryeld, and Cazzie lingered by the door, awaiting the conclusion of the indistinct exchange between the resolute redhead and apathetic Nyrhaean.
Cazzie repeatedly scraped the curved edge of her thumb's nails with her index's, producing faint arrhythmic ticks. Them? Stop a war?
Hiro may be all things, wild to the bone and a heathen for rules. When advised not to touch the roots of the wolfsbane, she had to watch him vomit every five hours and stare at her with his tongue rolling out of his drooling mouth, barely breathing back at Polyville. By the time he recovered, he would dare say he would do it again, munch a mouth full of it even. She would have ended him herself had he not wrapped it up with a punchline.
However, she was just as guilty. An inkling of her also appealed to the absurd idea. She had witnessed these adept warriors wield sticks like swords, rocks like ballistics, and hands like the most solid of metals that thrashed any walls in their paths into powder. And she firsthand saw what they could do to a group of agents. What can they not do?
"He doesn't want to."
Her soaring elation dropped at that instant, disappointment akin to the liking of about to climb a mountain only for the hunk of rock itself to crumble. "What?! Why?"
"What do you expect?" Ryeld retorted instead. "We're just kids. Not even an army of kids for that matter. This is an empire, for goodness sake. You're talking about going against a whole continent of supernatural beings who can't even be touched by magic."
"But we have an asset."
Ryeld's scowl deepened. "That liquor? Please. You can't even douse a finger with it." He sighed, hand on his hips. "Is it necessary to even argue about this?"
Cazzie gaped, speechless. How could he refuse? Does he not want the adventure? Sure the odds are against them, but are they just going to stand here equipped with convenient knowledge and do nothing at all while the fate of humanity is put in jeopardy?
"So you'd rather be oppressed and robbed of freedom instead of fighting for it?!" Hiro exclaimed like a fulminating volcano that had been dormant. "It's people like you that lead to problems. You do nothing! And you'd only mull over it when it's too late."
Ryeld's tone had become controlled, piercing. "I'm choosing to stay alive than die a pointless death because of a childish fantasy to 'save the world.' Leave it to those who sit in conference rooms for all I care. It's their job, not ours."
Hiro jerked his head to the side, muttering under his breath as Ryeld tramped off. His words towered over Cazzie like she was an insignificant cell in a universe that knows no bounds. She gazed at the mute brunette.
Kayne wore a tame regard. A mere observer in a world coalescing with peace and chaos, contemplating those dark pleading eyes. Then sighed. "I'll go talk to Zak."
She elicited a silent 'thank you.' As Kayne stalked toward the dorm, Cazzie caught up with the Volt mage. Her pace was inadequate with his long and brisk rate, compelling her to switch legs faster under short but immediate steps. "Rye, please."
Ryeld retained a straight gaze ahead, unyielding.
"Could you please slow down for a moment?"
He stopped. She whipped in front of him, craning her head up high, hand atop his arm. "Call it a child's desire or whatever, this may be the only way to stop a mass slaughter." She scoured his distant eyes for a response. Anything. But he still did not look at her. "I know it's a risk. But is it worth less than another where everything and everyone has become the cost? Hiro's right. In our final breaths, succeeding or losing, is it not better knowing we died fighting in fear rather than living with it? That we could have done something."
The words came out unexpectedly afflicting. Even she was taken aback by her own words. She had read the referential passage from the book under her possession before she was taken into Amaerys' Home For The Founded Youth. The book, as much as it was swallowed in a veil of an enigma, made up for its brevity of background in obscure insight in odd riddles and parables written in both ancient structure and language perhaps completely lost in present knowledge that she barely understood half of it.
It taught her that regret was a lasting disease that rarely found its remedy. An illness of the mind and soul a fool would seek its cure while the wise know better than to avoid it. Perhaps she might now have had a hint of its tone. Of what its composer had come to bear.
She had not realized several seconds had passed. When she looked up at Ryeld again, he had been staring at her hand on his arm. The strain on his face faded, replaced by what she could only hope to be.
Tolerance. A cue of a change of mind.
She gave the tiniest gleam, a conveyance of encouragement. "We'll need you there. I need you there."
He finally bore his eyes into her. Those warm, beautiful eyes of the purest jade. Then he closed them, sagging his shoulders too low they must have bolstered a harrowingly oppressive tension.
"You have a way with words, you know that?"
From the way he spoke with barely any emotion under an uninterested tone, she smiled, eager to throw her arms over him. It was the voice at his most normal. And it meant reserving no objection.
"But if anything happens that ends with us getting in trouble, I'm not taking part in any of it."
Cazzie resisted the urge to jump and yelp in overwhelming glee. "Fine by me."
*
Clamorous sirens of ambulances and constabulary vehicles bawled throughout the dense air hovering over the catastrophe the second they stepped out of the school gates. Debris were strewn over the streets and ruins on the city's premises and pillars of foul smoke ascended from over the flanks of rooftops and buildings.
Frontliners were dispersed, almost leaving no space to crowd in. The staggering sight of the mass testifies to the whole exertion of all departments sent out, yet the provision of assistance may not have been adequate should the raid persist far longer. Fatalities were admitted on ambulances, casts wrapped on people smeared with blotches of blood, and spine boards that occupied the insentient, waiting to be determined whether or not to be marked with the black tag.
The environment rang with the piercing cries of dear ones, if not the consistent howl of more arriving assistance vehicles. Parents held their children closely, elderlies clutched onto the blanketed feet of their dead as they were dragged away, excruciatingly wailing, gripping their chests.
The premonition of a looming apocalypse is beginning to surface.
If the first attack precipitated in the prompt desolation that could have immediately laid waste the entire southern stretch of Vherna, what more will the whole of the Sphere endure when it has yet to suffer greater damage from an all-out continental onslaught?
It was a sight impossible to erase out of memory. Yet the most outstanding of it all was the incomprehensible humungous wall of dark purple tract creeping from the north to the south of the region. The colossus sized up to half the height of the prominent skyscrapers that survived to tower over the heart of the metropolis. Upon a closer look, the monstrous wall turned out to be a cluster of less overgrown, pitch-purple, cords twisting into each other, constituting a humungous vine.
It was like a titanic serpent slithering over an ant colony with no regard for the minuscule organisms. A mere heap of soil to its reptilian, unempathetic eyes. Vehicles and structures underneath were grounded to nothing more than pathetic piles.
Thousands upon thousands gathered at the base of its body while hundreds wiggled their way through the throng to catch a closer glimpse. Poke a finger against it to satisfy their curiosity or any other meddlesome reasons with no regard to the yellow tapes and poor servicemen. Yet the true distraught was that no one was able to access their technological amenities to snap photographic data. Shreds of evidence are left to claims and witnesses for the unfortunate who have not seen the awe.
"It's a big-ass vine," Hiro remarked as they gawked at the frightening flora.
"Language," Cazzie chided.
"What is that thing?" Ryeld did not need to nudge their walking source of information.
"Roots. Projections of the Abanthus Tree," Zakuro said, unsurprisingly aloof. "It's their center of regrouping and synthesis. It's where we head to."
It was no hard endeavor to slip through surveillance as they slid their way beneath the shadow-cast canopies of edifices. They turned a corner into a narrow, dry alleyway. Mounted pipes clung to the walls and tangles of wires levitated above them.
The area bore not a twinge of spur save for the dangling cords, the eensy leakage of the pipes dropping on mucky puddles, and the ruffles of their bag packs. The tangy whiff steamed from the wet splotches or the black greases that stained the brick walls in smeared art, persisting for eight more seconds before their noses adjusted to the disgust. Alleyways had always been likened to restrooms.
"So, is this like a secret save-the-world mission without involving the government or stuff?" Hiro was not one to stand in irksome silence.
"Seems like it," Kayne said, another enthusiast stemming from his love of media narratives. "Although I doubt this maneuver would last longer than planned." The leather scabbard hanging by his waist had a long blue sheath with intricate gold curvature lines entwined along the rough edges until it knotted altogether at the tip in a satisfying swirl, tainted with torn-off flakes.
"You tell me. My mom's gonna start hiring AVA personnel to set up a hunting operation for me. Even if she thinks I was zombified if I didn't let her know I'm still myself and breathing." Ryeld sounded like a child forced to go along on an unwanted camping trip. "That's not an exaggeration, to clarify."
There was no limit to the amount of madness a person with money and power can unleash. Especially if that person carried an irrepressible, frightening, need to secure the welfare of their young. Thankfully, their Nana Cia and Tia Daphy fit the latter. Cazzie and Hiro had their letter of assurance sent to Polyville in less than a week through the post.
"I'd be more surprised if they'd search for everyone one by one," Kayne spoke, the tip of his tongue sizzled venom. "It's the authorities we're talking about."
Arguing against that assertion was like bickering with an unsoiled wall. No molds or cracks can be found to demur its quality. These are no more than creatures from the west side of the Sphere. Nowhere near the rumors circling about the government constructing biohazard weapons to gain absolute leverage over the whole nation. After all, history lessons did not shy away from discussing conspiracies, for these events had happened quite numerous times that they had not been spared from being dragged into the light, bearing widespread distrust among the people.
And magic was to be blamed, or, in a more appropriate sense, thanked, for all of it.
Attention-desperate campaigns incited by those who claim they can lead a better future were nothing more than shallow promises and shameless propaganda. Statistical reports have shown an increasing number of the population responding with apathy toward political affairs by four percent over the last two years with citizens not much older than twenty-six filling up most of the graph. Shoving that piece of information right onto their heed could not have come at a worse moment.
Moreover, getting into acquaintance with Zakuro can have many perks. But not all are as pleasantly thrilling as it may appear. One of them comes along with knowledge of the existence of mythical beings, having no need for proof with him coming as the carrier of the news. It turns out that there was not much difference from the people's outlook on fairies, elves, or whatever creature is yet out there. For their physical attributes, at least. But for those who sat at the tip of the reigning pyramid present otherwise. With these elite few, establishing consensus with the otherworld was more of a game of temptation like a cupcake sitting innocently on the beartrap waiting for the first party foolish enough to give in and take the bait.
It all traces back to the first discovery that magic bore from the purest essence of riches scattered across land, water, and ether. From the newly sprouted shrub to the vastest sea, there was beauty and wealth laid across the Sphere's skin. In a bitter truth, in the eyes of man, there was, most of all, a source. A vast storehouse of energy to be made anew into power with an endlessly flowing fountain of it.
It was what the species of this side of the globe hungered from the opposite realm. Meanwhile, its flow made up the foundation of the Red World's culture and leveled state of intellect. Its presence was the calming heat of nature's beloved hearth. While magic kept the humans alive and progressive, it kept the otherworld-ers sane. And the polar side of the land was theirs to keep.
But Nyrhaea was as far from sinless. Apparently, their plan to go beyond the boundary zone by the ways of their own making gave no sign of preplanned diplomatic exchange between the empire and the united nations. Instead, eager to go for the way of shedding blood of both humans and nyrhaeans.
Could the higher-ups have come to be aware of this? If so, what were they doing? Should not the crisis of wars or predetermined conflicts be publicized to the people?
When Zakuro spoke of his world, it reminisced of a decades-old black-and-white feature integrating a not-so-happy ending of a fairy tale drawn from a medieval aesthetic. Instead of rescuing sailors and gifting underwater-respiration kisses, merfolks pulled them to the depths of the sea to feast on their flesh. Dwarves and fairies grant unattainable desires at the cost of prices under tricks or the blinding drive of desperation, following eternal agony, and leprechauns are greedy as they are beyond bratty. A little disheartening of truth, if not nauseating.
The bright sun's glow illuminating ahead opened out more brilliantly than ever, signaling the end of the passage.
Then someone screamed.
Jolt struck them. The shriek appeared to be echoing not far from the west. "Come on!" Kayne sprinted, followed by the crew with paired dynamism.
🎒
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NEXT on Youngblood World:
With the city put into a restless distraught, how do the higher-ups address this mass conundrum?
And what circumstance awaits our heroes from that dire scream of terror?
Find out in the next chapter,
A Damsel In Distress
*~*~*~*~*
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