Jett's POV
Jett barely had time to register what had happened before he'd been pinned to the tree behind him, a humming blade of light pressed against his neck.
"Drop the throwing star, Jett."
To his surprise, Jett looked down to see a throwing star in his hand, poised to throw. When had he done that? He involuntarily dropped it - a decision he immediately regretted - and watched it roll to a stop behind Sol's feet. Jett frowned at it, a strange haze starting to take over his thoughts, muddling them.
"I know what mind control looks like when I see it," Sol said to him, lightening the pressure of his blade slightly after Jett dropped the weapon, "plenty of Spirits that have experienced it."
Jett looked up at him, "What?"
A look of annoyance crossed Sol's face, "You're not listening to me?"
"What am I doing here, again?" Jett said, trying to push Sol's arm out of the way, "Wasn't I training with Veton and Elvira?"
Sol looked like he was deciding something, then took the blade off Jett's neck and stepped back, "Yeah, you were."
Jett gave him a confused look, not seeming to fully realize what had happened, and started walking back towards Veton and Elvira.
◆✥◆
Jett woke with a start, wincing as he felt a headache pounding behind his eyes. It took a moment for him to remember what he had been thinking about the night before, all he remembered was staying up far too long. Oh, that was it! He'd been training with Veton and Elvira, and then he'd. . . Done something to Sol? Then after that, nothing. Jett racked his brain for what had happened after that, but no matter how hard he tried he couldn't think of anything.
He sighed, rubbing his eye with a hand, and stood up. He probably just needed a breath of fresh air, that was it. But as he reached the door of his bedroom and turned the handle, he discovered that it was locked. Someone had locked him in his room.
Jett tried to stay calm, he really did, but when you start panicking your brain has a strange tendency to reject all logic, and make sure you do the exact wrong thing in your current situation. The thoughts running through Jett's head definitely weren't helping either.
"Am I stuck in here?"
"What did I do?"
"Who locked my door?"
And lastly, "Why does my door lock from the outside?"
He curled his fingers inward, shadows appearing almost involuntarily around them. He thought that if he couldn't open the door, he could maybe break through it. But just as he was about to try, the door opened from the outside, revealing Blaze standing there with a confused look on her face.
"Why was your door locked, Jett?" She looked at him, then noticed Jett standing in front of her. "What are you doing?"
Jett looked down at his hand, what was he doing? His mind still felt foggy, it was as if he had to push through a thick wall every time he wanted to make sense of something.
"Hello?" Blaze stepped forward, waving a hand in front of his face.
Jett blinked, "Huh?"
Blaze drew her hand back, a frown on her face, "Are you trying to be really annoying right now?"
"What? No, it's just that . . . "Jett paused, drawing his eyebrows together, "Something's messing with my head. I can't remember anything from yesterday."
"Well I remember your weird darkness thing having to do with Umber," Blaze wrinkled her nose at the name, as if the very thought of the Sky Child it belonged to disgusted her, and looked at his hand, "I bet that you can't remember anything because of her."
"No, no, I don't think so." He shook his head. Blaze hadn't seemed to like Umber ever since she had started teaching Jett about Shadow Magic, which he didn't understand. Sure, she was a little bit creepy, but as she had said, if she'd wanted to kill him she would have done it by now. Right? After that slight moment of clarity, the fog in his head rolled in and banished any other thoughts. Jett moved to go out the door, "I need to get some fresh air."
Blaze blocked the door with an arm, "I still want to talk to you,"
"Y'know, it kind of feels like you aren't listening to me right now," Jett tried to push her arm out of the way, "My head is a mess. I need to get outside. I literally might do something bad and not even realize it."
After a moment's pause, Blaze pinched Jett on the arm with her other hand. Hard.
"Ow!" Jett winced, stepping back into the room. It almost felt like her fingers had burned him. "What was that for?"
"Do you need me to pinch you again? It doesn't seem like you're listening to me." Blaze said, mocking him.
As much as Jett wanted to protest, it had actually worked. The fog in his head had cleared, and he was able to make sense of what was happening, "Right, sorry. What do you want again?
The look Blaze gave him could have cut metal, "I want to talk to you."
"Well, yes, that's obvious by now. I was asking what you wanted to talk about."
In response, Blaze held up a hand, and with a snap of her fingers, the tip of a single finger lit on fire. Now the burning he had felt made sense.
Jett squinted at it, connecting the dots, "That's not much of an Elder power if you ask me."
He knew he was jealous. Who wouldn't be? But at the same time, he felt bad for Blaze, having known about her fear of fire since she was a moth.
Blaze seemed unaffected by his words, "It took a week to be able to do this on command, you know."
"Oh, very impressive then, bravo."
She laughed, "Not really. It's more like I'm a living torch," she paused to extinguish the flame on her finger, then said, "So what's your deal? You still don't remember why you locked yourself in your room?"
"I didn't lock myself in my room," Jett sighed, "I think I tried to kill Sol."
"You did what?"
"Sorry that came out wrong, someone made me try to kill Sol. Better?"
"Not really, does that mean you could try and kill me at any moment?" Blaze responded, involuntarily taking a step back.
Jett hadn't thought of this. He technically hadn't thought of anything, at least for the past half hour. He didn't even know what had happened, much less if he would go on another murdering rampage at a moment's notice. But he couldn't exactly tell Blaze that, so he said,
"I don't think so."
She didn't respond, probably deciding whether he was telling the truth or not, then said, "As I said before, it's probably Umber's fault."
As she said this, Jett thought of something. Yes, Umber said she would have killed him and Blaze right then if she'd wanted to, but she'd never promised not to kill the other Elders. Of course, Jett was assuming she knew about them. At least, it seemed that when he'd first met her. At that moment, Jett made up his mind, he'd have to visit the Forgotten Ark again and try to find Umber.
Ereven's POV
The chatter in the room was almost unbearable. For a group of seven people, they sure could make a lot of noise. Ever since Ereven had started catching glimpses of events that hadn't happened yet, but inevitably were going to, she'd barely had any tolerance to loud noise at all. Thus, she spent her days in the quiet, disorganized library, reading the books left on the dusty shelves by people long forgotten.
Ereven tried to distract herself from the noise by counting. Counting by twos, threes. Anything to keep her mind from wandering where it wasn't supposed to be. She tapped the table with a finger, looking over to where Elvira was showing Ararona something.
"Okay okay, watch this," Elvira said, then started spinning her rod around, gathering lightning all over the surface. Ararona seemed surprised by this, but Ereven already knew about it. She'd had a particularly brief vision of Elvira discovering her new Elder power with Veton - much to his surprise as well - when she'd been walking outside a couple of weeks before. Elvira slammed the rod against the floor beneath her feet, letting the lightning soak into her hands.
"What's that supposed to do?" Ararona asked, stepping forward to get a better look.
"No idea," Elvira shrugged, then a mischievous grin spread across her face, and she poked Ararona in the arm. Ararona jumped, and all of her hair stood on end, making her look rather like a dandelion, and Elvira dissolved into laughter.
The door at the back of the room abruptly opened and in walked Sol, followed by Jett - who she noticed was still wearing his mask, despite being told he didn't need to - and Blaze.
"Sorry I'm late, apparently these two weren't notified about this. . . gathering." He paused, "That's a good word, gathering, I should write it down somewhere for later." There was a moment of silence, in which both Jett and Blaze found seats next to each other at the table.
"Alright, ready to start?" Sol asked, walking over to one of the walls at the head of the room and grabbing a piece of chalk from the table. He seemed agitated, and Ereven wondered what he had been doing for the past week. "Number one, if anyone here has - or gets any - more special powers, please tell me, because I swear if I get zapped one more time by who knows what-," he looked pointedly at Veton and Elvira at this, "-I will personally throw you off this mountain."
Even though Ereven knew he was joking, her tapping still sped up, and so did her counting, causing Sol to give her a curious glance, but then he looked away.
"I have one," Veton propped his head up with his hand and looked at Sol, "I can fit 25 peanuts in my mouth."
At this, Sol turned around and threw one of his pieces of chalk at Veton, bouncing it off his head, "I'm being serious."
Veton rubbed his head, grinning, "So was I,"
Sol rolled his eyes, using the other piece of chalk to write "1 - Please tell someone about any powers so you don't accidentally kill anyone." He turned back to the table, "Second, Roko, I need you to tell me what the spirit looked like that you saw."
Roko gave a start, "How do you know about that?"
"I'll explain in a bit," Sol answered, then muttered, "Stars, we really need a better communication system."
There was a brief pause, in which Ereven used to look around the table.
Ereven had always prided herself on her observation skills. Whether she was figuring out where one of the Elders misplaced something, or who the murderer was in her book, she felt pretty confident in her judgments. Her latest being about Sol. Ah, how interesting. One stranger brings a bunch of strangers together to try and lead a bunch more strangers. She'd always been confused, why did they even trust Sol when he'd sought each of them out? Was it because they were bored? Did they need some excitement? Were they just curious, but found once Sol told them why he was there, it was too late to go back?
Ereven had settled on the idea that most of them were there because they reveled in the prospect that they were something more, something different. Someone who could actually change something, make a difference, be remembered. After all, who didn't want to be remembered?
That and they needed someone to tell them what to do. Everyone, at some point probably wondered what would happen if there were no rules. The second those rules go away, do you find you don't know what to do? What's right, what's wrong? They needed someone to make sure that they didn't make the wrong decisions.
"Okay Roko, that's detailed enough," Sol said, jerking Ereven out of her thoughts, "it's not the same Spirit we met yesterday."
When he saw the general look of confusion he was getting he added, "Oh, right, you don't know about that yet." He cleared his throat, "So Elvira and Veton saw this spirit when they were by the Citadel the other day, right? They tried to figure out what the Spirit was, and found a book supposedly telling them what, but they couldn't read it. Skip forward a couple of days, we're in the Forgotten Ark, trying to use the book, when the same spirit comes and tells us this." He tapped the chalkboard for emphasis, pointing to a list that had been written on the board when everyone came in. "Fallen" or the very first Elders, existed years ago. We don't know why they're here now. "Make sense?"
"Yeah, except the part where you say we both found the book." Elvira said, "That was Veton being an idiot."
"No, that was Elvira being clueless," Veton said in response, raising his eyebrows at her as if daring her to disagree.
"I was not-"
"So, who am I throwing out the window first?" Sol interrupted them. In other words, stop fighting or else. He waited for them to answer, and when they didn't, he then continued. "The Spirit that we met seems trustworthy, but anyone can lie."
That was true.
"So, I'll try to end this meeting here. I can try and see if any other spirits know the ones that we met." Sol paused, then added, "And yes, I can do that much faster than any of you can because I'm a half spirit, we've been over this, Xofos." Erven looked around to see that Xofos had opened his mouth to start talking, but then closed it again.
"What are we supposed to do with this information, though?" Elvira asked, "Go look for bad people?"
"No, we don't really know anything about who these spirits are, so for now just keep doing what you'd normally do."
That wasn't true, Sol knew that they wouldn't all just sit around and do nothing, most of them probably physically couldn't.
But no one had to know that, right?
After all, people are great liars.
A/N Have I mentioned that you should listen to music while you read?
Like seriously, it can make even the worst of writing seem epic ✨