Queen Thessa led the way deeper into the academy.
Unlike the chaotic aftermath of the first battle, these grand corridors remained completely intact. The polished floors shone under the dim lighting, and the walls showed no structural fractures or scorch marks that usually accompanied a raid.
Yet, the school was hauntingly still. Papers and abandoned belongings littered the floor, clearly tossed aside in a hurry. Everything else looked completely fine and eerily untouched. As they walked past row after row of empty classrooms and moved through the sprawling cafeteria, they noticed the entire sector was utterly deserted.
Damon looked around the hallways and stairs, a faint, knowing expression settling onto his face.
"Wow. I guess those guys did beat Doran after all," he thought.
From his perch on Damon's shoulder, Daichi's voice echoed telepathically, "Oh yeah? How do you know that?"
Damon replied mentally, "If they didn't, I just kinda guessed the fire kid wouldn't let Doran go. I imagined there'd be scorch marks and stuff on the walls if they lost—maybe the school would be broken down a bit. I mean, how else would the kids have escaped if Doran were alive?"
Damon paused mid-sentence. His eyes slowly registered an unusual weapon lying on the ground: a spear with a sword blade split lengthwise and bolted to its midsection, transforming the center of the shaft into a heavy, double-edged wingspan.
Continuing the walk, he picked up an image and then fixed a fine bulb on the wall with his own Light.
Daichi whispered, 'What I don't understand is why we didn't sense waves of kids leaving in the first place? I know I was hungry, so I can't be blamed. You?'
Damon chuckled and stroked the jaw of his smiley hound, 'Yeah, so was I. But also, I think my reason was too focused on saving Suicide Squad over there. Still, I'm glad no one got majorly hurt. Those boys are tough, but I feel we should be running to them instead of walking so casually.'
While Damon and Daichi continued their mental conversation, Draven scanned the quiet expanses of the building. His pale green eyes remained steady and unfazed as he casually folded his hands behind his back.
"I can't sense the Ki of any of the students," he noted aloud, his remaining voice smooth and grounded. "Did they all run away in fear? Is there even a suitable place to hide here?"
"There are a few, but I doubt anyone would hide with an obvious chance to flee," Cythera answered, her posture now freer as she kept pace. "But for them to do that, it must mean Doran was defeated. I guess we can assume that. As you can see, some of us weren't afraid at all," she said with a gentle smile.
Nyra smiled brightly beside her brother upon hearing Cythera's words. Catching his eye, they playfully bumped fists against each other.
"Told you my plan would work," Damon said softly, a rare, subtle smirk cutting through his occasional quiet indifference.
Nyra mirrored his gaze, "Never doubted you, big bro."
Damon turned comedically shocked, "Seriously? Never?"
"Of course not. I don't know if you've noticed, Damon, but I'm your greatest supporter. In fact, let me sit on your shoulders now. I need the support."
Queen Thessa glanced back, catching the siblings' quiet celebration just as Damon lost his wrestling match with the girl trying to get on his shoulder. Her slow stride didn't break, but the rigid majesty on her face slipped away, leaving a warm, private smile only a mother could give.
Draven continued with Cythera, smirking lightly and said, "I don't expect you to be afraid, Cythera. I'm centuries older than you and would have to try if you ever chose to go all out."
Damon heard that as he pushed Nyra from climbing him, and shifted his gaze to Cythera. Cythera felt it and turned her head to him. Her cheeks slightly pink. Draven noticed the pattern of stares and said, "Oh. You haven't told him?"
"No," Cythera said. Almost too quickly. "Not yet."
Draven, on her side, placed a hand on her further shoulder and gave a calming smile, "It's okay, Cythera. Every time we mention it you face turns… like that. I think of you as a sibling, despite your occasional coldness. I do hope you can… let go."
Cythera turned her gaze upward to him. Her eyes were almost calmer now, "I try. You still wear that pendant in your hair. Thorpax says he gave it to you as a child."
Draven placed his hands back into his coat's pockets and shrugged, "Velmira seemed to like it. So, I'll keep wearing it till I see her again."
Cythera's breath almost hitched as her eyes widened slightly in surprise, and she thought, 'Velmira… I forgot. He seems to be dealing with her passing well. I guess he does believe he'll see her again. Yeah… Maybe I'll see grandmother again, too.'
Further back in the formation, Klaven was treading slowly behind the Royals.
He hesitantly walked beside Princess Alya. For a short moment, his eyes drifted toward her face. Seeing the expression on her face shift from its former, crushing darkness into something slightly more stabilized was like watching a long-frozen river start to thaw.
Klaven swallowed his nerves, looking away from her profile. "Princess Alya?"
The sudden break in silence drew Damon's attention. From the corner of his vision, his blue-and-gold speckled eyes tracked them both.
Alya slowed her pace, turning her head. "What is it you want?"
"I wanted to apologize for—"
"I didn't know anything until Prince Damon explained it to Queen Thessa," Alya's steady and sharp voice interrupted him. "He told her everything. He even mentioned my past urge for suicide. Though he left out the part where he's currently resisting a purge. A boy protecting his mother from worry, I suppose."
Klaven froze. His heart dropped straight into his stomach as he braced for the impact of her words.
Yet, through the panic, a tiny shred of hope that her next words would lack a sting refused to die.
Alya kept her voice low. The wild panic she carried from the forest seemed to have left her, leaving her completely calm. She looked at him the way someone looked at a stranger.
"So, from his words, I deduce that a mere Noble like yourself chose to harm a royal of another kingdom," she said softly, her voice drifting down the corridor. "You're quite lucky I told the Queen you were trying to stop Doran from taking my core, and that you meant to return it within twenty-four hours."
Klaven's chest heaved. "But that is what—"
"No, it's not," Alya cut him off, her tone gentle but completely unyielding.
"You stripped away my core merely to ensure your apology would be heard, not out of any desire to aid me. Your personal ambitions are not inherently wicked, Klaven, but your methods are a crime. To risk a life without consent simply to serve your own ends is something I cannot accept, especially being your victim."
Klaven's face was completely hollowed out when she caught his eye. His mouth hung open, eyes unblinking, his selfish desperation stripped naked for her to see.
A faint, heavy sigh slipped from her. "I'm sorry. I must look pathetic right now. I've practically just been brought back from the dead, having nearly taken my own life right in front of the Prince of Woewyn. The Chosen One—whatever other titles he's burdened to carry. I just want to be alone for a bit. I can't forgive you, Klaven, but I will keep my parents from finding out what you did. That's the best I can do."
Klaven stared straight ahead, keeping his eyes glued to the floor as he walked in numb silence. Damon caught the exchange but kept his eyes trained forward.
The group started down a massive stone staircase. Queen Thessa led the way, the sharp click of her boots echoing in the stairwell.
"Cythera," Queen Thessa said, her tone light and conversational. "I know you have a room called the Verdant Atrium. Are we on the right track?"
Cythera stepped up beside her. "Yes, Your Majesty. Just a single left turn at the bottom and we'll be there."
Damon raised an eyebrow. "Verdant Atrium? What's that?" he asked, glancing at his sister.
"No clue," Nyra shrugged.
Coming off the stairs, Queen Thessa looked down at Hazel, who was fluttering in a tense, quiet pattern near her shoulder. "You're unusually quiet, Hazel."
Hazel looked up at her old friend, her tiny wings buzzing with a heavy, anxious hum. "Doran hurt my people, Thessa. I don't know whether to be glad we caught him or be annoyed the bastard's not even dead or… I don't know."
Thessa's expression softened with a deep, familiar warmth. "Don't worry, Hazel. I promise you the fairies will get justice. Alright?"
Hazel gave a slow, grateful nod, her shoulders dropping a fraction as they reached the end of the hall. "I'm just glad he's alive. A lot of people would want a piece of him."
Damon watched them, a memory sparking. 'Oh… right. Cythera mentioned it before. Doran really tortured and killed over a hundred fairies just to figure out emotions or something like that.'
He frowned to himself. 'Honestly, I hope those boys didn't finish him off. I don't think Godmother Hazel would be satisfied with just trashing a machine. Tolrex has to know a way to dump his consciousness into a real body, right?'
Daichi caught the thought while snuggled into Damon's shoulder. 'Why would you want Doran back in a body? Isn't it better if he just stays dead? '
Damon replied in a joking tone, 'I guess you're not wrong. But just dying like that doesn't feel right. If people earn a living, I'm beginning to think some people should have to earn their death, you know? Maybe let's toy with Doran's circuits for a bit before sending him off to Inferno? Or just make all the fairies give him a beating in a human body.'
'Wait… His consciousness is in the robot,' Daichi said with a dawning realisation. 'Does that mean he's souls' devil's meat in hell since his body's dead and in your class, one of your mad teachers said souls leave after a body dies?'
Damon's eyes widened as he gave Daichi a high five on the paw, 'Hm. That's a good thing to think about when I'm not focusing in class. You listen to my lessons more than I do, I think. You're a lot wiser when you eat, you know?'
Daichi huffed proudly, 'Oh, I know. What you don't know is that you should feed me more. Eating three large sheep a day is not enough.'
Damon's tone remained calm and unsurprised, 'I want you to think about what you just said. And then imagine saying that to the past version of yourself on Earth. It's absurd considering you still hunt with that.'
'The belly of a dog is endless, Damon. I've got wolf in me now, so guess how much endless it is?'
"Don't even wanna know," Damon whispered out loud. The massive, reinforced doors of the
Verdant Atrium stood tightly shut. Draven leaned back on the heels of his boots, scanning the entryway. "Cythera, what exactly is behind this door?"
"It's where all teachers of Trineum have personal training," Cythera explained quietly. "This is where I saw grandfather fighting Doran."
Damon pressed his ear closer to the seam of the door, straining to hear. "I can barely hear anything going on inside. Are they stressed out from fighting? Hmm," he noticed a rectangular device stuck on the wall. "It seems like we need to swipe a card to get in."
Queen Thessa stepped past him, walking up to the heavy barrier without a sound. Behind her, Damon and Daichi traded a look, both equally confused as the small wolf shifted on his shoulder.
Thessa leaned closer, her sharp hearing cutting right through the thick metal to catch a messy jumble of teenage voices:
"Don't touch me! I'm perfectly fine!"
"Just calm down, let me heal you!"
"How are you still moving so much after fighting that thing?"
A fourth voice cut through the arguments, sounding utterly exhausted. "Hey… Water… Come heal me instead."
"You're a light user," the tone of the second voice turned heavy. "How can you not heal yourself?"
Queen Thessa exhaled a soft sigh, her shoulders dropping as a wave of genuine relief showed on her face. 'They're okay,' she thought, a faint smile touching her lips. 'These children are... okay. They've never been in battle, yet they managed to survive. Hmm… I can only hear four different voices. I thought Damon said there were six boys. I'm sure they are fine. If one of them were dead, I doubt they'd be this lively. I secretly feared having to break to parents the death of their loved ones.'
"Mom," Damon said, breaking her out of her thoughts as he stared at the lock mechanism. "You've been standing there a while. Have you got the card we need to swipe?"
Thessa turned her head slightly to her son, her sapphire eyes gleaming with a sudden, devastatingly cool aura. "No. But… why do I need to swipe?"
As the last word left her lips, she knocked gently against the reinforced structure with her knuckles... one single time.
BOOM!
The heavy metal doors and the massive concrete walls in front of them crumbled instantly, disintegrating into a massive cloud of flying debris and pulverized stone.
Inside the Atrium, the five scouted boys froze mid-argument, their eyes bursting wide in absolute, jaw-dropping stun as the entire wall vanished before them.
As the dense cloud of debris billowed outward, the shafts of light cutting through the Atrium caught the dust perfectly, illuminating millions of floating specks that danced around Queen Thessa like a halo of shimmering gold.
Before the particles could even touch her royal garments, Draven casually flicked his wrist. A beautiful, localized swirl of wind erupted from his palm, perfectly vacuuming every trace of dust away from the Queen's side.
"Thank you, Draven," Queen Thessa whispered smoothly.
Draven was already bowing his head slightly in deference before she had even finished turning to face him. He offered his signature, grounded smirk, and the Queen smiled back warmly.
As the air cleared, Damon and Nyra stepped up to their mother's flanks, looking into the wreckage.
The sight inside was pure, unadulterated chaos. Aside from the injured elders that lay defeated before the boys got there...
Fireboy was entirely shirtless, his chest covered in fresh, battle scars as he gripped Water by the collar of his neck. Light lay flat out on the floor, looking pale and almost half-dead. In mid-air, Wind-1 was still floating upside down. Right next to them, Wind-2 and Earth squatted over what was left of Doran's broken metal frame.
Then the boys looked up and noticed Queen Thessa's majestic silhouette and the royal siblings standing there as the dust faded.
Instantly, their minds just went blank.
It was a pure collective instinct. All five of them scrambled across the fractured ground at once, dropping hard onto a knee. They didn't even form a clean line—just a messy, desperate row right in front of the Queen. Their foreheads slammed down into the backs of their right fists in salute, and their eyes were locked on the floorboards.
A single, terrifying thought screamed inside their heads: 'The Queen… She's really in front of me right now. I can't believe it.'
Fireboy's heart thrummed violently right in his throat. He kept his eyes glued to the dust by his knees.
'Is she going to talk to us now?' The panic hit him fast. 'What is she going to say? Huh… We destroyed the Verdant Atrium… is she going to scold us for that? Shit… I should have—'
"Quite frankly, children… I'm not sure what to say. Queen Thessa's rich and steady voice drifted through the room, carrying an undeniably royal presence. "Saying a mere thank you feels like an insult to the work you've done here."
The boys froze solid as if their breath caught tight in their throats, as their eyes went wide.
"One thing that is certain is you do have my gratitude," Thessa continued. Her sapphire eyes swept over their bruised, exhausted frames and were full of pride, but mostly of relief. "It was never your obligation, but you performed your duties as Nobles who were never trained to be involved in intense situations like this. While you had the help of your Prince, I have to say as your Queen... you have my deepest appreciation."
A sharp hitch echoed through the boys at the same time. The sheer weight of her words engulfed them, and suddenly, the sting of their burns seemed to no longer exist as they bowed even lower. And with hearts swelling with a fierce, brand-new loyalty, they yelled out together:
"Thank you, Your Majesty!"
The sound bounced hard off the Atrium's cracked walls.
Queen Thessa gave them one final, approving nod. Then her gaze drifted past them, scanning the rest of the wrecked training grounds. Her brow creased slightly as scattered near the waterfalls were the fallen teachers and the headmaster.
"Draven, Nyra," Thessa commanded smoothly, her voice dropping back into its naturally powerful authority. "Please assist the academy's instructors. Damon, could you move the combat teacher to a cleared area so she can receive medical attention? She looks the worst."
"I'm on it," Nyra said. Her gaze turned curious but sharply determined, and she took off into a sprint toward the nearest downed instructor. Damon just walked forward, perfectly calm with Daichi on his shoulder, to do what he was asked.
Klaven looked desperate for any distraction, anything to escape the suffocating weight of his own head. He silently bowed as he hurried over to a different unconscious teacher.
"Grandfather!" Cythera called out. She was already moving when her eyes locked right onto the slumped shape under the edge of the dried-up waterfall. That familiar silver-white hair was a mess of soil and blood.
Draven was beside her a second later, moving with that effortless, silent speed of his. He dropped a calm hand onto her shoulder, pale green eyes already checking the old man over.
"Calm down, Cythera. His core is intact," Draven said. His voice was a steady anchor against her rising panic. "He's just unconscious from the shockwaves. So that he can be healed, but right now you'll have to wait for him to wake up. Okay? I've called an Infirmary to come get all of them."
Cythera let out a ragged breath. Looking up at Draven, her eyes were filled with a quiet, fragile dread. But a few seconds passed, and she finally caught the faint, steady rise of her grandfather's chest. She let out a massive sigh of relief.
Damon squatted beside Valora Nemien, placing a palm right above her chest. A dome of light instantly surrounded her. Inside the shield, crackling lines like gold electricity tethered themselves to her body, and the healing began.
Draven walked towards him and said, "She's just unconscious, like Cythera's grandfather. We haven't practised Wind in a while. I'll tell you how to know an unconscious person when you see one. Leave Valora to me."
"Alright," Damon said. "I've healed her anyway, so it's fine. You know, I am waiting for my congratulations. The instructors couldn't even beat Doran while I formed a plan that those five… shardlings actually pulled it off."
Draven sighed with the frustration of an older brother, "Since you seem to enjoy being treated as a younger sibling, no congratulations for you."
Damon's mouth opened slightly wider than usual. Daichi covered Damon's eyes with his paw.
Draven smiled but remained brutal, "Were you affected by the acoustic blasts? Yes. That tells me you can't bend sound with your wind yet; if I have to teach you how to do that, you're not getting my praise. Your light and fire are better because your mother and father used those attributes. Possibly the greatest users the world has ever seen, ever will ever see if you fall behind. I don't have to tell you, you'll need to put more effort into Wind, do I?"
'He's better now...' Damon thought, 'The entire school day's been about fighting, but I feel good. I feel good about myself, that I can still be happy, and everyone's okay. It's getting darker now, but even Cythera's face is brighter. Never met the headmaster, but he's her grandfather.'
He noticed Klaven shortly glancing at his grandfather, his already worried eyes turned slightly heavier.
'Hm... he's actually worried about him, a part of me thinks he's kinda faking it though. But Draven, he's trying his best to get better, to move from Velmira. That's nice to see, I was gonna bring her up but... I guess I should just brighten his face too.'
"Oh yeah? You'll see," Damon folded his arms calmly but spoke proudly. "I've been training on my own using what I know from the Eildon Archives, but it seems like you're ready to help me now. Just keep in mind you owe your Prince a thumbs up."
Draven chuckled, and Damon walked back to his mother, who was already smiling, almost laughing at his interaction with Klaven.
"You did well. I'll always tell you that, regardless of what your tutors say," Queen Thessa said, her voice barely a secretive whisper. Damon and Daichi smiled gently.
While Damon stood with his mother, Valora opened her eyes. She woke to a face framed by snow-white hair and striking green eyes. A pendant swung from his hair, catching the light above her.
"Draven..." she said, her voice cracking, "Good of you to finally pay a visit."
Draven laughed, "Don't judge me. You never visited either, Valora."
Standing back near the ruined entrance, Damon watched the rescue operation unfold. He looked at the five vanguard boys who were starting to relax from their rigid kneeling stances, then over to where Cythera was tending to her grandfather.
'Looks like everyone's accounted for,' Damon thought, as a faint, quiet satisfaction settled deep into his chest. 'Now… how do I figure out Doran's goal?'