Neo was warm and comfortable, asleep in his bed when he was woken by alight pressure on his body. Slightly confused he started to get up until he felt a sharp pain in his stomach, almost instantly becoming numb. It was then that his body’s mana violently reacted to an invasive mana that was spreading in a circle, radiating from his stomach. Shivers ran throughout his body as his mind and instincts awakened to the reality of the situation. His instincts reacted seconds before he himself opened his eyes by moving his hand while pumping mana into the rest of his body to slow the foreign mana and his perception.
The hand blocked the opponent’s hand before it's icicle could be plunged into his chest again. Neo follow the slim hand to is owner, shocked to find Sordelia sitting on his chest, grinning maddeningly without her face mask, not that Neo noticed her scared and malformed throat and mouth. Her red eyes sent shivers down his spine, as he realised what was wrong his thoughts raged through his mind, 'How? I've been cleared by Jane! Why does she have the maddening disease, what about the others!?'
She tried to use her power to push the sharp ice down and into Neo’s chest. To get that power she was forced to let go of the ice in his stomach, which relieved the area around it as his mana could destroy it without a continuous power supply. She formed another ice shard and swung at him again, but instead of just stopping it, now that he was awake, he diverted the strike with his palm. It still managed to graze his cheek, but it gave him the advantage as he was on the outside of her.
He continued pushing her arm until she fell into him and then released some of his own mana into the air in order to disrupt her ability to use magic. He managed to catch both of her hands with his and he wrapped his legs around her waist and slowly started squeezing. Every time she breathed out he would tighten his grip, this distracted her long enough that he managed to trap both of her hands with only one of his, leaving his spare hand to choke her out.
As the last flame of fire blinked out, he lessened his choke hold and checked her pulse and gave a grateful sigh when he could feel a pulse. 'Glad that worked,' he thought, as he pushed her off of his body to land beside him. He analyzed his body to find that a large majority of his stomach had frostbite, and it had even caught some of his lungs, leaving him short of breath.
His next thoughts were filled with worry for his new friends and he decided quickly that they needed to withdraw. For that he needed to find the white ring, just then he noticed the black ring on his finger giving an ominous black glow. Neo searched Sordelia for the white ring and, not finding it on her, spoke aloud, coughing as he did, "Damn it, got to move now…" Pulling his hand away he found blood.
He struggled to get up, as his stomach muscles felt like they were grating on each other. He wrapped a blanket around his midriff hoping to warm the area around it and protect it. As he reached the door the world was already fading away to blackness. He took off his ring, the only thing stopping the raging instinct, and instantly felt more revitalised. He also found that the blanket had started to turn red so he had the transformation kick his system into gear.
He walked out of his room and directly into Sordelia’s as it was the closest to his, he found her gear and armour on the little desk. Sitting on the chair he went through it all but didn't find the ring in the pile of clothing, so he continued to look whilst grimacing in pain. He searched the drawers and thankfully found it on its own in the bottom drawer.
He was about to stick his hand into the drawer, but stopped as he and his instinct came to the conclusion that it was way to conspicuous there on its own, within a drawer of our local sneak. Taking one of Sordelia’s masks, he dropped it into the drawer where it was flash frozen. 'Hmm,' Neo thought, feeling pleased that he had a brain. He then dropped another one into it, that too froze. Neo continued to throw things into it, all of which froze as well. Instinct’s patience had come to an end and so had Neo's item pool, so he whole heartily pulled out the drawer, tipping it upside down and watched as the ring didn't fall out.
Instinct decided to angrily smash it on to the floor, splintering it into dozens of pieces. He then carefully picked up the bottom piece of the drawer, finding the ring still stuck. Neo took a closer look at the bottom where the ring met the piece of wood and saw a thin sheet of blue ice that stuck the two to each other.
Neo tried to chip away the ice, finally picking it off, and pulled the crystal crown, causing the ring to let loose a small pulse. He placed the ring onto his finger, disturbed by the sounds coming from downstairs.
Walking past Elisa and Tan’s rooms he saw that they were empty with signs of fighting. As he gently walked down the stairs, he found a heated debate on getting to the bottom. Tan was on fire and Elisa had roots surrounding her, whipping around. It looked like things had stalemated, which confused Neo, since Tan should have overwhelmed Elisa in battle, burning away her vines. He figured that Tan was holding back, which was unusual, her burns must also have been slowing her down.
As Tan didn't have red eyes, he was pretty sure she was just distracting and containing Elisa. Deciding to break the stalemate, Neo called to Tan, "Hey, what's up?"
Tan’s eyebrow rose but she didn't take her eyes off Elisa, "Oh, you’re alive, I was sure I saw Sordelia enter your bedroom. I did call out but I was slightly busy and I can't move very well, but I hoped you'd be ok, how's Sordelia? Alive, I hope?"
Neo nodded, "Yeah, she taking a snooze in my bed. I've called for help, they should arrive soon. There's no way we can continue like this, so we just need time!"
Neo looked over at Elisa her skin taking on an orange-red tint, which made her look furious, even her vines had the same tint. But they were back to a standoff, Elisa didn't move because she would lose her defences, while they didn't attack as they didn’t see a way in without getting ripped apart, plus they were stalling for time.
That stalemate held until Neo felt a chill roll off his neck. Glancing behind him, he saw Sordelia coming down the stairs with condensation falling from her mouth. She would have looked pretty awesome, if she wasn't freezing the area around her. But, as much as it was awesome, she was staring at him with those red eyes and that was even more chilling. There was something new, blood collecting on her finger tips. Neo really wanted to avoid fighting since instinct was angry and scared, so he tried to talk to her. "Ok Sordelia, I'm sorry I choked you out, but you did stab me."
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She didn't listen. Instead she jumped at him, forming two icicles that she tried to plunge into his chest. Neo grabbed one of her hands and, moving to the side, swung her towards Tan saying, "Tan can you handle your sister, maybe warm her a little? I've got Elisa."
Neo’s stomach had intense pain radiating from it and he struggled to stop himself from spinning. He looked up, gritting his teeth as he saw that he'd just thrown Tan into a difficult position. She avoided Sordelia’s flying form and blasted the area in front of her to stop the all vines. Neo took a breath and charged Elisa while her vines were engaged with Tan.
Neo formed a shield, Elisa saw him coming and averted her vines towards Neo, but it was too late for them to be of use as he started bearing down on her. Elisa tightened her body and out burst a huge mass of vines that obscured Elisa from his view. They pummelled Neo back to the other side of the room, breaking his shield and tossing him into the wall, cracking it. More blood fell from his wound and Instinct got fed up and worried so it shouted at Neo to let him have more control, but Neo was reluctant to do so as he didn't trust it to hold back.
But as the moments turned to seconds, Neo gave it a little more control as the pressure built and it took full advantage by shredding the vines with its space magic slashes. He began making progress with his Instincts, slashing his way through to finally see glimpses of the red Elisa.
Neo's progress suddenly stopped as vines grew out from the wooden floorboards, clasping at his legs and pulling him down. He had to make sure Instinct didn't slash at them as he might weaken or destroying the floor. He instead ripped the vines off and tried to continue, but more roots grew out of the floor restricting Neo in place and crawling up him faster than he could rip them apart. They were overwhelming him, as they started constricting around his body, he couldn't see anything apart from vines. He was slowly being strangled and dragged under the floorboards.
As the light started fading away from his eyes, a bright flash made Neo close his eyes. Blinded, coughing, and trying to take huge gulps of air, Neo found himself free from the roots that were around his neck. Once Neo had found that he could breathe again, he opened his eyes and found a big blue glowing figure, "Hey Gie, how's things?"
Gie replied with his softly spoken voice, "Well things are starting to look bleak, as I have to put you in containment. Since we have observable proof that you have what the dragon had, if a bit different since you don't seem to have lost your marbles yet. It was quickly realised that it is contagious, as the madness has infected these two, and we were sent to get you. But sadly I can't let you back into general population until we learn how this happened."
Neo then looked around the room find Bethany had subdued Elisa, and there was another two unknown people dealing with Sordelia, with Tan hurling threats at them. Worried about them harming her sister, she looked over at Neo as they left through the hole in the roof that had been made. Ropes and a rope ladder had been dropped down for them to climb up, while the tied up Elisa and Sordelia, who had magical sealing handcuffs, were pulled up while struggling.
Neo looked back to Gie, he'd guessed that they flew around but he hadn't seen what it was that allowed them to get around so quick, "Thankfully, you were a lot faster than I expected you to be. How is it you were able to travel so fast?"
"Well for starters," Gie started but Neo got distracted by the ropes being lifted up. Neo turned his attention back to Gie with another question, but allowed him to continue, "We were alerted to the problem with those two's vitals, as their heartbeats increased dramatically. We also started a to get a weird mana fluctuation from Elisa and we decided to take a closer look as we were in the area from picking up some other students. When we got the alarm from the white ring of yours, we were already pretty close. Thankfully for you. But we will have to wait for a little while for our air transport to return with an empty containment cell."
"What? You have a containment cell and what's our air transport?"
Gie nodded, "Of course, we never know what we’ll find in this bubble, so we simply try to think of everything that could happen and prepare accordingly. As for the transport, it’s an easily buildable airship, with a hot air balloon for altitude functions, several green magic propellers to manoeuvre it, and with black magic to lighten the load."
"Hum," was all Neo could come up with. Waiting for the rope ladder to descend, he finally saw the airship. It was about the size of a of a big van, made from wood with runes running throughout its hull, and had a large balloon above it. Neo was quickly guided into a human sized box and locked in. It too had runes running throughout it, Neo thought he understand them to be air purifiers.
It wasn't long before Gie made his entrance, the entire airship rocked as he climbed up the ladder and onto deck, where he came to inform Neo that once he got to the base he'd be transferred to another carriage and transported back to the academy. Then they could start looking into what was happening.
It was a fast ship. The wind buffeted the ship and Neo watched from the safety of the containment cell as everyone else's hair and cloths were whipped around.
As they landed, the headmaster came out to meet him. It was basically him attempting to comfort Neo, but Neo took the chance and tried to pass the ring over since he didn't want to go through this for nothing. Not to mention that it would make Death upset if he couldn't accomplish some simple test. It wouldn't be a good show of his skill to let a little disease get in the way.
Although Headmaster Helix didn't directly take the ring, Gie did and passed it to what Neo assumed to be a medic. The medic heated up the ring while it was on Gie's hand until it was red hot, and then took it once it had cooled. The headmaster left, giving Neo his best wishes, and told him that they'll be speaking again soon.
As Gie had said, he was transferred to a coach that was pulled away, Neo couldn't tell by what, but he knew that it wasn't long before they exited the bubble way. At least he didn't have to stare at the psychedelic reality, but his current view wasn't much better as he stared at the wooden wall while worry and concern was flung about his mind.
Neo stayed that way for most of the journey, just thinking about his impossible adventure. This certainly isn't what he'd thought it would be like after encountering Death, but who knows.
Neo felt the coach stop moving and the doors were opened, he saw that he was at the dorms. There was a large crowd of students around it, but they were being held back by teachers and others in uniform. As Neo was taken through his dorm, he heard yells and screams that he thought he recognised as Elisa and Sordelia from some of the rooms. When Neo went to look, but he was stopped by some tough looking beings. It was a little annoying, but he understood that they were only doing a job.
As he was guided into his room, Gie came in with the chatty Elf from the tent. Neo tried to remember her name… "Hello Mary, how are you?"
"Hehe, you remembered me. I wondered if you would, so nice of you. I'm fine, you lot are in a bit of trouble though. I'm here to take some blood, we got a report from Jane that said you were fine, but those around you might have caught it. So, it’s just a precaution as it could also be something from within the bubble that's causing it, or at least let's hope so."
So, she did so, talking the entire time. Neo was glad when she finished stabbing him, making his arm ache and fuelling his dislike for needles. Once Mary had left, Gie came forward gave Neo a update on Elisa and Sordelia. They were fine, if a little mad, and were currently tied down in other rooms of the dorm. Tan was also in one of the rooms in order to be kept an eye on.
Neo noticed Bethany by the door. She came over and gave him a hug before giving a smile that flattened Neo's heart. She just sat there, but had to leave when Gie did, leaving Neo alone. Well not that alone, as a calming and recognisable voice reached Neo. "Hey, Neo good job on the whole surviving thing. Time for some training!"