Back in Zien’s palace, Roun, Rueben, Xavier and Zielle were making their way across a massive open-air courtyard and towards the facility that housed the other two guardians when the palace’s power started to flicker on and off. Roun’s eyebrow tipped upwards with curiosity at the occurrence, but Zielle just smiled knowingly and shook his head, prompting them to carry on.

A few minutes later, Roun spoke up.

“I can’t even tell which part of Merricent this would have been.” He sighed; unable to spot even the slightest incursion of Terran architecture intermixed with the palace grounds.

“This is just on the outskirts of Neo Brighton, where the central police station was.” Rueben explained.

Roun’s eyebrow tipped upwards.

“Unfortunately, the palace’s shields were much stronger than those of your Terran buildings. During the fusion, it would seem that we simply… ‘overwrote’ whatever it was that occupied this space on Terra.” Zielle explained, almost nonchalantly, as they walked.

The horror in Roun’s eyes was visible, but Jayce just had more questions.

“How did you get here Rueben?” He interjected. “Why aren’t you in this concentration camp with the others?”

“The temporary housing facilities are for Terrans and Terrans only.” Zielle chimed in. “Viscount Rueben is from the noble house of Sol, direct attendants to the Itami Royal family.”

“And Zielle is a man who recognises such stations.” Rueben replied with a sincere smile.

Roun’s gaze narrowed at the revelation.

“And what about your Terran team?” He pressed, but Rueben just chuckled.

“They’re my ‘honoured guests’—they’re safe.” He assured Roun, but the young Itami prince wasn’t convinced.

“Have you seen Tyler or Nicola?” He inquired, but Rueben just shook his head in response.

“When the Royal Guard extracted me and my team, they brought us here directly.” He explained. “I haven’t been to the temporary housing complexes—I honestly don’t know who’s there.”

Roun’s gaze narrowed once more.

“If I had to guess though, I’d assume that those girls aren’t.” Rueben clarified. “They’re most likely with your brother, and if he was anywhere in Geraheim, he would’ve been brought here by now… same as you and me. It’s been hours since this fusion started and I haven’t seen him, so…”

Roun didn’t reply but Rueben had a point. He could only hope that Kairi had gotten the others out of Geraheim before this all started and that they were all somewhere safe.

Unfortunately, his thoughts were interrupted as Zielle pushed open a door into another medical facility, entering into the room that housed Xavier and Nikolai. Roun’s eyes widened at the sight as he saw Xavier sitting on an operating table, tears streaming down his enraged face as an ice blue prosthetic arm hung lifelessly from his right shoulder. It was much like Roun’s replacement eye—all form and no function.

Roun sighed heavily at the sight.

“How are you holding up, X?” He inquired.

“I’m fine.” Xavier snarled. “Where’s Teros?”

“Still in Avalon.” Jayce spoke up. “Demar and the others are holding him off as we speak—but it’s likely that they don’t have much time.” He explained. “Can you still fight with that thing?”

Xavier grimaced as he pointed at the lifeless arm, but then he slowly nodded his head.

“It’s useless in close range combat, but it at least stemmed the bleeding.” He stated, wiping his face with his left hand. “If I hang back and focus on energy projection, I should be just as useful as before.”

“As useful as before isn’t good enough.” Nikolai interjected. “We got our assess handed to us.”

“Harsh—” Roun retorted “—but true. Not only is Teros stronger, but he’s clearly a better fighter and we still have no idea how to kill him.”

“I dunno about him being stronger.” Jayce jumped in. “He struggled against Xavier’s Khaaos discharge—and there are four of us. I think we might just be shit at using these powers on the scale we’d need to finish him.”

Roun and Nikolai sighed heavily.

“Agreed.” Xavier added. “I felt something when he severed my arm—a power I didn’t even know I had access to—we’ve been handicapping ourselves—and it might have taken losing a limb for me to realise this.”

With this, Xavier stretched out his arm and dissipated his own energies, powering his form down completely. The others watched as the ice blue magical prosthetic lost its colour, becoming grey and lifeless as Xavier’s own energy ceased to flow through his body. Next, he focused solely on Khaaos’ power, channelling that through his body without powering up in the slightest. Slowly his prosthesis came back to life, now shining brightly with deep blue energy while a ball of pure Khaaos formed in his other arm.

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“Tell me, what do you see Roun?” He pressed, forcing Roun to draw Synchros’ energy into himself to augment his senses.

At first, it was hard to make out exactly what was going on. Unlike Tyler’s ability to read the code of techniques, his bond to Synchros simply revealed the various forms of energy in their world to him. To figure out what they were doing, he had to watch their effects, and do his best to work backwards from there. Luckily, he had seen this particular effect before, in their battle at Odessa, so it didn’t take long for him to piece its function together.

“Khaaos’ energy seems to destabilize and disrupt other forms of energy—no—not just energy, space probably time—who knows—I’d say it disrupts reality itself.” He speculated.

“That’s what I thought.” Xavier nodded. “I’ve seen glipses of it in my techniques occasionally, but I’ve always assumed it was just the amplified effects of my Levin.” He explained. “I think one of the reasons that we were chosen—beyond our personality profiles—is because our natural energies work in a similar way to the guardians’ energy types.”

“That would make sense.” Nikolai replied. “It would smooth over the learning process after all.”

“Yeah, but also make it easy to miss what we really have access to.” Roun sighed. “Alright you two, let me see what you’re working with.” He pressed, causing Jayce and Nikola to do the same.

Without their other energies out of the way, it didn’t take long for him to piece together their abilities either. First, he turned to Jayce.

“Your ability seems almost complimentary to Xavier’s.” He explained. “While his energy destabilizes, yours seems to sever aspects of reality.”

“I guess that would explain how you could rip a channeler’s abilities right out of their body.” Xavier recalled the unpleasant experience.

“Yeah…” Roun paused. “Dias’ power must go beyond just severing—to do something like that, you’d need to be able to separate one aspect of reality from another—regardless of whether or not there was a causal connection between them.” Roun explained as the cinders of the inexplicable energy danced in Jayce’s palm.

“Given what we’ve seen from Teros, anything is possible at this point.” Nikolai chimed in as Roun turned his attention to Geon.

“Your energy seems to have a weird stabilizing effect—given the scope of Khaaos and Dias, I’d assume it works at the level of reality as well.” Roun shrugged. “But it’s hard to tell without you specifically using it on something.”

Last, he turned his gaze inwards, focussing on the gold ring of energy that circled his own unique channelling core.

“And what about you?” Xavier pressed. “What’s Synchros’ gift?”

“Best guess?” Roun paused and thought about his experience with the energy. “Forming connections—maybe binding at a more fundamental level…”

Roun’s eyes widened at the thought before he dispelled the rest of his energy and, like Xavier before him, channelled only Synchros’ energy through his body. The group watched as the magical energy that had been used to patch him up shifted in colour from green to gold, shining brightly in place briefly before his artificial left eye started to flutter franticly. Roun growled lightly as Synchros coursed through his body, accelerating the strengthening of the bonds between his body and the Malaikin prosthetics. Quickly, his growl grew into a yell and then a scream, as his mind was inundated with pain. He could feel nerve connections between his body and the artificial tissue being constructed at an exponential rate. The others watched curiously as his artificial left eye continued to flutter, before the pupil visibly dilated to match his other eye.

In seconds, the pain subsided. Roun blinked slowly, before turning his attention to Xavier.

He was still breathing heavily from the ordeal, but the pained look on his face was slowly being replaced with a wry smile. It wasn’t long before a chuckle escaped his lips.

“What was that?” Xavier questioned, but Roun’s chuckle only grew.

“Synchros, apparently.” Came the cryptic reply. “I can’t explain it to you—but I can do it again.” He grinned. “Lemme show you.”

Xavier looked sceptical, but what did he have to lose. The young Khaaos host sighed heavily, before motioning for Roun to proceed.

“You sure you know what you’re doing, Roun?” Nikolai questioned, but Roun just waved his hands dismissively.

“Mostly.” Came the nonchalant reply, before he rested his hands on Xavier’s artificial arm and pumped Synchros into it.

For Xavier, the process was even more excruciating than it had been for Roun. Unlike Roun’s prosthesis, which had been based on the clan energy that the Malaikin were all too familiar with, Xavier’s replacement arm was much more generic. His arm used a default magical configuration, which had then been tweaked to try to accommodate zeta as his default channelling method. It was crude, and flawed, but not beyond Synchros’ capacity to fix. Roun could feel the guardian’s will guiding his manipulation of the energy that coursed through Xavier. He could tell that she had a far more in-depth understanding of what was interfacing between his artificial arm and his body, and as such, he simply deferred to her will as she went about piecing the parts together.

Unfortunately for Xavier, this took a while. His screams echoed through the room, but Roun couldn’t even hear them, entranced by his bond to Synchros as she walked through the process of connecting the prosthesis to Xavier’s body. After a few minutes, the process wound down and Roun returned to his senses. As his vision sharpened into focus, he could see Xavier opening and closing the hand on his artificial arm, while Jayce and Nikolai looked on in shock.

“You next Jayce?” He inquired, causing the Dias host to narrow his gaze sharply.

“Just let him do it Jayce.” Nikolai stated sternly. “We don’t have a lot of time to mess around.”

Jayce just growled in reply.

“Fine.” He snarled.

As Roun approached him, Nikolai turned his attention to Xavier.

“How does it feel?” He inquired.

“Strange.” The Khaaos host scoffed. “But functional.”

Nikolai simply nodded, as Roun went about making the connections between Jayce’s body and the energy that had been used to patch him up. While Roun went about that task, Nikolai and Xavier went about the task of trying to figure out how they would defeat Teros. Jayce’s high pain threshold helped, preventing the young man from screaming in pain as Roun and Xavier had done, so he didn’t disturb the process..

As Jayce grimaced, the two leaders of the guardians conferred.

“So, what are you thinking?” Xavier inquired.

“Something doesn’t add up about Teros.” Nikolai started, before turning his attention to Zielle. “Magister, how long has channelling existed on Oya?”

“At least 800 years.” Zielle replied. “If not longer.”

“Has there ever been a channeller that can do the things that Roun described?” Nikolai inquired further, but Zielle just laughed.

“Of course not.” He shook his head. “The powers of the Guardians and the Destroyer defy convention.”

Nikolai nodded at the expected response.

“But why?” He now questioned, drawing blank stares from Xavier, Rueben and even Zielle. “Much like your clan, the order that I serve has direct ties to the guardians. We’ve had first-hand accounts of their origins passed down through our membership. But nothing—nothing explains why their powers are so prodigious—why they can possibly alter reality at will and why Teros can seemingly destroy energy entirely.”

“What are you getting at Nikolai?” Xavier inquired.

“I simply feel like these entities are playing by different rules from the rest of us.” He explained. “And if they are, what makes us think that they’re not something entirely different from what we are?”

“Alright Nik… you have my attention.”