I don't know when I woke up. The last memory I had in my head, was the little boy that Evalyn and Serena helped. At some point of between this moment and last nigh, I had been either lead or walked myself into a bed that wasn't mine, and fell asleep. When I tried to stood up, I felt the whole room shaking. Where was I?

I could have been in awe of the room, if I knew where I was. It was a small room filled with machines and pictures I didn't know the use of. In the middle of all that was a table filled with pictures and photos. Most of the pictures was drafts on ideas, or pictures of Gorgos or Edan. When I clawed myself closer to the table, one picture stuck out to me.

One of the pictures was old and bit worn out. It was Sonia's parents. They stood with their backs against each other, arms pointing at the photographer. Behind them was a young boy who was so far away, only part of his body was visible.

Before I could guess who the boy was, the door opened in front of me. Sonia entered with a serious expression on her face. He walked over to the desk, and opened a giant bright screen. I did not say anything. I just closed my eyes and imagined I wasn't close to throwing up.

"Party was so wild. I had to drag you up here, so you can sleep." Every letter that Sonia typed into the device I heard as a monotonous voice. I didn't remember drinking anything yesterday. I've never drunk anything stronger, so I would remember if I had.

"I don't know- I followed… and then I had to- What happened to me?" A small smile grew on Sonia's face. She leaned back a bit and looked me up and down. Then she turned back to her desk.

"Wait, did you follow aunties? Okay, Edan should have warned you. We never put you on the Tartaros roster so there's a lot places you cab't go without me and Edan. One of them is the secret room. You get a shot liquid that's in my uncle's cartridge. Don't worry, it's so small you are fine now. Bit woozy probably. They are the best sleeping pills."

My head felt so messed up. I didn't want to ask anything. I just wanted to go back to the ground, but I didn't want the room to fall over. "Where are we?"

I crawled next to the nearest window. We were really high, way too high for my taste. The whole of Tartaros could be seen from the window, and even Ashphodea as a small speck. When I looked down, I saw a work shop, the work shop I was on yesterday.

"We are in my workshop. Me and Milo built it in the best place in the hall, i.e. on the back of Milo's aborted robot project. By the way, you are surprisingly heavy." Before I could ask anything, Sonia stood up and put two shoes on my lap. After some bad gesturing, I realized I had to put them on.

I tried to put the shoes on as smoothly as possible, but it was tiring to move around. In order to get my mind off all this, I tried to be as relaxed as possible and ask Sonia something insignificant: "Sonia, why do you- by the way- have a bed in your- very- strange study?"

Sonia laughed and walked back to her screen. "Edan sometimes sleeps here if he's with me maybe too long. For some reason, he likes sleeping places that are a bit dangerous." Sonia glanced in my direction and laughed. He walked over to me and put my shoes on properly. I didn't want to show it, but my cheeks got a little red.

“These are so… interesting. Thank you." Sonia smiled widely.

Sonia walked back to the table. "You're welcome. They are my own invention. Life in Tartaros will be easier with them. You will no longer be dizzy." I got up. I… I no longer had any problems standing up. I bounced and spun, but stayed upright.

“Th-thank you.”

"By the way, I also had a point. You have a meeting there in the arena where we saw those memories yesterday.” That was the last thing Sonia's computer said. After that, Sonia immersed herself in the secret of holograms and other images. I still had dozens of questions for her. Instead, I opened the door and tried to get off the robot without breaking any bones.

Surprisingly, it was much easier than I imagined. Walking on the metal surface of the robot was like walking on air. I even jumped to the ground from quite a height and didn't get hurt.

Those shoes gave me a strange confidence. I just felt… free. I waved at people as I ran down the paths of Tartaros. I looked around like a little baby, basking in the adrenaline my new toys were giving me. I got to the dome very quickly.

Medusa, aka Evalyn Roseblood, aka my aunt Evalyn Roseblood, stood in the middle of the hall, holding the well known board to me in her hands. Around her were dancing couple, woman and a man, who were fully enchanted of each other. Men's hair reached down on his shoulders. Woman looked so elegant with flowers in her hair. I could hear a small melody around them, but it sounded broken. I recognised her immediately as Evalyn and Louis. Well, as Louis and Evalyn i saw last night.

"What's wrong with this machine?" Evalyn mumbled, "Why that particular memory?" I tried to walk next to the woman as quietly as possible so I could hear more of Evalyn's mutterings. However, Evalyn was more receptive than I imagined. she raised her head and turned towards me with a big smile on her face.

"Andy! I didn't wait for you for a moment. Usually Edan and Sonia sleep almost the whole day the morning after the anniversary, unless they are woken up." Evalyn tried to look calm, but her blinking at the happy dancing couple was almost neurotic. “I've had some technical problems this morning. I informed Milo about the problem a moment ago, but it will take a while when he comes here. He's helping Samuel right now."

I tried to stop my delusional thoughts, but my superficial thoughts were screaming at me that this was all our fault. The card Tomas gave was still upstairs. Maybe it was- No, it wasn't our fault. It couldn't.

"Hey, you don't have to be nervous. This is not your fault. We can still practice." Evalyn smiled and put her hands on my shoulders. “I know this situation is very strange. However, I promise you're in good company here. I want nothing to trouble you here."

You could be reading stolen content. Head to Royal Road for the genuine story.

don't know what would have come out of my mouth if I had made any kind of noise. That's why I just nodded. Evalyn smiled gently. He thought about something for a moment, and took three steps back. I looked around nervously as my first thought was that Evalyn had set off some kind of trap. Then the ground around me started to open.

When I looked back at Evalyn, she was typing something randomly on the tablet. His reaction became more aggressive when nothing came up from the openings. The ground just shook so much under my feet, I was afraid I would fall into one of these holes.

"Well, I guess we are not doing my plan. I thought today would be a good time to test which weapon would be best for you.” Evalyn looked me up and down questioningly. “I won't let you in Serena's class until I know how good you are with guns. Even though I haven't seen your mother in years, I don't want the next meeting to start with her murdering me because you didn't know how to use a rifle.” A nervous laugh escaped Evalyn's mouth.

"You did see her, when.. When you got..." I don't have no idea what I should call Sonia's father, Hazel's husband. He was this small and weak little man, who was a monster in the eyes of a woman, who was a monster in the man's eyes.

"I'm sorry I scared you. I know I can be a bit scary. I promise it wasn't my purpose." Evalyn raised her hands up, and soon her swords arrived to her hands just like in the party. I almost fell down in shock. Evalyn didn't even flinch.

I slowly walked next to Evalyn. Evalyn held the swords in front of her. I forgot all my anxiety, when I stared at those sparkling swords. My urge to get information is more important than stressing out. "How... How did your swords work? Is it a some sort of mechanism? Is it a button? I-" I pressed my hand to my mouth. "I'm sorry. You are the teacher. I should listen to you."

Evalyn pressed one of the swords into my hand. I held it by the handle like it was the most valuable thing in the world. “Watch it as much as you want. Milo is a genius in weapon manufacturing.” Evalyn winked at me and put the other sword on the floor. I was close to throwing up when the next thing Evalyn did was to put her hand under her skin.

Before I fainted, I realized it wasn't her skin. As Evalyn slowly threaded her hand along her other arm, a thin light gray glove appeared on her hand.

"Because we can't practice with any other weapon, you get to do something a lot of other people can't do this. You get to use my sword." I could feel my eyes sparkling. My hands were shaking. I took the glove and put it in my own hand. As soon as the fabric of the glove touched my skin, I could not see the gray fabric. However, I could feel the fabric and the odd button pressing slightly against my palm.

"How did it… How did it blend into human skin?" I gently touched my hand. My hand felt like my own from the outside. I turned my hand from side to side. Evalyn looked at me with a grin.

"It is really cool, isn't it? Milo explained that the fabric blends in with your DNA. The button disappears almost completly." Before I could ask anything about the button or other mechanisms, Evalyn grabbed the sword in my hand and threw it across the hall. "Okay, now press the center of your palm with the fingers of the same hand, and reach for the sword. Remember to stand in a stable position so you don't fall and hurt yourself."

I couldn't stop my hand from shaking. My gaze was glued to the sword that was too far away. I reached out and slowly pressed the palm where the button was. I closed my eyes. This didn't feel as smooth as what Evalyn had done, far from it. After a while, I felt the hard metal hit my hand so hard that I staggered back a couple of steps. When I opened my eyes, Evalyn's sword sat gracefully in my hand.

"There should be a very strong magnetic energy between the button inside the glove and the sword. You should ask Milo about the mechanics in more detail." Evalyn pressed the glove on her own hand. At the same time, the sword on the floor rose gracefully into her hand. "You can only activate the power with the fingers of the same glove. So you can, for example, shake hands with people without the risk of the sword cutting off someone's hand by accident."

I twirled the sword in my hand. When I looked at the sword more closely, I saw a dark red color under the vines decorating the sword. I gently touched the decorative vine and pulled it a little. To my surprise, I was able to pull the vine really far. I stopped pulling when I saw the look on Evalyn's face, which was a kind way of saying I should stop what I was doing right now.

“Want to see how those wines work? Wait a moment." Evalyn walked up to the dancing couple and tapped the man on the shoulder. Evalyn grabbed the man's hand. After a while, the man started running along the edges of the hall. "We can at the same time see how good you are at throwing. Try to hit Louis in front or behind him. Don't hit the creature. We don't want to kill it."

I still couldn't say a word. Shaking, I raised the sword and waited for a moment as Louis, or rather a copy of Louis, was right in front of me. Then I threw the sword as hard as I could. However, I should have remembered that the muscles in my arms were completely non-existent. The sword only flew halfway across the hall.

I looked in Evalyn's direction, trembling. She just laughed. “Yeah, this is really tricky. Do you want to try again?” As I shook my head, Evalyn patted me on the shoulder and smiled. She then threw the sword in her hand directly in front of the man. Louis' copy didn't have time to react before the vines started to grow, covering half of the man in a second. As the copy of Louis tried to remove the sword, the vines became agitated. The more he tried to free himself, the faster he became covered in vines. “Those are really useful when you don't want to kill anyone. Or, if you want to trap your target."

"What would happen if someone stole the gloves?" I slowly handed the glove back to Evalyn without looking at her at all. Evalyn herself moved in the direction of my gaze. Evalyn took off her other glove and rolled up her sleeves. A box similar to Tomas's, albeit a much healthier looking one, appeared from under the glove. "The glove recognizes every person and code that is from Tartaros, or is a Roseblood like you and technically your mother, because of these things."

" How- Where-" I looked at my hand nervously, but I didn't see anything in it. Before I began to question my existence, Evalyn patted the small scar on my arm.

"It's under that scar." Evalyn smiled gently.

"How do you know that?"

"I was present at your birth. Or the part when they said that they also put these devices on newborns.” Evalyn laughed nervously. "I was forced out of there because I hit the doctor who took out the knife." A loud giggle escaped my mouth.

"You really didn't..."

"I had to protect my new niece." Evalyn messed my hair. He smiled widely, but there was something sad in his eyes. "I was ready to be the best aunt ever. Your father could never have taught you to fight as well as I did.”

"I… I would have loved that." There was a warmth in Evalyn's eyes that I hadn't felt before. When I started thinking about it, it would have been nice to grow up with Sonia and Edan, to really become their friends. I would have gone to school here and I would already been as skilled a fighter as my own aunt.

Our warm moment was suddenly interrupted. Serena suddenly opened the hall door. She was much different than last night. She looked like he had seen someone die. Noticing me, she forced a small smile on her face and quickly walked over to Evalyn's side. “I'm sorry to interrupt class, but I have to steal Evalyn.” As the women looked at each other, the concern on Serena's face transferred to Evalyn. "Milo sent a messege." Same time Serena talked, she was doing same hand moves Sonia was doing.

"I guess our little teaching lesson is cut short. Let's continue this later, Andy." Evalyn ruffled my hair and took both of her swords. Both of them rushed away from the room leaving me only the tablet and the endless opportunities to see in it.