THE MYSTERY DEEPENS

“Cannibalism?” My grandfather stared at him in horror. “Dear God.”

“Bella is going to face heaven’s wrath for the things she has done,” Starshine said. “She would find lonely students without family and take them under her wing while they were at school. Then, some time after they graduated, she would invite them back to the university and lure them down into a forgotten dungeon underneath one of the buildings, where she would stun them using a Terramagica shock-sword, strap them down, and then take her time consuming them while they remained alive.”

I shook my head. “Madame Starshine, that cannot be right about the shock-sword. We use them playing War Chess, and while they have shielding on the pommel unit providing the power, the rattan sword itself has metal strips giving off a Terramagica charge. We have strict rules about keeping non-players away from the fighting, partly for their safety, but also for ours.”

Professor Alar frowned. “Young Jonathan is absolutely correct. I enjoy watching the War Chess matches played here and before every game, the judges announce the rules, beginning with the most important: no spectator is allowed to approach the board while the weapons are active, especially Eldarions.”

“Perhaps the French got their information wrong,” the ambassador said, “and she used an uncharged sword to clout them on the back of the head.”

“Rattan hurts even without a charge,” I added.

“Ambassador,” Starshine said in a cross tone of voice, “the officer was adamant when I challenged him.”

“Regardless,” Ambassador Bannon said, “Bella was found out when a group of students, exploring the catacombs on a lark, found the dungeon and managed to open the door. Her last victim was still alive, though missing part of an arm, and they got him out before she returned. He told the French authorities everything, including where she had buried what remained of the dead student’s bodies.”

“Poor devil,” my grandfather said. “I assume she used Aethyr spells to heal them, ah, in between?”

“Not once,” Starshine replied before the ambassador could. “The French official was adamant on this part as well. Bella was never observed using Aethyr energy either with her victims, or on campus for that matter. The other Eldarion professors told the authorities she kept entirely to herself, which for an Eldarion is unheard of, and used only conventional techniques on her victims when Aethyr spells would have been far more practical. The French official told me, and I quote: ‘It was like Professor Bella had lost the ability to use Aethyr energy at all’.”

“That is absurd,” Professor Alar snapped. “All Eldarions have to use Aethyr on a regular basis, or we sicken and die.”

“There is another alternative,” Je’kyll said. “Professor, may I tell them the reason you fell out with my father?”

Professor Alar’s face grew thoughtful. “I had not considered that, yet you may be right. Go ahead.”

We turned towards Je’kyll as he said, “My father, flush with his success in proving his theory with me, decided to tackle the problem of Eldarions being slowly poisoned by Terramagica energy, by finding a way to make them resistant to Terramagica. He ended up killing two Eldarion females, both Whitesnake addicts living on Londinium’s East-end, and made the daughter of another Eldarion resistant to all magical energy, not just Terramagica but Aethyr as well.”

“That is horrible,” Catherwood said in a voice filled with outrage. “Even though the man is your father, he deserves to be hung.”

“I agree,” Je’kyll replied in a quiet voice. “He hid the evidence from everyone except his other two sons, Igor and Edward, leaving both bodies on the street with their throats cut. Surgically post-mortem, though the police did not recognize the precision of the wounds. Professor Alar asked me to investigate my father’s activities over a different set of experiments and I found his notes detailing everything. The point is, he proved it is possible for an Eldarion to become resistant to Aethyr.”

“Which theoretically might have been caused by whatever disease afflicted Bella during her digs in the Congo,” Professor Alar said. “Why did the French authorities not apprehend her?”

“They did,” Ambassador Bannon answered. “However, she was smuggled out of prison by a group of Eldarions and their human henchmen, and never heard from again… until tonight. Now, I have a question. Je’kyll, what happened to the young Eldarion?”

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He shrugged. “The last I heard, Ashe was fighting in the East-end pits with an Ogre named Oscar. I wish I could tell you more, but my brother Igor not kind to her, and she has a hatred for all half-blood Orku, regardless of who they are.”

“I see.” The ambassador’s face grew thoughtful. “I believe such a person might be of interest to Her Majesty’s government. I shall make some inquiries tomorrow. So, Alar, what can you tell us about young Jonathan?”

Professor Alar hesitated for a long moment. “I am not sure. I tested him, and he is fine; no changes in vital signs despite the attempt to modify him using an illegal Aethyr created substance, no-”

My grandfather stood up. “Modify him? What on earth are you talking about?”

“Shabaka, please sit,” Ambassador Bannon said. “Alar would know if anything evil was happening to your grandson.” My grandfather sat back down as the ambassador went on. “You see, even though the use of dark Aethyr energy has been banned for centuries, there are still a few cult groups out there that seek to use ancient knowledge in their nefarious practices. One of which is the modification of a human into… something else.”

A stab of fear went through me. “But you said that was attempted.”

“It was,” Professor Alar said, “yet it seems your blood repels any form of Aethyr modification, as far as I can tell.”

Catherwood walked over with a small stack of papers in his hand. “I think you will understand better if I show you what I drew.” He handed me the first one as everyone crowded around to see. It was the same as what I had seen in a textbook drawing on blood: small, round cells with a few other odd cells, the function of which no one was quite sure about.

Quite ordinary, except that mine also had cells with small, star-like shapes with seven points, floating around with the rest of the blood cells. Catherwood pointed at one with his forefinger. “I did not have time to do any shading, but unlike the other cells, these are the same exact color as your birthmark.”

“What are they?”

“At this point I can only guess,” Professor Alar said. “As you can see, here the stars seem to be dormant. However, in the second sample,” Catherwood handing me another sheet, “they are beginning to wake up, as it were.” Catherwood had drawn them with the arms of the stars moving. “By the third,” another sheet handed to me, “they are getting quite lively.”

The star-like things were twisting in all sorts of odd shapes as Professor Alar pointed with his finger at several. “They move much like an octopus swims, starting like this,” he made his hand flat, “then propelling forward,” closing his fingers together. “And by the fourth, they are beginning to multiply.”

The next sheet had the stars cavorting about, but several were in various stages of splitting apart. “I tried to show the various stages,” Catherwood said. “First, a star cell would stop moving and kind of shake. Then, it would begin to split into two different halves, except as it did so, the halves would grow more appendages. When it finished, there would be two separate star cells, which would move off in different directions as if nothing strange had just occurred.”

I was struggling to keep a feeling of panic from overwhelming me. “All this is going on in my blood?”

Catherwood put his hand out to grasp my shoulder. “From what I saw in the eye-scope, these star cells are not doing anything malign to your normal cells.”

“As a matter of fact,” Professor Alar said, “the one conclusion I have drawn about these strange, star-like organisms, is that they protect you.” He glanced at Catherwood, who searched through his sheets before handing one to me. It showed my blood, but with slender, worm-like creatures mixed in with the cells. The star-cells were swarming the worms. “What we saw under the eye-scope was the destruction of the invader cells by your star-cells.”

Ambassador Bannon asked, “I have seen how these mixtures can change a man, when they do not outright kill him, which is more likely to be the case. Have you studied what do they do to the blood?”

“We have. They warp the cells into strange shapes and odd colors, which is why most of the poor, tortured souls who have been given one of these mixtures die. Scientists such as myself are beginning to suspect that the components of the blood are crucial to life.”

My grandfather was shaking his head. “What I cannot understand is why that female did this at all. I mean, if she wanted to protect my grandson, we could have discussed the matter like rational-”

“She wanted to wake up the star-cells without anyone knowing,” Myste blurted out.

“Myste,” Madame Starshine said in a sharp voice, “what have I told you about interrupting adults when they are speaking?”

“I’m sorry, mum,” she said, dropping her gaze.

“Actually, Myste has quite the good point,” Professor Alar remarked, “which I had not considered. The base of the mixture uses liquefied Aethyr, which is the reason Jonathan passed out, but fortunately he only got about a quarter of the dose Professor Bella intended him to have. Which delayed the reaction, the ‘waking up’ of the star-cells, as young Myste concluded, and gave me a chance to study them as the reaction progressed.”

He gave Ambassador Bannon a troubled look. “So, Professor Bella expected to have Jonathan already teleported to a nearby location, likely somewhere on the university campus as considerable energy is needed to power that spell, with the young man incapacitated for several hours and the reaction in full force.”

“She knows something about this reaction we do not,” Ambassador Bannon said, glancing at me then back again. “While it is possible she intended to change Jonathan into something other than human, I think it unlikely. So this beggars the question of why?”

“I can give you the answer,” a female voice said from the shadowed darkness behind us. “Yet I fear you won’t like it.”

Ah, Doctor Frankenstein. His life work of studying Terramagica energies and its relationship to the more natural forces, like Magnetism and Electricity, should have earned him a place with the giants, such as Tesla. Instead, he is remembered for the resurrection of an Ogre who went on a rampage in Berlin, killing several distinguished Prussian scientists and eventually costing him his life (or so the world believed…).