Chapter 51: Doubts
There was a momentary silence as the crowd as they fully absorbed what they took in. Not many were receptive to the information Dante had described. Doing so would be to accept that a basic truth of life was actually false, that the Knightley were aware of this information yet hid it for some reason, and that this random person, who freely admitted of being a descendent of a traitorous family, somehow became privy to this closely guarded secret.
No one had bigger doubts than Amelia, “Is this all of your proof?” She slammed her hands on the table near a cowering Dmitri, a pissed off Cleo, and a smiling Melody. Even now, Damien couldn’t get a clear read on her.
Dante made his way to her table and stared at her. Her gaze did not waver, “Amelia Heart, are you not content with what I have shown you?”
“Content?! Dante Guile, you cut down a Grand Tree! Do you have any idea what could happen because of that?” Damien noticed her legs slightly shaking from all the attention. Amelia could feel all the eyes on her, but she didn’t falter. “The Grand Trees have been here far longer than any of us, so can you tell me, can you tell all of us, with absolute certainty, that removing a Grand Tree won’t cause more problems than it solves? That, by doing so, you won’t jeopardize our lives, our livelihood, our wattiez? Just who are you to decide that?!”
There was some more mummering amongst the crowd. Most of them were questioning Dante’s motives, and one of them was wondering about what they’re going to have for dinner?
“Don’t just take it from me,” Dante said as he eyed her table. “Take it from the finest biomagist I know.”
Beside Amelia, Dmitri took to the floor. He was shuddering noticeably, far more than Amelia, obviously not used to all this attention, “He-Hello, excuse me. My name is Dr. Martin Dmitri Jr. Some of you may be familiar with my grandfather, Dr. Martin Dmitri Sr. To start off, I-”
Right in the middle of his speech someone else slammed their table, “Murderer! You disappeared! Why are you showing your face now!”
The others near the woman’s table tried to pull her back down back to her seat. As they held her, her body started to radiate aura. In turn, Dante held his hand out. For just a moment Damien could see a sphere appear around the table, before it became transparent, along with the aura surrounding the woman.
“Professor Phila of New Dawn, correct?” Dante inquired. “I understand your resentment towards the events that transpired 3 years ago, but please do try to be civil. You are among the representatives from the College of New Dawn, are you not?”
She still looked furious but held her tongue, so Dmitri continued, “T-Thank you Dante. Amel- Ms. Heart, while I cannot give you a guarantee, the removal of a Grand Tree is highly unlikely to have any devastating side effects due to their parasitic nature.”
Before he could go any further, Amelia cut him off. “Why are you so sure they are parasites?!”
Dmitri pointed to the case that held the Grand Tree branch. Dante, in turn, took the branch and placed it in the casing before handing it to Dmitri, “That’s just it, wilted branches enhance a human’s wattiez output, yet a healthy branch, as you saw before, absorbs the wattiez from whomever touches it. That is except for Dante as you saw, a Anomalous Wattiez user, and those like Raven, a untethered. In other words, those who do not produce any wattiez. Take a look at this.”
Amelia heeded his words, moving close to Dmitri. Seemed interesting, so Damien took it upon himself to move a bit closer. “Damien?” Amelia asked.
He just smiled and waved her off while continuing to examine the staff. I didn’t really notice any significant differences; maybe because the skin wasn’t peeled off the wood it was special.
“Animus, if you would?” Dmitri said as the invisible shape of Animus appeared holding another staff, actually it looked closer to the fresh branch from before. Just much more dried out or rather wilted? “In case you’ve never seen one before, this is a wilted Grand Tree branch before being processed by a staff smith. Notice the straight-line affinity pattern.”
“Affinity pattern?” Damien had heard the term before, but only during an extremely stressful moment, so he had forgotten about it.
Staring closely, Damien saw that Dmitri was right, as though they were etched on the wilted tree branch, the lines were quite noticeable. Then he thought far back, back when he first made it to New Dawn. The necklaces the guild members wore. Then he took a look at Amelia’s staff and recognized the double helix. Looking at the other staffs nearby, Damien saw spirals on some, half circle ridges on others, and more.
“Have you not noticed them?” Dmitri asked. “Well, you aren’t the only one. Take Amelia’s life affinity pattern, the double helix, for example. Augmentation staffs have spirals, elemental carry lightning bolts, wave sharp, oscillating lines, Relativity a grid, and mental holds ridges like on a brain.”
Amelia lost her patience, “Do these patterns bare any importance?”
Dmitri responded with a grim face and nodded, “Ms. Heart, are you aware that if you hold a staff with different affinity than yours, you become unable to use your wattiez, and it acts as only a drain on your wattiez?”
“Well, of course!” Amelia said somewhat sarcastically. “How could a staff meant to amplify a life affinity be used to amplify a mental one?”
You could be reading stolen content. Head to the original site for the genuine story.
Dmitri gestured to Dante, “Not long ago, Sir Guile displayed one of his abilities as an anomalous wattiez user, the power to stop the flow of wattiez in a small area. Observe.” Dmitri produced a small flame. “If you would show us again, Dante.”
He cracked his knuckles, “With pleasure.” Dante created a small sphere of transparent, black energy that surrounded Dmitri and himself. As soon as it covered Dmitri the flame disappeared.
“Please, if anyone doubts this ability, come and try it for yourself,” proposed Dmitri.
Several bystanders, including Amelia, produced aura and walked in close to the two. Each wanting to gauge the truth of Dmitri’s words. Each found themselves unable to use any of their abilities or even produce aura as they entered the sphere. Each immediately able to produce their aura once more when they left it.
Amelia thought to test a theory she formulated in her head. She kept her entire body within the dark sphere but had her staff mostly outside of it, “Check Health… Dear Vitnova!” Amelia fell to her knees, tears flowing out of her eyes.
Somberly, Dmitri helped her off the ground, “You have gotten ahead of me. I intended to show off what you just did myself.”
“What did she do?” someone in the crowd asked now fully invested.
“Amelia said it before,” Dmitri started, “It’s common knowledge that a staff enhances the users own wattiez, but that is false and can be simply proved. As Amelia saw for herself. Allow me to demonstrate.”
Damien thought to himself as to what the purpose of all this was. Why Dante wanted to out the Grand Trees. Was it to point blame towards the Knightley’s to get something? Power? Wealth? Infamy? Dante had become an enigma to Damien. Especially as he still couldn’t think of a real reason why he had let Damien live. Pure kindness? No it couldn’t be that.
Dmitri placed himself back within Dante’s circle, staff in hand, “As proved before, Dante’s ability allows him to stop the flow of wattiez, making anyone unable to use their wattiez.” A pause, then mummering of agreements. “Therefore, if my body is completely encased within, I should be unable to use wattiez.” Further agreements. “Unless…”
Dmitri produced a small bit of flame that ran a short way on the arm holding the staff before dissipating. Damien watched as several of crowd members, namely those who represented research organizations scramble to get a closer look at the phenomena.
“This, this simply can’t be!”
“Impossible!”
“I knew it, that jackass Jackie owes me 20 ruby!”
Dmitri stopped his presentation and passed the Grand Tree branch back to Dante while breathing heavily, “Excuse me, but before a branch is handles by a staff smith they have the bad habit of trying to drain from all affinities. Any questions?”
There was a distinct lack of response. Even Amelia looked unwilling to speak. I’d like to answer your second question now if you all don’t mind,” Dante remarked, “You wanted to know whether or not I’m acting as an agent for my family? For that, I’ll need to answer your question with a question. Who among you has heard of the Nihil family?”
Pharoah Blaze raised her hand, but she did alone. Not a single other soul reacted, or at least they tried not to appear to act. There was mummering in some places and blank faces on others. Though not a single soul rose up to answer.
“Come on!” Dante shouted, somewhat annoyed. “I know for a fact that more of you have at least heard of the name. The Nihil family, for those of you who actually don’t know, were instrumental in an uprising 100’s of years ago. You might know it as the Wildfire. Tried to burn down Vitnova. Ring any bells?”
A man in his late 20’s, with short, light grey hair raised his voice, “You claim to hail from the Nihil family? At best, you might be from some loosely connected branch family. The Nihils were wiped out nearly 800 years ago through a combined effort of New Dawn and Soaring Sun.”
Dante looked to the man and smiled widely, “You’ve changed your appearance Kiryu! I didn’t think we’d get the pleasure of seeing you today.”
The man, Kiryu, stared Dante down, a stern face that never wavered. “You’ve already seen through my disguise? I knew it wouldn’t work long, but I thought I’d at least get to say hello to my brother without causing a scene.”
He muttered something to the woman with green hair next to him, who then grew a strong orange aura and touched his arm. Slowly Kiryu’s body changed, he grew slightly taller, his grey hair turned dark black, and he grew more muscle.
“Brother!” Nishi had yelled this single word from under his adoring entourage, basically throwing some of them to the floor as he ran to Kiryu. “It’s you! Brother! Where have you been? You just disappeared, now… now. It doesn’t matter, you can finally come-”
Kiryu stared harshly at his brother causing Nishi to stop speaking before he continued, “If you claim to be a Nihil then Amelia is right. You could be spinning lies in order to trick us into destroying the Grand Trees, the source of our wattiez.”
While they spoke, Amelia, her eyes puffy and red, decided to join their conversation, “I’ve been thinking, and something else has been bothering me. This whole meeting, why did you set it up? Are you trying to start insurrections in the other Great Cities like you did in Soaring Sun?”
Dante pouted a bit, “I thought you wanted to hear more about my answer to your second question, yet now you seem like you want me to skip to a third.” He stood before everyone. “The Nihil family are nothing but poor, pathetic creatures stuck in the past. I both rebuke and disown them, hence my use of the surname Guile. What I want? I want change… growth!”
Soldiers walked in, and they were carrying items Damien hadn’t seen since his time in Journey. Gas powered tools, steel appliances, items considered modern in Journey, and even-
“Where did you get firearms?!” shouted Damien.
“Funny enough, I think it’s someone you might know, Damien,” Dante smirked. “Ever heard of a man that goes by the name Don Klaus?”