“Teenagers with attitude.”

That was the tagline Nick had uttered a few times now. Most of Friday night had been spent recovering at Drenar's home, with questions reserved only for the most crucial items. Everyone was present, and everyone looked grim. He couldn't help but feel they might have pushed the envelope a little bit this time when they had gone into the mine alone, and decidedly under-armed.

And if this wasn't enough already, his arm still hurts from the bite wound, and Nick's regen potion had only taken the worst of the injury away. He wasn't at risk for infection, but the muscle would need time to recover. He was effectively a patchwork of bandages on his arms, chest, and right leg. Julia had fared marginally better, but her stunt trying to melt the restraint foam had burned her, and regen potions had fixed only some of it, along with the mana burn that had hurt her, though not as severely. Nick warned them that proper dosage meant they couldn't take more for a while. Angela had the least severe injuries, and she is sitting close to him, her arm wrapped around him tightly. It helps a little with the current situation. But not much.

“Quite frankly, you're all idiots, and you're lucky you aren't dead, so congratulations on your miraculous survival against hardened mage criminals. This won't be happening again,” Nick states with vitriol.

“Okay, that's great, Nick. Real charming, blaming us for wanting answers when we're victims of a horrific arcanist experiment gone horribly right,” Julia says with remarkable restraint. “Let's get one thing right, your lack of candor helped contribute to this mess too.”

“Oh for–are we going to go in circles again trading blame, and shout and stamp and swear as all of you teenagers are wont to do on a routine basis?” Nick sure keeps a calm veneer most of the time, but this is definitely edging past his patience limits. “No. This is over for you guys, end of discussion.”

“Except for one little problem, Nick. Crosomer knows who we are. And if this lovely psychopath named ‘Val’ hasn't already gotten wind of us yet, she will soon, and I can hear our life expectancy dropping like a rock. And worse, he was targeting me for some reason,” Drenar states calmly. “Before we decided to break in and start digging for evidence.”

“Well maybe you should have–”

“Our blood work? Really, Nick? This experiment they pulled off was massive, and a lot of people were involved. This isn't some hack job. Crosomer mentioned dossiers. Records of us, and others. They planned on getting results, and I'm pretty sure based on Jonaleth’s ‘or else' threat to my brother, they don't care how they get them.” He's trying to be patient, but it's like Nick can't comprehend how gargantuan this task must have been or how many people it required to pull off. “We never had a way to opt out. Trouble was coming our way, sooner or later.”

“He's right. It was startling how much Crosomer knew, starting with Drenar right off the bat. We did what we could to get a bigger piece of the picture,” Angela says. Nick stands there, as if trying to come up with a counter argument. His expression softens a little.

“For the record, you did a pretty good job snagging a ton of data. Levine, did you get those hard drives I sent?” He states into the microphone Drenar had rigged up on his PC. He'd just turned on a conference call a few minutes prior after plugging in some strange modem on the PC to access what Nick called the ‘arcanet,’ or mage-specific databases and websites. It was useless to anyone without mana in their body, which ensured that no one would accidentally come across it and dive into secrets they weren't supposed to read about the arcane world.

“Nick, it's not like I'm a wizard or anything, but yes, I have the photos and the other files. I haven't had time to parse through the video feeds yet.” Levine's face comes into view on Drenar's computer screen, and he's surprised by the early-forties male on the other end with milano-colored skin, medium-length wavy brown hair, and horn-rimmed glasses sitting at an almost antique wooden desk. “Ah, there we go. Drenar, right? And…Julia and Angela, correct? James and Evan, you two were running support for Nick?”

“Yeah, I probably wouldn't survive a firefight with dragons and armored thugs firing fully automatic lawn dart launchers,” James replies dryly. “Tell me that SAF is all over this, please.”

“They're not. Nick is supposed to be on desk duty after yesterday’s debacle, and the mine is completely obliterated. I'll deal with that once I'm done parsing through this data,” he answers back after typing in something. “Sorry if I'm late to the party on this, by the way. I'm Nick's more cerebral partner, SAF Major Levine Dillenger. Forget the title, you can just call me Levine.”

“Not too big on formalities, huh?” Julia asks casually.

“For things that matter, sure. Nick has given me the details of the situation, but I decided a full debrief might be warranted after you all had a chance to recover. I have to ask, are you all alright?”

“You mean mentally traumatized?” Angela states in a strangely reserved way. “Not quite there yet.”

“Upset that I inflicted health damage on myself,” Julia sighs. “Also, It was utterly exhilarating to fire an anti-material rifle with magically enhanced munitions at one big bastard of a dragon. So, a little of column A and column B?”

“Has that statement ever been uttered by anyone in the history of ever?” Drenar ponders aloud.

“Pretty sure it’s a first somewhere,” she replies with a shrug. “What about you, you’ve been rather quiet since last night.”

“Still mentally processing this a little. Though this is the worst I've ever been beaten up,” Drenar answers. “Um, Alex is still in my head, and no one can hear him. So remind me if I start talking to him aloud? It’s a little disorienting still.”

Oh, I’m fine too, in case anyone’s curious. When do I get to take this body for a spin?

You don’t, Drenar reminds him. There’s a rather loud curse that echoes in the back of his mind. Don’t worry. We’ll keep it interesting. And maybe we’ll try to find a way to get you a microphone for speaking from the soul.

Good luck with that one.

“I’m rather surprised you all aren’t dead. Talons soldiers, even low-ranked members, typically have decent training,” Levine muses. “Fighting one-on-one with Crosomer is flat-out impressive, given his history of combat prowess before the revolution.”

“Let's just keep to facts. I get this feeling we're on a clock,” Nick rebuffs lightly.

They spend the next several hours going over the details of the day. Reliving the whole day is not something Drenar is keen on, but someone in a position of authority has to be notified of everything they'd gathered so far. Levine is playing back the go-pro videos, and he looks grim when he sees the cracked sphere.

I can't believe Robespierre survived inside that thing for seven hundred years. I almost feel sorry for him. It's a mighty strange thing to hear Alex say.

He did kill you, you know.

Allegedly. Something is muddled with the memory. I beat him. He was down for the count. I think someone else was there. And there are…other memories that are fuzzy. I'll get back to you on that Drenar. I'll keep browsing through your psyche and see if I can get up to speed on this modern world.

Avoid the proverbial file named ‘something cozy’ if it exists in there.

…Why?

Privacy, Alex. Privacy.

You clearly don't know how dragons lived, do you? You know what, I'll save the scarring of your nascent mind for another time. That has Drenar even more on edge when Levine whistles at the sphere.

“Nick, is that what I think it is?” he asks with emphasis.

“A resilient sphere. Damn. I sincerely doubt that an imposter going around calling himself Robespierre Crosomer is the leading theory.” Nick looks stressed by this.

“How bad are these things, exactly?” Angela asks. Levine takes a moment and removes his glasses before leaning into the frame a little.

“Lass, the Conclave and its precursors don't always have a history that smells of roses. Mages and dragons have spent millennia in conflict, on and off. We’re not exempt from the same horrible things that regular people inflict on each other. Some of the things some mages have done have been incalculably worse.”

You could be reading stolen content. Head to the original site for the genuine story.

He points to the video still playing. “That sphere is made of concentrated dark mana. It contains immense energy, and this thing only has one purpose: to place people and objects into stasis for eternity. And eternity is a long time. The oldest known records show the dragons during the Byrenum dynasty from eighteen thousand years ago used them to banish those who inflicted unspeakable crimes. A subject is locked inside, and the sphere is buried into the world–typically in a random location, deep in the world. That sphere is nearly indestructible. And the subject inside, if they're alive, the sphere lets them endure. They feel the passage of time.”

“Don't they age?” James asks. Levine shakes his head.

“No. They simply exist there. Trapped, unable to die. The sphere sustains them, they won't die of lack of water, food, or air. But can you imagine tens, hundreds of years of being alone, with no escape?” Drenar likely isn't the only one to feel a chill seep into the air. “This is a punishment that was not applied lightly. This was for the worst of the worst. The last known use was three hundred years ago. They've been banned since on grounds of being utterly inhumane. I can't imagine what Crosomer must have endured, sitting and waiting in there. Or, how someone broke him out. This wasn't an accident, someone knew how to find them, and how to crack it open. This suggests sophisticated, immense resources. Resources that the Onyx Talons don't have by themselves.”

“Are you saying he didn't deserve this?” Nick suggests with tempered dissent.

“I'm saying no one deserves this,” Levine said. “Crosomer's mercenaries inflicted a lot of pain–and believe me, I'm brushing up on the official conflict history–but not to the level that he deserved this.”

“He had some kind of journal to pass the time,” Julia points out. “It kept him sane. It had an immense amount of alchemical formulas, sketches, translations–”

“Holy hell, I saw that file. It’s massive. Did he really write in it for seven hundred years?” Levine gasps.

“I saw it. It was detailed enough to suggest he’d been at it for a long time,” Angela chimes in. “I despise the guy for what he did…but he did sound sincere when he said that the book would survive him, his last academic journal. A researcher to the end.”

“Small repentance,” Drenar states icily. Crosomer is still dangerous, regardless of motivation when he thinks about it for a few seconds. “Could they use this sphere to power an arcane device?”

“Oh you can, but very few of these things have ever been found after being buried. Experimenting on this dark mana crystal hasn't exactly been on anyone's priority list,” Levine answers.

“We have samples of it, they used it to power some kind of device. Possibly the same one that caused all of our pending or current awakenings,” Julia says after putting on a heavy glove and gingerly pulling one shard from Drenar's bag. “This stuff,” she emphasized as if she's self-corrected from saying something coarse, “is thermally conductive to the extreme. They were pulling immense current from it from wires, from our video feeds.”

“Hmm. Looks like the material matches. Obscinia hectate.” Levine continues the feed and skips through the grisly remains they'd found. He's interested in the artifact, and he zooms in on a few still frames from the photos.

“Draconic runes. Or some dialect of it. I've never seen anything like this, with the interlocking discs. I'll need an expert to identify it,” Levine assesses. “Nick, you think they could force Awakenings?”

“None of these guys are in the registered mage family database,” he answers curtly.

“Yeah that's not awesome either, if people have lists of who is a mage,” Angela responds sourly. “How could someone just force awakenings?”

“In theory? Maybe accelerating the body's ability to generate mana. Half dragons typically don't have that until they are in their early teens, and usually not enough to trigger Awakening until deeper into their teens. But this does not explain Drenar’s drakensoul, or yours, Angela.” Levine’s theory might only be partially correct.

“Levine, it could be related. If I saw the Stranded Lands–inside the aether, or whatever it's called–then maybe there’s a path that dragons take back. Some must have already, like a crack in a dam. What they’re doing is making the hole bigger.” The analogy makes some sense. “This thing takes massive amounts of energy, if what you’ve told us about these spheres is true. Maybe enough to jump-start the body’s mana generation. I'm still a little fuzzy on what mana is, though.”

“Energy, in a short answer. Magical energy. It takes more than one form, though, as Julia’s powers can attest to, and yours and Angela's,” Levine responds. “Dragons and other magical creatures generate it naturally through their biology, which itself partially contains metamagical elements. It can also be found in natural mineral formations and has a limited ability to leech elements from the surroundings, in the right conditions, and generate what we call mana crystals. Hell, you can even find microstructures of this crystalline material in your body, now that you’ve Awakened.”

“Uh…is that bad?” Drenar asks nervously.

“No. It’s just part of your natural biology. There’s now an intricate lattice network of mana filaments and crystalline formations in your organs, bones, and circulatory structures.” What it sounds like to him, is a delayed anxiety attack once it settles in his mind, and Nick isn’t sugarcoating it. “Look, your body has gone through changes. I had the same thing happen when I was about your age,” he assures him.

“And what about Julia and Angela?”

“Same. It’ll probably happen within a few days. I mean, were you using full elemental plasma tethers before you’re awakened?” Nick asks Julia.

“I call it my grappling beam,” she states proudly. Drenar is mildly jealous, but his telekinesis still has vast potential, he figures.

“I still want one,” Angela retorts.

“You can Jedi force push and grab distant objects, it’s nothing to sneeze at,” Julia replies.

“Ahem,” Levine coughed in an unsubtle manner. “That technique is a little…advanced for someone who hasn’t fully awakened yet. Also, my dear, you appear to have draconic shaped irises right now.”

“How long has that been going on?” she asks with a vein of anger.

“About a minute. Wow, it’s kind of intimidating. Scary, even,” James utters. Julia glances at him and looks unimpressed.

“Someone yells ‘boo’ and you wet yourself, James. Next opinion, please. Hang on, I've got a question for Nick, how old are you, anyway?” Julia asks suspiciously.

“Um…it’s impolite to ask a drake his age,” Nick replies. Her distinct eyeballing of him finally breaks his stonewall. “Okay, fine. I’m seventy years old.”

“And you spend all day with a bunch of jailbait teenage girls?” He doesn’t say anything, but Drenar can’t help but smirk when Nick appears extremely irritated by that statement. He clamps his fingers down onto his crossed arms. “Oh, you dirty-minded boy, you.”

“Yeah, that lack of aging is a bit of a pain sometimes. It leads to some super awkward conversations. Like this one,” he replies. “I’m not doing it for the sake of being around jailbait. I have been running a cover surveillance for the past two years. I’ve been trying to follow leads on the Talons. And I’ve found a few, based on my contacts with the students.”

“I'm not sure that's a qualified excuse, Nick,” Angela bristles at his rationale.

“Oh? Want to guess what I've turned up so far?”

“Let me think. Chuck Zantos, Jonaleth Winters, Billy Vicks, Dave Laplace? I'm just grouping all the bad apples in one barrel,” James proposes.

“Billy isn't that bad. He's got family problems,” Angela counters. “Jonaleth is a skeevy creep I wouldn't mind taking a talon or two against.”

“Well, you had that partially right. Jonaleth is an errand boy for the Talons. His stepfather has contact with them, but not directly,” Nick finally relents after a moment.

“Did he really stab someone, or was that a rumor?” Drenar finally asks.

“Attempted aggravated murder. He cut up a female Wargen badly in some kind of dispute with another student at his last school. The charges were dropped, no witnesses were willing to come forward, and they had circumstantial evidence at best, and his stepfather is a silver-tongued lawyer at a well-connected law firm.” Levine's clearly done his homework, Drenar notes. “Even if he was convicted, he'd have been out of prison in a few years. He is dangerous, and not unduly so. Nick has been tracking him for six months, once we were made aware of his past.”

“Yeah, he bloodied up Evan and told him to join the Talons, or else,” Drenar states darkly. “He and I are going to have words–”

“No, you're not. You're leaving this to the professionals,” Nick interrupts. “Let's stick to the debrief?” Drenar realizes this isn't worth contesting at the moment.

Both he and Levine are mildly impressed by the escape and the rail cart ride from hell. “That was some impressive shooting. And sword swinging.” It felt nice to not be rebuked for at least this portion.

"Someone explain this to me. I mag-dumped about ten rounds into one of those creeps, and it was scratch damage. Why?" Julia asks.

"Arcane barriers are strong against kinetic impact like that. Small hits like that, they're too weak to disrupt it. But as momentum increases, barriers are more susceptible to a rapid collapse. A higher caliber with enough hits in rapid succession would have worked. You just had the wrong tool available. This is why autobows have rapidly become the tool of choice, due to the massive momentum they can instill. Of course, autobow bolts have some trouble defeating properly made plating armor--they'll shred Kevlar, though. Mage plate armor requires enhanced munitions or extremely powerful armor-piercing rifle rounds. I'm also impressed by Drenar's sword fighting and CQC."

“I've been trained. I wasn't joking when I said I was good. It did help that they were not prepared for a CQC battle in a minecart barreling along at insane speeds,” Drenar adds. Watching himself snap a guy's arm is still uncomfortable.

“Ouch. I think I might have to surrender my title of the breaker of bones to you,” Julia says after witnessing that. She almost sounds proud.

“I don’t think that’s a title I really want for myself,” he mutters. Nick parses through the feeds in the warehouse, with Levine asking a few more questions. Admittedly there hadn’t been as much to recover intelligence-wise, the servers containing any pertinent data had been grabbed previously.

Nick is much more tight-lipped after they witnessed the battle with Crosomer–Drenar’s feed had been cut out after his transformation; the camera had been smashed, but the data had been intact. Levine looks like he's been holding his breath when Julia's feed ends after Crosomer teleported out, holding his arm wound.

"Dear Gaia. I don't know what he did to himself, but the power of this artifact is immense. We're in trouble."