Joey has to more than gently nudge Drenar to get a reaction from him. He decides a seat is a far better option than falling on the floor, and the couch no longer feels welcoming. He just stares at the lockbox, and then the crystal that is now dim in Angela’s hand. The crystal clatters almost instinctively back into the lockbox, glowing a dim blue with an internal light highlighting its inner intricacies.
“Drenar? You alright over there?” Angela asks, looking warily at him.
“Nope. I am so far beyond not alright, Angie. I think you might want to take a seat, too.” He can’t comprehend this series of information. His mother’s sword was calling out to him almost seven years ago? There’s a connection between Angela, and whatever is going on?
Julia sets the tempo and rises up out of her seat to grab Angela and gently guide her to a seat. “Okay, group therapy first, then a debrief, then I’m gonna go grab Matilda and go hunting that smug bastard King. He’s so dead.”
“Putting holes through all our problems doesn’t exactly solve them,” Nick retorts casually.
“It’ll solve mine,” she snaps. Drenar shakes his head, trying to process this. He’s just going to have to do the impossible with the rest of his friends. Like usual. But for once, he feels like this challenge is within reach.
And if it brings him one step closer to getting his mom home in one piece, he’ll do whatever it takes to make it happen. “Okay. I’ll start. What the hell, Kiera?” he demands. She shrugs lightly.
“Don’t ask me. She kept this one so close to the chest, she didn’t even tell me.”
“You guys suck with informational control.” He lets out a frustrated exhale. “Look, I need to know if the Talons are my biggest problem right now, or the Conclave. We just confirmed that King is playing his own game, where he thinks he’s coming out on top.”
“Could this all be tied to the Kilnstar’noth?” Angela asks, and is uneasily examining her hand. The faint lines of mana have already disappeared, and Julia more than subtly guides her to the couch where she sits down. “I mean…it could be a coincidence, right? I mean why would she leave such an impossible to decipher message in a crystal in a lockbox for several years? Surely, she must have been expecting someone else.”
“Weird shit happens around you guys on a routine basis,” Kyle comments with a surly look on his face, and he rubs at where his nonexistent beard is. Still a habit, apparently. “Kiera, did you know about the shard in Angela?”
“No. That was not known to me, either. Though I do question if it's related.” She rises up and keeps that composed look–she kind of has to, given that she leads the biggest group of badass warriors on the planet. “Well, I think we have some more things to look at. Drenar, Evan, if you two need a moment, I would understand that–”
“We have work to do.” Angela is the first to snap out of it, with a hardened look on her face, and she turns to Joey. “I know we haven’t done a lot of bloodwork on me, but there is something about me that literally resonates with Luminari. She’s going off like an alarm bell right now.” To her, it might be that loud. It’s strange how he can hear it, too, but in a more muted capacity.
“Angie, are you sure you–” Joey stops when she sees Angela’s determined expression, and the way she looks tough as nails with the way she ties back her hair. He kind of liked it when she let it down, though.
Angela is already marching for the door. “I’ve got parents to go chew out. Care to join me?”
“Oh, I wouldn’t miss this one for the world,” Joey says before she springs out of the chair, and is lockstep behind her. “Drenar, you might want to hold onto that crystal closely. I doubt that’s the only reason your mom left that thing to you and Evan.”
“Yeah, but–” he glances around and just thrusts it into his jeans pocket for now. He’s sure that there must be more to this, mom would never leave such a shaky backup plan unless was sure there was a chance for them to pull this off. “Alright, before I mentally lose it, let’s get this done.”
A minute later, a shouting match is underway from Angela with her mother, who is unapologetic in the face of accusations. Drenar just grimaces as she lays out every grievance–this house is not built to contain Angela’s wrath, in the very few times she’d invoked it, and she is furious.
“You haven’t said anything for two months! Time to come clean!” she snarls. “Natural miracle, my ass! You think you can repeat that line? Or are you more terrified of whoever made this happen for you? There’s no way you two are savvy enough to have saved my life. If my heart was so bad off, why didn’t you two use arcanist healing to take care of it? I did the research, Mom! So did Joey! You could have settled the matter easily!”
Her mother’s resounding silence quickly tests Drenar’s patience, the same as her father. “Nothing? You have nothing to say? Nothing at all?” Angela says, fists clenched tightly.
“I’ve spoken on this matter, and I have no further comment,” her mother says coldly while sipping a cup of tea, and her father looks on like he’s going to hit his break point of patience. “You were miraculously healed by the surgery. It was a success.”
“So you’re still going to live in denial? Typical. I shouldn’t expect a word of honesty out of you. Working with the enemy,” she snarls, and more than a few draconic scales emerge on her hand. Drenar lets out a soft sigh, he should step in, but her mother deserves a chewing out like no one else. “Prosthetics and medical research? Are you willing to hold out now? Screw it, I’m done with you.”
“That’s no way to treat your mother,” her dad, Alan, says with a brushing of his dark hair away from his temple. They’ve been mostly in lockdown, same as Diane and Dave, ever since this whole endeavor began, and they haven’t gotten out much. He’s getting impatient as well. “We explained this, we worked on some alchemical work for them that had other purposes within the industrial field. A way to decompose mana crystals in the body without causing harmful effects.”
This story originates from Royal Road. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.
“Wait. Why would that be helpful to them?” Joey snaps her fingers as if this is interesting. “Look, standard mana crystal you find in the earth is one thing, but the structure is completely different when produced by biological sources. What chemical process is this?”
“It’s a chemical formula and a process far beyond the Talons’ capabilities, if that’s what you’re worried about,” Angela’s father replies. “We just know that MI has an ‘in perpetuity’ clause in their contracts, and when you were all on your misadventure, we erred on the side of caution and avoided them where possible.”
“Any idea why they would want to break down crystals?” James queried. “I mean isn’t there already a way to do that, with mana primer?”
“Mana primer is basically ground down mana crystals. It’s like a blank slate, you can do whatever you want with it, whether that be runes, enchantment work, or magical crafting. Once imbued into other materials, its effects should be permanent, with an occasional recharge of mana energy,” Kyle explains. “Still, I have a theory.”
“Lay it on us,” Joey says, snapping to attention.
“What if they wanted to liquify the crystals, make it something like a molten salt reactor? Emulsifying it might be possible at low temperatures with the right destructive agents. But, I’m confused on what possible use they’d have for it. Do you have any theories about the end use?” Kyle flips the question back to Alan. He shakes his head.
“No. I do not. I just know they pushed for it. And they were willing to spend a lot of money on it. Gross sums of money. We worked on that project for three years, and just completed it prior to the attack on Asqualia.”
Angela leers at her mother, as if trying to put pieces together. “Oh, I get it. I was a human guinea pig, wasn’t I? Was that your plan? Is that what the secret is? You’re both ethically and morally bankrupt! I’m so done with you two.”
Drenar is giving a long thought to this–why does this mana shard resonate when Luminari is close? There must be connections here that he’s missing, or there’s a vital piece of information he’s missing. Either way, he gets this feeling it’s not going to be solved–short of coercing the information out of Celes. He gets the feeling that if even Kiera can’t bully or threaten the information out of them, then he’ll have even less luck. Still, it’s time to try a tactic his mother wouldn’t approve of.
“Joey, how many tests can you run for mana?” he asks suddenly.
“A lot. Why?”
“How long?” he presses.
She tilts her head, then shrugs. “A few days. Some of them take longer to get results than others,” she says and brushes a strand of wavy red hair out of her face.
“Celes, you have until these test results come back to tell me what I want. If you fail to come clean with us on what you know, you’re out.” Drenar points to the front door for emphasis. “Good luck hiding from the Talons, or whoever else you pissed off with this.”
Celes stammers, eyes wide. “You–you dare?!”
“Celes, If I have to repeat myself one more time, you’re gonna see a side of me you wish you didn’t. I’m done being patient. I have no reason to hold you here if you have nothing to hide. Isn’t that right, Levine?”
“Correct,” he says with a hint of a smile. “I do believe that’s within our power.”
“You’d throw us out?!” Celes is up on her feet, grey-blue eyes narrowed and focused on Drenar. “You are no son of Trisha, if you think you can threaten me like that.”
“And what kind of mother lies to protect her own ass? At least my mother came clean…in a way. I think you can do the same here.” Throwing some shade back at the parents felt like a guilty pleasure to him.
“I can’t believe this!” Celes protests. James is fighting back a smirk, Angela looks like a menace, arms crossed and glaring at both of her parents. “I-I’ll…I’ll report all of you!”
“Bold of you to assume I give a shit about that,” Drenar states calmly. “You can’t push around your kids, lead them blindly their whole life, and not expect consequences.”
“Celes, tell them.” Alan finally hits his break point. “You never told me the details of what happened that day, and you knew I wouldn’t agree with whatever you had planned.”
“What day?” Angela asked, eyes narrowed.
“The day you died.” He’s unapologetic in his glare at Celes. “Or, maybe we can lead with the other secret you’ve been holding, Celes.”
“Don’t you dare.” She points upwards at her husband, and it’s almost amusing to Drenar when he seems unphased by that gesture right under his nose.
“We are past the point where you should have come clean about this, and our kids deserve to know. Tell them, or I will.” His stern gaze is unflinching. “Your call.”
“Fine!” Angela’s mother snarls, and leers at her husband, not even bothering to turn while addressing the room. “I’m elven. And I’m a lot older than my late thirties, let’s just say.” James stammers a few words, Angela stands there as stoic as ever, and lets out a tsk sound.
“Hey Drenar, add it to our bingo card. Pretty sure we have every major kin species represented on the team now,” she states with remarkable calm, her eyes never leaving her mother.
“Who’s the wargen?” Kyle queries.
“Most of them,” Joey corrects. Drenar does note that she glances in Nick and Levine’s direction–wait–did he just miss an important reveal?
{Do yourself a favor Drenar, don’t unpack that one just yet. I keep forgetting you’re super observant with little details like that.} Joey’s less-than-subtle warning causes him to roll his eyes.
This girl has hair brighter than the Wendy’s girl, and he has yet to switch out her cinnamon scent with something that smells like fast food fries. She whirls around and furrows her brow while he wears a calm expression. {I’m doing that, by the way.} He tries to look at her innocently, but it falls flat.
{Do it, and you’re so dead.} Her acidic thought is interrupted when Angela throws up her hands in frustration.
“Great Mom, thanks for that, too! Holy shit, I would have lived to be...wait, how the hell long do elves live again? Is it a thousand years or something?”
“Two,” Joey adds with a sidelong glance at Drenar, and sends him a private message. {That girl is gonna need ice cream, and a hell of a lot of hugs after this. I’ll get Julia to take care of those. I recall you two had…history?}
{It was five minutes! I mean, she’s always been…you know, there. We kinda grew together for a while. But then it got awkward.} Drenar gently pulls Angela away from grabbing anything sharp, heavy, or simply using her telekinetics to rip her mother in half. “I think this is the time for her to stew, and come around to it.”
“That is no way to talk to the adults!” Celes shouts, and points at him accusingly. “This is all your goddamn fault, you stupid, smug, arrogant teenager! You and Julia decided to wreck shit, and bring Angela along for the ride!”
Drenar laughed in her face, because he knew she was rapidly losing sympathy from anyone in the room. “Yeah, sure, blame me. Because that’s easy. Let’s ignore everything else that you have failed to bring up in a timely manner. Joey, let’s go run some tests, you can chill here Celes–oh I’m sorry, missus Shalinde, if you prefer that. I don’t think you want to piss off the one person willing to extend an olive branch to you. So take, it, please?”
“Good idea. James, care to join?” Angela asks, already turning to leave.
“What, you have to ask me, sis?” he queries with a resigned sigh. “Yeah Mom, you’re being kinda psychotic. Fix that, please. You sound more dysfunctional than Drenar’s family right now, and that’s one hell of an achievement.”
“Oy, still standing here, Skeletor!” he retorts back, and Julia snickers at this comment, even as they all depart the room. Celes fumes and makes empty threats that he promptly ignores.
He’s done being pushed around. It’s time to stop being driven, and time to lead, and that means he’s getting answers.