The Great

Evay Maver: Professor Vylen spoke in an urgent voice, “Jugo! Jugo! The black fire columns have been lit, the horns are blaring, you can’t signal war with this little information! Who are we even at war against, Jugo? Answer me! I’m not your superior anymore but I have a right to know!”

Jugo dashed towards Lela in an instant and whispered something into her ear. Lela nodded and she looked at Professor Vylen as well as the rest of us, “thank you for hosting us this evening, Professor Vylen. I trust that you will take care of your students well, they will be needed in these upcoming times. Farewell, all of you.” Lela looked up into the sky and disappeared in a brilliant flash of emerald green light. Jugo looked at Professor Vylen who was still searching for answers to his questions.

“Neo, it’s not just Evay Maver’s testimony which has caused Taegan to go to war. Sometimes in organized, imperially authorized, interrogations information obtained from word-of-mouth can be used to make decisions as serious as a declaration of war. A testimony from a curse of order can also be treated in the same way, however, there are still people who can negate the effects of a curse of order. Evay Maver’s testimony will be taken into consideration but we just got a report that hostile forces from Raga have just landed on Taegan soil. This is the official reason for a declaration of war.” Aurora, Lila, and Geon all stood up in an instant.

Aurora spoke in a confused and angry voice, “Raga? When? How? What do they have to do with any of this?”

Lila spoke up, “Taegan hasn’t had any problems with Raga in nearly 30 years. Why are they attacking us now? Also if Raga is trying to attack us doesn’t that mean we’ll also have to fight against the likes of Mevillime and Tundra? They’re allies right?” Jugo sighed and spoke up once again.

“Taegan suppressed a major civil war in Raga nearly 30 years ago. A group of extremists who opposed the natural born, ruling family of Raga tried to stage a massive coup with the support of the entire eastern half of the country. Raga only has a population of about 11 million people, but the war claimed the lives of almost 3 million people. After a while, Taegan aided the ruling family of Raga and the coup was suppressed. More people did support the coup than remain loyal to the royal family, and even after the Raga government re-established the old regime a lot of people–even those in the government–hated Raga’s central ruling family and Taegan—who helped establish it. We’ve been monitoring the situation closely but we didn’t expect…this.” Professor Vylen spoke up almost instantly.

“No matter the history, how long have they been on our soil?”

“Our intelligence warriors say about eight hours, from the beginning of sun down to now. They originally hit the settlements in our eastern mountains which is why word of their arrival got out so slow. Interestingly enough, they entered through the Forested straight which isn’t heavily guarded due to the obvious natural barriers which the forest presents intruders with. There is one palace present in the forest–which had been mysteriously destroyed a couple months prior.” Everyone went silent.

Geon finally broke the silence, “so the fact that they chose to hit that specific spot wasn’t an accident. Someone leaked information and someone helped prepare the path of entry.” Aurora interjected,

“That’s what I thought but it’s not too difficult of a concept to figure out. Blasting through a high mountain plain or a deep forest is one of the oldest tricks in the book when it comes to military assaults. It’s weird to me though that they chose to attack our forest.” For the first time in what seemed like forever, I got the urge to speak.

“Why? Raga is probably being led by rebels right? What if they just chose the oldest trick in the book again?” Aurora shook her head.

“Our forest is dense and dark and a pain to get through but the main reason why we don’t even bother going in there too much is because of the wildlife.” I stared at her in confusion.

“Like bears?” Aurora looked at me in confusion.

“Evay, you’ve never heard of the liquor beasts before?” I shook my head.

“Beasts which come into contact with liquor plants seem to have their entire bodies manipulated and changed into much deadlier, vicious versions of themselves. If you stumble into the wrong cavern, ravine, or trench you might get mauled to death. I don’t even think we’d be able to take some of those beasts down.” Aurora continued speaking, “These beasts are a..um..how do I say this,”

Geon spoke, “a pain in the ass?” Aurora nodded,

“Yeah, that. Anyways, there’s no way that even an elite group of soldiers would be able to get through that forest without making enough of a scene to be detected. Unless they knew about the imperial trails.” I spoke again.

“What are those?”

Aurora looked at Jugo before speaking, “it’s a trail which runs through and connects every forest in Taegan. The trail lets you pass by liquor beats undetected and even makes it difficult for our imperial intelligence warriors to find people on it. It was designed in order to help secretly transport children of the royal family or important political figures in times of crisis.”

Jugo’s cold voice suddenly echoed out into the air, “and how do you know that, Ms.Maple.” Aurora’s eyes went wide and she visibly shuddered with fear before finally collecting herself.

“My—my father works as a structural engineer specializing in liquor structures and technology. He worked on the trail and never told me about it, but I managed to figure it out after sneaking into his office files.” Jugo’s eyes narrowed.

“I will hear what you have to say, but know that if you so much as spread this information to anyone outside of this room, I will personally have your head. Which goes for all of you as well.” I felt my heart go cold and fear creep up into my throat. He’s not a happy guy, huh.

Aurora gathered herself and spoke in a shaky voice, “I—I believe that you would need a special rune-stone embedded with liquor in order to access those trails. These rune stones are only given out to special politicians, nobles, and some select warriors. What I’m trying to tell you, sir, is that there is a traitor among us, and it’s a high profile warrior sir, someone trusted enough to be given access to the imperial trials.”

Jugo interjected quickly, “like you said only the members of the royal guard, imperial guard, the nobles, and three total politicians have access to these trails. Besides them you are so far the only person to mention them.” Jugo dashed towards Aurora and towered over her. “So why should I not suspect you as our traitor?” Lila pounced on top of the table, ready to fight, I activated Gold’s Veil and pointed my spear at Jugo’s throat, Geon’s silver eyes glowed as he grabbed Jugo’s cloak, and Professor Vylen stood on the opposite side of Jugo—across from Geon—and grabbed a hold of his cloak as well.

Professor Vylen spoke in a calm and deadly demeanor, “you were always quick to jump to conclusions, Jugo. Get away from my student.”

Jugo scoffed, “did I ever say she was directly guilty? If she knows anything about these trails someone could’ve overheard her speak about them, or simply used a liquor skill in order to read her mind. She is a threat to national security as of this moment so I suggest you move away.” We all stood our ground. Jugo’s cloak began to lift off the ground and his hair started to float up around his face. Black tendrils of smoke billowed out from his cloak as his deep, black eyes glowed with malice.

“Do not test me, Neo, your students, world-class warriors or not, can not touch me. Not even you can not test me–I advise you to stand down.” A shockwave of black energy erupted around the room as all of us were knocked on our backs. A wave of deep, dark, terrifying fear washed over me as I felt my body go into paralysis. My limbs refused to move, my mind refused to think about anything but survival, and a familiar feeling washed over me—the feeling of death. This guy, this royal guard, could kill me. I felt it, he was dangerous, so dangerous that he could, and would, kill me. I stood no chance, no one here stood a chance. Jugo relaxed and looked at Aurora. “You will not be denied your freedom but you will be closely monitored by the imperial guard. I thank you for your information and your ideas about the traitor amongst our people, we will consider your ideas going forward. Remember Taegan is at war, we will meet again shortly.” A column of black smoke encased Jugo and spun around rapidly until the smoke disappeared, and Jugo along with it.

Taran Brunner: The entire school was lit up in flames, but that wasn’t even the worst part. There were so many bodies on the floor and impossible amounts of blood were splattered on the building walls. Buildings were on fire, incinerated, or partially destroyed and entire sections of campus were gone—reduced to nothing. Eden was a warrior school but a good portion of the student body was made up of just non-warrior students trying to become scholars—they couldn’t defend themselves like we could. They’d been targeted first, and most of them had been taken out. The same guy who had been standing over me when I got knocked out was now standing on top of a building, dawning the same purple and white armor he was wearing when I last saw him. He had a large scar running across his face and possessed crystal white eyes. He had extremely short brown hair and red tattoos on his forearms. He looked at me and an angry but cautious look dawned upon his face. He jumped down off of the building and began to walk towards me.

I braced myself for the worst and prepared to strike. He spoke with an angry and heavily accented voice, “who are you?”

An overwhelmingly strong feeling of anger rose inside of me, “why did you do this?” The man stared at me blankly with those eerie, white eyes.

“For my country.” I gritted my teeth and spoke again.

“For your country? What could we, students, have possibly done to your country so that you’d do all of this?” The man’s face contorted with rage and hate as he yelled in an angry voice,

“DO YOU SEE MY EYES BOY! THAT IS WHAT YOUR COUNTRY DID TO ME! DO YOU SEE THIS SCAR BOY! TAEGAN HAS TAKEN OUR FREEDOM, OUR DIGNITY, THEY EVEN TOOK MY DAUGHTER!” His chest rose up and down as he tried to control his breathing, but it didn’t seem to do much since he didn’t get any less angry. “You see this? This is what they did to us, to my family. They chose those things in the royal house over us, over people. How do you like it, Taegan boy? Do you like it when we slaughter your children?” I looked into the man’s eyes and spoke in an angry tone.

“You’re not very smart are you? You’re killing us, over something other people in our country did? I guess that’s just war, but don’t act like you're getting revenge for anyone or anything. You’re just too weak, you’re not strong enough to take on our imperial forces, so you chose to kill a bunch of non-warrior students. You’re not vengeance, your a fucking pussy.”

The man’s face contorted with rage, into an almost inhuman figure. He lowered his body in preparation to strike and spoke in a voice filled with pure hatred, “I’ll cut off your head, I’ll cut off all your limbs, and I’ll bring them to your father and mother boy. I’ll tell them how much you begged for your life, and then I’ll kill them too.” I pointed my hand to the sky and the heavens erupted as a bolt of black lightning flashed into my hand. My blade materialized in my grasp as the obsidian black steel glowed with dancing, purple electricity. I pointed my sword at the man and stared deep into his soul,

“I’ll show you what true vengeance is like.”

A purple blast of energy burst out from his feet and a strange, circular, purple symbol was engraved into the ground as the man blasted right towards me. I jumped back and swung my blade down into the ground with all my might. A giant explosion echoed into the air as a crater the size of a large lake formed beneath my feet. I tried to see through the clouds of dust but my visibility was shot. I flipped over and landed on my feet and immediately jumped up into the sky. A pair of hands suddenly emerged out of the clouds of dust and grabbed onto my ankles. I tried to shake the man off but his grip suddenly tightened by a hundred fold. He swung me around and slammed me into the ground as if I was a sack of potatoes. I tried to keep my eyes open as I felt myself being flung around in the air, the world going by me in a blur of color. I was rocketed towards the ground as my body slammed into the hard, dirt road at blazing high speeds. He slammed me repeatedly again, and again, and again into the ground before he tossed me into the air. I spun around and swung my sword, aiming for his neck. He quickly ducked under the blade and dropped to the floor as he pushed off of the ground with both hands and kicked me in the stomach with both of his legs. I crossed my arms and prepared to block the oncoming attack.

He’s readable, he’s easy, he fights with too much aggression, I can punish hi— My arms shattered as the impact of the kick completely tore them in half. Blood splattered everywhere on my body as his kick went through my arms and hit me in the torso. I was thrown backwards at impossibly high speeds as I felt myself crash through a multitude of buildings and walls. I felt each and every impact shatter my spine and back as I finally slammed into the side of a hill and dropped to the floor. My head felt dizzy, my body felt numb, and my heart started to pound harder than it had ever before. I looked down at my arms and panic started to creep into my heart. They were almost entirely gone, I could see the muscles, veins, and bones on my right arm and my left arm was so mangled and mashed that it didn’t even look like an arm anymore. I looked down at my torso and a huge cut ran across my abdomen, revealing a giant red gash which cut deep into my body. I tried my best to breathe but most of my ribs were broken, and worst of all, one of my ankles was turned in the complete opposite direction. The man landed in front of me and a sadistic smile crept across his face. He knelt down in front of me and stared at me with his cold, white eyes. “I will show you vengeance? Is this so? IS THAT SO!” He punched me across the face as I felt the full impact of his strike land on my chin. Some of my blood splattered on the ground and the man grabbed my hair. “You’re a dog, a dead dog, a sick dog. Did you think that you could kill me? A true warrior, who fought against your empire for my country? I’ve seen things you couldn’t even imagine boy, I’ve killed men, I’ve had my life at death's door many times. I hear Taegan lets their children play “warrior training,” with gladiator matches and little sporting events. This is what real war is like, boy, do you feel that? Fear? What it’s like to truly believe you could die.” My heart started to beat like crazy and my head started to go numb.

He was right. No amount of training, matches, or championships could’ve ever prepared me for this. My breathing quickened, panic flooded my senses, fear, anger, desperation, and dread all washed over me in a giant wave. As I looked into the man’s sadistic face and eerie eyes only one thing came to mind. This was it. My breathing quickened again, I groaned in desperation, I tried to crawl away, run away, get away from him, get somewhere or to someone, anyone. I crawled towards my sword and tried my hardest not to scream. The man laughed and followed me towards my sword. “Yes, yes, yes, go get it. Go crawl after it. I’ll let you get it! Come on, beg for mercy, do it. I’ll spare you, maybe I’ll even bring you back home. There’ll be plenty of uses for you.” I kept looking at my sword, I focused all of my being, all of my existence, all of my thoughts and feelings towards getting to that sword. Live, crawl, live, don’t die, don’t speak. The man kept talking, “you poor bastard. Maybe you’ll be reborn and have a better life. That girl which we wrote about in our fake letter, Savitar told me you're quite fond of her.” My heart dropped.

Who the fuck is Savitar?

The man laughed, “did that get your attention? What was her name? It was Mia? Melly? Mena? Yes Mena, Savitar showed me pictures, she’s a good little girl isn’t she?” My head slowly began to clear as the fear and desperation began to fade away. “Does she love you? Isn’t that sweet. After I’m done with you I guarantee our men will find her. She’ll be a good prize for our efforts, that body could use some attention from real men like us.” It was almost like someone had turned on the lights in my brain as rage and anger cleared my mind of all fear and doubt. I began to think. He spoke, “and while we’re having our way with her, we’ll tell her all about you, and how much fun we had together.” The man’s sadistic grin got even wider as he knelt down to look at me. “What do you say?”

He hit me so hard that I’ve absorbed more energy from his one strike than in ten regular battles.

I replied, with a rage, an anger, amd a hate from the very deepest part of my soul, “I’ll feed your fucking body to the birds, scar-face.” I grabbed his head and pulled it into my chest and released all of my absorbed energy out of my body at once. He screamed as dark purple energy incinerated the skin, hair, and clothes off his body.

I braced for impact.

A gargantuan explosion leveled half of Eden’s campus as buildings, sidewalks, and entire patches of land were tossed into the sky. A large purple glare radiated over the earth as the ensuing bang from the explosion ruptured my ear drums. I closed my eyes and let go of the man’s body, and felt myself land with a thud onto the hard, dirt road. I got up shakily and walked towards a crisp, burnt body leaned up against a piece of destroyed wall. The man’s face was in a horrific state as his skin, hair, and eyebrows were completely incinerated—making him look like a real life skeleton. His arms were partially mutilated and his body was completely burned black. I walked towards him and stuck my sword into the ground, leaning on it for support. I coughed and tried my best to speak. “I’m—I’m able to absorb and redirect energy from enemy attacks. You hit me with a strike which should’ve killed me, but I lived and absorbed it. All of that talk at the end gave me some time to build my counterattack up. You should’ve just killed me, dumbass.” I hurled my sword at his throat. He disappeared in an instant and reappeared behind me. As his foot touched the ground another blast of purple energy was emitted from his feet—engraving the same strange purple symbol into the dirt. He threw a spinning hook-kick so fast that it could’ve easily decapitated me.The air coming off of his strike sliced the top half of a building directly behind me. I instinctively dodged and I ducked under his strike, and aimed to sweep his planted leg. He flipped over me off of one foot and tried to stomp me into the ground upon landing. I rolled out of the way and immediately swung my sword.

He leaned out of the way of my strike as I swung again and again. I swung left, right, left, down, sideways, but he avoided all of my slashes. His skull-like face and red, putrid eyes stared into my soul like a face from the depths of hades. He was a man possessed, fighting off of pure anger and hate. I stabbed at his chest and he leaned to the left like always, but this time, I had a counter. I kicked the back of his legs as he leaned his body back to the left, and he was sent to his feet. I kicked him in the liver as he was sent flying into a marble wall at blazing speeds. I dashed towards him to finish the fight, but he recovered quickly. His feet touched the ground and the same engraving which appeared all the other times appeared once again. I rammed my sword into the ground and hurled the flying pieces of debris I had created at the man. His fists went through them like butter and he launched off the wall and aimed a kick at my face. I ducked under it and slashed up at the man, but he arched his back so that my slash narrowly missed. I slammed my sword into the ground and catapulted off of it and leapt into the air. I grabbed his arms and called upon any absorbed energy I had left in my body. My eyes glowed a faint purple as I pulled as hard as I could.

The man’s red eyes got even wider as he tried his best to shake free of my grasp. We landed back on the ground and I immediately let go of his arms and went in for a takedown. He tried to defend my tackle as he sprawled and leaned his weight forward onto my body. I made one last push as I swiveled my body around the man and successfully grabbed his torso from behind. He desperately tried to push my arms away but my grip was locked and I wasn’t letting go. I picked him up and jumped blasted into the air. The world under us slowly began to disappear as the buildings—or what was left of them—became smaller and smaller and smaller. I felt the clouds dissolve into cool water droplets as we passed through them and I made one final push. I used all of my remaining energy to blast towards the ground as we plummeted towards the earth. I heard a sonic boom roar across the sky as I took one last look at the man’s face. “When you die, don’t come back.” I grabbed his face with both of my hands as we finally smashed into the ground. The ground beneath us was incinerated as a large crater the size of a village formed beneath my feet. The man’s skull split in half as I smashed his head into the ground. Giant clouds of dust filled Eden’s now destroyed campus as I waited for the visibility to clear. The dust finally settled and the sound of my breathing echoed out into the empty air. The adrenaline finally started to wear off as I felt the pain start to increase in intensity. I looked down at the man’s almost lifeless body as his eyes twitched with anger and spite. He spoke in a barely audibly, hoarse voice, “don’t.” Anger started to creep back into my body as I summoned my sword back into my hands. I raised my sword and stabbed it into the man’s body as blood sputtered out of his abdomen. I stabbed him again, and again, and again, and again until a massive pool of blood surrounded his body. I smashed his skull with the hilt of my sword as each impact chipped more and more of his bone away. I raised up my sword for one final strike and smashed the hilt of my blade into his face. The left side of his skull shattered as his jaw and cheek were completely destroyed. Blood splattered everywhere as I threw away my sword and started punching with my magnaled hands. An immense feeling of anger, hate, and rage filled my body as I kept beating, smashing, breaking, and striking the man’s face. My fists smashed into his skull over and over and over again until my hands completely shattered from the impacts. I smashed my elbows into his face as I let out a scream of terror, rage, and hate. I kept hitting him until the ground beneath me started to crack and shake as I let out all of my anger.

This guy had tried to kill me, he humiliated me, he threatened to hurt my friends, and my family. He had killed people I had talked to, he’d killed some of my friends. For that I was going to make him pay. My arms exploded into red mist so I smashed my forehead into his skull. His skull completely shattered as brain-matter splattered everywhere. His arms and fingers twitched and his eyes stopped moving around as he finally began to lose his life. “I figured it out. You make a giant ring around yourself and inside that ring your energy levels and overall physical ability get boosted to the max. But once you’re outside that ring you’re just a normal guy. That’s why I took you into the sky. It makes sense really, it just took a while to figure it out.” I stood up and brought up my foot above his head. “Die.” I stomped down on his face and his entire head splattered into pieces and his brain matter was plastered across the dirt. He was dead, completely dead. All of my energy seemed to flow out of my body as I crashed to the floor.

My eyes fluttered open to the sight of people standing over me.

“He looks like a crusty gingerbread man……What! Hey, he’d be fine with me saying that, he’s got stubby little arms and legs! Are those his legs? Oh wow, those are his legs.” I slowly opened my eyes to see Geon standing over me with Lila and Aurora by his side. He looked concerned—or at least concerned enough—while Lila was hunched over and seemed to be trying her best to heal me. She was doing a pretty good job, considering that I didn’t have any more blood pouring out of me in weird places. I looked down at my body and resisted the urge to lie down and go back to sleep. My right forearm was entirely gone, my entire left arm was gone, my legs were broken in several places, and my chest was so scared it almost looked like I didn’t have any skin. I couldn’t move my body and the only reason I wasn’t passing out from pain was because Lila was patching me up. I groaned and Geon’s eyes went wide, “Lila I think you did it.” Lila’s expression didn’t change as she furrowed her eyebrows in concentration,

“Taran, don’t panic and most importantly don’t move. We’re good, there’s no more enemies, so just lay down and let me work.” I groaned in agreement. I spoke in an extremely hoarse voice.

“Do—do you have water? I need some water, anything.” Aurora reached into her pack and poured water into my mouth. My head started to clear and the pulsing pain inside my skull began to subside.

Geon looked over at me with concern, “so this guy was strong enough to do this to you?” I waited a while before speaking.

“He got a lucky shot in the beginning which almost killed me. It was different though, all my training went out of the window in the beginning of the fight. The fact that there were no retries and no more professors to stop the fight made me ... .well scared.” Geon, Lila, and Aurora were all silent. I continued speaking, “I also killed him. He’s not going to get a retry either. I killed a guy today.” Geon spoke in a soft voice.

“He killed thousands of our friends, our people. He wasn’t innocent either. I know that’s the worst thing to say right now but you had to do it. It’s not your fault. You know that right?” I nodded and Lila put her hand on my shoulder.

“Taran, you saved the school. Without you, this would all be gone right now. You have nothing to be ashamed about, okay?” Lila gave me a smile and I closed my eyes to rest.

Geon coughed and waved away a dust cloud, “I hate to say this and Lila’s right, you did save the school, but holy shit man, you guys really leveled this thing. Campus is huge and almost none of it is left. But I guess the bar is still up.” I smiled,

“Yep, I saved that one on purpose.” Geon laughed.

Aurora knelt down next to me and started to speak, “I assumed you wanted to know where the other people who attacked this place went, right?” I nodded.

She continued speaking, “Raga invaders were found escaping at the western border, they’d escaped here through the National Tunnel network using your ID, and they purposefully left one here to cause a distraction and make us deal with business here. But you dealt with the warrior here yourself so we almost captured all of the other fleeing invaders but two got away. We don’t know where they’re going yet but we think they’re crossing the sea to Mevillime.” I nodded and Aurora continued to talk, “If Mevillime accepts them, a giant catastrophe will be created. By giving those terrorists safety and protection they’re acting in the interest of our enemies. That’ll mean that they become our enemies as well.” Geon spoke,

“And then their enemies will become ours, and ours theirs, and then everyone fights each other right?” Aurora nodded.

“Yes, but if Mevillime refuses to accept them then this whole thing won’t go that far. The problem is that they probably will, Taegan and Mevillime have never been on the best of terms. They didn’t support our secession from the Sugul empire all those years ago and we’ve never forgotten it. I guess they also feel threatened by us, but hopefully they act smart in the interest of not starting a world-wide war.” Lila spoke for the first time in a while,

“Do we know why Raga attacked us?” Aurora shook her head and replied,

“Not really. They’ve had their gripes with us but we have no idea why they chose to attack now. Maybe it’s because we’re distracted with all our business overseas, or maybe it’s because we were rumored to be on bad terms with Evian, but we still don’t know. All we know is that they had some type of spy in our nation–maybe the spy thought it was time to strike. Taran, did you hear anything that would be valuable to us?” I tried to speak but a faint cough was the best I could manage.

I tried speaking again, “I—I don’t really know. There was a lot actually. Most of what you said was true, the guy said he was doing this for his country, but I think there’s something bigger. There’s no way he and his group are spearheading this entire operation alone—they’re smart enough to know that they themselves can’t do much to us. So there’s something more to all of this…I just don’t know what.” Everyone was silent. I suddenly recalled that one name that the man had been throwing around. What was it? Savi something?

It popped into my head.

“Also, they were telling me about this guy named Savitar. He never told me who he was or what he was doing but I was baited out into the forest by a letter written to me. It was signed by Melissa but I knew something was odd because it didn’t sound like her at all. When I arrived at the location it told me to come to, I was ambushed by Ren.” Aurora’s eyes went wide.

“Ren? Like the Ren we know? How? He’s with the Raga people?” Geon’s eyes glowed with hate.

Aurora continued speaking, “so what happened next?” I let out a faint cough and kept talking,

“I beat him pretty easily, but some flash of energy appeared out of nowhere and knocked me out. I couldn’t even see what had hit me. I was out cold for a bit but I’m pretty sure that…that guy that knocks me out is our traitor. I heard him speak and he sounds just like us, no accent, no stutter. He also knew about the National Tunnel system and that you need an ID to get it. He was also the one who wrote the letter which means he knows who Melissa and Mena are.”

“Stop,” Aurora spoke in a sharp and shaky voice.

Her eyes went wide, she tapped her foot nervously, and she began to bite her nails. She looked at me with wide and desperate eyes, “what was the color of the energy that hit you?” I stuttered a bit. She spoke in a frantic voice, “the color Taran! What was it? Taran!”

“Um—uh—red..red! Why, what’s the matter?” Aurora started to pace back and forth and began mumbling to herself. Lila looked at her with concerned eyes.

Lila spoke in a firm voice, “Aurora stop! Why are you so jittery? Aurora!” Aurora stopped in her tracks and looked at us with scared and confused eyes.

“Red energy, a strike that can knock out someone like you, a strike so fast that you can’t see it, someone who knows all of us and who all of us are familiar with, someone who’s fast enough to get in, out, and through the country without anyone of us noticing, and someone’s who’s name is similar to Savitar.” My eyes went wide.

Aurora whispered in a tone of horror, “Savain Yelenta is our traitor, he’s been a spy for Raga and other enemy nations. He’s been a spy, all of this time.”