Feeling sweat coming down hear forehead, she had received the information from Taki, that annoying green fellow knew exactly what made her tick and it had caused her no endless amounts of trouble, slowly shaking her head as she pulled up the live feed and the rest of the information, staring at the data as her eyes started to go wide.
Slowly standing up as she reached out to grab one of the books from the shelves around her, the room rather small in a back office somewhere, the glowing city outside, she had moved to the glowing city almost ten years ago after getting an invite to the Celestial Union. This was a group that ruled the entire North America and parts of Europe. It was in a state of constant skirmish with the Demonic forces which ruled the rest of Europe, Africa and parts of Asia. Both groups in a constant fight to claim resources, territory and even talent.
She choose the Union due to her preference to order then anarchy. She was scouted by one of the angelic officers and a good friend of hers, angels were strange creatures that were not born in the average sense, people normally awoke to being an angel but due to the very low purity of power it was nearly impossible to find new full angels, each angel tended to boon the growth of the union while the death would weaken it drastically.
She just froze for a moment as she shook her head, long golden hair that flowed down her back, height being just below six foot at 5'10, silver white bunny ears that flopped lightly down, small and a slightly chubby appearance, not enough to be fat but more on the cute side as someone who spends more time in a lab then the field. "Taki thanks, Ill look into this. Do not show that crystal to anyone"
Taki looked annoyed, clearly thinking about money again.
"Taki, Listen. If you try to sell that. Either two things are going to happen, the black markets will send people to take it from you or second the demonic legion will assassinate you and take the crystal." She left out the third part of being captured by the angels and the crystal also being taken, but she did not disbelief this fact.
She would quickly hang up the call, shaking her head as she leaned back in her chair, slowly skimming the data.
"I wonder if any of my friends can help. Lets upload this to the intranet" She said before uploading the data on repeat, slowly making a post on the local Intranet, her eyes going wide as her account froze, the computer shutting down.
"Oh what the hell?"
She would hear the door open behind her as an imposing figure came in, her wings fluttering behind her back, the celestial appearance was like a wave that crashed into her and made her body freeze in fear, her eyes went and looked at the full angel, her beauty almost stunning as she wanted to just gaze at this person for eternity.
The next words coming out of her mouth would make her realise one thing.
She had stepped onto not only a landmine, but one that was connected to a nuclear bomb.
"The Arch Angel wishes to speak to you Ms Thorn. You can not refuse, you can not leave. Come with me" The angel turned and waited for her to follow, Sam's mouth pursing as she only thought one things.
'Taki, You have screwed me again!'
---------------------
Back at the University.
Darrien had cheered himself up, he had no illusion that he was some secret powerful mage and had already given up his plans, instead he had a new problem that he had to solve, the repeating dreams had haunted him for sometime and these times they had become even more of a problem after touching the Echo, each night grew stranger as the dreams twisted into something even he could not explain.
Given an excuse to his already pissed history teacher after his performance at the museum only made things worse as he was chased out of the hall, getting to the library as he would being his search about things in regards to the Echo.
The Library itself was special, using some teleportation based magics the deans had created a network to connect all university's together and allow all students to look at all the books from the Union together. The amount of students in the area was massive but so was the entire library which was five times larger then his entire university and had several more floors going up into the sky.
He would feel almost amazed every time he came to this location, he watched several half angels fly across the sky, watching with vigilance, many different types of people and species wandering around, he even noticed some dragon-kin flying up the levels.
Shaking his head slowly before feeling someone collide with him, smashing into him as he would tumble down with a woman, the blonde hair woman seeming to become angry at him.
"Are you blind, deaf or just dumb." She said snapping at him, Darrien blinked as he looked at the bunny ears, lab coat and general attitude, looking to her name tag.
"Oh, Sorry about that Ms Thorn, this place just took my breath away"
The woman just scowled as she continued on wards, it seemed she was in a hurry and also rather annoyed. Darrien just shrugged before continuing on to the third floor, using terminals to find the sections before pulling a few books. It took some time before he even managed to skim the knowledge.
"Apparently the world was vastly different, no magic at all with only humans. Everyone looked rather similar with only mild differences in colour, size and race but it seemed war, tension and other such things are still common. It seems no matter what war and conflict are going to happen"
He would continue to flip through some pages, till he got to an interesting part in regards to the Echo.
"Huh, seems like this device is not the only one, apparently it was the fifth device found out of seven. This one was found in the heart of Africa and once activated it started a chain reaction to reactive the others, eventually the worlds supply of magic was restored over time, over a few years everyone had turned."
He continued looking as his face became rather grim.
"The man who touched the device turned into an abomination, magic crazed and unleashed the magic into the world, before he could get captured he perished due to magic corruption."
He felt his face going pale, such a device was now interacting with him and he started having strange dreams, his mind racing as he knew that this was not a good thing to happen and it could mean the end of his regular life.
"Wait, why am I worried, I have no magical capacity at all while this guy was magic crazed, its almost the opposite. I'll be fine" He muttered to himself, slowly flipping another chapter.
"The Seven are the keys to the world." he would flip another page as he saw a list of the devices.
"Alpha - North America, Beta - South America, Charlie - Australia, Delta - Europe, Echo - Africa, Foxtrot - Asia and Golf in Antarctica."
He would look through this all, wondering what this all meant. "Wait, only seven. I thought one would be in the north section if one is in Antarctica, as well as Asia is massive along with Africa but only one for each" He seemed confused by this whole thing.
Thump, crash flop!
He almost jumped out his skin, he had been reading this in the deepest part of the third floor, though even deeper a dark book had fallen from the shelf, old and dusty it was now on the floor, he was alone yet this book dropped.
He would slowly walk over, bending over to look at the tome, his eyes adjusting with the low light as he would slowly read the title.
"The One"