"First off, what is your name?" Sydra asks as he takes the dagger away from the man's chest and sits down on the bed next to him.
"My name? It's Ned," Ned says, still watching the dagger in Sydra's hand in case it was to suddenly find a new home in his chest.
"Ned, huh... So what is the group you work for called?" Sydra asks, turning to look at the table with the tools on it, "And why are you doing tests on children?"
"Our group is called Evowave Group, and we are after the next evolution of humankind. We believe that if we can change our DNA with that of other creatures, we can raise our powers to the next level," Ned says, turning his head to look at the beds the other children had been strapped to.
" I see, so how did you come to find the city of the Kantoko, and build this place?" Sydra asks, standing up from the bed and walking to the other side.
"We were following a Jadeshell Turtle in hopes of catching it a few years back when we discovered this place. When we entered it, we found the city of the frozen crab people and built our base underneath their worship area," Ned says.
Listening to what Ned had to say, Sydra was surprised to find out that he didn't hesitate to answer any of his questions. In fact, Ned seemed eager to answer them and hid nothing from Sydra. Feeling slightly suspicious of how Ned was acting, Sydra thought back to how Sam and Gram betrayed them earlier by pushing them down the hole.
"How did you enter the city, and do you have people out searching for things?" Sydra asks, hoping to get Ned to tell him something of more importance.
"We entered it through one of the buildings on the outside, but I'm not sure what you mean by people searching for things. If you're talking about people who bring me more creatures, then yes there are a few of them," Ned says, thinking Sydra wanted to know about the people who brought in creatures for his experiments.
'Were Sam and Gram not part of this group? If that is the case, then what was the reason for them to behave as they did when they saw the scepter?' Sydra thinks as he flips his dagger through the air, looking down at Ned.
"Are there any other people in this place? And how large is your group?" Sydra asks.
"I am the only one in this place at the moment, and our group is very small, about thirty or so people," Ned says as he secretly wishes he wasn't the only person there at the moment. 'Why is my luck so bad?!'
"Interesting, well that was all the questions I had for you," Sydra says as he quickly slashes Ned's make with his dagger, ending his life immediately. "Sorry, but people that experiment on children deserve death," Sydra says as blood drips off the table and onto the floor.'Hmm, seems that this person didn't have any powers,' Sydra thinks when he notices that no aura leaves Ned's body.
Turning around, Sydra leaves the room with the beds in it and heads back to where the platforms are.
With each of the platforms being controlled by a rune panel on the wall, Sydra quickly raised all the platforms that had creatures on them. After checking the creatures to see if they were still alive or not, Sydra sent the living ones into his Arbor Sanctum. Once that was done, Sydra called Lorey back out to tell her what happened, and check on how the children were doing.
"So in the end you killed him... That's good," Lorey says, "By the way, I was able to get the children away from the brink of death and clean them up a little bit. Currently, they are sleeping on some beds in the palace, being watched by a lady named Marie, who said she knew you,"
"That's good, you can trust Marie. Did you check on Haley while you were there?" Sydra asks, wondering if Haley has woken up yet.
"Yews, she also still asleep, but I think that is just because she is tired," Lorey says, looking around the room with the platforms. "What are you going to do now?"
"I plan on checking the rest of the facility and then destroying this place, once that is done I'll call you back out, and we can leave this place," Sydra says as Lorey nods her head, Sending her back into the Arbor Sanctum, Sydra walks down the hallway and approaches the door at the other end.
Pushing open the door, Sydra sees that the room on the other side is an office filled with filing cabinets. 'Why is it always filing cabinets, I wish these places had something more interesting,' Sydra thinks as he walks into the room and opens one of the draws.
Instead of the folders Sydra thought were going to be inside, he was surprised to find a single book with a yellow gem on the cover. Pulling out the book and setting it on the desk in the room, Sydra goes back and opens the rest of the draws, but finds nothing inside.
"That's odd, there is only one book in this entire office. But why the need for all the cabinets?" Sydra wonders as he sits down at the desk and tries to open the book. When the book doesn't open, Sydra picks it up tries prying it open with more force, but the same result occurs. "Great, it's a book that won't even open,"
Tossing the book back on the desk, Sydra turns his attention to some photos that are hanging on the walls. In the photos is Ned standing next to a beautiful woman with along red tail. In the woman's arms is the same book that Sydra can't open, except she has it open and is showing the contents to Ned.
"So the book does openor did at some point. I wonder who the woman is," Sydra says as he stands up and sends the book into his Arbor Sanctum. Leaving the room, Sydra heads back down the hallway to the door that leads to the tubes. Before heading down the stairs, Sydra places his hand on the ground and starts a fire.
"That should do it," Sydra says as he calmly leaves the underground base and heads back to the Kantoko people's worship center. As he walks out of the hole that the alter covered, Sydra notices that there are a few frozen Kantoko in the place.
"Crap, I didn't think about that," Sydra says as he turns around and sees the inferno he started racing up the stairs behind him. 'I need to do this fast,'
Activating his lightning aura in his body, Sydra runs through the worship center, picking up Kantoko along the way. After his thirteenth trip back into the building, Sydra feels confident that he got all the Kantoko out in time, but he does one last sweep just in case.
Running through the building, Sydra checks every nook and cranny for anyone that he might have missed. 'I seriously hope there are none left, the fire is almost at the top of the stairs,' Sydra thinks as he glances back at the hole that is becoming bright orange as the fire approaches it.
Leaving the building, Sydra deactivates his lightning aura, returning the world's speed around him back to normal. Watching the worship center become lit on fire, Sydra notices the faint smell of crab being cooked. Freaking out, Sydra runs back into the burning building to find the cooking Kantoko, using his manipulation of fire to keep himself from being roasted.
"Dang it, I can't put out a fire this size, and I have no idea where the Kantoko is," Sydra says as he focuses on his nose to follow the smell of the Kantoko. As he runs through the building, the smoke from the fire travels into his nose, causing him to have to stop and cover his nose with a wet rag.
As he lifts his head to tie the rag, Sydra notices a Kantoko hanging from the ceiling, attached to a wire. In its hands is a paintbrush, and it looks like it had been painting a crab reaching out its claw to the waves on the domed ceiling.
'That looks familiar,' Sydra thinks as he grows his crystal wings and flies up to the Kantoko. Pulling out a dagger, Sydra cuts the wire holding the Kantoko and grabs him before he can fall to the fires below. Carrying him outside swiftly, Sydra drops the Kantoko on the ground, before turning to look back at the worship center that is now falling apart.
"Wow Sydra, I can't believe you burned down their worship center. Why did you do that?" A voice asks from behind Sydra.