"Indeed, Lord Apollo Kairis, Emperor of Aura and now deposed Military Combat Marshal of Babel, received direct orders from the Council of 15 to intercept a suspected target cargo. But communications suffered some kind of interference and ended up losing much of the information. According to reliable sources who were part of Lord Kairis's detachment, few words reached their destination. Among them were: Cargo... Important... Protect... School... Children... Intercept."
As soon as he received the voice, Pietro began his speech. Starting by clarifying some important information, in order to increase and sustain its relevance and importance at this meeting.
"It is assumed that Lord Kairis deduced that his detachment needed to escort and protect an important cargo that was being destined for a children's school in order to avoid any kind of attack on it. Which would make perfect sense according to the few words that reached him. And indeed, there were about 3 attacks on the cargo, which we now know were carried out by Graviton mercenaries. I believe they were trying to distract the detachment so that the cargo would not be carefully examined. A really efficient strategy."
As he said that, he showed some images that were projected onto a holographic screen that appeared a little to the right of the stage, opposite Helena, where everyone could see a battle scene.
The images showed about 100 men in uniforms in high-protection snow camouflage gear fighting an equal number of men in slightly less rugged clothing.
All types of weapons could be seen being used by both sides. Pistols, swords, large and small shields, maces, war axes, precision bows, snipers, assault rifles and more. A wide variety of weapons, but the one thing they all had in common was the soft glow on each one.
The Aura is an energy that inhabits the entire world of Sihir, whether on the edges of the planet or at the bottom of the oceans. It permeates everything and exists in all types of beings, affecting everything it touches, even if the being is not organic and has no life energy.
Aura has existed since the dawn of creation, and over time she has shaped the planet to her will. Scholars point out that the Aura was responsible for influencing the creation of all living beings we know, whether plants, animals, magical beasts and sentient beings.
Religions around the world have the Aura as a central figure, and even the sciences do not dispute most of the claims made by religions, which further strengthens the figure of Aura as a Deity.
To religion and science, the Aura is like a force of nature endowed with humor and affection, picking her favorites out of all living beings and giving them her affection, some more than others.
But attracting affection is not something light, it requires sacrifice, courage, dedication, patience and discipline. Luck is not something that Aura takes into account, what matters is how much you can give in exchange for what you want.
Each person is born with a null potential to be chosen by the Aura, there are exceptions that are already born with a potential of 1%, which gives a huge advantage to their future career as a blessed one.
But these exceptions are very rare, with 1 in 100 million for non-animal races, with 1 in 50 million for animans, spirits and chimedeans, with 1 in 1 million for Elves.
Perfect hybrids are not counted because the specimens are extremely few. But scholars point out that a perfect hybrid between two very different races, such as elves and dwarves or human and a nymph, may have added potential between the two races.
Even if this exception appears, the future is not guaranteed and if the effort is not made the Aura can, on a whim, take away all the potential it has given. Therefore, each and every individual who wants to be chosen by Aura must follow a strict training routine from the age of 4.
Not only preparing, training and keeping your body healthy, but also gaining knowledge and sharpening your mind in a continuous and gradual way.
At the age of 14, a ceremony is held in all preparatory schools on all continents exactly on the 1st day of Auristice, when the Aura is peacefully floating in the environment, for all these individuals to test themselves and be judged by the Aura.
This ceremony is called Baptism, and is performed by exposing individuals to a large concentration of pure horustite in a closed environment. Those chosen by Aura are around 40%, all these gain the rank of Blessed. And the clearest sign of the success of the ceremony is the subtle glow around the individuals.
This glow directly reflects the most prominent characteristic of a person's soul, for example, red for intensity and warmth and white for purity and goodness. This glow is strengthened according to the power of each individual, it is the symbol of each blessed person.
"As we can see from the images, Lord Kairis' detachment successfully countered and repelled the attacks or alleged attacks on the cargo."
The screen showed several images of soldiers fighting, in all it appeared to be 4 different combat locations, but several figures could be recognized easily in all scenarios. After all the images were over, Pietro continued his speech.
"Undoubtedly, further casualties existed, I personally visited the site and took statements from all the individuals who witnessed what happened. 44 young people who had high potential for the Kingdom of Svalbard lost their lives, Babel took full responsibility for distributing compensation to all those injured and in efforts to repair and secure the destroyed structure."
In one of the few truths told so far, Babel really took responsibility with the damage repair and recovery efforts. As well as efforts to investigate and collect evidence.
"But we must also look at it from another point of view, we do not find enough evidence to blame Lord Kairis for insubordination and desertion, according to the investigations he should only be convicted of negligence and unintentional breach of regulation."
Having said that, the crowd began to murmur and talk among themselves, discussing the veracity of the facts and the evidence they had access to through Babel itself.
After some time, 5 people got up and walked with their respective companions to a door a few meters away from the left side of the stage. Helena also went to the same door and entered last, thus closing the door.
After the door was closed, Pietro looked directly at Apollo and gave a small confident smile, as if he said that everything would be fine. Ever since Apollo saw Pietro heading to the stage he knew that nothing was going to be normal.
Pietro is someone he saw growing up, but unlike Helena who was trained to fight with weapons, Pietro was specially trained to be a diplomat and fight with words. In the few instances that Apollo saw Pietro in action, he was already proficient at cheating and outright lying.
Even with this confident smile Pietro is trying to give a false image of confidence. Which is far from reality, if he were to place a bet, Apolo would bet that Pietro is extremely nervous for being bluffing in front of 90 VVIP figures.
"Daynis taught you well. But I hope she really taught you everything."
After muttering those words, silence took over the entire hall again, the atmosphere growing colder as the minutes passed. Only a clock regularly broke the silence of the hall, warning that time was passing.
*TIC* *TAC*... ... *TIC* *TAC*