"What makes you think that?" Dan asked with a raised eyebrow.
"The things you assure turns out to be true."
"Huh! It's only been three times, and I'm pretty sure it was just a lucky guess"
"Yeah, and what about me? I only did it once" Feeling a little left out, Ciru asked
"First time's luck, second time's a coincidence, third time's a tradition. There's no way you can do something thrice and call it luck ." He paused for a second and looked at Ciru "what you and Mercy did defy all the laws of nature_which I don't think anything in this place obeys, despite that, there's no way that that tree had so much water stored in it"
Alpha had seen everything they'd done first hand and considering how strange everything in this place was, it didn't seem that much out of the ordinary.
But now after Tony put it out like that, he began seeing it in a new light, even remembering the concerned look on his teacher's face after they did that. She must've figured it out.
"So you're saying I can create water out of thin air?" Ciru curiously asked.
"How should I know?, I don't even know how anything works around here."
Ciru, her curiosity turning to utter disappointment, signed.
Dan didn't argue or inquire and instead pondered as he gazed at the night sky.
...
"Wow! Make it bigger. "
Everyone's attention was drawn in by a loud voice.
Turning his head, Alpha noticed a fire burning in the middle of a few of his classmates who'd sat quite afar from the rest of the groups.
It wasn't that big, the fire, but the one Mercy had lit earlier paled in comparison. Burning in the strangest of ways, the fire wavered in the middle of the group. It's colours made the supernatural abilities more believable as it burned with four distinct ones_which was ironic considering the colours represented the flag from their home country.
Black on top, followed by white, red then a blight green at the base. Some of the colours according to the laws of physics weren't supposed to be capable of any illumination, but they all somehow did, making the illumination from the four moons somehow pale in comparison.
Alpha immediately shot up, like every other kid that wasn't in the group and dashed towards the so called miracle.
Everyone gathered around, surrounding the strange fire.
"How....how did you do it?"
"It's just like our flag"
"so warm"
"Another hunch, huh?" Margret who stood behind Mercy, from surprised to a bored expression, asked.
"No"
Everyone was dumbfounded by that statement.
Alpha couldn't believe what he'd heard. He was finally gonna get some answers, even if it wasn't all of them, the little she had to offer was enough.
"How...?"
"What happened?" Before Alpha could finish, he was interrupted by Mrs Taiyo who now shoved through the crowd of kids.
"She lit another fire." A kid answered.
"How do you feel? How did you manage it?" Mrs Taiyo was perplexed, not believing in what she was witnessing. It was an impossibility. She knew what they'd previously displayed wasn't something normal, but now this fire seemed to solidify her beliefs about unnatural abilities.
The eerie silence of the night filled the entire forest as everyone held their breaths for what she had to say.
Mercy stood up, not being able to maintain eye contact with anyone, stared at the skulls on her right, before finally uttering what everyone was so eager to hear.
"This time wasn't a hunch" her voice slightly louder than usual. "She'd mentioned feeling a bit cold." pointing at one of her group members who still sat around the fire, "when I heard it, I just imagined a colourful fire that would warm us up as I caressed one of the skulls which suddenly ignited into a combination of colours that I've always thought to be the most beautiful."
"Did anything feel strange after you did that?" Mrs Taiyo asked with a concerned look.
"Nope" Mercy, not intending to worry anyone, lied.
Immediately after the fire ignited, her sight become blurry and her eyes felt like they were being burned inside out, though it wasn't severe so she just decided to leave it at that.
"Do you think you can make it a little bigger and warmer?" Tony asked with a grin.
"What's with the face?" Dan asked.
"Just happy I was right."
"I can try." Mercy said walking closer to the fire.
"Don't push it." Mrs Taiyo cautioned.
So we get abilities. I wonder what I'll get? Alpha lampooned, before being hit by a wave of warmth from the fire that'd now grown twice, illuminating quite a distance.
"So cool, I wonder if I could make one." Liam exclaimed joyously as he adjusted the frame of his glasses.
"What's wrong, envious of her power?" Tony asked, wrapping his hand around Dan who's face had turned solm for a second before finally reveling an empty smile
"Nah, I think mine's sounds better."
"Mine's, so you do think It's a power?"
Dan didn't answer and instead continued observing the miracle that was unfolding before him.
After increasing the size of the fire, Mercy staggered and was to fall but Mrs Taiyo caught her.
"I thought, I told you to take it easy"
Regaining her balance, she sat near the fire which, even after it's size increased, somehow didn't become hotter and instead only increased the area of effect it's warmth radiated.
"I'm fine"
'What was that?' Alpha looked to have noticed the slight change in Dan's expression. If what Tony had said was true, maybe something bad was gonna happen or nothing good was gonna come out of possessing abilities. After all Dan could see the future, according to Tony's speculations that was.
-------------------------------------------------------------
"Hmm, he managed it another time, huh?" An ethereal feminine voice resounded in dimly lit room.
In the room were six figures sitted around a hexagonal golden table that had a single candle placed on its centre.
On each side of the table a figure sat on a silver high back chair.
The figures, with mysterious appearances, were all clad in hooded red priest lobes.
In the stead of their faces a veil of darkness lingered, making it impossible to decern their actual appearances.
"Hahaha, we get to have another hunt, what an honour" A hoarse voice declared with an enthusiastic tone. Behind it was a figure that sat very leisurely with his feet on the golden table. He had four distinct black horns growing on one side of his head all shaped like elephant tusks.
"You better enjoy it, this is their last cycle and soon as they figure that out they'll be like cornered animals with nothing to lose" A husky voice cautioned. His head was caged in a round glass filled with some kind of a blue liquid.
"They're still kids. We still have a couple of years before they remember, in the meantime let's just watch how it'll unfold this time." declared a soft voice, with small silver wings that seemed to grow from the back of her head and extended to wrap half her face.
Sitting on the left edge of the table, perhaps being the strangest figure of them all as she looked to have been melting. Instead of hands she had a red liquid that appeared to flow like a river but on air.
"Poor fellows, this is what?, A thousandth, no two thousandth time they're doing this? With a brittle voice she asked, pausing for a moment and taking a deep breath "They have no idea what awaits them, all the horrors, all the betrayals, all the cries." her voice turning honeyed, she continued "if I were them I would just step off the path and get ripped apart and end my suffering."
"Oh, stop acting like you sympathise with them, we all know you're more wicked than Crimson" A guttural voice said, with an annoyed tone. He had three red halos floating above his head, that seemed to drip blood that never once touched the ground or even left the halos in the first place.
"I'm not" she threw her liquidified hands in the air with refutal.
"Enough of that, let's talk about what really brought us here" the first voice that had steered the conversation in this direction said. She had two deer antlers that had multiple, small yellow, flaming skulls on them.
"Why did you call for this meeting anyway?" With a dead voice, the guy that had his head caged in the glass of blue liquid asked.
"They're back"
-------------------------------------------------------------
An hour had passed since Mercy made the fire, everyone who sat around it either close or far could fell it's warmth.
A few of the kids struggled to lie down on the skulls, but it turned out to be too uncomfortable resulting in them just sitting there lining on each others backs. Most of them had even attempted to make a fire like Mercy did, but ended up failing miserably.
"Why won't you try again?"
"I've been trying since I saw Mercy do it, maybe mine was just a fluke."
"It's wasn't, the reason you're not able to do it is because you don't believe you can."
"How am I supposed to believe I can when I don't even believe that this place is real."
"How can you not? Everything you've seen so far is and also feels real"
"I don't wanna believe it"
"Come on, just one more time "
"No"
"O.."
"Why don't you leave it at that, if she wants to try she'll do it on her own free will" Alpha said in annoyance, interrupting Ciru and Liam who after seeing what Mercy did tried to do the same, which resulted in him failing, after which he turned to the next person he'd witnessed perform another miracle and decided to tutor her.
Ciru didn't refuse, after all Liam was a weeb and had told everyone that he'd seen an anime like the reality they were experiencing now.
They tried many different approaches but all ended up failing, to which Ciru decided to give up.
"Fine" Liam stood up a little frustrated and walked to another group.
"That guy can be such a headache sometimes" Tony who sat back to back with Dan said.
"Yeah" Dan answered, with an unusually low voice.
"What's wrong man, you don't seem like yourself"
"I'm fine, just a little headache that's all"
Alpha could tell he was lying but didn't really comment. Yet it seemed like he didn't have to.
"I don't think these abilities are gonna help us survive."