The teachers present at the test were quickly and equally alarmed. The gem radiated and spun about at high speeds and incessantly. Whirring a subtle hum.
"What is that?"
"My eyes!"
The students shared their concerns.
Then, as if heeding to the cautions of those around, the elemental affinity gem suddenly went silent and sucked in the torrent of light it unleased, but majority of the people in the room still had their eyes closed, until the lids of their eyes could perceive a feel of dimming. Then, they all began to pry their eyes open. And were somewhat now preprocessing the situation, Khay included. He began to think to himself and out loud even; "Is this supposed to happen?" and before anyone could answer, the gem began glowing with a deep brown color then green and yellow and black and blue.
"Interesting. Principal Takel pinned up his glasses.
"Yo, yo, yo." Trilith jolted, "Does this mean what I think it means?!"
"There can't be any other way to look at it..." Lilith followed.
"But… is that even possible?" Han continued.
"This has to be some sort of…" Mira struggled to find words.
"Teacher Lina, Mai; is this supposed to happen?" Khay inquired.
"Brown, green, yellow, black and blue." Khay said to himself as the gem slowly cycled. It went over those same colors over and over again then…
"Can I take off my hands now?" His ecstatic voice inquired of the test supervisors.
But they were as confused, best they've seen is a cycle of two colors but five? That was something new to them.
"Erh… I - -"
"Mai?" Lina signaled.
"Sure." Lina assured.
The boy couldn't hide his excitement, he couldn't wait to reach his friends. To share the news with his family. Amidst the sudden rarity that had occurred, the students murmured incessantly, all the while as soft as they could.
How?; was the question on everyone's lip.
"How does the dud end up getting something like that?"
"This is unheard of." Kaina grunted. "How come it didn't do that for me? I have more zhin control than those good for nothings."
"The gem must be defective. I'm sure of it." One of his friends argued.
"That's right, that's the only explanation." Another added.
"Ha! In your faces, you self-conceited - -" He stopped himself mid-sentence. Something was wrong.
"Khay." Mai called. "You're the last person to this test, but. Hands off now. You have the Beast Integration Strain test next."
"Yeah…" He chuckled nervously. "I want to… but…" He groaned, pulling. "My hand won't come off."
"What's he - -?" Mira softly expressed.
"What?" Lilith followed. "What's he talking about?"
"I know right, what does he mean by "my hand won't come off." Han continued.
"Yeah, that makes no sense." Trilith supported. "Khay," he shouted. "What do you mean by your hand won't come off, just get your hands off that gem."
"Yeah." He said in return, groaning and pulling. "But… it's not budging. Did someone put glue on this thing?" he groaned. "Very funny, guys."
The gem continued cycling between brown, yellow, green, blue and black, then, it hummed a subtle high pitch noise that drew Khay's attention. It began to pick up the speed, cycling through those five colors, then more got added to the mix and it began to cycle through a myriad of colors; spinning as if a rainbow was trapped in the gem and seeking a way out and growing in intensity. The people hastened to instinctively shield themselves from the sudden outburst of radiant colors but Khay and a concerned few, forced themselves and pried their eyes open as much as they could to behold what was transpiring concerning himself, and they saw it all happen; Khay, Trilith, Lilith, the Jun brothers, Mira and her friends, the teachers in charge of the test, the teachers at the balcony, Kaina and a handful few.
"Lina…" Khay strained, unable to free himself amidst the torrent of light that spun about the room.
"Principal Takel, should I?" Tawa inquired.
"No, let him just… go through it."
The E.A gem spun about haphazardly like a disco light and took a dark glow with white light mixed within and then suddenly died out with a subtle crack and as it did, Khay came tumbling to the ground. The gem had gone off without as much as a trace of light and the place was riddled with sudden silence.
"Okay… What just happened?" Mai inquired.
"All that scare just for nothing." Kaina exclaimed.
"In the end, a dud is a dud huh."
"Well, that was weird." Amine calmly said.
"Come on guys, let's go." Kaina ordered his crew. "I knew this was going to be waste of time and he didn't disappoint."
The students began to dismiss themselves from the test room and soon it was all but left with a few.
"I can't really tell, it's either the gem is broken or maybe gotten defective over all these years? Cos I have no idea what just happened." Lina hesitantly stated.
"That's… quite far-fetched." Mai replied. "Have you ever heard of a gem acting this way before? These are gifts from the gods, how can they be defective?"
"I know what you're thinking but how else do you explain what just happened here?"
"Well there's a first time for everything." Lina insisted. "You know come to think of it, this gem has been here for quite some time now hasn't it? Haha." She chuckled while she looked at Khay.
"The gem is not defective." Miscovan arrived at the scene.
"Miscovan, Tawa." Mai addressed.
"Was the current situation so serious that these two had to come to the grounds themselves?" Lina thought to herself.
"The gems are not defective, saying that would be an insult to the gods that gifted us with it."
"That's what I was trying to tell her." Mai said.
"Then how do we explain this?" Lina curiously inquired.
"The trio along with their friends came to the teachers for a concrete explanation as to what had just transpired.
"What I mean to say is…" Miscovan stressed. "Young Master doesn't have any elemental, at least not yet. The gem just couldn't find any.'
"Their zhin control may not be top notch but it shouldn't have had any problem detecting. I know for a fact these two are not entirely zhinless." Tawa gave more insight to the situation.
"It's rather unfortunate but the boy doesn't possess any elemental and the gem isn't broken. That much is clear." He backed up that statement as he held on the Elemental Affinity gem and filled it with a minuscule zhin and it glowed to match the E.A Miscovan had.
"I don't quite understand it either or should I say, there is nothing to understand. The gem works fine." He threw it towards Lina."
Trilith was frozen in shock upon hearing such harsh, will-breaking words, Lilith, Han and Lui looked at Khay as he stood staring on at his clenched fist.
"So it's no good huh…" He sighed. "I thought there really was something for a minute there… Well whatever." He said leisurely, looking rather unbothered by the discovery.
The tutors there were very much surprised by the boys' sudden change to the news and so were his friends.
"Haha, that's the spirit, young master." Miscovan chuckled and smiled.
"Khay…" Lilith softly cried out. And before she could reach Khay to console him, Trilith ran out.
"Tril." Quickly Khay went chasing after him.
"There you are." He found him seated at the back of one of the academy buildings; sobbing, trying to hold the tears in as much as he could. He couldn't take it anymore, the disappointment, how helpless they were.
"So it's really a godless era after all huh…" He said to Khay.
"Hmm… Maybe? We still haven't cemented on that." He said, staring at the clouds.
"How can you be so calm?! After we worked so hard on this, how can you just act like it didn't mean anything to you?"
"Hmm… You're quite wrong there partner. It did mean a lot to me. All the training we went through just to get to this day… only for it to blow up in our faces. I'm… okay with this but you, you at least deserved something. You worked more than I did.
"We've been ridiculed, called names, looked down on. We've really made it this far with our own two hands haven't we?" Trilith said.
"We have… We did everything in the book, yet look at us. Needless to say, I have made peace with it, there's no need for us to wallow; I have a backup plan. Listen Tril…."
"Backup plan?"
"Yeah, I kind of thought this might happen, so I had one just in case."
"Since when did you get so smart?" He sniffed, wiping away his tears. "Let's hear it then."
Sudden quick but heavy thumping footsteps approached, heavier than your average footsteps.
"What could this possibly be?!" the voice resounded and echoed. "My two star pupil down in their spirits?" He was loud as he was sturdy and he had the two locked in a hold under his bulging muscly arms.