STILL AT THE OPEN FIELD…
"Just like I said earlier, a group of three will be formed with each containing four members, I will give you guys fifteen minutes to pick anyone you want in your group since there are exactly six guys and six girls in this class, all groups are to have two boys and two girls in their team making a total of four … so just organize yourselves; when the time is over, I will tell you what happens next; your time starts now" Manchester then walked out as he goes through a portal he opened.
"Alright this is it, this is my chance to finally get to know him, I am so excited, I must be the first to pick him" Sara said as he ran towards Sebastian in joy, while everyone picked who they wanted on their team.
Sebastian just stood there letting fate lead the way.
"Yooo! Sebastian! It is me Sarah, you will be my teammate, oh sorry that was probably unpleasant… please Sebastian will you be my teammate" Sarah asked having the looks of intense excitement, this is the closest she has ever gotten to him. Sebastian turned around and gazed into her eyes… she still had a soft smile on her face…
"yeah that will be nice" Sebastian replied immediately taking his attention off her.
Sara then whispes to herself... "yes"
"oh no, no one wants to pick me, oh no, anyone… someone, don't tell me, shit it is going to happen again, no, no, no" Luthur said in his mind.
"I will be your teammate" Albert asked…
"oh, oh, finally" Luthur said with a huge smile on his face, he turns to Albert's direction, seeing it was Albert, his smile then fades away.
"You, no, no, I can't be in a team with you, that can't happen, find someone else" Luthur said as Albert walks away.
"That guy is a weirdo, I can't be a teammate to a weirdo" he then walked up to Lauren to ask her;
"Hey, hmm…" he taps her.
"what?" Lauren answered.
"will you be in my group" Luthur asked.
"oh no, I can't, I am already in a group and it is full"
"oh" Luthur walked away in disappointment. He then spent the entire time, wandering about looking for a teammate, while the willing one came to him, he neglected them.
Sirius without hesitation, walked up to Ava, while on his way, Ava turned to his direction and they made eye contact, that moment, Sirius heart began to pound, he began sweating rapidly, he immediately looked away, and began walking the opposite direction, Ally then approached him and asked…
"will you be in my group, I …" Sirius did not wait for her to conclude before he replied.
"yes please"
SEVENTEEN MINUTES LATER…
Manchester pops out of a portal, with his entire hands filled with snacks, packaged in some sort of nylon with a plane color… he had like fifteen of them in his hands; he folds both arm by his chest supporting the weight of the snacks he had on him, he had one of the snack opened as he stuffed hi face with them.
"okay now, times up" Manchester said with his mouth full… they all stared at him, he gazes at them and then noticed he had his mouth filled up with snack, he immediately swallowed them all.
"oh sorry, that was just an illusion" he said laughing jokily as he stretches out one of the snack and said…
"who wants snacks?"
SOME MOMENTS LATER…
They were all digging into their own package of snack…
"So, Luthur where are your teammates, looks like you've got none" Manchester asked.
"Of course, I don't, none of them agreed to let me in"
"Oh, that is because you rejected every person that came up to you" Lauren said.
"Bitch…" Luthur said inaudibly
"what did you say"
"Hey we need to focus" Thomas said as he deeps his hand into the packet and brought out some chips, he then stuffed them into his mouth and thereby chewing them loudly, drawing everyone's attention, with every bite he took, making a cracking sound.
"Alright, so what group is left to take in this one" Manchester asked, pointing at Luthur.
"we are short of one member, we asked him to join our group but he disagreed, dude got some serious issues" Sara commented.
"Luthur, it is obvious now, your fate is defined, you can't take this exercise without being in a group"
"Fine…" he said as he drew near the group Sebastian was in…
"Now, Elliott, Sirius, Lauren and Lucy, Group A… Sara, Luthur, Sebastian and Ava, Group B… and Albert, Ally, Lydia and Thomas, Group C. Take note of your groups and your group members. I want to let you know that this is an outdoor exercise to test 'your' personal abilities, 'your' strength and 'your' agility" as he spoke he stressed out the word 'your' like he was trying to send a message, but they all just took it as a something unserious. If we start early tomorrow before the sun rises we should all be done with the exercise… meet me here exactly at the third hour of the day, yeah, before the morning twilight. Now you can dismiss"
In an enclosed camp out shelter about the size of a regular room, Elizabeth was standing by the side of a large table peering into a large paper on the table with hands spreading left and right on the table to support her weight. She was stressed out; with so much focus and dedication, she stared into a map. The map contained the outline and structure of Arcadia's land; containing the walls, the several routes, the streams and their various channels, the garden, the farms, and so on all viewed from a top perspective, it was a really detailed map; it also contained the details of the surrounding, every route that lead to Arcadia, the contour lines, rivers around and a lot of things a map should contain, but this map was sort of different as it had Arcadia zoomed in with the rest surrounding at a normal scale, in other words it was made specifically for Arcadia.
Elizabeth then took out a pencil, a pair of compass and a ruler and began working on the map, she was trying to dig out something; saying to herself as she was the only one on the room…
"something doesn't sum up" she began drawing lines connecting them, she was scanning through countless of possibilities that could arise, she drew the lines using an intense speed resulting to a motion blur while she moved her hands, erasing as she made mistakes and yeah, she was making a lot of mistakes, she made a constant use of the eraser. She suddenly stopped dropping all the tools she held onto. She then thought to her self and recalled what Lady Alia had said during their meeting… the memory echoed through her mind…
"the wound was two and half inches deep, with this sort of black smoke emerging from it" those were the words lady Alia said. The moment that statement played in her head, she immediately recalls a similar wound like that she had encountered in the past. It was a memory associated with a woman in labor about giving birth…
A FLASHBACK MEMORY…
Elizabeth and a crew of medical personnel of about five in the room, they all had gloves worn and dressed in white garment, they were all women with Elizabeth being the lead there as she was an expert in the medical field… in the background you could hear series of explosions from afar, as it was not so far away from a battle field but it was protected…
"Okay lady, I want you to keep breathing, look at me… look at me, don't fall asleep, don't close your eyes" Elizabeth requested paying attention to the woman's face and making sure she doesn't close her eyes.
"I can't be multi-tasking here, are you guys all useless here, we are about to lose two lives here, you (she points at one of the nurse) make sure she doesn't close her eyes and you (she points at another nurse) place your hand behind her head and pass energy into her to stimulate her healing process (the woman in labor was a non-xenian). Suddenly the woman began to scream in so much agony…
"I can see the baby's head, keep pushing, you can do it, keep pushing okay" Elizabeth said while the woman screams intensified like she had something other then the pain of childbirth hurting her… the woman was on distress, trying to reach out to her left foot while the nurses held her down, while in pain the woman in a muffling and in an inaudible way said…
"my… my… my foot, my foot hurts…"
"what did she say" one of the nurse asked
"she is talking about her foot" immediately Elizabeth took out her right shoe, she saw nothing, then she took out her left foot, this revealed something terrifying, while Elizabeth took off the shoes from her left leg, there was this black smoke that emerged from the leg making everything around the foot vague as the black smoke was too intensive, when the smoke cleared off, she saw something like a large slime feeding off her leg, it was black and it had a soft surface, that moment the rest nurses freaked out… that moment Elizabeth immediately toughed the slime in confidence while being grossed out, the slime turned to her it mouth was covered in black blood, it then made this creepy creature kind of sound and then it burst into more black smoke leaving behind a two and the half inch deep wound. From the looks of things, the slime was not actually there, it was more of like significance of the kind of poison used. Elizabeth turned to the nurses and said to them.
"She was poisoned, she may not make it" while saying those words, tears dripped out of her eyes.
"we need to get the baby out, before it spreads" leading to the wound, the veins were black spreading out the poison rapidly, while the mother screamed...
Finally, the cry of a child, a life was born, the child was delivered. Elizabeth immediately passed the baby to the nurse next to her and then made a sudden movement to the woman's head; she reached out to the back of her head, and placed her right hand on the woman's chest, Elizabeth then closed her eyes, as she pictured all her blood vessels exactly the way they were, she then followed the one that channeled blood specifically to the leg region, in what she saw, it was like going through a tunnel underground, but this tunnel is like some kind of maze, so you are just moving very fast making sudden turns and you are just going, going and going, but this were blood vessels instead; she tracked the vessels that led to the leg region and then stopped blood from reaching there, she created some kind of barrier that somehow the vessels will bypass the leg so as to stop the blood from circulating without cutting off the woman's leg.
But this wasn't enough the woman was still dying, the poison was still spreading, the woman screamed louder in pain even after labor, all Elizabeth could do was watch her dying in agony, the woman's eyes began to pour out blood, she began bleeding from her ears, her mouth, the baby cried feeling the wounds of its mother. The woman stretched her hand toward the direction of her baby.
"Stay with me, please stay with me" Elizabeth said as she held onto the woman's hand tightly, she then performed her renowned medical technique which was done by transferring one's pain from someone to herself, as she did that the woman stopped screaming as Elizabeth groaned in pain, all the woman's pain was transferred to her. She wanted to make the woman's last moment painless. While she held onto the woman's hand, she groaned even more, the intensity of the woman's pain was so much, Elizabeth stared deep into the woman's eyes, then she rested the woman's head on her chest like a little child as she wept. Tears poured out of her eyes as the pain intensified, slowly, the woman began to lose life, although she felt no pain, but still you could feel her soul whispering out for survival as every ounce of her cells fought for survival her body fought against the poison but it was futile, with her hand still in the direction of her baby, from her view all she saw was a new life, every person in the room and everything around were greyed out, all she saw was the red cloth in which her child was wrapped in seeing her baby crying, she them smiled softly, all she heard was the child's cry… as she slowly closed her eyes, as her life flashes away.
Elizabeth was holding onto a lifeless body, she was crying, as the pain the woman was suppose to feel faded out. One of the nurse came to Elizabeth as she made her lose grip of the woman's body, thereby leading her outside, opening the entrance curtain, by that time the explosions had already stopped, as the curtain opened revealing the bright environment, at their front, there was a man standing there waiting for Elizabeth, the man was putting on a silver colored coat that reached his ankles, it was like a jacket, a White-horse was standing behind him it was standing sideways to the man, his face wasn't revealed due to the brightness of the sun, but Elizabeth knew exactly who he was…
BACK TO REALITY…
Elizabeth snaps out of the memory she was having… she then picked up the pencil, marked out a location on the map, that moment she paused, and stared deeply into the map… she said to herself… "this can't be"
She ran out of the room, moving out, she then walked into Eric, slamming her head onto his chest…
"I am so sorry Eric… I am sorry… I need to find Lady Alia… Lady Alia where is she?" Elizabeth asked.
"Oh, she is over there where our timbers are kept"
"okay thank you Eric"
"what is it" Eric asked… Eliza did not answer him as she was more focused in finding Lady Alia, she finally found Alia, she was tending to an injured cow in some kind of farm.
"Alia, can you follow me" Elizabeth asked
"What is it" Alia asked while Eric followed them.
"yes, Eric I need you also… come with me"
Alia then asked again as she was scared the way Eliza rushed up to her… "what is the problem"
"can you show the me the location of where you first found those injured soldiers.
"I did not find them, I was told they were picked up from somewhere close to a tree.
"a tree… and that is what I am talking about, I had a similar case like that it was around that same tree.
"what is going on, we are going supernatural here now" Eric asked.
"nothing has never been natural in this world, that tree was where those soldiers were injured I presume, and that was where the woman fetched some water that she drank before she went into labor. While they were talking, they were moving out of the camp they were in towards Arcadia as it was not too far from where they were camping at.
"You should know all this are just probability, presumptions" Alia said…
"guys, I don't think it is a presumption, isn't that the tree" Eric asked as they saw it from afar. That moment, it was a dark twilight, as the sun had already set, leaving little rays of light that still gave the environment a little bit of light. That moment they ran towards the tree as fast as they could, they were now within the kingdom of Arcadia bounded by those sank and broken walls. They finally found the tree, it was still standing, it was an old crooked tree that still had little bit of vegetation, it was untouched after the devastating massacre and burn that happened in Arcadia. As they soared their view from the top of the tree to the bottom, something caught their attention.
From afar Alia could recognize the aura of her own blood… she pointed her hand straight ahead, as Eliza and Eric pinpointed what she was looking at, immediately she called out a name…