The Story of Rhodan

"This is bad." Alabaster gasped while looking at the barrier circle.

"What's the issue? You can't fix it?" Boris asks curiously.

"It's far worse than that."

Boris knelt down to Alabaster's level to see what he is thinking. Alabaster's appearance is so fearful that even got Boris anxious. "What could be so bad that even you would look so scared?"

"We need to wake them up and run."

Taken aback, he says, "Run from what?"

Alabaster quickly put everything away and got up.

"Run from what?" Boris repeated, following him after one last look from the unconscious women. "From them?"

"Everyone" Alabaster replied and began attempting to wake up one of them up.

"Wait what?"

"Oh, just help me wake them up before the timer goes down!" He exasperated the quickly grab something out of his pocket. "I gotta inform the others."

"What do you mean by others?"

*

Viola always had good intuition. From childhood, she can feel if something is out of place even just for a fraction. As inconvenient this may seem, it serves her well when the situation calls for it. She thought that Selim is the cause of her anxiety right now but that isn't the case. In fact, it is the least of their problems.

Every single child and student barricaded themselves to the Great Hall because the dorms are unsafe. And this place is big enough to house everyone and is the furthest away from the other buildings. The children are undoubtedly confused and scared. The students are all taking the role of guards, medics and protectors until the situation ends. 

"There are hundreds of people coming this way." She says with a hand on the ground, feelings the rumbling. "The adults are waking up, but they are all weird."

"Hundreds?" Nathaniel said and looked at some of the fifth years, "Hey! Did you figure out how to break the barrier yet?!" he yelled.

"No! This is the most complicating circle I've ever worked on. We need the professors or maybe access to the library." Killian replied with the other fifth years, trying to break the barrier.

"Dammit, they're out cold. If Amelia Licht were still a student here, then she might've figured this out." Another one commented.

Unfortunately, she graduated last year so she's not an option.

"You might need to cast another barrier outside. We are going to be dealing with a stampede." Viola says.

Nathaniel looked outside. "How could there be that many peo-" he stopped mid-sentence to look more closely.

After a brief pause, he shouted, "We need a Protective barrier now!"

The younger children and teenager are terrified while the students began preparing for a battle. 

*

Boris is shocked to see that Alabaster has a walkie talkie in his hand.

"What is going on?" he asked with a curious expression.

"I brought mercenaries with peonies just in case things are out of control. All of them do not have magic nor any affiliation with us or each other."

"What are you saying?" Boris looked alarmed.

"Unless you want all those kids to die then we need to hurry up." He says with the straightest look he could muster.

Boris looked at a tablet from Alabaster's bag and through their surveillance system, he saw the mercenaries. They are large in number, and he immediately recognize the items. Part of sharing having the worms means understanding her feelings. Since her long recovery from the Insanity caused by temporal disease, they are well aware of what she likes or hates, and that sentiment is shared.

"Amaryllis is going to kill you and she will. How dare you..." Boris silently said.

"She won't." Alabaster replied. "We have to hurry up and free those under the puppeteer spell."

"Puppeteer spell?" Boris repeated. "Do you intend to kill everyone here?!"

"A similar one was cast when back when I was still a cult leader. It could only work when someone is unconscious. You cast the spell and place a command, and they will wake up entranced. This spell was forbidden because they have been used to create suicide bombers in past wars. Anyone who uses them is now executed by law in all countries. There are several conditions made on the barrier though. I managed to get rid of the condition that made the guards unconscious but not the puppeteering so I can't be sure that will work. The command here is to kill everyone on sight."

"Wait? Everyone?"

Alabaster cursed under his breath as he now tries to wake the women up. It is ridiculous how anyone could sleep through all of this. The mercenaries are all given similar orders to wake as many people as possible up and knock out the ones who show signs of being in a trance.

Alabaster is worried of what is going to happen in the Academy as it is about to turn into a bloodbath, but he is also worried of what would happen if Amaryllis were to find out what he had done. He kept this secret too far and might even be killed for it.

But there is something off about all of this.

The barrier takes at least a week to set up. No one will be able to leave. There are thousands who came over just to watch this tournament so the purpose of all of this is to bring many people in as much as possible. An adult's mind is different than a child's. In a paradoxical sense in this case, the child's mind is more protected than an adult because it is still growing so they will not be easily affected. The more vulnerable a person's mind is, the easier it is to control them. The anxiety and fear without knowing anything is something that everyone felt. The reason why there are separate barriers is because of the psyche's location, and it has a small range. The Barrier's has three conditions. 1. Every adult will be affected and knocked out until the mind control is complete. 2. Upon waking, kill everything on site. And lastly, 3. the mind control will stop once the objective is complete. The adults are similar, but the effects are subtle up until the right moment.

Escape from the inside. The queen will have to take action herself. Hopefully they could fix this before anyone starts to kill each other.

*

Amy had finished discussing terms with the Arcus family when she met an unsightly view through Boris and Alabaster's eyes. Though she may appear calm, she is far from it. 

She could tell that the eclipse just ended and thus the celebrations are starting. Every one of her shipmates are going to be enjoying themselves for the rest of the night. The Fire dogs are tired and went back to Teluka.

She walked across the ship deck and listened to the sounds of cheers, hoping to cover up the noise and disturbance in her mind.

He just had to bring these items in this place of all things.

Once this matter is over, she'll deal with him.