The Realm Protectors - Chapter 24: Chapter 24

I rub my hands together, breathing on them to try and fight off the chill. I push aside the tent flap and enter our temporary base of commands at the gateway collapse sight. It's colder here than in the city, probably because and any all light that was here last night was sucked into the void of the collapsed gateway.
It was a massacre.
When the tunneler dropped us off at the gateway a few hours ago, the Five Star General, Officer Alexxi, and the Chief of Intelligence behind us, we were met with the sight of bodies and a black ring of burnt grass.
When the gateway was still functioning, it was one of the most beautiful places in Capital. It was placed a little ways outside of the city for protection, but it was still a sight to behold. There was a guard post lining the road, and a giant white stone circle on the ground was at the end of it. Eight giant pillars, each carved with a symbol of a High Arch position, surrounded the rip in the air, outlined with an arch of white marble.
Now there's nothing there but a pile of bodies and a thin, shimmery scar. The smell of death lingers on the air. It reminds me of the graveyards in Mork. They all reek of decay – both from the humans buried there and from the deteriorating stone walls, tombstones, and all the various flora.
The tent is slightly warmer, since there are two fire elementals inside keeping the room warm. A circle of folding chairs surrounds a bulletin board full of pictures and papers, pinned up and connected with yarn. Nile is staring at it like he's interrogating it. Avani is reclining in a folding chair, sipping hot chocolate. We all changed out of our Coronauguration outfits pretty much as soon as we got here, opting for thermal leggings or sweatpants and warm sweaters.
"All of the people in the surrounding area have been interviewed by Alexxi, his team, and I." I tell Nile. He nods, never looking away from the board.
"Tell me again how many soldiers were lost." He turns to Avani. She makes him wait while she takes another sip of the steaming liquid.
"Sixteen guards that were posted around the gateway are missing." Avani recites. "Another eight were inside the guard post, and all eight were found with unconscious. Three died before they could reach the hospital, four are in critical condition, and one is already in recovery."
"Have we interviewed him yet?" Nile asks me. I shake my head.
"Last I checked, he wasn't awake." I remind him.
Nile huffs and turns back to his board. He looks at the pictures of the guards that the Chief of Intelligence pulled from the files. Twenty-four men and women who are fighting for their lives or MIA.
The tent flap opens and the Chief of Intelligence walks in. He nods his head in greeting.
"Arch Aquino, any news?" He asks.
"None yet, Chief Carmichael." Nile replies. "Could this possibly be a hate crime against Capital?"
"Hate crime?" Avani asks. Her voice is weird, choked up with emotion.
"There are some old-fashioned elementals out there who aren't fans of a blended country." Chief Carmichael explains to her. "There hasn't been anything like it in decades, maybe even a century."
"What have you found?" I ask him.
"Officer Alexxi's teams have thoroughly searched the surrounding area, as you know Arch Voronkova." Carmichael says. "No one saw anything. They were all paying attention to the broadcast of the dance, if they were home at all."
"Well, you can't say this wasn't a planned attack." Nile huffs. "The timing is too perfect. They used the broadcast of the ceremonies to their advantage."
"That's for sure." The chief agrees. "We probably won't have any more leads to go off of until we found out what's killing those guards."
"And what that dust was." Avani points to the bags of shimmering black dust pinned to the board. Most of the samples we collected were sent to a lab for testing.
"Lyra said it was tunnel magic." I remind her.
"That's some of the darkest tunnel magic I've ever seen." Chief Carmichael frowns. I notice that his epaulets are striped with purple to show his status as a space elemental.
"What does it normally look like?" I ask.
"Purple." He replies. "Tunnel magic is purple. It's shimmery like that, but I've never seen black tunnel magic." He strokes his mustache as he paces across the tent. Nile flops into one of the folding chairs, propping his feet up on another.
"So right now we're working with mystery space dust, missing and dying guards who might not even be able to tell us anything, and that." Avani points to the side of the tent, roughly towards where the gateway scar would be.
"Surprisingly, I've seen worse." Chief Carmichael admits.
"What do you recommend we do, Chief?" Nile asks. He rubs his neck, doing his best to cover up the purpling bruise from Enya.
"Coffee?" Officer Alexxi walks in, two drink trays in his hands.
"Yes please," Avani snatches one, pouring the remains of her hot chocolate into it. I cringe and grab a coffee for myself. It's getting late, and we'll probably be here for a while yet.
"Any news on anything yet?" Alexxi asks.
"Nope,"
"Nada,"
"Nothing." I tell him. I take the folding chair next to Avani.
"Sir!" Someone shouts from outside the tent. We spin around to see a young woman in a white lab coat run in. She has a folder of papers in her hand. Her braids fly behind her and fall to her back when she stops, doubling over for breath. "I have the results of the exams, your Highness." She pants. She lifts the folder and Nile takes it.
"Thank you," He says. She nods and walks out of the tent. Nile opens the folder and scans it quickly. "Darkness poisoning."
My blood runs cold.
"Darkness poisoning?" Avani asks. "What's that? The Black Plague?"
"No," Nile and I say together. He jumps and motions for me to continue explaining.
"Darkness poisoning is when a darkness elemental projects shadows into the bloodstream." I look down at my nails while I talk. A few hours ago, they were freshly painted. Now I've picked most of the polish off. "It turns the blood cold and black. It spreads through the body, killing the organs it touches. Once it spreads to your heart and your brain, you're dead. Leaves the body with dark black veins."
I refrain from looking at Avani, not wanting to see her expression. She's probably horrified.
"It's one of the worst ways to go." Chief Carmichael says.
"They say you can feel yourself dying," Alexxi shivers. "Like becoming a living shadow."
"It's a destructive weapon." Nile says to Avani. "Especially to light elementals, and sometimes fire elementals."
"You can die in as little as fifteen minutes." Carmichael continues. "For light elementals, it can take five minutes."
The tent goes silent for what feels like a long time.
"So what does that teach us?" Avani asks.
"That at least one of the attackers was a darkness elemental." Nile says. "Most likely more than one, since they were able to get past twenty-four guards."
"They also had to have had at least one space elemental." I point out. "Someone had to detonate the gateway." Nile nods, marking something on the board.
Another person walks into the tent, folder in hand. This time it's an older man in a lab coat.
"The results of the substance, your Highnesses." He says. Nile takes the folder.
"I knew it," He mutters. He turns back to the board and begins furiously rearranging it.
"What is it?" I ask. Avani picks up the folder from where he dropped it.
"It's tunnel dust." Avani reads aloud. "With traces of darkness."
"How can that be?" Carmichael asks. "The user would have to be–"
"A child of space and darkness." Nile says. He pulls out his phone and types quickly. "I'm getting Lyra over here to debunk that scar."
"It also says that they're still working on tracing the... magic signature." Avani continues reading. "What's a magic signature?"
"It's like a magical fingerprint." I explain. "Everyone's magic has it's own unique components that make up it's signature. Police stations have records of most people's magic signatures for this reason."
"When will we find that out?" She asks.
"Magic signatures can take months to come back." Nile huffs. "It's complicated to pull them apart and place them."
"Sometimes you get lucky." Chief Carmichael points out."
"Not often." Alexxi reminds him.
Lyra walks in a few seconds later.
"Yes, Nile?" She asks.
"Come with me." He walks out of the tent. We all follow him over to the shimmering scar in the air. It's really jagged, and it changes shape when you look at it from a different angle.
"The scar," Lyra notes. "You want me to inspect it?"
"Yes," Nile nods. "Please."
Lyra raises her hands and touches the scar. At first her hand goes through it, but then she somehow grabs onto it, like it's a piece of wire hanging from the sky. She closes her eyes and twists it in her fingers, bending it.
She opens her eyes and lets go of the scar, instead holding her palm parallel to it. Her hand lights up with faint purple light, her eyes as well, and she shakes her head, turning back towards us.
"There is no way to reopen it." She states. "As I feared."
"Lyra, you're the space Realm Protector." Avani says. "Aren't you supposed to be the best?"
"If I tried to undo the stitches of this gateway, I would have no way of controlling it." Lyra replies. "Once a gateway has been detonated, it is dangerous. It becomes a black hole, and sucks up anything around it." She motions to the empty, blackened grass around us.
"What can you tell us about the stitches?" Nile asks.
"They are intricately done." Lyra notes. She stares at the scar with contempt. "Whoever did it has certainly practiced the art. It is complicated magic, something only a graduated elemental could even think about doing. Stitching a detonated gateway is like trying to saddle a wild bull in a wide open field. I can tell you one thing."
"What?" I ask.
"There is darkness woven into the strands," She grabs the scar again, twisting it around her wrist. "Small, delicate. Whoever did it has a space elemental somewhere close in their lineage."
"I knew it." Nile mutters again. "Chief, I need you to search all of your records for anyone with darkness and space anywhere in the last two generations of their lineage."
"On it, sir." Chief Carmichael nods. He motions to Alexxi and slices his hand through the air. A tunnel opens and they step through. It zips shut behind them. The ground shakes and the scar glows an angry purple. Lyra holds up her hands as if she was calming a spooked animal, and everything stills.
"What was that?!" Avani screeches.
"We should not open gateways this close to a detonated one." Lyra says. "The energy tempts the stitches to break."
The scar seems more jagged than when we came out here.