CHAPTER 13: TRAPPED IN A BOX

Meanwhile, in the Hecate sector of Styx, Idia was facing the four intruders who had breached the Isle of Woe's defenses. Rook, Epel, Ace, and Deuce had already been questioned by the researchers thoroughly—how they got here, why they came, and so on. After that, it was the Night Ravens' turn to start asking the questions, and Idia was the one to provide the responses.

"So this place researches blot… and you guys kidnapped our friends to help you?" Epel summed up. He didn't quite look like he was buying it.

"How can you say you're the good guys?" Deuce asked angrily. "You just smashed through our school and beat us up!"

"Yeah, why not just explain the situation and ask the others to come?" Ace said. "…Granted, most of them probably wouldn't have listened, but still."

"Yes, I've already grilled the Charons about that," Idia replied begrudgingly. "Thing is, they're used to capturing mages that have already gone off the deep end. And when their targets used self-defense… well, that didn't exactly convince them to extend the olive branch."

"I'm just grateful that everyone is okay," Rook said. "If you can help them all with their overblots, it would mean a lot to us."

"…Did they really all overblot?" Epel finally asked. "I know about Vil, Grim, and Jill… but the others? Jamil, Riddle, Azul, Leona…?"

"Yep," Ace said. "Deuce and I knew about them too—we were there for almost all of them. It's just that we were pressured to stay quiet about it." Deuce nodded next to him.

"These overblots are highly irregular," Idia noted. "In ancient times, overblots ran rampant… though with our current technology and research, these events are now quite rare. But this year, we've had six humans and one direbeast overblot one after the other. With Jill being so involved with all the previous attacks, and then overblotting herself, I wondered if it was contagious… but all of the subjects are healthy with normal blot levels. We're trying to figure out what caused all the attacks—Ortho is running new simulations with them as we speak."

"May we please speak to them?" Rook requested.

"No dice. Until the twenty-four hours are up, the subjects need to be separated," Idia said. "As for you pests, we'll have to keep you here. Once we're done, we'll send you all back to school and start doing some clean-up for the mess that Charon made."

"So… that's it?" Deuce asked. "I can't help but feel let down somehow."

"What, you expected to break into an evil lair, beat up the bad guy, save your friends, and fly off into the sunset?" Idia scoffed. "Well, that's life for you—it's disappointing."

The door was unlocked, and Ortho Shroud let himself into the room. "Oh, hey guys." He waved to the four, but with less enthusiasm. "So it's you, huh? Coming all this way even though you didn't stand a chance against Charon… human behavior is baffling sometimes."

"Don't remind me about that fight," Epel huffed, mumbling "anti-magic armor hoo-hah" under his breath.

"I heard your whole exchange through the monitor," Ortho said. "So you don't have to explain the invasion to me. And Idia, I finished the simulations with all our subjects. I need to talk to you about the results."

"Right," Idia agreed. He glanced at the four sitting opposite him at the large table. "Well, I'll have to talk to you later. Got lots of directing to do." He took out his phone and started making texts, directing a handful of researchers to lead the students into guest rooms where they could be monitored.

"Thank you, Roi de sa Chambre," Rook said politely. "I'm sure Vil will thank you someday, too."

"That's probably the last thing any of the subjects want to do," Idia replied. "But… you're welcome, I guess."

Ace, Deuce, and Epel just gave him tired glares. Their exhaustion and frustration were at its peak, breaking into Styx and seemingly having nothing to show for it. But all four eventually allowed themselves to be lead away.

Once the Shrouds were alone in the spare conference room, Ortho took out a technomatic tablet which showed a number of results. "I made the simulations as lifelike and accurate as I could," he confessed. "They did make a small impact on the subjects… but the blot spike was minor in all of them. Definitely not enough to overblot."

"Geez, that's another theory down…" Idia grumbled. "We have half a day left to figure this out. This epidemic is just getting more and more sus."

"Epidemic… perhaps this wave of blot is moving like a virus," Ortho suggested. "It would be irregular, but it would explain how it's moving through different mages and then vanishing without a trace."

Idia nodded, studying the negative results of each test. He was getting sick of these sessions.

"There's one more thing I wanted to talk about…" Ortho's voice lowered. "As I was creating the personal simulations, I surveyed the subjects in the waiting area. They were all talking about their overblots—with the exception of Grim, they all followed the same pattern."

"What patterns?" Idia asked.

"Each of the human subjects had a brief period of weakness, which caused them to hear a distant dripping sound," Ortho said. "After that, they experienced a traumatic nightmare, which then pushed them to become more desperate and aggressive in their personal goals. This caused their blot to accelerate and then peak with an overblot. Then when their Phantoms were destroyed, the mages fell unconscious and they had echoes of those nightmares, but in a lighter form with their patrons giving them advice."

Slowly, Idia put down the tablet and gazed at his brother with mixed emotions.

"Idia… just before we executed Code Obsidian, you had a terrible dream," Ortho said. "…Was it about the original Ortho? Ortho 1.0?"

"…Got it in one," Idia muttered. "I haven't had a dream like that in a long time…"

"Idia, let me see your pen," Ortho demanded. Idia surrendered his magic pen without a fuss, and Ortho's eyes widened as he saw the multiple dark spots in the sky-blue magestone.

"My blot's accelerating," Idia said. "I don't know why—especially since my curse should be eating up the blot like always."

Ortho turned the pen around in his hand, using his sensors to thoroughly analyze it. "It's not that your curse stopped working," he said. "It's that your blot is appearing too quickly for your curse to erase."

"Of all the times!" Idia cried. "I suppose in their infinite wisdom, the Jupiters didn't consider this would happen…" He sat back in his chair, anxiously pulling through a strand of his hair.

The long blue flames that made up his hair were not a cosmetic quirk. They were a curse, passed down from Shroud to Shroud since the times of old. The Jupiter Conglomerate was made of several families, with the Jupiters up at the very top. Well, the ancient Shrouds decided to rise up and rebel against the Jupiters in the hope of taking the massive conglomerate all for themselves… and every Shroud since then had paid the price for it.

Not only did the Jupiters soundly defeat the Shrouds, but they placed a powerful and mysterious curse on the lower echelon to teach them a lesson. Shrouds had blue fire where hair would normally be, constantly eating the blot around it. One would think that eating blot would be a boon, given how dangerous blot could be. But if there was no blot to consume, the curse would start eating away at the soul instead. Idia had a few relatives whose blot attacked their souls, and… well, it wasn't fatal, but it definitely wasn't pretty.

That was why the Shrouds had to remain in the Isle of Woe, tending to Styx for the rest of their lives. This was the only place in Twisted Wonderland where blot was everywhere, meaning Idia's soul would be safe from his ever-present curse. Like Hades was forced to remain in the Underworld, Idia was forced to remain in the Isle of Woe, with the outside world as a distant and unobtainable fantasy. He once had dreams of travelling the world, finding a way to break his curse, making friends and maybe even finding love… but none of it was possible.

"Idia?" Ortho's voice sounded far away. "It's not too late. We'll fix this."

Idia stared at his younger brother… well, the humanoid modelled after his younger brother. Ortho 2.0 also had blue fiery hair, but it was created through advanced magic and technomancy—it didn't eat blot, nor did it change color with his temper. Idia felt a strange envy for Ortho.

"Worse case scenario, we may have to mark you as Subject H," Ortho continued. "If you're showing the same symptoms as the previous subjects, then we need to talk to them about this."

"What? Talking about feelings and sitting with them like I'm trying to level up their social links?" Idia asked in disgust. He glanced at the spots of blot in his magestone. "Is that the only way to figure out what's happening…?"

"It's a start. I don't want you to end up as an SSR-troublemaker," Ortho said.

"Fine." Idia stood up. "At least they won't remember any of this when we put them through the River Lethe at the end of our twenty-four hours."

"True… but I wish we didn't have to erase their memories of this," Ortho admitted quietly. "It would be nice if we didn't have any secrets, and we could be friends with everyone…"

"Yeah, if only…" Idia said halfheartedly. He shoved his magic pen inside his pocket. "C'mon, Ortho. Let's get this session over with."