Shon had had enough. Without uttering another word, he swung his right hand at the Fraxian leader’s face. However, the Fraxian leader swiftly ducked out of the way, and his fist met nothing but thin air. Struggling to regain his balance, Shon swung his left hand at him again. Once again, the Fraxian leader took a small step back, and Shon stumbled forward with his own momentum.

  Suddenly, the air current changed. Shon sensed the sudden blast of cool air before he saw the Fraxian leader whipping out a kick. Either way, he had no time to react. The next thing he knew, the leader’s shin slammed into his stomach like a metal pipe. His vision blurred and then darkened, and a wave of vomit rose in his stomach. Clutching his knees, Shon coughed uncontrollably, fighting every urge to throw up on the spot.

  The Fraxian leader signaled at his followers. Shon felt a pair of brawny arms grab him from behind. He tried to fight back, but that roundhouse kick knocked the last bit of wind out of him.

  With his vision still blurry, Shon could only rely on his thermal senses. As the gang member dragged him away, the Fraxian leader approached Professor Lilah, a new icicle forming in his hand. Professor Lilah did not retreat. She stood her ground and said something to the gang leader, and he refuted it with anger. Then he raised his icicle.

  Suddenly, Shon felt the wind knocked out of him once more, as if somebody had punched him again in the guts. His legs turned to jelly as he collapsed onto his knees.

  Shon reached out with his thermal sense, searching for the three gang members, but he found nothing. He reached out to Professor Lilah but also got nothing. All the body heat and the regular air perturbations from breathing and movement were gone. Suddenly, his thermal awareness became obscured by a mist of extreme cold. The air around Shon grew chillingly frigid, sending a chilly shiver of fear through his body.

  Shon recalled this feeling. It was oddly familiar. He searched through his memories and landed on a flashback of his novice days of Stormrunning training. That day, he accidentally detonated a cryo spear near him, triggering the exact same reaction.

  That was it. A detonated cryo spear would cool down everything by absorbing all the heat in the environment. That subsequently would weaken every Fraxian in the vicinity, especially those tapped into the heat energy in the surroundings.

  If the aftereffects had been so severe for Shon, who was barely using his thermal senses, how much worse would it be for the gang? They not only had more sensitive thermal senses, but they were also using thermal manipulation to conceal their body temperatures.

  Shon opened his eyes. The three Fraxians were wounded. No, wounded wasn’t the right word, for it did not describe the extent of the damage. They were completely debilitated. The cryo spear created a temperature differential so drastic that their delicate thermal manipulation efforts could not withstand the extreme shift. It was like trying to perform a delicate diagnosis with a stethoscope, only to encounter an unexpected, deafening explosion.

  Seizing the opportunity, Shon turned around and threw an overhand punch at his captor. This time, it landed square on his jaw, knocking him out with ease.

  Shon looked around. The other gang member, supposedly in charge of restraining Professor Lilah, also collapsed on the ground. The Fraxian leader, although visibly shaken, somehow managed to recollect his senses. Despite his shaky knees, he stood back up and assumed a combat stance.

  To have taken a blow like that and still remain standing, that required willpower and strength beyond Shon’s imagination.

  “Come out, you Valerian scum,” he shouted into the dark. The blast had taken out all the nearby candles and lamps. The moonlight itself was not bright enough to illuminate the Fraxian vision. Without his thermal senses, he was just as blind as Shon.

  “I’m no Valerian,” a female voice responded. She sounded young, probably around Shon’s age. Unlike the Fraxian leader, whose countenance was comprised entirely of anger and nonchalant vengeance, the young woman’s voice resonated many veins of sentiment at once, like a collage of colors twisted into a single string.

  “So you’re a Fraxian. Where did you learn to use a cryo grenade, huh? These are the weapons of the oppressors.”

  So it was a cryo grenade, not a cryo spear. No wonder the blast felt so strong. A cryo grenade was engineered with one sole purpose: to debilitate Fraxians.

  No response from the darkness. Suddenly, from the depth of the shadows and mist, a figure pounced out with astonishing speed. In half a second, she had halved the distance between her and the Fraxian leader, and the next second, her fist was already going straight to the gang leader’s head. At the very last moment, the leader raised his arm to block the punch. Nonetheless, he was knocked back a few steps.

  This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.

  However, the attacks did not stop there. A flurry of punches ensued. Unlike Shon’s amateur strikes, these punches lashed out with both velocity and precision. The Fraxian leader dodged the first few, but despite the missed punches, the woman did not lose any balance. In fact, for every punch that missed, it let her pack more force into the next punch. After a few punches, the gang leader could no longer keep up. He covered his head as showers of punches landed on his face and stomach.

  Finally, the Fraxian leader collapsed. Blood dripped from the cuts on his face onto the pavement. With a bruised arm, he propped himself up on his knees.

  The woman whipped out a pistol from her belt. She pointed the muzzle right at the Fraxian leader’s head.

  “Leave now.”

  “You are a traitor to our race,” the Fraxian leader seethed.

  “Don’t test my patience,” she responded curtly, cocking the gun.

  The Fraxian leader glared up at her. The orange glow in his eyes had now faded to near nothingness. He considered his options, and none seemed to allow him to outrun a bullet.

  Finally, he staggered back onto his feet. He limped to his conscious companion, and together, they carried the third on their shoulder and hobbled away.

  When they were finally out of sight, Shon turned toward the woman. She looked young indeed, perhaps only a year or two older than Shon. A few patches of bruises covered one side of her face, their colors suggesting they were several days old. Beneath these marks, her face was strikingly beautiful, yet her eyes gleamed of a sharp coldness — not of nonchalant frigidity, but rather a tumultuous blizzard of emotions.

  At this moment, Shon had a thousand questions, but the only words that escaped his lips were, “Who are you?”

  The woman stared back, seeming unimpressed at how elementary this question was.

  “My name is Vye.”

  “And who are they?”

  “The Dragon Cult,” Vye said, and seeing the confusion on Shon’s face, she added. “The Brotherhood of the Dragon Claw. They are some cultish Fraxian supremacists.”

  “And how did you get the cryo grenade?”

  “Easy with the questions. Tell me, who are you?”

  Shon had to rein in his mind to a full stop before he could respond.

  “I’m Shon, and this is Professor Lilah of the Deercreek Academy.”

  “You’re the Professor Lilah? Eleanor Lilah?”

  That caught Professor Lilah by surprise. She looked up, a mixture of surprise, suspicion, and fear in her eyes. Shon couldn’t blame her. There had been two attempts to hurt her just the past hour.

  “You know me?” the Professor asked.

  “Relax,” Vye said, sensing the unease. “I know the work you do here. I respect that.”

  “Uh… Thank you.”

  “Sorry, I didn’t mean to -”

  “No, no. It’s fine. Thanks a lot, really. I appreciate you saving my life…” The professor looked around nervously. Even without thermal sense, Shon could tell that her legs were shaking and her heart was racing.

  “You’ll feel better in a few days, hopefully.” Vye approached the Professor and, seeing that she did not flinch, put a hand on her on the shoulder. “The first time’s always the hardest, watching someone get killed. It gets better.”

  “It never does for me,” Professor Lilah muttered.

  Shon turned to the Professor, unable to conceal his bewilderment. He had always known of the Professor’s legacy, but he had never considered the details of these struggles. On closer thought, however, he realized he should not be surprised. Given the Professor’s age, she had lived through several grim epochs of the republic’s history.

  Far away, the police sirens appeared. They drew closer and closer, headed toward the heart of the Mill Row. It had been an eternity since Professor Lilah lit the flare.

  “So, what now?” Shon asked, motioning to the flashing red and blue glows from far away.

  “I’ll leave you guys to it then,” Vye said, ready to leave.

  “Hold up,” Shon said. “I still have unanswered questions.”

  “Try to stop me.”

  “I did not mean it that way,” Shon said, raising his open palms in conciliation. “I just want to talk, that’s all.”

  Vye eyed him up and down for a few seconds, not saying a word.

  “Come on, you can’t just leave me in the dark like this,” Shon pressed on, his voice shifting to a plea. “I still don’t know a thing about the Dragon Cult. I don’t know why they wanted to kill Professor Lilah. I don’t know if there are others like them out there. I just…”

  “I’ll consider it,” Vye said, then muttering just loud enough for Shon to hear. “How can you academy kids be so obnoxious and self-important, yet so stupid?”

  The sirens grew louder, and now the flashing lights were reflecting off the tents all around them. The screeching of tires and the rumbling of engines could be heard in every direction. They were about to be surrounded.

  “You need to get out of here, now!” Professor Lilah commanded. “You can’t be seen with the corpses of two Valerians.”

  “But what about you?” asked Shon.

  “I’ll stay. They will need a witness. But don’t worry, you two are never here.”

  Shon nodded. He wanted to say something, but nothing came out of his mouth. Vye’s voice broke the silence.

  “I’m glad they didn’t kill you.”

  The professor nodded.

  Finally, Shon put his words together, albeit bluntly.

  “Professor, you’ve always taught us to give ourselves fully to our nation, to love our republic. I always assumed you were… speaking from a place of privilege. But after today, do you still believe all that?”

  “Of course, Shon. I fight to better our society, precisely because of the love I have for its people. Why would today’s events change any of that?”

  “But… In a way, you have it even tougher than us. It’s not just the Valerians who detest you. Some Fraxians also want you dead. How could you still love a nation like that?”

  “What is love, if it demands reciprocation? What is commitment, if it falters at the first obstacle?”

  Shon nodded, silent. With that, he turned and disappeared into the darkness with Vye.