They decided to tell no one else, and it was immediate that there was no bug on Luna, although she now possessed a very different mercurial form than what she had before. It was bad news, and her heart raced as Ella checked both her person and her mercurial form.

Ella wanted to talk to Luna about what it meant, but Luna understood very well that hers was not a very common name. Should it ever be her brother, a figure from memory as distant as her first friends from before unintelligible childhood in Lodestone, she would ready herself. Until then Ella could not force her to grieve the news with anyone else he could be a terrorist, so she digressed. It was an exercise of trust, though the one who would be cheated would be Luna herself.

Ella did not ask her to manifest it on will, but she sensed new symmetrical structures. Luna said it was the result of her practice, though for that manner it was achieved in less than twenty-four hours, meaning it could’ve been unstable, if it was not outright dangerous for herself to push so hard.

That was not a prime concern and Eleanor trusted Luna to take care of herself in that way as well, as she believed her ‘management’ conditioned her to do, but rather the checkup reminded her that she never checked Sally, Tom or Stein to see whether they had any aptitude for magic.

Ella opened a very odd closet filled with a miscellany of tools, spanning from screwdrivers to knights’ things like walkie-talkies and in the view of others nearly magically produced a lightbulb, wires, and a special pair of heavy clamps. She looked to them with calling, and scalding authority, and did not even sit them down as she asked for Sally’s hands.

Without warning she squeezed her fingers with the clamps and observed that the lightbulb did not light up. It was too bright anywhere in the corridor, so it was hard to see whether it lighted up faintly, but Ella was sure. Sally would have minded the pain as she looked to her bleeding fingers, but it was too strange and curious, especially since Eleanor did not say many words, and not anything as she cleaned them for another use. She accrued the same result from Stein, but curiously when Tom tried it, the bulb lighted, but very faintly.

“These clamps produce electromotive force when in contact with magic or mercurial form. For you, Baronet, I’m not sure what it means,” She said harshly, “I suppose it means you have the potential, but very useless and slight potential to use magic.”

Sally felt slightly cheated that Tom shared her intelligence but also got so many inert skills she could never develop, even for all good purpose as knights or otherwise, were useless. Luna watched from the door, clearly visible, and no one rejected her prying, and she took it as good opportunity for to forget about what had just happened.

A sleepless Nicholas arrived, and told them they would go out one more time this week, since the last time they had not hunted adequately, and the incomplete and strange comradery was set aside, as everyone needed supplemental sleep.

Lawrence, who fell asleep early at his work was fully awake now, went to make celebration food then.

As he was finishing up, the siblings were up second, already prepared with their equipment, and Sally remembered to pack medical equipment. It was quite heavy, but ultimately simplified for knights’ purpose, and put in a hard case so it could be discarded in the confusion of contact without damaging the contents. Hopefully it would not see use, since magical healing did not necessitate the use of mundane antiseptic or supply.

The starlight painted their field of vision, and a most impressive Luna endured several of the smaller darklings, which struggled to take form as she lunged from target to target, and she did not feel as helpless or delicate as two nights before. It was surely uncomfortable, but she felt pride that the others did not have to take action.

She was finished unleashing one tendril, and while she should’ve tired, she felt boundless joy in achieving flight, pushing herself off the ground with more that came like spider’s legs from her back. She forgot both that she had armor with the appropriate slots at home, but more importantly that she had also punctured her back at two places.

She then fell to the sea, albeit a little gracefully, becoming acutely aware that she had committed the worse sin for an umbrae, being complacent with the resident darkling. Even if she was much better at control, the fact did not excuse her, and since that was as hurt as she got she stopped surrounded by uneasily positive disbelief from the watching squad, who enjoyed the whole thing until the fall similarly to as if they’d just seen a carnival attraction, mixed with pride and anticipation of even greater power.

She then conserved strength, scaling a smaller building and hope no one saw her arachnid form and taking a more defensive role as the darklings that appeared before them were the larger but less mobile kind, earning the others’ sweat.

There were swarms on that night, and thus the prince, who actually seemed in actual hunt to have very little authority, ordered a split. Stein and Ella, and also Tom and Sally, had displayed basic teamwork with each other respectively, thus Luna was to accompany the former, while Nick and Lawrence would watch the siblings’ progress. It appeared that while Stein wasn’t quite adjusted yet to combating darklings, he had the bare ability to cause one to disperse. However, the evaluation that he was more ready than the sibling was only based off of the first excursion.

Rather the decision, which had only been given enough focus because Luna was flying high by herself moments ago, was more decided upon by the learning manner of Tom’s and Sally’s performance on the same night. However Nicholas amended the misjudgment and sent Sally with Ella and Luna, since it would be better to have each teammate practice working with different configurations. After all, it was yet to be determined whether Stein and the siblings would all stay in zero squad.

As the split, since Sally, Ella, and Luna were deemed just slightly stronger, they would take a more winding path from the city center. If it was not for Luna’s training the day before a different evaluation would be made.

When they were patrolling, they became slightly worried that they didn’t see much of the darklings, and with the relatively high number they saw before splitting up, they worried, even though they had the numbers advantage. However, there was no indication that they had to turn around. Furthermore, they did not take communicators of any kind since Nick had never used these tactics before, and even two days prior they only split to escort Luna home.

Sometimes it was better to talk idly than to worry and feed the darklings. Sally never learned that at school, and Ella said that among the finer aspects of knighthood was that one should take lookout while the other two should stroll lackadaisically. It was only possible in groups of three, since including more than two people in the conversation would not make it very light at all. This time, Ella also checked the sky above them.

Luna was not very enthusiastic, and didn’t ‘believe’ in this method of patrol, and only talked to Sally because of the benefit Ella proposed would come from it. Truly, it was a ruse by her, and that’s why no one else had ever heard of talking at these kinds of situation. Ella knew that they would only attract the biggest and nastiest darklings which would not provide adequate training for Sally if Luna did not get her mind off of her brother. It was strange; Luna was too young to really know her brother, yet she remembered him doing some sort of favor for her. It felt even more bizarre now than when the news was just breaking in, that he would join an extremist faction of some sort. She really hoped her name was more common across the border.