"Cookies?" Ayla offered, moving the tray towards Nox, who picked up a single one and bit into it.
She still had no expression on her face, but she genuinely wanted to share the treats, maybe as a way to comfort him?
Astra, on the other hand, sat with a hand on her chin as she thought about Nox’s words.
He had basically given her a summary of what happened in the rift and she realized that the kid had survived something he was far from prepared for.
If his words were true, then it was even a miracle that he was sitting here with them.
Even Radiant knights had died in that rift, and yet, the kid had somehow survived and only with just training for two weeks.
Was that even possible?
She had seen the state a tier 2 Eclipsed left him in, so how?
Astra still couldn’t wrap her head around that, so the voices just reasoned that she was simply a great teacher.
Mostly to get her to stop thinking so hard on the fact that the kid had survived, though they had just signed him up for an even hellish training with Astra.
She was pulled out of her thoughts by a flick on her forehead, causing her to turn towards the culprit,
The headmistress.
"Stop planning to torture the kid," She said, "he just barely survived and came back alive, you saw the state he was in when you entered the rift, didn’t you?"
Nox felt a shiver run down his spine as he heard the headmistress’s words, slowly, he turned to Astra and quickly realized, that it wasn’t a joke.
She really was planning to torture him.
But for now, thanks to the headmistress, it seemed she put that thought on hold....not that it was discarded though.
He then turned to the headmistress and asked, "can I have a pen and a sheet of paper?"
She looked at him, a bit confused for a second before nodding and from thin air, appeared both.
Probably taken out from her inventory, but that begged the question of what they a random piece of paper was doing in there in the first place.
But Nox didn’t ask, he just took it, closed his eyes to recall as much as possible before writing a single line of text.
That was as much as he could remember, so he picked it up and turned the paper towards the headmistress and asked, "what does this mean."
Arielle extended her hand, requesting both pen and paper which Nox handed to her.
She seemed to scribble down something before lifting the paper back up and showing the completed text.
"It’s old tongue," She explained, "the language historians believed we use to speak with the gods."
She passed the paper back to him before finally answering his question, "it means seal or some type of barrier."
Nox looked at the paper for a while and then recalled the barrier around the being of light, he also recalled the next thing it had written and he scribbled it down.
καρδία
"And this?" He asked again, lifting the paper towards her.
The headmistress looked at the sheet before looking back at Nox, with a sigh, she said, "you wouldn’t mind if I checked something, would you?"
He was a bit confused at her question, but he still slowly shook his head and watched as the headmistress’s fingers slowly moved to her blindfold.
With a gentle tug, she took it off, revealing the most beautiful pair of eyes Nox had ever seen in his seventeen years of life.
They were golden, like his, but that’s where all similarities stopped.
She had what seemed like cogs or gears within that were gently spinning. He almost got lost in them, until the headmistress spoke again, snapping him out of his thoughts.
"This is my solar tech, Oracle," she muttered, "it allows me to see far more than the normal eye can, at the cost of both eyes and a bit of my life force...well, depending on what I use it for."
She had said it so casually that Nox didn’t register the meaning behind her words until a few moments passed.
"Your solar tech drains your life?" He asked, doubting that he had heard that part right.
With a smile, Arielle said, "yes, but the benefits are just as valuable."
Nox didn’t get the last part of her words as he was still in a bit of shock, "how is that even possible?"
Arielle paused looked at Nox, then at Astra before closing her eyes as if contemplating a decision.
After a while she opened them back up and said, "do you know what Solar energy is?"
He was a bit confused at the question, but he still replied based on what he knew, "an energy from the sun, that is filtered into Helion cores and used to power everything in Aureum?"
"Yes," she nodded, "but do you truly know what that energy is?"
Nox thought about it for a while, all his limited knowledge told him was that SE was just energy from the sun, nothing more.
Seeing him think so hard, made the headmistress chuckle a bit before asking, "have you ever wondered how Energy from the sun is able to keep away Eclipsed?"
"Because they’re beings of darkness?" again, he summoned his limited knowledge pool and replied to the best of his abilities.
Still, he had no idea where this was going or how it’s killing the headmistress.
"And yet, the Eclipsed started surfacing when the sun still proudly hung in the sky," she added, looking at both Nox and Astra.
Even Astra was confused since as far as she and basically the entire Aureum knew, SE was energy from the sun used to power basically every tech.
Ayla, on the other hand, was entirely kept busy by the cookies before her, showing no interest in their discussion.
The headmistress finally, went to her point,
"Solar energy is otherwise known as Divine Energy."