Area One

11

A few days had gone by since Jongdae, Yifan and Tao had arrived. Everyone had told their story again. Tao had been fascinated by Luhan's story and wanted to know everything they had managed to find out about the tree so far.

Junmyeon, on the other hand, had been completely stunned by all of their stories. Yifan's will to fight the Red Force was impressive, and to hear how his only friend had betrayed him had been terrible. Everyone had listened in silence as Jongdae told them how his mother had died and how he had discovered his power, not able to understand how he was able to feel so much sadness and not let it show.

Tao's story, however, had been nearly unbearable. The poor guy had started crying after a few sentences, which had led to Yifan doing the talking for him. All of them agreed that it was most likely for the Red Force to be responsible for the death of his family. The thought of the Red Force being able to do such a cruel thing without hesitation left all of them in pure terror. Even Luhan appeared to be shaken by the boy's past. Tao himself, however, was trying to push his memories as far away as possible. In one or the other way, he seemed even younger than Sehun, even though he was technically the older one.

Jongdae was a rather shy person, wandering around on his own and also trying to create lightning without any help. He kept insisting that he didn't want to hurt others. Junmyeon, however, suspected he was just not used to that many people around him. Jongdae had told them about how he hadn't met strangers often, usually being around his mother to care for her. Hopefully it wouldn't take him too long to get accustomed to them.

The people who still had the most problems with their powers were Kyungsoo, Yifan and Junmyeon. Yifan was able to let his scaled wings appear quite easily. However, he became more and more frustrated when he just couldn't figure out what else he was capable of. Tao kept insisting he was able to transform into a real dragon, while Jongin bugged him to try if he could spit fire. (What kind of fascination this guy had for fire was a question Junmyeon hadn't bothered asking.)

Kyungsoo succeeded in cracking up the earth rather effortlessly by now, but Sehun kept pestering him about the sensation thing and Kyungsoo was eager to make it work. From time to time, he would ask them to walk around or throw things on the ground so he could try to sense it in the earth, but it hadn't worked yet and whenever he tried this out, he would be completely exhausted afterwards.

The exhaustion was maybe their biggest problem. Junmyeon had already noticed how tired he felt after trying to use his power for a longer time, but he had somehow expected the others to be better at coping with it. However, every time Tao tried to make things age and reverse them, he complained about how draining this was, and Luhan had forbidden Jongin to teleport to places that were far away, because no one would know where he was if he fainted there.

"Where's Jongdae?" asked Jongin, turning around in a perplexed way. "Has he gone for a walk again?"

Luhan nodded, shooting pine cones at the trees absentmindedly. It was creepy how everyone kept struggling with finding an approach to their power, while there were three rocks bigger than his head and Tao hovering in the air around Luhan and the pine cones were shooting from the ground without him even looking in their direction. Well, he didn't need to, of course, but it was an unsettling sight. Junmyeon had hoped that there were others who managed to make the same amount of progress, just to make Luhan seem less terrifying. But the others were just as confused as he was.

"You keep wondering about this while it's everything you think about all day long?" Luhan asked, ignoring Tao's screams of terror and excitement. "Why don't you concentrate on your power instead of mine?"

"Because I'm trying to figure out how you're able to do this," Junmyeon shot back. "You could take it as a compliment instead of teasing me. And can't you read someone else's thoughts?"