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  “Then she is not doing a very good job at protecting her children if we are missing five angels,” Venir said. “Unless they figured out how to summon a Focus Room and they hid in there when the darkness came.”

  “So they may not actually be missing. Only that, the book does not teach us how to summon a Focus Room,” I replied. Or else I should have summoned one already.

  When Tarain and Naia arrived, I traded them the knowledge about Focus Room with Naia’s information about the archangels in Ether. A book about archangels was one of the easiest to read in Mash, but the book itself did not provide an in-depth discussion about them.

  First and foremost, there was Michael the Archangel, the first born, chief of all archangels. Then there was his brother Gabriel. Then the other archangels were Emerald, Sapphire, Jopiel, Ariel and Metatron, and then the brothers Uriel and Raphael. There were many more archangels, but their names were not included because they wished it that way.

  “Each archangel is capable of summoning dark energy,” Naia explained.

  I glanced over at Venir and he looked uncertain about it.

  “You think the darkness is dark energy?” he asked.

  “That’s what most of us in Rebu believed,” Naia answered.

  “So the darkness could have been summoned by an archangel?” Tarain asked.

  “Yes,” Naia agreed. “A line of thinking that most of us in Rebu subscribed to. Would you blame an archangel for the missing angels? Maybe. It also means that they must be safe.”

  “Why would you think that?” I said. “Have all archangels proven not to harm an angel?”

  They all turned to me when their incredulous eyes.

  “How can you doubt the creator of the academy themselves?” Tarain said with a little reprimand in her voice.

  “And thanks to your information about the Focus Room, Orieumber, I am now certain that the angels were not taken by the archangels but are actually in the Focus Rooms,” Naia said.

  “Well, then, case closed!” Tarain said, looking pleased.

  “That’s it? We solved the case?” I said.

  “We all did,” Naia said. “The entire team including the angels in Rebu. Now I’m going back there to trade your information with theirs. I’m sure they’ll all be happy to learn about this Focus Room.”

  Venir and I went back inside after both Naia and Tarain left. There was this little nugget of doubt lingering in my mind. So what was the darkness about then? A trial? A riddle to solve? Did we solve it? If we did, what then?

  “So do you agree with them?” I asked Venir as he leaned against the fifth wall.

  “Look, I only know probably point zero, zero, zero, zero one of everything there is to learn in here. I have no idea what to think about it,” he replied.

  Then something clicked in my angelic brain. “You know what? I think our quest has just presented itself to us.” I watched his face change from resignation to bemusement.

  “What now?” he asked.

  “We’ll have to investigate what really happened to those angels. If they are, indeed, in the Focus Rooms, then let’s find them there.”

  With his brows raised, he tilted his head to the side. “How are you going to find out if you don’t know their password. We don’t even know how to summon one!”

  “Watch me learn how to summon one.”

  “Oh, I’ll certainly watch it,” he said, actually looking sincerely excited.

  “These angels were in Rebu when they went missing, right? So that means, in Rebusphere, there is a book there that can teach us how to summon a Focus Room.”

  “Okay, that’s a good plan. So what are you waiting for? Let’s go.”

  “Wait, what? Let’s go? You’re coming with me?”

  His smirk looked enchanting on his face. “I think I’m ready for the next sphere.”

  CHAPTER 10

  Venir and I were witnesses when Tarain made her first flight toward the third level called Salsusphere. And when her first attempt turned out successful, we cheered. She glanced down at us from above and made a funny face before moving high upward.

  I sighed. I knew I could fly up there, but I did not want to leave Venir in Min. Not yet.

  “You don’t need to wait for me,” he said. His gaze was assessing. “Go. Get as much information as you can, then come back here and tell me as you owe me one.” Then he grinned. “For friendship.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “I’m certain.”

  To his confusion, I hugged him and kissed his cheek. “I’ll be back.”

  His gaze followed me all the way up. And when I made it to Salsu, I could see his big smile. He was such a sentimental angel.

  “Congrats,” Tarain said. “You made it. You should have told me you’re ready. We could have flown together.”

  “I’ve been ready. I just don’t want to…” I did not finish my thought.

  “You don’t want to leave him yet? He is such a good looking angel.”

  I suddenly felt a burning sensation in my stomach. Although I agreed with her about Venir, I did not want her or anyone to be close to Venir as I was to him. It was as though I had claimed him as mine. Was I making any sense at all?

  The books here in Salsu had blue plate coverings. Other than that, it was no different from the two lower spheres. I followed the routine. Read, read and read. There was no knowledge here that would help me about the missing angels or the Focus Room. After reading a few books, I flew down back to Min. Venir glared at me like I was bothering him.

  “You’re back early. Concentrate, Ori, go back there.”

  I flew back, read more books and decided to go back to him. The glare was back when he saw me approaching.

  “Ori?”

  “It’s boring there. The books are about navi measurement. Dedui—”

  Venir cut me off by placing a finger on my lips.

  “Don’t say it. Treasure that knowledge. Alright, how about this,” he said as though he was talking to a fledgling back in the Garden. I found this tone irritating.

  “Can you change the tone of your voice?” I said.

  He looked as though he was holding himself back. “Okay, what I’m saying is that. Take as much knowledge as you can in Salsu so you will have enough navi to get to the last sphere. And maybe you can find information that might be useful for our current quest.”

  “How hard was it to say that minus the condescending tone?”

  “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to. It’s just I’m frustrated myself. I’m really trying… really trying very hard to increase my navi, to be better so I can fly with you. But it’s not working for me. I just have to accept the fact that you’re way beyond me and that I’m really, really, really slow.”

  The look of acceptance and resignation in his face coupled with the tell-tale sign of tears in his eyes made my chest feel heavy and tight.

  “You know you’re special just the way you are,” I said. I couldn’t help the tears falling down my cheeks. My strange reaction quickly worried Venir.

  “Hey, hey. It’s fine. I’m definitely fine,” he said. “I’m not going to do it again.”

  “You didn’t do anything,” I said confused.

  “I will try not to do anything that will make you sad, I promise,” he said. “C’mon, smile for me.”

  “That would be a lie because I don’t feel like smiling?” I asked with my brows raised.

  “Yeah, that’s true.”

  But the way he said it actually made me smile.

  “I think I should go back now. I’ll fly all the way to the Rebu,” I said.

  “And I’ll be watching you from here.”

  And he watched me fly higher and higher and higher, past Salsu and into the Rebusphere where the books had red plates and the angels looked at me with curiosity.

  “Orieumber, you made it!” Naia said when she saw me moving toward her.

  “I got bored with measurement.”

  “You’re going to need your m
easurement knowledge to survive Rebu,” she said with the seriousness in her voice.

  “A knowledge for knowledge. What’s Rebu all about?”

  Naia smiled, showing her twin dimples. “Deal. The one who initiates the trade should be the one to tell it first.”

  “Pick your hardest book in Salsu and I’ll tell you about it unless I haven’t read it,” I said, grinning.

  “Okay, there’s this one book about rulmond, I guess volume two since there are like two rulmond symbols on the cover,” she said, thinking.

  “Oh, that’s not rulmond, the book is called Metropolis.”

  She looked confused. “Then why are there two rulmond symbols on the cover?”

  “It’s the symbol of the Metropolis. It’s the book next to rulmond, right? It’s actually my favorite book in all the books in Salsu.”

  “Yes, that’s the one. Okay so tell me something about it.”

  Ether was divided into five spheres and the Metropolis, the main place for major trading, was in the third sphere called Tertium. This was written in one of the green books in Mash. However, one blue-plated book in Salsu gave thorough and interesting information about the Metropolis. Since it was a higher sphere much higher than the entire academy, fledglings did not have enough navi to fly over there. So did they have to wait to become a full-fledged angel to visit the Metropolis? The book had the answer. Fledglings from the academy could use the secret door found at the Academy’s second celestial house.

  “However,” I said looking into Naia’s eyes. “For it to open its door, it requires valuable information from you.”

  “That’s fascinating. Now, for the information, you seek. Rebusphere contains knowledge about the different kinds of energy. It has an Experiment Area.” She pointed at the wall where the name was written. “It’s where you experiment mixing energy.”

  “Are they teaching us how to summon one?”

  “Like this?” Naia opened her palm and a glowing green light suddenly hovered over it. “It’s just a basic energy summoning. I can only summon a Dili quad of the energy.”

  Dili was the term for the tiniest amount of energy. A quad, on the other hand, was one-fourth of the Dili, so tinier than the tiniest. These terminologies were all discussed in Salsu.

  “But the glow is big.”

  She gave me her dimpled smile again. “Look, you’ll have to find it yourself.”

  How could I forget? No freebie.

  “So you’re done here?” I asked.

  She had this huge smile on her face, and her wings glowed even more yellowish.

  “I’m ready for the next house!” she said with wing-flapping vigorously kind of excitement.

  “Good luck!” I said as I watched her descend to the Mash. But before she flew farther, completely out of my sight, I was able to catch her reaction to parting words ‘good luck’ to her. It was a complete confusion on her face like she did not know what the heck the words even meant.

  This led me to ask the question myself: where did I learn to say that phrase?

  Good luck to me figuring that out.

  In Rebusphere, I was way up in the air, hovering with my legs crossed and a book in my hand, and I could barely see Venir below.

  The book I was reading had the word ‘Chemistry’ written on the front. It listed down the different types of energy.

  Rood was the name for red energy; Grona, for green; Naranza, for orange; Gel, for yellow; Blo, for blue; and Hwit, for white. There were many other kinds of energies excluded in the book, but these were the ones written in the book for summoning purposes.

  I looked up and noticed an angel sneaking a glance at me.

  “Hi,” I said.

  She looked startled when I said that.

  “You’re fast. I saw you just breezed through all the books, plate after plate, section after section. Magnificent.”

  “I’m Orieumber. Have you been here long?”

  “I’m Grinlock. I’ve been here long enough to see ten angels move to the next house.”

  “That long, huh?”

  Then a thought occurred to me. “So… you’re here when the darkness happened?”

  Please answer my question? She glanced to her left and then right like she was making sure no one was listening.

  “Yes, and my friend went missing after that,” she said in a whispered voice.

  “But they said that those missing angels might have just been in the Focus Rooms,” I replied with my voice lowered.

  “Focus Room? I’ve never heard of that. But I did hear that the Great Riddle was already solved.”

  “Naia didn’t tell everybody that?”

  “Naia? The angel you talked earlier?” She shook her head. “She only told some of us who could afford her information. And… I got nothing that valuable for her.”

  My eyebrows clumped together and my eyes narrowed. So that’s how it was here in Ether, huh. You’re as good as the knowledge you owned.

  “Well, consider yourself lucky today because I’m going to tell you what you need to know. For free.”

  “Oh, no. That’s in violation of the rule here. You’re only devaluing your knowledge and by devaluing it, you’re making my knowledge even less valuable.”

  “No one’s going to know?”

  Her eyes widened. “I think I might have a piece of information that I can trade with yours.”

  “Oh, really? That’s great then.”

  “This information only works with you since everybody I met already acquired this information.”

  “Let me have it then.”

  “I found this information from one of the green books in the Mash, which I believed you skipped, and yet you made it way up here. But that’s beside the point, anyway, the air, the water, everything around us here—They listen and report everything they sense back to the main pool inside the Communication Garden. There are angels working there as Communication Analysts and they sort out its importance and urgency and analyze messages, interpret the languages used and if it’s worth scribing, they write them and send them here at the Academy.”

  It was interesting how I kept missing all the important information. I would bet my wings Venir had read this book. Still shaken from the idea of being watched or observed, I shared with Grinlock what I learned about the Focus Room.

  Grinlock’s eyes shone with hopefulness as she listened to me talk about the possibility that the missing angels might be hiding there.

  “So there’s a book here in Rebu that teaches us how to summon a Focus Room?” she asked.

  “I believe so. Or where else did they learn it? I don’t think it’s in the lower spheres since this is the sphere that has books about basic summoning.”

  “You’re right,” she said, smiling. “I’d better find it then.”

  I went back to my reading. It took a while before the book taught me how to perform a simple energy-summoning.

  Energies were part of Ether. They were the reasons why we flew, the reason why the spheres were floating and stayed on their spot, the reason why everything around us moved, glowed. To summon them was to call them and to make them do what you want them to do was to tell them. It was like holding the air in your palm and molding it into something as though it was a piece of clay. Easy, right?

  But energies in Ether did not understand angel-tongue. They had their own language. Fortunately, to speak the energy-tongue, I only needed to acquire at least a Sei amount of navi. Sei was equivalent to reading five thousand books. With that much navi, I could summon the blue energy Blo and yellow energy Gel. The red energy Rood required a navi equivalent to reading at least ten thousand books, or two Sei. And that’s only to summon it, good luck telling it to do something, for Rood was the most stubborn of all energies.

  But here was the silver lining. At least for me. Sylfur though required as much energy as Rood—that is, a navi equivalent to reading ten thousand books—responded well to me. It was like we had developed a rapport. It did everything I wanted it t
o do. In fact, I always kept one with me. It turned into a necklace and I wore it around my neck.

  It became my second important companion, next to Venir.

  I entered a room where the angels were on different stages of their experiments. Each of us had a transparent container where the summoned energy was confined. My task was to conjure energy and transform it into another and then another.