Within the following weeks, each of the Guardians' abilities ree by one. The change was received with mixed emotions. Half were ecstatic, half were less so. None of them had an answer to what this meant. 

The popular hypothesis? The Tree of Life hit a benevolent streak. Ruled out immediately — nature doesn’t care, nature simply does — along with the hope their Seeress was alive. The anomaly that occurred that same night? Forgotten in light of the new absence at their dinner table. Another theory not given much backing. Maybe this, perhaps that, all of them could care less why it happened. 

“No word from Lay?” 

Kris deftly entered Luhan’s room, eyes staring to dilate, taking a few moments to adjust to the darkness. His feet made a hesitant beeline for the spheres of light hovering midair, unable to tell where edges began and points ended. It had been awhile — two full years — since Luhan cooped himself up, lights off, in his room. 

He was a part of the “less so.”

Monotone, Luhan replied, “He’s making his way to Dunai now with a group of Flior merchants. It took him four days to get through the Council's checkpoint.” 

He swiped his right hand through the air. Once. Then twice. The translucent orbs trembled in the air, stuttering at a turtle’s pace to display themselves before him. He breathed out, parallels forming between his brow. Sweat running down his temple. He hadn’t slept last night.

“Still getting into the swing of things?”

“Jumped off the People’s Court yet?” 

Luhan shot back, inflection raising to dot his question with a jeer. He couldn’t help it. Even though Kris didn’t deserve to be berated. “Less so” much more than he thought, Kris retaliated meekly.

“I’m working up to it.” 

Another sound came out of Luhan’s mouth. There’s no real telling what it was. Kris thought it another sarcastic, lip-bitting laugh as the burden of an entire planet eagerly hopped onto their shoulders once more. When Sehun heard it again that night, he fetched Luhan a handkerchief from D.O’s room. 

Thumbing the embroidered edge, Luhan let out a single sigh. 

“If I thought I wouldn’t get in your way, I would help you.” Sehun sat on Luhan’s bed, eyes drooping. Midnight had come and gone. Yawning, the young male stretched out his legs, toes wiggling, “You know that.” 

“I do.” Was Luhan’s empty response. “Just sleep here.”

“Another all-nighter?”

“Yes.”

“Alrighty then.” 

It only took minutes for Sehun to give into the temptation of sleep. Happiness about the past sprouting up so unexpectedly one cause of his apathy towards the problems of his present: the Council, the riots, the starvation, the fires. The fires. The fires alone should have kept him awake. Tempted even more by what the future held, Luhan’s days only grew longer.

Relearning how to control the flow of time was, in fact, nowhere near as easy as hopping back onto a bicycle after two years without. Suho had lied, yes. Did that change the planet of hurt Tao would be in if he didn’t jump right back up, no. The training wheels were off and no one was better at diving stomach-first than Suho.

Hours upon hours of the day spent in the Training Room, the sandbag grew soggy and ten times as heavy. Suho began to develop what Tao called a "washboard” that would make D.O’s job of doing laundry at least twenty times as easier. For the thirtieth time, he swept the young Moon Guardian off his feet — quite literally.

Tao scurried off the floor mere seconds before a rainstorm of water came crashing down. Another step from Suho, another slip-and-slide for Tao. Headfirst into mud, body spasming with each new bruise forming in screaming skin, Tao tapped out of further punishment.

“Get up.”

Suho’s stern cadence clashed with his gentle demeanor. He’d have Tao back on his bike whether he wanted it or not. Pressure: an understatement for what Suho felt. Tao did as he commanded, rising to his wobbling feet slowly only to be knocked back down within the blink of an eye. 

In the past, a match-up between the two was unheard of. Tao’s abilities to distort time as he wished left him sitting on the bench for most fights. An amplifier with the potential to level any playing field in an instant. Better yet, tip the scales in his own favor. 

However, in this instance, he was nothing without his training wheels. 

“Get up.”

Suho said again. Tao did. The cycle repeated itself. Kai and D.O sat watching from the sidelines. With the recent rapid depletion of the ground's nutrients, D.O kept a close eye on the structural integrity of the sparring arena. Kai’s reason for being there was, as per usual, a mystery.

Kicking his legs back and forth, Kai wondered out loud. “When’s Baekhyun getting here?”

D.O answered without a hitch, “Luhan said he should arrive sometime next week,” though his primary focus laid upon the chunk of wet dirt in his hands.

“And Chen?”

“Busy as ever in the outer sectors of the city.” D.O grumbled a set of complaints beneath his breath before throwing his anger at Kai. “He comes back too late and leaves too early for you to catch a glimpse of him, though.”

Kai scoffed, rolling his gaze from nothing to nothing in particular. D.O felt like smacking him outright. “Nobody likes an early bird.”

“Late birds shouldn’t expect extra servings at breakfast, either.”

D.O’s fervent expression had Kai’s hunched back snapping into place. A full 180 degrees. Even straighter than Lay’s. “I’ll get up at eight starting tomorrow.”

Flare up of frustration settling, D.O said, “Good boy,” with an absentminded nod.

Another set of Tao’s groans filled the seconds between them. Kai stayed rooted in his spot, thankful he caught the hang of his own bicycle a few days earlier. Half of the Guardians had already gone through the painstakingly brutal “Suho Regiment.” Next up after Tao was Chanyeol — right after he stopped setting himself on fire.

“You’re still staring.” D.O gave up on his task. As the saying goes: A quiet Kai is a troubled Kai. An idiom their childhood taught him well enough. “There something you’ve got to get off your chest?”

“No, Mom.” Kai laughed, then became besides himself with who-knows-what. “But thanks for asking.”

“If you don’t want to be here, you can always just leave.” D.O wasn’t serious. He also wasn’t referring to merely the sparring room. 

Kai coughed once, then twice. D.O briefly wondered if he caught a cold. Kai's ears were red as he took them in his hands, rubbing hard at the loose cartilage. “I feel like a child caught in the act.”

“The extra cookie was too tempting?” D.O inwardly reminded himself to give him some herbal tea later. Outwardly, he was anything but kind. “Or, if you’re referring to an older child, we both know you’re still a .”

“Someone’s snappy today.” Kai mumbled. 

“I can’t get the front entrance right.” 

The devil is in the detail. The pointed arch. The wide pillars. There was something off about it. Or he’d gone senile. A possibility that had him pushing Kai’s cup of herbal tea up his list of priorities. Something to do before he forgets. 

Something to do. Before he forgets. To do. Before. Something. Forget. Forget it. 

Smashing the mud sculpture in his hand without lifting a finger, D.O mumbled another string of words Kai couldn’t hear. Over time, "Mom" became more and more pessimistic. The concern was still there, but with minimal to forced effort. Meals became “tedious” and “bland” — though the latter of these couldn’t be blamed on D.O. Kai had taken to avoiding him at all costs, his instinctual, childlike feeling of guilt enough to numb even the smallest of victories.

“Get up.”

Suho said again. If only it was that easy.

“I don’t blame you.” Kai shrugged, counting backwards from 100. When he reached zero, he would return to his room. Find something to do for the day. Maybe try his luck at teleporting to the kitchen with his clothes on. “The place burned down over a year ago.” 

In the recent days, the library became the prime place to treat any and all wounds under the glorious blessings of the Sun. Despite the dust gathering in visible layers on each bookshelf, the room remained the cleanest public space in the Hall of the Guardians. Chanyeol, here for the purpose aforementioned, flinched as a voice suddenly assaulted his large, butterfly ears. 

“Any third degree?”

Xiumin, thick book in hand, plopped down onto the couch beside him.

Red-colored lobes twitching, Chanyeol gulped down before responding to the Moon Guardian’s question — merely for the sake of talking to someone. Next on Suho’s blacklist, he couldn’t afford to be caught with his pants down. Or, rather, with his shirt off. 

Young and spritely, he could still take a shower by himself just fine. 

No Suho in sight, he more than welcomed the tight-lipped Xiumin’s pass at conversation, “Nah. A second here and there.”

Xiumin took a moment to scan Chanyeol’s . Flesh pink and bubbling yellow along his spine, marring his pectorals with lashes of bright red, the sight was cringe-worthy. Though Xiumin had his own problems: frostbite. 

Even after sitting in front of the stoking fire in his room for a handful of hours, pins and needles pierced every expanse of his exposed flesh. The only difference between him and the Guardian of Fire?

He had a near unbreakable pokerface.

“A shame Lay’s not here when he’s needed most."

Chanyeol squinted, rubbing more green paste on his wounds. D.O created it for him to heal his burns on a daily basis. Its contents remained unknown and, apparently, it was better he didn’t know. Through the nauseating smell, he huffed out, “He blames himself for it.”

Xiumin shook his head, flipping another page of "The Life of Samuel Johnson.” All he discovered was Boswell had a hard-on for Johnson. His third time through and he couldn’t see past the giant hyperbole.

“He’s just looking for a way to say goodbye.”

Chanyeol tapered the end of one last bandage across his chest, minutes having past since Xiumin spoke, yet he couldn’t stop there. Not when he’d been dying to ask someone, anyone, the following every waking moment of his current days.

“You really think she’s dead?”

Xiumin shrugged, “It's happened before.”

Accidents happen. Seeresses die too young. A new one is born to an old set of Guardians. In special cases, anyway. Xiumin doubted they gave the Tree of Life much reason to like them that much. 

Chanyeol pushed on, unsatisfied if he wasn’t burning up from the inside out, “Do you want her to be?”

“Slightly.” Xiumin decided after a long pause. “Does that make me an awful person?”

“No,” Chanyeol laughed for no particular reason, “it makes you honest.”

The flowerbed atop the subway terminal in Sector A laid barren. The People’s Court was burnt to the ground by the people themselves. The rioting intensified with each decrease in ration portion size. The Council couldn’t control the fires erupting from the Capital to the cities to even the most obscure towns — for example, Beleuch, where Baekhyun had spent his Seeress-less days. 

EXO Planet was not a kind place for a Seeress now.

Nearly blowing the library door off its hinges, Sehun came barging in. With a yell, he demanded, “Come to the Main Hall.” He picked up Chanyeol’s discarded shirt, connecting it to the Guardian’s face with a swift throw. “Now.” 

All too excited to stop reading, being the awful person he was, Xiumin stifled a sigh of relief behind tight lips, “What’s the rush?” A concern similarly voiced through a grunting muffle as Chanyeol pulled his shirt over his head.

Sehun took a moment to stop, stare, and smile, before announcing, “Her Highness calls.”

Troublesome circumstances thrown to the wind, she was here now.

A/N: Happy New Year! I hope to continue receiving feedback from you all this year as well!