IPandora's Box

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

“Now that that’s been taken care of, why don’t we start our lesson?” Zelo asked. Misun glanced to the side where a whimpering Tao did his best not to shed tears. He was rubbing both arms and looking back and forth from Sehun to D.O. who both ignored him.

“With everyone watching?” the female questioned uncertainly. “Of course!” a certain big eared male piped in; his wide smile easing her nerves, “None of us want to miss this!”

While Chanyeol’s demeanor comforted her, Misun was still confused by his words. Looking back to Zelo she asked, “Miss what?”

The Fairy King replied with a mischievous smile, pulling a small cube from behind his back. The cube was only as big as his palm and was completely see through except for an odd distortion that made it seeable to the eye.

As Misun stared at it, she could see Zelo’s form through it, but unlike glass or plastic, his body was not enlarged, but crooked and wrong; almost like a broken fun house mirror. “That…thing,” she mumbled, transfixed.

“It’s made of Zedic,” Zelo explained, “it’s a mineral only found in the Troll lands. It has a special property that reacts with magic. The Vampires were the first to discover its ability, but it was the Trolls that lead them to the discovery. Centuries ago, the Troll people were more civilized and human like. They lived in thriving villages set into mountain valleys. They tilled the innards of their land, selling and trading their finding with other lands. They weren’t smart necessarily, but they were able to get by and survive as long as they stuck together. But then, a drought hit the Greater Continent, where their land resides, and it left their people without proper food or a means to trade for some. They were left with the only resource that didn’t need, Zedic.

For most, Zedic is uneatable, but for the wide teeth, and strong tusks of the Trolls, it was sustenance. They could live off it and for quite some time they did; but it was not without consequences. Over time, the Zedic began to change them; it mutated them and as they mated and birthed, the young ones came out too big, too dumb, too foul. They became what everyone now knows Trolls as.”

“And what about the Vampires?” Misun questioned, “How do they play in?”

Yongguk chose to answer this, “They studied the trolls once they realized the Zedic was having an effect. At first they were just watching, interested in any being trying to live off a mineral, but when they noticed the children having a complete loss of rational intelligence, they moved in. Going around the Trolls radar, which really wasn’t hard at that point, they began to create their own mines. They extracted Zedic at a dangerous rate; even other countries, including our own stepped in to put a reign on things. We could not stop the Vampires, but we could at least slow them down with ceilings on how much they could extract per year. There are still working mines to this day.”

“With the first batch of Zedic though,” Zelo elaborated, “they experimented on its properties. They tried to figure out what made it, it, basically. You see its raw form is much different than what’s in my hand; close to a dirtied diamond, but softer. I digress, through one of the experiments, by far the most successful; they created something similar to this cube, but much