"What did you say?" Adrian asked, turning around to face Seraphina. "You can save her?"
"Yes-" Seraphina mumbled, only to be yelled at by Adrian.
"Don’t make laugh!" Adrain yelled, ready to pounce at her. "Are you blind? Did you not see the condition she was in? A’MILA IS DEAD! NO MAGIC OR ABILITY CAN CHANGE THAT!"
"...you died once, too, rember?" Seraphina mumbled softly so that only Adrian could hear her.
Adrian was suddenly taken aback. He died once. That much was true, but was Seraphina suggesting they turn A’Mila into a chimaera as well? Would she even want that? Was it right to disturb the dead for selfish reasons?
Such questions flood his mind. But more than that, he was worried about the complications. The one who resurrected Adrian and turned him into a chimaera was Victor, a man who had researched about it for decades before creating the first chimaera.
Where could they possibly find soone like him on Earth? Even if they had managed to locate such a person, they couldn’t possibly possess the experience and talent that Victor had taken decades to acquire.
"No, I’m not talking about turning her into a chimaera," Seraphina interrupted, grabbing Adrian’s hand and walking back to A’Mila. "Let’s take her ho first. Then we can discuss the next steps without prying eyes."
As enraged as Adrian was, he cald down following his conversation with Seraphina. Although he wasn’t sure what she wanted to do, since she had never lied to him before, he decided to trust her and leave.
"Sir, are we going to let them walk away with the corpse-" an officer asked Rick, who shook his head.
"There’s nothing we can do," he replied. "All units focus on cleaning up and transporting the prisoners. We can deal with the rest later."
Despite Rick’s words, the real reason he refrained from intervening and letting Adrian take A’Mila’s corpse and leave was his desire to avoid another of Adrian’s rage-filled outbursts.
The others might not have noticed, but if Seraphina hadn’t stepped in when she did, Adrian would have certainly attacked them. The bloodlust in his eyes was as unmistakable as a cloudless sky.
Since Seraphina had succeeded in calming Adrian down, Rick was reluctant to disturb that fragile peace. For now, it seed wiser to let Adrian do as he wished.
However, this didn’t an Adrian hadn’t damaged his relationship with the DRA. Rick, in particular, was inclined to exclude Adrian from all future operations, believing that a reliable soldier was far more valuable than a volatile, walking nuclear warhead.
But it didn’t seem like Adrian cared about them all that much, either. From the very beginning, he had made his intentions clear to Rick and the DRA: he would do whatever he wanted, and anyone standing in his way would be treated as an enemy.
It was sothing the DRA had learned firsthand in the past few minutes when Adrian was a second away from slicing their throats.
"Huh... I’m getting too old for this shit," Rick shook his head before walking away.
***
Soti later, Adrian’s Villa...
Once Adrian had placed A’Mila’s corpse in the cold storage, everyone gathered in the living room, waiting for Seraphina to explain how she intended to bring A’Mila back to life.
"...as many of you already know, Gemini possesses a single body shared by two souls," Seraphina began. "However, this wasn’t always the case..."
She continued, "During the early days of the Zodiac, long before you were summoned, we had an encounter with a high-ranking Arbiter. While most of us escaped with little injuries, our youngest, Gene and Mini, the twins, t their end."
"It was a sad situation, but we were ready to move on... well, most of us were. Our leader, 13th, was adamant we needed to do sothing about it. That’s when we conducted a ritual which created the Gemini we know today."
While the rest of them knew what Seraphina was talking about, George had no clue about it. Unsurprisingly, his knowledge of Nexaria was limited to the scant bits and pieces he had gathered over ti from their conversations.
"So, you can conduct that ritual and resurrect A’Mila?" Adrian asked once Seraphina was done.
Seraphina shook her head. "It isn’t a resurrection ritual, but one of rebirth. By offering a sacrifice, we can fuse two bodies and souls, creating sothing entirely new. Sothing that is both familiar and entirely different. But there is a problem."
Adrian wasn’t surprised by the sudden ergence of a problem. He could already guess what Seraphina was about to say.
"The sacrifice has to be soone close to her," Adrian mumbled. "Isn’t that it?"
Seraphina sighed and nodded. Unlike in Nexaria, finding a sacrifice on Earth would be a challenge, and finding soone close to A’Mila was simply impossible.
Adrian sank into his chair, covering his face. He now knew why Seraphina wanted to discuss it away from prying eyes. She didn’t care about them overhearing anything, but she was afraid of how Adrian would react once he learned the whole truth.
’She’s right. If she’d told about this there, I would’ve completely lost it.’
However, that realisation wasn’t going to help in their predicant.
"What will happen if we use soone unrelated?" Sophia asked.
"I got no idea," Seraphina shrugged. "I have only perford the ritual once, so I can’t say much."
Just then, Fenris walked in and nudged Seraphina with her snout. Expecting the wolf to want so affection, Seraphina reached out to pet her, but Fenris had other intentions. She gently grabbed Seraphina’s crop top between her teeth and tugged insistently, urging her to follow.
Adrian told Fenris to stop, but she didn’t. It was the first ti Fenris had refused to obey him and kept tugging.
As a Kitsune, Lucina could understand what was happening inside Fenris’s head. But she refused to elaborate further despite Adrian’s insistence. It was sothing they needed to find on their own.
Adrian gestured to Seraphina to go with Fenris. She did so while the rest followed them until they reached the cold storage, and Fenris began scratching the tal gate, asking to be let in.
"Could she be...?" Vesper mumbled.
"Can we do it?" Sophia imdiately turned towards Seraphina, who was as shocked as them.
"I an... I don’t know what will happen-"
"Let’s do it," Adrian made the decision for them, opening the
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