Page 111 of Dark Island: Rescue
"Everything."
I narrowed my eyes at him. "Don't tell me you haven't studied at all."
A sheepish smile spread over Morek's handsome face. "Fine. I won't tell you that."
"You're terrible." I turned on my heel and returned to my desk. "There is no way I can cram everything into a couple of hours."
Once upon a time, I would have been ecstatic about spending time with Morek, just the two of us, but I was over my silly crush. The guy was yummy to look at, but that wasn't enough to excite me. I needed someone with whom I could also have a stimulating conversation.
A pair of dark eyes with flakes of molten gold swimming in their depths flashed through my mind, but I pushed the memory away.
It had been a traumatic night, and my mind must have interpreted the battle rush the wrong way. How in all hells could I have felt a connection with a guy among all that carnage, with the smell of sulfur and burned flesh still lingering in the air?
"Thank you." Morek placed a chair on the other side of my desk and straddled it. "You are a lifesaver."
"Do you want me to get you fresh caff brews?" Shovia asked from where she had remained by the doorway.
I turned to look at her. "I'll wait for you to return before I begin. You need this almost as much as Morek does."
She wasn't happy with me at that moment. "Please, don't. I really don't care what grade I get on the comprehensive refresher. It's not like the Spy Corps won't allow me to join because of a low score on this drakking test."
"True, but you need a passing grade."
"I'll pass." She waved a dismissive hand and walked away.
"You heard her." Morek leaned back in his chair. "Let's get to it."
I sighed. "Where do you want to start?"
"The basics," he said as if I was daft for asking. "All that drak about what makes Aurorys crazy. I'm not good with physics or math."
"Aurorys is not crazy. It's magnificent and challenging and unlike any of the other planets in our system, but it is also the only habitable one."
Morek shrugged. "How do we even know if the other planets are inhabited or not? It's not like we can travel to them."
"It's true that we cannot reach them, but there are other ways scientists can determine that. We know that the other planets don't have the right combinations of gases in their atmospheres to support life."
Morek winced. "Do I need to know how they determined that?"
I laughed. "No. You only need to know the basic stuff about Aurorys. It starts with its core. It's composed of a highly turbulent mixture of metallic hydrogen and helium, and that results in a powerful but erratic magnetic field. The field interactions with the solar wind create the near-constant auroral displays that bathe our planet in ethereal lights."
When Morek looked at me with glazed-over eyes, I knew he needed a simplified explanation. "Think of Aurorys's heart as a giant, swirling pot of soup made of two special ingredients—hydrogen and helium—thathave become metallic, like liquid metal. Just like how soup bubbles and swirls when it's boiling, the planet's core is always moving and churning. This churning creates a huge magnetic field around our planet. Imagine holding a giant magnet that's constantly wobbling and spinning. But unlike a regular magnet that stays steady, our planet's magnetic field dances and changes unpredictably. When this wobbly magnetic field meets the stream of energy coming from our sun, called the solar wind, it creates the beautiful lights we see in our sky. That's why we can't have flying vehicles, only hover-cars."
"So, how do birds and dragons fly?"
"They can feel these magnetic changes naturally, which allows them to fly safely through the ever-changing skies."
"That's why Elu created the bond between dragons and riders and gave them exclusive control of the sky." Morek pumped a fist against his chest. "Elucians are the chosen children of Aurorys."
"I wish that were true, but since we are less than two percent of the total population of Aurorys, that claim will be hotly contested, especially by the Shedun and probably by most of the Sitorians."
A grimace twisted Morek's handsome face. "The Shedun can all go back to the hell that spawned them, and it would be my pleasure to escort them there."
He was such a warrior at heart, and I admired that, but I also cringed at the vehemence, even though it was justified.
More accurately, the ratio that I had mentioned was true of the Daian continent's population, and not all ofAurorys, since it was unknown whether anyone lived on the mythical continent across the Addolian Ocean. A pre-division myth claimed that Dolis was home to fallen gods, and current science even confirmed the existence of another large continent on the other side of the planet based on mathematical calculation of mass and rotation, but since navigation across the ocean wasn't possible, the existence of Dolis would forever remain a mystery.
I often wondered about that myth, though.
