During the fourth week of training, the Argentian military tightened up on skills related to mission execution and success. The platoon was split up into four equally sized groups. Each group was given a corner of the woods outside of the headquarters building, far away from the suburbs of the city. They were then tasked to maintain their encampments for one week while one of the groups was randomly chosen to attempt to infiltrate them.

Each day they would be pulled for a new task related to the theme of that day. On the first, they were told to defend a caravan from assault by a squad of bandits. These roles were played by members of their own platoon guided by officers and intelligence support. Success meant getting goods out to a predetermined location.

The next day they trained their ability to operate in urban environments. Most of the students did not know about this training area in the city, as it constantly appeared as if under construction. No curious neighborhood kids ever spoke about what they saw inside if they managed to break in at all. Almost the entire day was spent on edge clearing rooms of a mock enemy, or simulating various hostile scenarios.

As the phase progressed, lessons further expanded into security and patrol protocols. They learned what was needed to disperse crowds and mobs, control the movement of those crowds, as well as how to organize anti-riot tactics with the tools provided to them. An opposing platoon would take the role of an aggressive mob, while Holiday’s platoon prevented their advance into controlled areas. They were harassed by throwable incendiaries, rocks, gemin casts, and chemical irritants.

Near the end of this training, a special course was given on improvised explosive devices. Recently, Lillyvon’s pirate clan had been using gunpowder charges encased by a tube of black gemin stones. Everyone in the platoon was required to learn how to disarm these devices safely. Not only was the explosive itself dangerous, but the black gemin inside had insidious properties of their own. The Argentian military was not afraid to reconstruct the live device in its entirety. This was done outside of the city, where any such device would be dangerous only to the personnel attempting to disarm it.

Black gemin are highly illegal in almost every nation of Una. Because of their fickle and volatile nature, they can cause great harm to their surroundings if disturbed or given access to unprotected skin. These gemin are capable of interacting directly with the mysterious properties of a person’s spirit, one’s “soul” so to speak.

A novice of the platoon was asked to remove the black gemin-containing tube from the inside of the device. Suspended by an iron bracket, to center the material within the gunpowder charge. His hands were clad with a thick pair of leather protective gloves sufficient for this task. Under normal circumstances, his protective equipment would have left him safe.

This time the thick gloves made the cylinder difficult to grab in his relatively small hands. The black gemin tube and bracket fell, with the iron bracket slicing open the pants of his fatigue uniform. The tube was packed with low-grade black gemin stones of assorted sizes. These contents poured all over the ground, but some entered the slice of his pants leg.

Only half of the black gemin stones were dangerous to touch, but with this many small gemin packed into an improvised device; nobody was going to check them individually. The enemy certainly wouldn’t be kind enough to do that for you.

Medical support did not get to the young man fast enough. Some of the black gemin that contacted his leg began to set, transmuting his flesh into a tumorous amalgam. Tooth enamel shards, fatty tissues, organ meats, and tendrils composed of elements of the nervous system attempted to lift themselves away from the leg. To free themselves of their hosting dreamer.

“GRAHHHH--- help...” The young man’s shoulder plunged into the ground where more of the gemin laid as sharp shards, determined to cause damage elsewhere. “he---hel---helaaAaa AaAaA AAHA-AAHA PLEASE! Don’t let ME DIE! Here, it-i--- burn-urns...”

The sharpest of the black gemin managed to penetrate the cloth covering his shoulder, performing the same transmutation of material there. Some were resting on his neck from his collapse. He lost his head cover in the fall. His forehead and cheek were becoming affected by the setting gemin as well.

Medical personnel approached with Professor Holiday taking the lead and kept their distance from the black gemin spill. Argentinian military research on black gemin was extensive. They had procedures for this kind of spill.

“Tomel. Price! Talk to us, boy. I know it hurts, but it’ll be over soon.”

“Why, why do I see them? Why do I HAVE TO SEE THEM!” The young novice was either starting to lose touch with his surroundings or was becoming aware of the small creatures trying to burrow their way into and out of his flesh. He raised his hands and up toward his face in an attempt to block his eyes, but this only caused further damage to his face.

“Do it, before we lose him!” The professor barked at the medical unit, as they procured a staff, wrapped in fine white Coopracian silk.

Professor Holiday’s own weapon was a moderate-colored fine glidewood cane short in length. This was an entirely different class of weapon, a staff topped with three large identically cut gemin white in color; a full triad. The body of the staff was daisel, a naturally white wood, and a fitting aesthetic choice. Whoever created this object cared about it very much.

The young boy began to enter a complex combination of neurotoxic and neurogenic shock, as the damage done to his nervous system was substantial. He began to convulse violently on the ground, contorting in grotesque orientations that alone could cause lasting damage to his limbs.

A member of the medical unit lifted the staff vertically by both hands and thrust it to contact with the ground firmly. A blinding light radiated from the staff’s crown. It even outshone the midday source. The expanding light formed a thin spherical shell of white light that swallowed every member of the medical personnel, the dying young man on the ground, the black gemin lying in the grass, and every student in the platoon. It continued its expanding bubble of light partway into the road just outside of the training area.

This pure light washed over the black gemin, and they became enclaved by it. The black color within them began to fade, and the gemstones became clear and inert. A deeply sooty smoke wisped and billowed from them as the white light refracted within the crystals. Scattering and dispersing it into rainbow colors.

The white bubble of light pulsed again with another round of expansion from the staff, washing over the body of Price. Black gemin that had embedded themselves in his skin pushed out and became clear as well. The creatures moving through and transmuting his skin, created by these crystals, released their material as a powder of dusty skin cells and bonemeal.

Two members of the medical unit ran up to Novice Tomel thickly dressed in personal protective gear. The ground in its current state was mostly safe, but the black gemin underneath the novice’s body needed to be touched by the light of the staff to be destroyed by it. They turned him over, and once he was, the black gemin on the ground were rendered inert like the others.