The Headmaster, appearing frazzled, walked back and forth in his office. Despite the late hour, he was still dressed in his usual attire, complete with a burgundy vest, white collared shirt, and green tie. He appeared to be nervous, as evidenced by the way he kept tugging at his vest.

The black shoes echoed against the marble floor as he paced. The nightlife from below in the Academy of Allegiant radiated up from the forty-three levels below and illuminated through the large glass panels of his office.

When Matthew, Jesse, Toni, and Richie entered the room, they found the Headmaster in a state of agitation and the ten soldiers already dressed for battle. The four warriors, in their black training gear, were in stark contrast to the crisp and pressed uniforms of the soldiers.

"Dani," the Headmaster called out, his blue eyes locking onto the door of his office. His brown hair was dishevelled and wild, adding to the air of unease in the room.

The older woman, who appeared in her late fifties, bustled in with a tablet, ready to take orders from the man. Cid pushed his round glasses up the bridge of his nose, clearing his throat. "Alert medical across the board for an influx of casualties."

"Casualties?" Matthew cocked his head as he stepped in front of the ensembled soldiers and his own that entered the office.

"Yes, the palace signalled a distress beacon from the moon moments ago."

"What form of distress?" Jesse moved forward on Matthew's heel, just as nervous as the rest of the room had been with that statement.

"Mayday was received." Cid elucidated.

"Wait, we told them to use Mayday as the code if they were under attack," Richie angled his head, watching as Matthew assessed that critical piece of information for himself.

Disbelief was a core factor, and the room watched as the Commander headed straight to the Headmaster's table. He pushed the chair to the side, leaned into the table, hit the illumined keyboard, and began to type away at the screens that appeared before him.

"That is correct," Cid exhaled and removing his glasses, he wiped them clean, a nervous sign evident, before he resumed. "The death toll is currently rising, but we expect that there was more than eighty per cent of the loss of life. The Elders are currently there as we assemble support. Our teams will be on the ground in the next twenty minutes."

"Why are the Elders there? This isn't their jurisdiction?" Matthew didn't bother to raise his head, but his voice demanded an explanation.

"The palace was attacked; it affects them all."

The soldiers in the room felt their hearts drop into the pit of their stomachs. Bile forced its way into their throats at the reality of their world.

"Dani, alert the soldiers, Alpha Prime and Alpha Beta teams, to be on board and ready to go in seven minutes," Matthew commanded, fingers faster than before at the keyboard.

"I want Zulu one through to fifteen on board, along with the Ceres and Dune teams dispatched out to the eastern border to line up with Archer and his academy. Get them to report back to me ASAP."

Dani's sandy hair swayed, nodding to the instructions that she relayed on her tablet, activating the orders immediately to those instructed.

"Skarsgard, I want my surgeons transferred out to Horizon Grace. It would be best to send the trauma victims there first. Redirect noncritical to Hopedale and level three trauma to Rosewood." The head of medical and trauma began her plan for casualties.

Matthew agreed.

The room had then watched with the last command on the keyboard; what Matthew had been inspecting on the screen before him had now been blared before them on a large hologram displayed in the room.

"Cedric gave me this," he explained of the footage, watching the front view of the cameras on Cedric's body suit. It displayed the grounds of the moon and a soldier searching through the city's rubble.

"Palace is gone," Toni inspected the footage.

"The grounds are in shambles."

Comments began forming from everyone.

"-Is that a dead reaper? Vile skeletal things. I haven't one seen in years!"

"-Impact looks like it hit the civilians harder than the palace."

"-I think there are wraiths aswell. Their black skin shimmers of the lights like that, we used to study these!"

"-I see guards' bodies and the elite."

"I can confirm reapers were in the first wave," Cid clarified on the chatter, "wraiths in the second wave. A servant managed to get the signal out before the palace took a major hit and crumbled all the communications."

"How did they get through the defence network?" Allegiant's network specialist who was with them in the meeting was baffled at that.

"Disabled, it appears. Rocco found the system in tack," Matthew remarked. "Cedric sent the report; I'll forward it to you to further investigate."

The man nodded, "I want to see it myself; I'll have the team go through the report while we are on the moon."

Matthew moved from the desk to the rest of the soldiers, "move out; you know the directive."

The others nodded to the Commander and began filing out of the room, leaving behind Toni, Jesse, and Richie, who continued to stare at both their Commander and Headmaster.

Once alone, Cid spoke, "this will impact Isadora beyond measure once the news circulates by dawn." The Headmaster paced, his tongue clicking the roof of his mouth, "I can only imagine the anarchy we will be faced with if the Queen is not found."

"Was it even confirmed that she was there?" Jesse folded her arms.

The room was filled with a moment of silence, punctuated only by the anxious movements of the Headmaster and the sound of the blaring reports echoing around them.

"Is that what you think you're doing? Controlling the hostility with a war? Turning it in your favour."

Matthew couldn't shake off Seraphina's words from earlier  that afternoon. Her words were at the forefront of his mind, rattling his confidence ever so slightly.

Considering the timing of that discussion, considering what she was trying to tell him. Did she know? Was she warning him?

"You are so arrogant." She hissed. "When this goes wrong-"

"-what do you think is going to go wrong?"

"You! The academies! You are not peacekeepers, you are built from war, made of war, and destruction is in your blood. You are going to tear our worlds apart instead of saving them. Our enemy knows this about you, the arrogant Commander on the front of this war. She will tear us all apart because you think you're smarter than her."

It was on repeat.

"Cid, has Ezra and the eastern border assumed responsibility?" Matthew looked to his Headmaster, who, in response, shook his head.

"No word yet. It is safe to assume she would in the coming hours."

"I don't get this attack. Why the palace on the moon? There is no tactical advantage," Jesse said, staring at the coverage. Richie sneered in response.

"They had pretty good odds at killing the royal elite. If she's not dead, she's critically injured, which does just as much damage."

"Richie's right," Matthew said, pacing a bit. He needed to get his team in the air and to the moon.

"She's incited war," Toni scoffed, "man. I don't like this. It's not controlled, nor on our terms."

Toni's statement placed the room into an unease that they didn't want to deal with. Clicking the roof of his mouth again, Cid looked between the soldiers before landing on his Commander.

"For now, let's get through the attack," Matthew acknowledged. He stared at Cid before he drew back to the others. "We'll deal with the rest of that when we're back."

"I implore you all to be careful when you are up there. There could still be another ambush for us, waiting for our soldiers to be gathered in one place."

"I'd like to see them try," Richie snickered at that, his fist clenching as his powers snapped around his hand.

"They don't have what we have."

Cid shook his head; he needed to be the voice of reason with these warriors; foremost, the power they held needed to be reigned and controlled.

"That is true," Matthew winked, thinking the same thing, "the only reason we haven't ended this war with Ezra is that we can't get in against their barriers and launch a full assault."

"Soldiers," Cid implored again, "get on the ship and head to the moon."

His hand raised towards his office doors, "we will discuss the rest of this when you are back. You are ordered not to do anything stupid nor take off towards the borders. Am I understood?"

With a smirk from the four soldiers, the cocky Commander that always held his cards up his sleeve in this war looked to Cid, indicating that other plans were formulating in his head.

"Matthew, don't!" Cid barked more fiercely than before, "Do I make myself clear?"

"You've made yourself clear for today." Matthew humoured. Turning on his heel, he nodded towards Jesse, Toni, and Richie, that followed their Commander out.

It left the older man to turn and look back at the monitors in front of him.

The live footage of Cedric's camera continued to display as the reports came in. It hadn't taken long for the publishing houses and the reporters to catch on to what happened. The news coverage blared on his screens and along with all the additional live footage.

Cid's heart palpitated, knowing that this was now only the beginning.

Whatever peace was in their world now finally left them after all those years that night.

Peace was now a dream. The war to end all wars was closing in on them.

Someone's gottaaaa voteeeeee............. for the poor helpless soulssss....