"500?" Zuzia blurted, voice cutting the cave's heavy air.
"You may call me that." The voice replied, low and oddly resonant.
The figure in the dark shifted; the neon-blue numerals on the hood pulsed again as it regarded them, one by one.
"Interesting," 500 said. The syllables rolled like distant thunder.
"You are not a Dragonion, yet dragon-blood stirs in your veins." Its eyes—if they could be called that—glimmered when they settled on Tyler. Then it turned to Myrtle. "You have turtle-blood. You wear human skin as a mask."
"And you," the figure intoned, looking at Lanny, "your face bears a cursed mask. Emotionless. You don't cry, you don't laugh, you don't smile, you don't truly fear nor feel sad —they are all just an act. You perform what you think you should feel."
Lanny's nervousness she'd been showing a moment ago stilled into something harder, more wary. He was right. Lanny never able to show emotions like others.
