In a raid, Cryostoria's agents started using a new weapon against us.

The best way to describe them are small barbs. They have guns designed to fire them at you, and if any peirce your skin, you're likely infected.

Within a few days, a mark appears at the site of infection. It's a circle with four lines, almost like a crosshair, pointing at the infection point. The mark does not ever fade.

Some time after that, symptoms begin, and there's not much we can do.

I've never seen a virus or disease like this before. It's completely unlike anything else.

We call it "the choke", because what it does is choke off your ability to use magic.

It starts slowly, but can accellerate quickly.

Eventually, you have no ability to use magic, and... you wither.

It consumes your blood. The only treatment we have that does anything is near constant transfusion and blood filtering, but all that does is slow the process.

Nothing works on it. It just copies itself. Magic use just accellerates the process. Curative magic just makes it spread faster.

The Air Tribe left us a message that if we wanted the cure, we would have to completely unconditionally surrender.

We have anyone with the mark completely quarantined, because we don't know if it can spread any other way. We don't know if it can spread to anyone who isn't a Fire Tribe.

I don't think it will do anything to Ura, Fennic, or Drago, but I don't want to take that risk. We're just trying to understand it, at this point.

But I believe this is an engineered weapon designed to kill us, and a sign that Cryostoria's technology is far beyond what any of us are able to even comprehend.

Our labs here are basic, and understocked. We need something like Ion's Hospital of the Sphere, but we can't transport anyone with the choke.

So we're trying everything we can to cure it.