Karfice gracefully tipped himself up over the edge of the rugged earthen hole, coming out in an expansive room, the walls of which were too far in either direction to make any sense of its scale. But given the wooden podium, atop which Wyll stood proud, hand over his eyes squinting to try and make sense of the scene around them, it was safe to say this was probably a lecture hall of some sort.
“Agh, I really shouldn’t have skipped those presence lessons. How am I supposed to make heads or tails of any of this just by touch?” Wyll mumbled to himself.
“Touch?” Karfice asked.
Wyll glanced over, the darkness doing little to dim his joy, “Exactly right. It’s kinda hard to explain, but my presence is kinda like a big hand. Anything it touches, I feel as well. I’m no good with it though. Era and father keep telling me it's just a matter of finding the right connection between mind and body, but I can never figure it out.”
“Just like Wimbleton,” Karfice mused, remembering the boy’s very similar description of his own presence.
Wyll’s eyes widened, his cheery expression faltering, pupils shifting ever so slightly back and forth across Karfice’s face, “Just like…”
“I’M HERE I MADE IT!” Gyrus burst from the hole, slamming into the ceiling from the burden of his momentum and falling down remarkably uninjured. “...am I the last one?”
Wyll refocused, smile slowly returning, “Yup, which means…”
“Yeah…I know…” Gyrus pouted, eyes downtrodden.
“It’s alright, there’s always next time,” Karfice patted Gyrus on the back, as best he could, anyway, with only one arm and 4 bodies atop his shoulder, noting Wyll’s avoidance of the comment and storing it away for later scrutinization.
“Right,” Gyrus set his eyes, expression hardening to one of pure determination, “next time is when I shine…oh, right! I almost forgot! ” Gyrus said, taking a moment to pose and flex his actually rather impressive physique before extending a hand towards Karfice. “Let me carry them! I got real strong working with the Korak, guards, and I’ve got more arms than you…not that there’s anything wrong with that, of course…it’s just that I think it would be-”
Karfice tipped his shoulder, letting Gyrus take Garrote and Kiva, while keeping Maria for himself to carry, “Focus Gyrus…and try not to call attention to disabled people's disabilities, generally a bad idea.”
Gyrus took a sharp breath in, bending at the hip as if to apologize, but stopped himself, clamping his mouth shut and focusing up, drawing another rise of laughter from Wyll.
“Whose light do you carry, boy? These winds are not your own, I can tell. I saw within the very depths of your soul, but saw only winter and death. I thought the golden boy the only one with the light of the sun. So tell me, where did this light come from?” A strange voice echoed, the coalition of hundreds of human voices building together from the darkness just beyond his summer’s gleam.
“I recognize those voices,” Wyll whispered, keeping his eyes locked on the darkness, one hand tightly gripping a simple steel longsword at his waist. “They sound like students. I think whatevers infesting the school grounds is somehow worming its way into their bodies.”
“Are they…dead?” Gyrus asked, uncertainty falling over him.
“I don’t know…” Wyll said, brow creasing.
“How did you two manage to avoid it?” Karfice asked.
“Luck, as it so happens. We were both sitting in an after hours lecture, trying to find a way to get to you when everything went down. It was instant, like someone turned off a lightswitch. One moment the teacher was rambling, the next I couldn’t see a thing and everyone started screaming. If it weren’t for Gyrus, we wouldn’t have been able to move at all, but his fire bought us enough time to start burrowing. Honestly, we were kind of just running from the shadows and hoping. Turns out it wasn’t a bad gambit after all!” Wyll giggled, slapping Gyrus on the back who grinned sheepishly.
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“Do I think I cannot hear you mutter, mutter, muttering?” A single voice from above croaked.
Karfice looked up, watching as a single body, twisted almost beyond human recognition, descending from the ceiling, darkness enshrouding them like a weave of ropes. They stuck their hand into Karfice’s light, attempting to push their way through. But the moment the shadows made contact, they began to sizzle, fading into nothingness before him. The figure shot back its hand, wicked smile turning to crooked grimace, its skin blistering even from the slightest touch.
“Come on, we need-”
Just then, a mighty tremble shook the ground, sounds of shearing stone and crashing mountains somewhere off in the distance. Wyll’s arms spun round in circles as he tumbled from the podium. But he was up again in just a moment, popping to his feet with gusto, head snapped to attention, eyes closed and a single hand reaching out towards the source of the disturbance.
All around them, the shadows began to press forward even harder, tendrils lashing through the light, managing to make it most of the way through the some 30 foot expanse of summer before fading to nothingness, others stabbing right at Karfice, forcing him to duck low to avoid them. Gyrus stood at Wyll’s side, slashing through these tendrils with a blade of brilliant blue fire, splitting them in twain just enough to keep Wyll safe. At some point, he’d shifted the many bodies he carried over to his other shoulder, giving him a single arm with which to fight.
“What is it!?” Gyrus shouted.
“I don’t know! It’s a lot of crashing stone, I think, and flesh and muscle, but I can’t make heads or tails of it. One of them’s real dense, though, like a mountain of man,” Wyll replied, panic creeping into his voice as the shadows got closer and closer to hitting him.
“It’s Trenton!” Karfice shouted, pushing away the drowsy feeling settling over his mind.
“Are you-” Wyll started.
“I’d bet my life on it! Lead us to him! He’s probably got a plan!”
“Alright! Follow me, then!”
Wyll opened his eyes, drawing his sword and carving a path forward, Karfice and Gyrus close at his side. They bolted from the room, collectively breaking through the hallways, weaving their way barely between pillars of rising shadows which burst from the floor, walls, and ceiling, heaps and heaps of bodies trying desperately to breach the sphere of summer and failing.
Wyll and Gyrus alone were both remarkable in their own right, but together they formed something of a spark which shone with brilliant light. As Gyrus stumbled through the hallways, Wyll swung him around, using his own body's mass to press Gyrus forward. And when Wyll lost focus for a moment, Gyrus grabbed him by the collar and yanked him, pulling him several times from the grasp of the averician shadows. It was miraculous to watch, each making up for the other's weakness like a perfect duo. It seemed Gyrus had really found his match here at the Academy, disregarding how he even got there in the first place.
“Back in the hole, I thought I-APART!” They all broke either way, barely dodging a 10 foot wide spire of pure blackness boring through the ground, “-I thought I felt the shadows entering your body! How did you get them out!?” Wyll shouted.
“I don’t know. Something about the scene it showed me triggered an old memory. It won’t last much-”
“DO YOU THINK I DO NOT HEAR YOU LITTLE MICE!? SCAMPERING AMIDST MY DOMAIN!?”
All of a sudden, the hallway listed upwards, forcing them to sprint up the rapidly increasing slope of stone towards a section of flat ground ahead. It was as if the whole building was falling apart, massive clefts appearing in the building beneath their feet, gargantuan chunks of stone falling out of the walls and ceiling, breaking large holes in the ground and falling off into the abyss below.
Karfice couldn’t tell exactly what was beneath them, but guessing from the cold wind plowing through the room, it was safe to say they were in one of the sky bridges. A fall from this height would certainly kill, if nothing else.
Wyll made it first over the lip, just as the fissure completed its round, severing the hallway from the rest of the building. For a moment, the whole world slowed to a crawl, Karfice watching through the open hole as hope fell away, both earth and sky beyond the gaze of eye. But he refused to fail. This was no time to die.
Karfice slammed his foot against the edge of the listed hallway, leaping into the open air with absolute confidence in his ability. Below him, the darkness smiled, thinking itself another victim claimed, but Karfice was not meant to fall, not to such a paltry obstacle. He easily cleared the gap, rolling to his feet a little ways behind Wyll.
“COME ON GYRUS! JUMP!” Wyll screamed, leaning out over the gap with his left arm outstretched.
Gyrus may not have been a man of confidence, but something about the threat of imminent death in the black void looming below was a remarkable motivator. He stumbled as he tried to jump, the falling building and incessant shaking doing little to help him. It impeded his leap, forcing him to hop half heart on one leg out into the darkness. He wasn’t going to make it alone.
Wyll leaned further out over the void, reaching out as far as he could towards Gyrus’s flailing form. But just as their fingers touched, the first formations of a strong grasp, Karfice realized that the void had not been smiling for him. It knew he was beyond its grasp. It was smiling for Gyrus, who no longer stood within Karfice’s light.
A wall of shadow exploded from below, completely consuming Gyrus but a half man’s length from the ledge, the slightest flicker of light ringing from the darkness before being sniffed out for good.