They knew they were heading the right way because they finally started feeling cold again. After the thick and almost dour heat of who knew how many hours underground, even the barest bit of brisk, cool air was enough to pull them forward with ever more enthusiasm.

That was part of the challenge too, Malcolm now realized. Finding their way through the maze had been a matter of logic and intuition, educated guess after educated guess leading them up the mountain. Then there were the obstacles, the lake beast and the other competitors, a test of their skills and ability to survive immediate danger. But between all that was the more deceptively perilous weight of their own minds, the psychological strain of the endless corridors and their identical absence of clear direction. A small factor when compared to everything else, but one much more consistent.

Now that was gone, and Malcolm listened along with Stretch as Red and Jason talked a couple feet ahead. Their lack of urgency should've annoyed him, but now with the whole ordeal being steadily put behind them he found himself strangely comforted by their careless banter.

"So," Red was saying, "when you say anything..."

Jason nodded, patting the sword at his hip. Excalibur's crossguard, small and gold, glinted a little too brightly in the low green light of the gemstones along the walls. "I mean literally anything, yeah."

"Okay. Diamond?"

"Pfft. Easy."

"How about… the sun?"

That made Jason miss a step. "The… sun?"

"Yeah. I mean, you did say anything."

Jason, somewhat horrifically, hummed in sincere thought. "The sun… It should be possible. The hard part would be figuring out how to make a slice that big."

"Alright." Red nodded to himself, as if anything about what he'd just heard was at all reasonable. "How about a black hole? No way, right? I don't care how badass your sword is, that thing's going all spaghetti the moment it gets close."

"Well if I ever get the chance to cut one I'll let you know how it goes."

Malcolm couldn't tell if that was a joke, but by now he'd accepted that Jason had the startling ability to take Red seriously so there was a good chance it wasn't. Next to him, Stretch seemed to be thinking along similar lines.

"Those two," he said, chuckling. "It's like they live on another planet. I'm still half expecting to get ambushed again after fighting those last guys."

Malcolm nodded. "It's hard to stay on your toes when you're practically unkillable. That's what we're here for."

"What? To be careful?"

"To be vulnerable." Malcolm reached up to adjust his glasses out of habit, then paused as he fruitlessly tapped his new goggles instead. "As long as we're around they have something to worry about. If it wasn't for us they'd probably still be fighting back there just for the fun of it."

"I guess... Nice to know I'm good for something."

Again, Malcolm couldn't tell if that was a joke either. Stretch said it with the same light humor he said most things with, but there was also a tinge of something else in his voice, a sighing resignation. Maybe it came out without his meaning too, because before the ensuing silence could get awkward Stretch squinted ahead.

"Hey, I think I see something!" he said.

Red stopped talking and narrowed his eyes, searching the corridor's end. "It's another door!" he said, breaking into a run before anyone else could react.

Clicking his teeth, Malcolm went after him, followed shortly by the others. "Stop going off by yourself already!"

Thankfully, nothing came out of the few branching caves they passed, and the four reached the door in short order. Stopping before it, Malcolm saw it was circular just like the last one, a great stone wheel stuck into the wall surrounded by a blocky orange frame. Jason walked forward to put his hand against it, but when he pushed and prodded it refused to budge.

"Hate to mess up even more of these ruins," he said, unsheathing his sword, "but the historians'll have to forgive me for this one. Stand back."

The other three did so, stepping gingerly away as Jason held the sword before him, took one deep breath, and let fly with a series of smooth slices. His blade swished faster than the eye could see, and in an instant the circular door was reduced to perfectly geometric rubble, its pieces sliding down each other.

At once the four Rangers all flinched, eyes closing to slits and hands held up for shade as a blinding light consumed the corridor. It took a few moments, but eventually Malcolm struggled past the dazzle and found a wide open span of dirt lit under a cloudy sky. Stepping through the opened door, he looked up to see that sky's endless smoky grey broken up by what looked like the bottom of an asteroid hanging impossibly in the air. Soratan's floating underside looked even larger from this close underneath, taking up far more space than it had at the base of the Peak.

Outside, then. They'd made it. Had they done so in time?

"Congratulations."

The four jumped a bit, looking to their left and finding a woman standing there with hands clasped over her hip. She looked like some sort of air hostess, well-postured and dressed all in blue, enough that even in their surprise none of the Rangers attacked her.

Calm and almost robotic eyes glanced over all their faces. "The Roxbury Rangers, is it? Your team is cleared to proceed. Please be aware that there are fifty-seven places left to enter the second challenge. Please also keep in mind that your team is malleable, and Tourney Tokens can be acquired and traded in at any point between challenges."

She held a hand out, gesturing toward where a crowd had congregated some dozen yards away. Too big a crowd for it to have just been the forty-three who'd supposedly beaten them here. "Your guests Magicians have been brought here in case you'd like to perform such a transaction. Bring any unregistered Talisman to myself or other attendants so that we can assist you."

So, theoretically, they could offer Kitty's ring to fill two more of the fifty-seven open spots. Malcolm considered it as they walked toward the crowd, getting deeper into the center of what he now saw was a large square plateau. He saw other exits all around the perimeter—some circular and structured like theirs, others more like raw, natural caverns—and as he did a couple of other teams seemed to find their way out. Attendants were waiting beside every exit, giving the same spiel his team had just gotten. Whatever they decided, they'd have to do it soon.

The Rangers found their friends grouped up by what seemed like one of two long metal platforms. Clover noticed them first, and soon after the others did too. What followed was a series of high-fives and hugs that Malcolm allowed himself to go through; mostly he was taken up by how long it felt since he'd seen them, even though Baba said at most it had taken them five hours.

"It was kinda boring," Luke was saying. "We got here pretty quick, but it's just been waiting around for you guys to finish ever since."

Malcolm raised a brow, breathing out a plume of hot air into the cold. Though he'd gotten rid of his coat while underground, he at least had the advantage of a Trick that functionally worked as an internal heater. "I'm surprised it took you so little time to climb a mountain."

"We didn't climb it." Luke tapped the metal underneath with the heel of his foot. "It was this thing."

Looking down, Malcolm glanced through the surface of this strange ground, a circular sheet that stretched for at least fifty yards in diameter and felt sturdy despite how thin it looked. At the center stood a perfectly cylindrical metal pillar guarded by a set of suited Enforcers as if it were some valuable treasure. Definitely not natural, and it didn't seem like any part of the ruins below, so Malcolm could only guess the RC had brought them down for whatever reason.

"What is it?" Malcolm asked.

"You think I have any idea?" Luke shrugged, nodding towards the other, identical sheet that a smaller crowd had already begun to populate. "Better you just see for yourself."

"Everyone competing gets on that other platform," Baba said, jaw clenched to keep from chattering. Hood up and face framed by its furred frills, she hugged herself in a clear attempt to preserve heat, smoking puffs with each word. "Those who aren't stay on this one with the luggage."

"So, how'd it go in there?" Clover asked. "You all made it out fine so... it couldn't have been that bad?"

Jason hummed, holding a hand out and waving it in a so-so. "Could've been worse, but things got pretty hairy a couple times. Ran into a giant hallucinogenic fish."

"A megalohypnota?!" Clover gaped, not unlike a fish herself. Then, stammering, she grabbed Jason and went nearly nose-to-nose with him. "What'd it look like?! What'd it smell like?! What happened to it?!"

"It got turned into sushi," Red said, snickering before getting elbowed hard by Kitty. "Ow! Hey, not like I'm the one who did it!"

Clover's face went slack, eyes crestfallen, and with a pitying look Jason pulled himself gingerly out of her loose grip. "Sorry, Clove. It took us by surprise, and I guess I panicked." He gave her hunched shoulder a pat. "Er... I'll tell you about it later, though. You'd find it interesting."

"What about this?" Zelda asked, tapping him on the arm. There a soft purple bruise had developed, healed over the past hour or so but still visible on his tan skin.

"Got it from some Magicians we fought." Jason took her hand in his. "One of 'em was Arthur. Y'know, the Arthur."

"He's here?" Zelda scowled, lips puckered like she'd eaten something sour. "Great. Guess we should've seen that one coming."

Glancing around her own lost frown, Rebecca closed in. "I'm sorry, is this guy famous in your world?"

Baba reached up to pull her cig free with a cloud of smoke that everyone else leaned away from. "Technically Arthur's famous on both worlds."

"Oh? Arthur what?"

"Arthur Pendragon, heir to Camelot."

"You…" Rebecca shook her head, hand up as if to ward off some assault. "Wait, you mean like the King Arthur Arthur? The sword in the stone Arthur?"

Zelda scoffed. "He wishes. More like King Arthur's great-great-great-times a hundred failson descendant."

Rebecca gave a wonky smile, expecting everyone else to do the same. She thought they were joking. "But… that's, like, a legend, right? It didn’t actually happen."

Baba was the one to finally break it to the girl, and she did it with her usual frankness. "Kid, of course it happened. Jason here's carrying Excalibur for crying out loud." She waited for Rebecca's waiting smile to drop. "Any myth or legend or folktale you've ever heard of, chances are there's some truth to it. At least enough that the Veil has to work double duty to convince everyone it's just stories."

Rebecca stared at her, face blank. Then, frowning, she turned on her heel and poked Red in the ribs. "Why have you not told me anything about this?!"

Bent over her finger, Red paused, glared threateningly at her, then gave her his own poke in the ribs. "It's not like I knew!" he said, grinning when another poke drew a laugh out of the girl. The two poked each other again and again, falling into a giggling mess, and Malcolm found himself with the sudden urge to either push them off the nearest cliff or jump off it himself.

Luke, looking on at them, leaned over to take his own chance with Kitty. "You think Cupid was real?"

The dark girl didn't even glance at him. "Real and dead."

While Luke joined Clover in shared despondency, Jason turned to Baba. "It's not just Arthur. The other one we fought had Mjolnir on him. If I had to guess, the League sent in a whole team."

"The League?" Red swerved in their direction, keeping Rebecca at arm's length. "You mean the Justice League?"

Zelda glanced down at him, deadpan. "I don't understand why we keep you around."

This novel is published on a different platform. Support the original author by finding the official source.

"Me neither," Malcolm said, huffing when Red stuck out his tongue in response.

"The League of Honored Families," Baba said, glancing from Red to Rebecca. "If you want more proof that all those legends are real, that's it. A strong enough Magician is bound to earn quite the legacy by the end of their life. Wealth, fame, power, and most of all the Talismans that helped them get it. It's only natural for them to pass it all down to their children, and their children do the same, on and on for as long as they can."

Baba stopped a moment to shiver, sucking on her cigarette like a lifeline of warmth. "They used to fight all the time, competing for their Talismans. Then the Ranger Corps came around here in the States, and the League was formed to compete. After fighting for hundreds of years, some of the most powerful Magician families in the world came together just like that." She snapped her fingers. "Shows how much the RC scared them."

Zelda crossed her arms. "You mean how much our Treasure Trove scared them."

"I thought you guys weren't supposed to be an army," Luke said. "Why get scared? It's not like you'll invade them or anything."

"Politics is about more than invading other people," Zelda said, huffing. "They're not on top anymore and they can't stand it. Really it's sad. Just the thought that someone else could be doing better than them is enough to make them freak out. The RC's not under their thumb and they can't stand it."

Stretch glanced slyly at her. "I have a feeling you wouldn't be too different if it was them being stronger than you."

"Uh, but they're not stronger, so who cares?"

Rebecca, taking this all in, pointed at Jason's sword. "But you're the one with... Excalibur," she said, the word coming slowly, like it was made of some alien language. "Doesn't that mean that your family..." She looked between him and Malcolm, brow raised. "I mean... are you guys—"

"They're not, but I am," Zelda said, pointing at herself. "Someone on my mom's side won it fair and square way back in the day. Then my parents got married." She wrinkled her nose. "The Pendragons have always hated my family for taking Excalibur, but joining up with the RC got the rest of the League all riled up, and it got even worse when Mom gave the sword to Jay. Apparently it's fine for one Honored Family to take stuff from another, but an Honored Family just giving their stuff to some commoner is crossing the line." She scoffed. "Don't ask me how that logic works. Bunch of entitled jerks."

Malcolm had been keeping an eye on their surroundings, noting each time a new set of Magicians exited the caverns and joined the winning crowd. He hadn't seen any familiar faces—no Arthur or Falnir—though he couldn't be sure he hadn't just missed them. "We're losing time," he said, glancing around at the group. "So, are we keeping the team as is, or should we change things up?"

"Let me come along," Kitty said, looking up at Jason. "We don't know what this next challenge will be, and there's safety in numbers."

"Are you blind?" Zelda asked, crossing her arms. "They already made it through the first challenge without losing anyone. It's best to save on Tokens." She glanced at Stretch and Malcolm. "It might even be best to keep one of you guys here. Jay and the brat could make it through, and in case one of them doesn't you can jump back in later."

Kitty sent a glare to the older girl, who stared back as haughtily as she could. Jason looked down, thinking through their options, and beside him Stretch made to say something but pulled back before the words could come out. Then, when the seconds ticked by and no one added anything, Baba grunted and glanced at Red.

"What do you think, kid?" Everyone looked up at her in surprise, not least of all Red himself. "We can't just stand here and knot ourselves up with what to do. Your gut usually makes the right call."

Red blinked, looked up at the sky, tapped his chin, then shrugged. "What we're doing now already worked out, so why change anything?" He looked at Malcolm, Stretch, and Jason, grinning. "Let's just keep going like this. Fearsome Foursome all the way."

Jason raised a brow, then nodded. "Sure, why not."

Sputtering, Malcolm frowned up at his brother. "What if we end up needing more people?"

"What if we end up needing less?" Jason said. "Kit's right about one thing: we don't know what the next challenge'll be. Sure, we'd wish we had a bigger team if we can all stay together, but if it's something that forces us to split up then our size'll come back to bite us. Four's sorta in the middle. I like it."

Baba turned to the other metal platform, where an uncomfortably large crowd had now formed. "You'd better get going, then. Don't let them run out of capacity before you get on."

The four said their goodbyes, though not without some hesitation. Stretch in particular loitered, and Kitty took a few steps along with them before getting gently held back by Clover.

"See ya later!" Red said, waving as he walked backwards. Voice lowering, he leaned close to Malcolm. "Feel kinda bad for 'em. They're missing out again."

"Right. They get to rest and maybe actually eat something." Malcolm sighed, feeling his grimy skin and empty stomach. "How unlucky."

They reached the second platform, finding another attendant waiting on its edge to count them as they stepped onto it. Strangely enough, they also each received a parachute, one they strapped on with the attendant's direction. Malcolm couldn't see the supposed aircraft that should've been waiting for them, and more than that he couldn't see any sort of runway or even a long enough piece of flat ground atop the Peak. Maybe they'd all be picked up by a series of helicopters?

In any case, with them included ninety-seven spots had now been filled; they'd sure cut it close. Malcolm wondered how the Magicians who got cut out of the competition would feel, once they climbed all the way there and found themselves too late to continue. He wondered how many Magicians wouldn't even get the chance, still lost in those underground tunnels and searching only for a way out, competition be damned.

"Oh, great. It's that guy."

Malcolm turned to Red and saw the other boy glaring across the crowd at a man who stood by the platform's central pillar. Suited like the Enforcers, the man was rather thick, though powerful shoulders and a strong jaw spoke more to his strength than any lethargy. His hair, carefully combed back, had grayed at the sides, age seeping in to provide an air of dignity more than frailty.

En. The very man who'd convinced Jason to enter them in this tournament. Let it be known that Excalibur's wielder was willing to risk such a powerful Talisman and Magicians from all over would chomp at the bit to sign up for the chance to win it, or so the argument had gone. Judging by Arthur's appearance, Malcolm figured En had been proven right.

"What's your problem with him?" he asked Red, watching as En overlooked the growing crowd from atop a somewhat sectioned-off circle that more closely surrounded the central pillar. Beside the Enforcement Bureau's director knelt another man dressed in a frayed lab coat, though he was hard to place while he faced the pillar, his back turned to everyone. "Far as I know you've met him literally once."

"Once was enough," Red huffed, arms crossed.

"Must've made a bad first impression," Stretch said, bemused.

"En can be a little pompous," Jason said, tight eyes searching the crowd for something, though Malcolm couldn't tell exactly what. "I can see it coming on a little strong for some people. Is that what turned you off?"

"Nah," Red muttered. "Just a feeling."

Strange, but that was Red for you. Before Malcolm could needle the other boy with more questions, an attendant shouted out that the hundredth competitor had passed the first challenge. At once a hum ripped through the crowd, partially from their own talk but also from something else, a kind of whirring, keening noise that lay too low to place.

"My fellow Magicians!" En called, hands out and voice carrying. His easygoing smile seemed, as always, a little too controlled, like he knew something they didn't. "I can't tell you how good it is to see you all here! You've made it! why not give yourselves a round of applause?"

Slowly, then more enthusiastically, they all did so. En joined in, smile closed but reaching his eyes, and when the clapping died down he raised his hands again.

"I am Endymion Rhodes, Director of the Ranger Corps Bureau of Enforcement. I'm sure some of you have heard of me, perhaps in an attempt to avoid me hearing of you?" A few of the Magicians chuckled awkwardly at that. Several were technically Rogues who Malcolm was sure En's Enforcers normally hunted down. "In either case, you have all earned your place in the next stage of this Tournament. Now, to start, we'll have to move locations, which is why my friend here has joined us. Everyone, meet Odellus Teach, our Director of Mystic Research."

Here En gestured down to the kneeling man. Thin in his labcoat, his hair stuck out brown and wild, skin an unhealthy pallor. Despite the silence that followed after En's clear cue, the man did not turn around; instead, his voice came reedy and quiet.

"Stabilization set," he said, tapping along the central pillar with a knobby hand. "Activating the module."

The ground shook. It was a light tremble, more of a humming vibration that rippled up his legs and into his bones. Malcolm looked down and found the floor now covered with strange green lines, their glow so dim as to be almost unnoticeable, streams of light flowing through like a million connected rivers.

"I'd advise you all keep away from the edge," En said.

Then, after a moment of still anticipation, the world fell all around them. Malcolm gasped, seeing the plains that surrounded Labyrinth Peak suddenly drop far below, sinking fast with every second until finally, he realized that it wasn't the world falling but the platform rising. This giant disc of metal was some sort of elevator, a veritable magic carpet.

The Peak disappeared, and along with it went the first platform that Kitty, Zelda, Baba, and everyone else had stood on. They flew higher and higher, the blanket of gray clouds above coming closer and closer until they broke right through them. Malcolm reached for Jason, finding his brother's hand already searching for him, and the two held on as they were blinded by the thick milky fog, ears filled with the sound of whooshing wind and the panicked chatter of the others around them.

That panicked chatter soon turned into awed silence when, breaking through the other end, the flying island came into clear and glorious view. Letting go of Jason, Malcolm saw it down beside them, its great rocky cliffs turning into a wide expanse of land. No end was there to greet them, no sign that this piece of earth did anything but stretch far into an eternal horizon. One might have confused the journey for a closed loop, a rising into the normal world below, if it hadn't been for the sea of clouds at their back, one lit orange and yellow in a sunset that filled the whole sky.

"Welcome, everyone," En said, "to Soratan, Home of the Ranger Corps."

A painting, a dream, an illusion made real. That was Soratan, with its snowy eastern peaks and its wide savannah, its thousands of acres of forest and the deep, ocean-like lake filling its center, its rushing rivers slipping down into waterfalls that rained on the clouds below and disappeared into mist. It was like some god had taken a chunk out of the planet and cast it into a close orbit, a living moon atop whose flat back the children of Earth had been granted leave to populate.

And populate it those children did. Even now, as they soared high across its landscape atop their floating platform, Malcolm could see winged beasts flying in circles over its trees, could see herds of furred beings marching over a sea of grass. Far in the distance, almost too far to make sense of, he saw too the blocky outline of the city where the RC had made its headquarters.

"So, Red." Jason turned to the boy, whose gobsmacked expression had remained all throughout their climb. "Is it everything you hoped for?"

Red didn't take his eyes off the island. Following his eyes, Malcolm saw that one of the winged beasts had caught his eye; a scaled, long-necked thing that seemed to blow smoke in its wake, leaving behind a long trail of dark air. "I should've come sooner," the boy mumbled, scratching at his tattoo.

"As you may have realized," En called, regaining their attention. "We won't be heading for civilization."

The Magicians slowly turned back to the man, though many found it as hard as Red to look away from the impossible sigh. They'd risen up three thousand feet over Soratan's surface, high enough that the air had started to become thin, though not so much that the island's features had become indiscernible. A small mountain range, a wide lake, plains of grass, a forest, and even a stretch of desert, all of it lay unnaturally below them, each world slipping into the next.

"Down there you can see what we in the RC call the Mile-High Sanctuary," En said, hand held out as if their eyes needed his direction. "A work of careful cultivation over one hundred years. We Rangers must, after all, ensure the safety of our Mystic World just as much as that of the normal one, and that includes all its wonderful creatures. To that end, our Sanctuary holds the single largest population of Mystic Beasts on the planet. There they are kept safe, preserved against both mundane and Mystic encroachment, studied by our greatest minds. And, now, they will serve as your second challenge."

That sharpened everyone's focus. Malcolm saw faces harden around him, the thoughts behind them brought back down to earth, as it were. As amazed as they all were, they hadn't forgotten they were here to win.

En noticed the same change in the air, and it made him smile. Casually, he held up another hand, one which held what looked like a thick deck of cards. "Can you all see this clearly?" he asked, waiting for nods and cries of affirmation. "Good. These are colored tags. Please pass them around until each of you holds one. There are exactly one hundred, so there should be no extras."

He split the deck and handed each half to the nearest Magicians, who went on to do the same. After a few minutes, everyone held their own tag, and thin as they were, Malcolm noted their rigid structure, trying and failing to bend his over. He noted also that the set of tags spanned the whole color spectrum, red, blue, green, orange, yellow, or purple painted starkly on either side, with one tag fully taken up by one color.

"What color did you guys get?" Jason asked, showing his green.

Stretch held out an orange tag while Red held out a purple. Malcolm, scowling at the other boy's knowing grin, showed them his red.

"Maybe we should trade," Red said.

"It really doesn't matter," Malcolm grumbled, pocketing his tag before Red could reach for it.

"The goal of this challenge," En said over the crowd, "is to bring at least one pair of twin tags to the Sanctuary's exit. Now, before you all start fighting between yourselves again—" Here the man scanned them with glinting eyes, almost laughing at the way they had all immediately begun sizing each other up. "Before that, let me tell you that we have taken the liberty of attaching tags to all manner of Mystic Beasts below. You might find it easier to work together and take the tags off of them rather than try your hand at battling one another, particularly when there's no certainty that the person you fight will have the same colored tag as you. Consider this challenge a kind of... friendly scavenger hunt."

"Thirty seconds," Odellus mumbled. It was said so lowly and so randomly that most didn't give it much notice.

"This challenge will, like the last one, have a time limit," En continued. "Luckily for you, it won't be a race. You have three days, until midnight of the day after tomorrow. Anyone who comes with a twin pair of tags within that time will be cleared for the next stage of the Tournament."

Another incentive not to fight each other, Malcolm thought. Whether or not that incentive would actually work was another matter, but so far he was liking their chances much more this time around. The Roxbury Rangers could stick together, hunt down Mystic Beasts one by one until they'd all found a match for their tags.

For the first time, Odellus looked up at En, showing everyone his wiry face and big eyes that stretched across round glasses. "Twenty seconds."

"Once again, there will be no more rules other than the parameters for success I just gave you," En said, clasping his hands and taking one pointed step back onto the central circle beside the platform's main pillar. "Good luck, and have a safe landing."

"Ten seconds."

"Wait," Stretch said, frowning at the rest of them. "Does that mean we're starting now? How're we getting down?"

"Five."

Jason's eyes widened, and he reached for the ripcord on his parachute. "Guys, I think—"

"One. Detaching secondary module."

"Bon voyage!" En called.

The green lines that filled the platform suddenly stopped glowing, like a light switch clicked off, and at the same moment Malcolm felt his stomach climb up into his throat as the floor dropped from underneath him. Looking up he saw the central pillar still hanging there in the air, En and Odellus standing on the short circle that encircled it, and looking down he saw the platform he'd been standing on plummeting to the earth, whatever energy had held it up now gone. He found himself falling, wind whipping his hair, limbs flailing in a vain search for balance as thousands of feet started ticking down with each second.

Naturally, there was only one thing left to do. The only reasonable thing to do for anyone who found themselves falling to their deaths.

Malcolm screamed.