Vayra took an abrupt turn and sprinted to the east. With the Astral Shroud, she wove through the tree-sized stalks of wheat, trying to cut outwards to the edge of the dome.

It was miles away, but it wasn’t as far as it could have been. She was crossing a chord of the circle—if her course stayed straight.

She jumped down levels of terraformed land as she picked up speed, but soon, they became more like stairs. With a single step, she propelled herself down them. Her path sloped down, and the air whistled around her like wind—it was the first time she’d felt wind since she arrived here.

The Astral Shroud left a brilliant white streak in the air. If Larra was watching, she would see it, if she hadn’t already spotted or sensed Vayra.

“We need to reach the ledges before she catches up,” Vayra said, locking her eyes on the hanging platforms at the edge of the greenhouse. They clung to the glass dome like barnacles. Even at this distance, she couldn’t make out any kind of stairway or ladder up to them, but there were plenty of hanging vines.

‘She’s got a full-body Bracing technique too,’ Phasoné commented.

Vayra sprinted until they emerged from the wheat forest and onto a perfectly flat plain of flax. She plowed through the little blue flowers; there was no way to dodge them. Most of them bent before she even touched them—either from her flaming white aura, or because of the wind she was creating.

But with every step, her core sloshed around. It felt like it was full of water, not energy, and it didn’t conduct and guide anywhere near as well as it should have when it was empty. She knew this wasn’t the best she could do.

In the open fields, she glanced over her shoulder. The plume of mist trailing Larra, now high up on the terraformed cliffs, was turning to follow Vayra. “Any idea what her bracing technique is, Phas?”

‘It’s got something to do with water.’

“Yeah. Thanks.”

‘Whatever it is, she’s faster than us.’

“She’s a hulking brute, and you’re telling me we’re not faster than that?” Vayra scowled.

‘She’s a Captain and you’re not.’

They needed more speed. They needed to reach the Kausisia platforms before Larra did.

“You’re not going to like this, but we’ll need to lighten our load,” Vayra said.

‘Vayra…’

“The barrels. I’m going to drop the half-empty one, and two more. We’ll save as much as we can,” she said. She skittered to a halt and deactivated the Astral Shroud, then mustered one of the barrels out of her corespace. It was entirely full, and when it appeared in her arms, it took her down to her knees. She dropped it and let the golden elixir spill out, then snatched the empty barrel back up and tucked it back into her core.

Larra was starting to descend the slope behind her. They had thirty seconds.

Vayra pulled a second barrel out without sending her consciousness into the corespace and dumped it as well, then put the empty barrel back in. They could fill them up again later—there would be more wells. There had to be.

Twenty seconds. She could make out two little black specks at the base of the misty plume—Larra and her wolf.

For the last barrel, Vayra ventured into the corespace personally. She grabbed the half-full barrel and dragged it out, then kicked it over.

Ten seconds. She sucked the barrel back into her corespace.

It was lighter, now. Everything was lighter. Her Arcara moved faster, bending to her will and commands, and when she reactivated the Astral Shroud, the world blurred around her. She took off with a boom. The air bent around her body. She tucked her head and tightened her sprinting form.

The gap between her and Larra grew again. If Vayra stopped, it’d be ten seconds until Larra reached her. Then twenty, then thirty.

Between her and the Kausisia platforms, there were three more hills, each covered in a different overgrown crop. First, overgrown flax. She lost time weaving between the stalks, when Larra simply plowed through them, but on the open fields beyond, Vayra made up the time. Twenty seconds, then thirty, then forty…

When Vayra was halfway to the platforms, sprinting through a barren field of normal-sized wheat, Larra stopped.

“What’s she doing?” Vayra panted. She didn’t stop sprinting. Each step carried her ten paces. “Is she tired?”

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‘I doubt it,’ Phasoné said. ‘She’s been using a full body Bracing technique and doing whatever she does to push her Arcara-grade to Admiral, and unlike you, she can’t just cleanse her channels with a cycle of Arcara. She’s probably dealing with minor blockages and debris buildup. Even water techniques have impurities to deal with.’

“So basically, she’s tired.”

But Vayra kept running, and she maintained the Astral Shroud. If she didn’t stop, she was guaranteed a victory in the footrace.

‘Don’t get cocky. You’re halfway through your mana.’

“And we’re over halfway to the ledges.”

She passed over a rigid hill with another forest of tree-sized wheat, then down to a deep valley. At the bottom, in the lowlands, waist-high bundles of rice grew in a swamp of Stream water. Vayra skimmed along the top in seconds, but just touching it restored a fraction of her mana.

On the other side of the valley, there were more tree-sized flowers, but they weren’t as tall as the first forest. The outer edge of the dome loomed over them, now, and the platforms were just ahead…

Sort of. They looked much higher, now, than they did from a few miles away. The lowest platform, a ledge of wood, perched up on the wall nearly at a height nearly four times taller than a ship’s mainmast, and there was no rigging to climb up.

She ran around the edge of the platform’s shadow until she found a hanging vine long enough to climb. A turquoise tendril brushed against the ground, and it had started putting down roots. The main stalk was the width of her waist, and there were leaves and offshoots sturdy enough to bear her weight.

She deactivated the Astral Shroud and began to scramble up the vine, pulling herself up leaf-by-leaf and only using basic, limited Bracing when she needed an extra boost in strength.

When she was halfway up the vine, a knife of freshwater swished through the air, slicing towards the vine. It might have been liquid, but it was moving fast, and the edge seethed like a beast’s gnashing jaw. It would cut through the vine just above her, and she’d fall.

She jumped off a leaf and grabbed a higher offshoot, then swung up and wrapped her legs around a higher leaf, then climbed a few feet higher. The water rushed towards the vine and blasted through just below her feet. Unstable and ungrounded, the vine began to swing, but she didn’t fall off.

Larra sprinted towards her still. She launched a few more blasts of water, but Vayra climbed faster than most of them. The last one shot straight at her head. She unleashed a Starlight Palm and dispersed the blast’s point. Tiny needles of liquid water-Arcara fizzed past her, leaving small slices along her arms, but it was better than death or getting knocked off the vine.

She scrambled up the rest of the vine, ascending the last distance to the main platform. As soon as she made it up, she wanted to flop onto her back and take a break—maybe sleep, or maybe just catch her breath—but it wasn’t over.

She was almost out of mana. ‘An eighth left,’ Phasoné reminded her.

Vayra needed to hide.

The platform was a few hundred feet wide, covered in mounds of dirt and two-storey tall ferns. They had turquoise fronds, spread out like arms welcoming someone into an embrace, and they smelled sweet like honey. But their stems were covered in knife-sized thorns and needles.

She ran into the center of the platform, ducking under fronds and swerving around the stems. She had to slow down if she didn’t want to impale herself on the thorns. “These are kausisia?”

‘Looks about right to me,’ Phasoné said.

When Vayra reached the center of the platform, she stopped and fell to a crouch. When her breathing slowed down from a pant to a slow drone, she heard a faint whooshing noise off the distant edge of the platform.

It sounded like a waterfall. Somehow, Larra was lifting herself up.

“Come on…where are the platform guardians?” Vayra whispered.

‘Rip a fern off one of the plants,’ Phasoné instructed.

“What? We want them to be mad at her, not us!”

‘Do it!’

Vayra turned to the nearest fern and grabbed the edge of one of the turquoise ferns. The moment her fingers touched it, they tingled. A light sensation fluttered behind her eyes, but she cleansed it with a few slow breaths. Then she pulled.

A foot-long section of the fern’s tip ripped off, and Vayra fell flat on her back.

Just in time for Larra to rise up above the edge of the platform. She carried herself on a column of mist—water vapour. Just below her feet, a pillow of freshwater swirled, wide enough for both her and her wolf.

Larra flung herself and her wolf into the center of the platform. They landed in a crouch right in front of Vayra. When Larra stood up and clenched her fist, the water swirled into three perfect rings around her.

But the three of them weren’t alone anymore.

Pale white roots swirled up from the ground, still coated in mud. They appeared on either side of Vayra, first as aimless heaps of brown and white. A moment later, ankles formed, and the roots rose into a set of legs.

In a heartbeat, two dirt-and-root golems had appeared on either side of her. They were each twice her height, with broad shoulders and bulges that reminded her of armour. They had spiked helmets, with crowns of roots, and two turquoise eyes glowed beneath the root-helmet’s eye slit.

Vayra spun to face them, then took a few steps back. A knife of water blasted into the ground only inches behind her, and she whirled back to face Larra. The God-heir had whipped out her three-part staff.

“Phas, are those really powerful nymphs?” Vayra whispered, glancing over her shoulder at the golems.

‘More like really powerful animated vines,’ Phasoné replied. ‘Like what was guarding the doorway. Calling them a golem was correct. They were hand-fed by Talock.’

Vayra turned sideways, attention split between Larra and the golems. She tried to scan the golems’ spirits, but they, like the nymphs, had no core—only channels.

‘I’d say it feels like Commodore-stage Arcara, but without coming out there and taking some of your—’

With a shout, Larra charged, swiping her staff at Vayra.

Vayra ducked, then tucked the ripped section of leaf into Larra’s coat pocket. “Yours now! Good luck!”

The golems converged on Larra, and Vayra sprinted to the edge of the platform.