“Okay, Kids. Let’s try not to make any mistakes if we can.” said Jermaine, wrapping up the briefing he’d given to his people.

They all nodded with determined looks on their faces, and just a little fear in their eyes. By now they were all very clear on how serious the matter at hand was. Those who weren’t clear on this issue were already dead.

*****

The practitioners taking part in the raid lost half of their numbers by the end of second day. It wasn’t that they were unprepared, it was just that this was how high the difficulty was set.  The fourth floor was literally just an open pit.

Occasionally the ground would fall away and there’d be a gulf that would either lead to a bed of spikes or an endless pitch black nothingness.  

What the traps didn’t kill, the monsters did. The Thousand Ghosts were no exception. Miss Fizzy and Tundra Fist were just a few among the names that the Thousand Ghosts would have to mourn.

******

“Hey...Ed, Ell...I’m not going to be able to fight.” said Billy.

Edna looked up at him, looking mildly surprised. Elena just frowned, looking concerned.

“Um...why?” said Edna.

“You’re not coming down with something, are you William?” said Elena.

“Nh?...No. It’s nothing like that.” said Billy. Looking slightly uncomfortable.

“It’s...I’m not sure what it is, but just for the sake of hedging our bets, I’m thinking that its best that I hang back for a bit. So do you guy’s mind taking point?” said Billy.

Edna wasn’t so sure. As the weakest link within their three person company she was starting to feel more aware of her deficiencies.

She’d said she was going to cultivate seriously, but making progress as a practitioner was easier said than done.

Elena on the other hand, simply nodded, patting Billy on the shoulder. Her eyes smiling, the grin she wore palpable for all that it was hidden behind her mask.

“You do you, beau. We’ve got your back.”

The Bone Tree Company trailed behind the Thousand Ghosts and their compatriots who were in cahoots with the EITC. Billy, Edna and Elena, would bring up the rear, mainly acting as extra muscle and support.

Though aside from supplying Bone Tree Company products they wouldn’t get the chance to actually do anything till several floors had gone by and the number of surviving contractors had grown thin.

*****

“Suck it, Muthafucka!” bellowed Edna. Her voice made husky by her exertions. The words mostly lost in the cascade of bellows and roars that was taking place at the same, exact time.

Hidden behind the mask on her face, the veins on her forehead were bulging. Her blood was boiling. Icy sweat beading on her brow. The muscles of her arm bulging as she  drove a lance through the chest of metal limbed, minotaur with tank treads where its hooves should have been and exhaust pipes instead of horns.

The floor crumbled beneath her steps, a wall was caved in as she slammed into the minotaur, forcing it into a dead end.  It spat blood and smoke as it died, an unreconciled expression  still on its face, as the light in its eyes slowly dimmed.

From behind her there were thirty-six sharp barks, the retorts of a firearm. All thirty-six shots were soon followed by the sound of six bodies dropping.

The mechanized gnolls, lying as a smoking heap, with their chests and head perforated, with six holes each, a mixture of blood and motor oil spilling out onto the floor. Pooling around their bodies.

“Things quiet on your end, Ell.” said Edna. Calling out from her position at the back of their group.

“Yeah...Thanks for the cover fire.” said Elena. Stumbling away from the corpse as the lance in the beast’s chest crumbled away. Reduced to a stream of glowing grains of sand. Critically damaged by the forces it had been subjected to.

“Don’t mention it.”

*****

After then tenth floor came the eleventh. There multiple floors and multiple wings of the floors and the assault by the raid party was on each and every one of them. With the main aim being the capture of the core or hub that lay on the top floor.  

Jermaine’s people would wait on the tenth floor, holding the fort while they tried to recuperate. The Bone Tree Company’s job now was to scout ahead. Checking out the next target and hopefully softening and or eliminating it, if it was within their power to do so.

This content has been misappropriated from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

*****

The eleventh floor was just like all the others, narrow hallways with the floor made of tempered concrete and the walls made up of rust and steel.

“Ah...As usual I’ll go ahead.” said Billy. Taking the lead, as he wound his way through the many traps that made up this floors security. Tripping some traps, disarming others. Using magic to draw a color blue guide for Edna, Elena and the few Thousand Ghosts who’d come up with them, to follow him.

There was an ogre on this floor, it’s head conical. It’s body built like that of some hairless gray-green gorilla. A huge screw was jammed into its weeping eye socket. Its left arm had been replaced with a laser turret.

As the strongest contributing member of their little party, naturally it was Elena who took the lead. She charged forwards, dodging the red beams that were being fired by the turret. Flicking a throwing knife at the weaponized limb,  and doing so with enough force to nearly knock it loose.

The laser assault stopping once the turret fell limp, having almost been torn from the body it was attached to. Now this would be the point where a more even kilter and cautious combatant let their long range team member deal with the rest.

Edna had even prepared an AW for the task, however just as she was finishing doing so, Elena, rushed forwards. Throwing enraptured by the thrill of the hunt. She threw a haymaker into the Ogre, thick jaw, making its head rock. Back. It staggered and used its remaining arm to throw a blow that should have sent her flying.

They settled into a heated slug match that continued for several minutes. Ending with beast lying on the floor, its face and body beaten into mash, while a feral eyed Elena leaned over it. Huffing and puffing, barely keeping on her.

“Ah...So it ‘was’ you.” said a voice.

She turned and saw a face that was both familiar and unfamiliar. Esme Mckinney stood with her posse of fellow sect pupils. Her pink locks were unbound and unruly. Her martial uniform was torn. Blow from a wound in her side and from her  nostrils spattering onto the floor. All the same  her gaze  remained haughty. Somehow the Sect’s group had ended up wandering into the EITC’s wing.

“Elena Maddoc, right? Former first ranked amongst the Twelves Souls Sect’s Core Pupils?”

The girl smiled but it was more of a sneer. She clasped her fist in her palm and bowed, but her gaze was mocking.

“This Junior greets her senior.”

*****

The words were full of poison and the poison was one that transcended time and space. Taking her back to a day where the sun refused to shine and a very driven, young woman had stood in an arena with her back against a wall.

This was after her father had cut ties with her. Almost immediately after those ties were cut her tuition stopped being paid. However that wasn’t a real issue. Elena ‘had’ been a top ranked student after all.

The merits of her talents alone were worth it for the school to keep developing her. It was just a simple matter of having her take the test for the scholarship students. She tested and then she passed and things were handled just that easily.

Thus she was allowed to coast. With everyone including the girl herself, being unaware of adrift she was. One crisis was solved and then another was born. Without her family, she lost her drive. She lost her sense of purpose. She’d been working so hard, for so long that without a goal in mind, she couldn’t push herself.

She’d discovered the well of exhaustion that had been building up inside of her and she drown in it. Paralyzed and helpless to do anything to change the course she was on.

It was only  three months, twelve weeks, that was all it took for her to lose everything. She fell into a three month long, slump and no matter how hard she trained and studied, it just didn’t come together. She failed tests, her grades suffered and  she slowly fell from the favor of the school.

Finally ‘that’ day came. The day for the  school ranking matches. She’d stood as the old queen, surrounded by a screaming audience, all of them shouting for her blood. Her loss was a forgone conclusion.

There was a new queen now and the current fight was expected to be a mere formality. Elena would lose handily and the new queen would reign. Even Elena expected that to be case. She was worthless, she was trash. There was no one who needed her and no purpose in her existence.

There was a certain, easiness to it all. She’d fight, she’d try, but she’d lose, and probably die because this was a life and death battle after all, with the match not stopping till someone died or surrendered and because for whatever reason, she just couldn’t stop losing, or maybe some miracle would happen and she’d win. Either way that would be her karma. Her fate.

That’s not what happened that day. Something inside Elena awoke and after taking third blow that should have killed her for the third time. She’d been lying on the ground feeling the fuzzy edges of oblivion reaching out to her.

The other girl raised her leg for a heel drop that could powder stone and would have had no problem reducing Elena’s angst and uncertainty to naught but jellied neural tissue.

Suddenly she felt herself standing again. She stood up and dished out several punches of her own. A desperate series of rabbit punches that came from the part of her that realized that she might not be a reconciled with her inevitable demise as she’d been telling herself.

She dealt out a  flurry faster than anything she’d ever been capable of delivering before. They sounded like hammers, like the slow drop of her own explosive heartbeat. They came endlessly, falling one after the other. Like raindrops in a storm. Continuing forever within the confines of her skull.

The referees intervened, ending things early. By that point the other girl was already severely injured, crippled, her core broken, the aether within it scattered. Her cultivation having been dropped down to the status of Dandelion. Her bones shattered, her viscera mashed, her face beaten into a black and blue mess.

Blood pouring out of every orifice. In all honesty it was a miracle that she didn’t die. Which was the only reason, that the school didn’t kill Elena. After all the other girl ‘had’ been the precious niece of a sect elder.

A rising star, of more worth to the sect than her opponent. Even Elena was going to win, she should have appreciated this and held back some. Though honestly she hadn’t been in a clear enough mental state to hold anything back.

Instead they took her arm and her leg, at least ‘tried’ to break her core and then expelled her from the sect. There was nothing unfair or unreasonable about any of this. ‘She’ Elena, was supposed to have just been a ringer.

A mere stepping stone for other girl. Another feather in her hat. A cornerstone for the other girl’s glory to be built around. It was forgetting her place, for something like Elena to fight back.

Thus in a way, at least  seen from their angle, she deserved her punishment. She’d deserved worst. For she’d not only rebelled, she’d done so violently, and excessively. Ruining the future of someone who ‘really’ mattered.

If it weren’t for the person standing in front of her Elena wouldn’t even have recalled it. After all, all of this was just the ‘start’ of Elena Maddoc’’s downward spiral.

*****

Elena felt something she almost never felt, an urge to run away, she might have well have done it, but she could hear the footsteps of her people coming. Edna was coming, Billy was coming and she refused to let them see something as shameful as the sight of her turning and running with her tail tucked between her legs.

So she stiffened her spit, straightened her posture. Clasped her own fist within her own palm and bowed as well. Plastering an unconcerned smile on her, as if they really were just two former classmates randomly meeting.

“Senior greets Junior.”

Esme’s eyes narrowed, her expression filled with a sort of complex displeasure. Then she sniffed and turned heel, stalking away with her fellow pupils trailing behind her.

Whilst watching the other young woman walk away, Elena wonder who else in the Twelve Souls Sect remembered her. She wondered if they’d come after her and felt a warmth of happy anger.

She wondered if they’d come after Billy and Edna, if they’d come after the Bone Tree Company and she felt a icy fear. Then she closed her eyes and felt nothing. Deciding that aside from discussing it with the other two, there was nothing else she could but take things as they came.