The bridge creaked, but the travelers made it over. Minding their minds, and trying their heart, preparing their soul for the show to come.

The sand is coarse, but that’s par for it.

The wind is in my eyes, but that’s how it’s always been.

The past may have been certain, but the time to come is nearly anything but.

***

“Kaiya,” Amity walked up to the girl, stepping past the rest of them. “Have you had anything to drink since you died?”

“… Thinking about it, no, I haven’t.”

Amity formed a bit of water, which she made into a water bottle simulacrum. “Want some?”

She chuckled, and grabbed the water, using her magic to keep it shapely as her hand hovered beneath it. Something was off about this. Something… missing.

“Wait, how are you holding the water..?” Amity looked beside the girl, but her other hand was empty.

“My… magic?”

Kaiya missed the point of the question entirely, so Amity elaborated. “You’re not holding a medium, in your-”

“I’m holding one! Here,” she pulled her hand up, and presented the palm. “Right there!”

Silence, as they kept walking, but it only took a few seconds for her to realize the flaw in her argument.

“How… am I holding this?”

Kaiya used the mysteriously still extant magic to help her chug the water, then patted her pockets, but found nothing. She had lost her mediums somewhere, but her magic remained. Ideas brewed in their heads, but the one who had initially questioned the other figured it out.

“Hear me out,” Amity said. “What if your death caused this?”

The dots in Kaiya’s brain stretched to connect, but didn’t quite reach.

“You died, then were… I’ll put this as, “reborn” in limbo. What if, because it was in an area more apt to magic, your rebirth had you absorb more magic, and you don’t need external mediums?”

“That’s… really smart, actually. You might be right.”

Albeit a sudden realization, it helped the two’s minds settle.

***

The gray building stood low on the ground, somewhat buried in the surrounding sand dunes. It bore a simple, familiar glyph, and even from the distance, the two guards standing outside the entrance, under a shaded canopy, were very clear.

“So, how are we going about this?” Amity stood, staring at the building. All in all, the trip here was fine, but the rest of the journey to come wasn’t quite the same.

If you discover this tale on Amazon, be aware that it has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road. Please report it.

“Should we just rush them?”

Kaiya looked towards the building.

“Nah, we’re not ready.”

Raleigh sat down on the rough floor.

“There might be a back door, beneath the sand.”

Himiko walked up to Amity, standing next to her.

“Maybe we can ambush, from above?”

Katie’s legs stretched with her, bending her joints and getting ready for whatever they decided.

As a group, they sat there for a few minutes, spit-balling ideas, until something hit them. Quite literally, as a piece of stone flung into the sand beneath them, and spat up some into their faces.

“Gah-” Lightning hit the air surrounding them, clearly from a distance, and just narrowly missed Amity, who fell back, prompting the others to do the same to help avoid the shot.

The building had quite a crowd awaiting at the base. From the distance, the most that could reasonably be made out was two bulky men standing at the corner of the building, focused intently on nothing in the distance.

Once they all confirmed what the sight was, and what had just occurred, Himiko asked Amity for something.

“Hey, we should get back for a second - they can see us all too well from there. And… can you please give me magic?”

She winced, but Amity was fine with it.

“Sure, if you’re sure yourself,” Amity directed to the girl who had looked down, but was obviously now nervous. “Let’s head down here for the time being, it should be enough to stay out of their sight.”

Kaiya was first to start the trek, although the rest followed quickly. Amity opted to surprise Himiko, heading down behind her, and catching her legs to sweep back to her arms.

“So, are you really sure you want magic like that?”

“I mean, yeah! I’ve kinda been doing nothing for the entire time we’ve been here, and I actually want to help.” Himiko adjusted the hat that was nearly falling off from the abrupt lift. “Plus, it’s probably the best thing we can really do now. We need to have as much power as we can.”

Amity bent as best she could to peck Himiko on the forehead, before setting her down as they approached the rest of the group. The thought crossed her mind that they would need to know about the two girls, but that could wait for now.

“Alright, Himiko, just sit down for a second, I’ll get everything ready.”

This time, Amity had a lot more ingenuity, creating the needed mixture in water she held in the air, and using fire on the spot to boil mid-air. Then, the syringe was filled, air bubbles removed, and Himiko came over.

“Raise your sleeve,” Amity instructed, before sinking it into her arm. Slowly, the plunger was depressed, and the needle lifted. “There.”

She knew what had happened the first time Amity used her magic, the seemingly temporary strength had knocked Himiko down and out. Even though this was her first time using the magic, though, it felt intuitive. Fire lent itself nicely to coursing through the similarly resilient girl’s body to exit her hands, and lightning made her arm tingle as it leapt out.

Although she wished the nearly unbridled power could flow as fast as it wanted, the fact remained that there were many people who could see them at any point.

“We’ve gotta start getting in somehow.”

They threw around a few more ideas, but the notion of approaching from above won out.

***

Running past the building on the left, they saw the majority of the people retreat back inside. Maybe they think we’re gone, the only explanation Amity could come up with. She didn’t stop to wonder further, continuing with the group, until they stood atop the large gray brick of a building.

“Himiko,” Amity whispered. “You take out the guard on that side, I’ve got this side.”

Himiko nodded, a determined look on her face, and stepped to the sandy building’s corner.

“And, can you get the doorman, Kaiya?” She replied with another nod, and took her place in the center.

The ringleader, standing at the corner, counted down, whisper-screaming.

“Three! Two! One!”

Lightning charred the sand beneath the edge of the building, and three distinct sounds of hefty guards falling forward into the sand.

Peeking over, nobody looked even close to getting up - the man in the middle was entirely motionless, and the rest just breathed.

“Okay, let’s get down… there’s some sand here we can probably just slide down.”

Amity was the first to take her own path, and although she made it to the floor perfectly safely, and most of the others did too (Raleigh had chosen to sit, and ended up catching his feet in the ground to tip him forward,) Himiko was nervous.

“C’mon! We need to start going in!”

She opted not to go down the normal way, instead preferring the riskier strategy of creating a shallow ice bridge with uneven, inexperienced ice to get down. Luckily, nothing happened to her, but Amity did have a word for her.

“That was kinda dangerous, as a first-time magic user, just so you know. Your ice is kinda jagged, and you could easily have slipped off or just broken it!”

“I really didn’t want to do the sand thing though, my balance isn’t that good.”

Amity sighed. “It’s… fine. We need to go in.”

Opaque glass doors turned open, as Amity peered inside. This facility was clearly different - rather than the blinding white from the other ones, the rusty metal and black material across the walls highlighted at least one deep red stain following every cell, which lined the walls.