Thick acid clung to Jelani's boots like a kind of molten jelly. Each step forward brought a fresh sizzle of corrosiveness that slowly worked its way through his soles. The switchback paths ahead wound like a snake up the mountain's face, each bend promising either refuge or ambush.
For thirty minutes, he'd been narrowly avoiding getting touched by the slimes while trying to find windows for attack. His muscles screamed from constant tension, nerves frayed from endless near-misses as slimes lunged from every angle. He’d tried twice to take advantage of openings to attack the slimes but failed.
The first attempt had come at a narrow bend where the path doubled back on itself. He'd waited, sword ready, timing his strike for the moment the pursuing slime rounded the corner. But the creature had simply flowed over the outer edge of the path, reforming behind him while another attacked from the front. The acid spray from their colliding forms had caught his left arm, leaving a patchwork of angry red burns that still throbbed with each movement.
His second try had been more elaborate - using his hex ability to weaken a slime while simultaneously striking from above after a difficult climb. He waited till the moment the slime made it onto the path to cast hex and intended to strike its brain as soon as it liquefied. Instead, the slimes form turned watery and rolled backwards down the side of the path before he could strike it.
The echo slimes had proven harder to outmaneuver than he'd expected. His earlier strategy of acknowledging his flaws - his arrogance, his fear, his desperate need for control - had worked initially. But now the creatures seemed to be adapting, their psychic assaults growing more precise. Thoughts like:
"I don't believe myself, I'm just responding out of desperation" and "I’m talking out of my ass, I like doing whatever I want to protect myself" kept slithering into his consciousness.
A fresh wave of slimes emerged from holes in the cliff face, their forms taking on his shape with fluid grace. One lunged forward, its acid-blade whistling past his ear as he ducked. He sloppily shoulder-rolled beneath a second attack, feeling droplets of acid rain down on his back where the slime's form had been partially disrupted by its own momentum.
When an opening appeared between three converging slimes, Jelani took it. He threw himself through the gap, ignoring how the movement pulled on the bruised muscles of his back. His sprint up the path was more stumble than stride, each step sending fresh waves of pain through his battered body. One of his rolled ankles threatened to buckle with each impact, but he pushed through it, using the cliff wall for support when necessary.
Through gaps in the rock face, he caught glimpses of other paths coming up the mountain from below. Familiar faces appeared and disappeared like ghosts in his peripheral vision. Ahsar made slow progress on a lower path, slime shaped variants of him were starting to emerge in small groups.
Movement on another trail caught his attention - Raveena, paired now with the east asian girl with scarlet hair and a blood-stained denim jacket from the beginning of the trial. They moved in coordinated patterns, watching each other's blind spots and alternating between attacking single slime variants at a slow pace.
No sign of Reason or Tobi. Had his attempt to help them been too late? The memory of their desperate fight against the Trawlls gnawed on his focus. He’d offered them what he could at the moment and almost sacrificed himself to draw a couple trawlls away, but he couldn’t help but wonder if he’d done enough.
Rounding another bend, Jelani spotted a massive boulder partially blocking the path ahead. Unlike his previous attempts, this one offered true concealment - a blind spot that would force any pursuing slime to commit to its approach. He turned the corner and pressed his back against the cold stone, raising his sword in a two-handed grip beside his head.
The lead slime rounded the corner at full speed, exactly as he'd hoped. Jelani's blade flashed forward, catching the creature's brain dead center. "There we go! Finally made it work for once," he thought, a small spark of victory flaring in his chest. He'd been attempting this ambush tactic for a while with no results, but now...
The moment of triumph died as more slimes emerged both ahead and behind. The summit seemed to mock him, appearing closer and farther away with each glance, like some cosmic illusion designed to break his spirit. Jelani pressed onward in his awkward half-jog, half-limp, using the cliff face for support when his legs threatened to give out.
The psychic assault built in his mind like a crescendo, distant at first but growing louder with each step. In desperate defense, he launched into a mantra: "Im not where I need to be but I will get stronger. I’m not my doubts they don't control me." The words felt hollow, mechanical, but they gave him something to focus on besides the growing chorus of doubt in his head.
Three slimes caught him in a triangle formation, their featureless faces studying him with alien intensity. Jelani waited until they lunged, then dove through the narrowest gap between them. His shoulder hit hard as he rolled, nearly sending him tumbling down toward the gathering slimes below. One of the creatures managed to catch his leg as he scrambled up, its acidic form beginning to eat through his pants and into flesh before he could kick free.
The sight again of Ahsar on a lower path sent fresh adrenaline coursing through Jelani's veins. "Can't slow down now," he thought, but the words were immediately drowned out by the slimes' manipulations. He tried to return to his mantra - "I’m not perfect but I’ll get stronger " - but the words seemed to take up mental space he couldn't spare.
The trial demanded more - wanted him to open doors in his mind he'd kept locked for years. But there was too much behind those doors, too many shadows he couldn't afford to face while fighting for his life.
A slime launched itself from the slope and latched onto his forearm with burning intensity. The creature tried to pull him in, its acidic form beginning to envelope his flesh. Pure instinct took over - Jelani activated hex, the green smoke causing the slime to temporarily lose cohesion. He drove his blade through its exposed brain before it could reform.
"Look at how desperate I am to chase after power I don't deserve," the thought rang out over his consciousness.
Something shifted in Jelani's mind then - a kind of emotional shutdown born of pure survival instinct. The cacophony of psychic imitations of his voice were only growing. So out of necessity he started to become numb to the sounds in his head and focused on the instincts driving his body forward.
Time seemed to blur as he moved with mechanical precision. Dodge. Hobble forward. Strike. Repeat mantra. Advance. The pattern repeated endlessly, his mind locked onto the singular goal of reaching the summit.
The slimes' psychological attacks became background noise, like static on a distant radio. Each wound, each burn, each near-miss registered only as something to note for later.
When he finally looked up again, he'd gained significant ground. The French man was still ahead but not by an insurmountable distance. He'd come to a complete halt with his sword raised, staring at something hidden behind a boulder that Jelani couldn't see from his position.
"Being more skilled meant opponents that were harder to defeat," Jelani reasoned, his tactical mind searching for advantage in his own perceived weakness. But before he could formulate a strategy, pain exploded in his skull.
A psychic pulse ripped through his mind, followed by hundreds of screaming voices. Jelani collapsed, clutching his head in a futile attempt to block out the sound. Ahead, slimes began to converge, flowing together into a grotesque mass that towered eight feet high. Faces formed and reformed in its surface - people he'd fought with, family members he'd disappointed, strangers whose paths he'd crossed in anger.
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The mass spoke with every voice at once, the uncanny sound reverberating through his skull: "We don't believe you are the person you'd like to think you are. The notion of Jelani Von must end here. We will snuff your resistance out."
A face emerged from the mass - a coworker he'd fought years ago. Its mouth distorted into a perfect circle, and before Jelani could move, a ball of concentrated acid shot forth like a cannon blast. There was no time to dodge, no space to evade. The projectile flew straight at his chest, promising an end to both his resistance and his existence.
The acid projectile screamed toward Jelani's chest like liquid death. His blade came up on pure instinct, catching the mass dead center. For a fraction of a second, everything stopped. Then physics took over.
The impact sent caustic spray in all directions, droplets of concentrated acid finding every patch of exposed skin. The force threw Jelani backward, his body hitting the ground hard enough to drive the air from his lungs. Each point where the spray had landed began to sizzle and burn.
"Fuck, fuck, fuck!" Jelani frantically thought while swiping away the acid jelly, his mind forced back to reality. Through his blurred vision, he watched the massive conglomerate of slimes growing larger, absorbing every echo it passed. Its movement slowed with each addition, but more face-shaped protrusions formed across its surface, each one a potential weapon.
"Running away again?" his uncle Derek's voice echoed in his mind as the mass took on the man's stern features. "This is why you'll never be shit. Can't fix nothing if you're always trying to handle everything alone."
Jelani pushed himself up, legs trembling beneath him. Projectiles hammered the path behind him as he ran, each impact loosening rocks and sending debris cascading down the mountain face. His foot slipped on the unstable ground, nearly sending him over the edge.
"All that potential," Mr. Henderson's disappointed voice rang out, the mass briefly wearing his former teacher's face. "But you never could apply yourself the right way, could you? Always taking shortcuts, always looking for the easy path."
The French man was still ahead, maintaining his lead despite his own pursuing mass of slimes. Envy burned in Jelani's chest, fueled by the hateful chorus in his mind. He'd come so far, endured so much – didn't he deserve that top spot?
"Deserve?" Alexis's voice cut through his thoughts, dripping with contempt. Her face formed in the mass, beautiful and cruel. "You don't deserve anything. You're too scared to even look at yourself honestly, too afraid to admit what a terrible person you really are inside."
Jelani reached for his hex ability the moment it came off cooldown, but the green smoke only affected a small section of the ever-growing mass. It was like trying to stun an ocean – there was simply too much of it, and more slimes were being absorbed every moment.
The faces kept shifting, each one wearing expressions of disappointment and disgust. The voices grew louder, a symphony of every doubt he’d heard from others:
"Always trying to prove something–"
"Never listening to good advice–"
"Think you're better than everyone else–"
"Just another self assured nigga who'll never make it–"
Jelani opened his timer: [11:11:21]. He needed to distract his mind. How long had he been running? The weird lighting of this realm made time feel stagnant, meaningless. The tower loomed closer now, its alien architecture both promise and threat. He activated his threat radar, using the yellow pings to anticipate incoming projectiles as he ran forward .
His lungs burned with each breath in the thin air. Every few yards, he had to pause behind outcroppings to gasp for oxygen, each stop a dangerous gamble.
The French man maintained his lead, batting away acid projectiles with practiced grace. Jelani's remaining cores felt heavy in his inventory – insurance against what was coming. But watching the cocky bastards smooth movements, that old fury began to rise. The man's condescension, his casual disrespect , the way he'd made Jelani feel small...
"Just like you," the mass taunted in his father's voice, "always letting your pride write checks your fists can't cash."
Jelani ignored the taunt, studying the French man's movements. There – he favored his left side when dodging. A weakness to exploit, if he could just test his hex's range.
After evading another acid blast, Jelani ducked behind a jagged boulder. He focused on a stone formation several hundred feet up the path, willing his hex to activate. Green mist manifested around the distant target, confirming his theory.
The mass's voices grew more insistent: "You really think you deserve to win? After everything you've done? Everyone you've let down?"
But Jelani's focus had narrowed to a tactical point again. He watched the French man ascend toward the final slope, timing his counter-strike against a slime projectile. The moment the ability went on cooldown, Jelani struck. His hex enveloped the man just as another acid blast approached.
The French man's movements turned sluggish. The projectile collided into his right side, sending him on his back and rolling off the path. Jelani watched him tumble down the slope, guilt warring with savage satisfaction. When the man struggled to his feet, clearly alive but nursing a broken shoulder, that satisfaction won out.
The victory was short-lived. An acid blast caught Jelani's right arm with the force of a professional fastball. The impact spun him around as chemical fire ate into his flesh. His scream echoed off the mountain walls as he watched the skin on his now broken left arm slowly dissolve before his eyes.
"Look at you now," the mass wore his father's face, laughing. "Acting all big and bad, but karma came quick, didn't it?"
Then the mass shifted, and Jelani's heart stopped. Kamari's face formed in the writhing slime, wearing an expression his brother had never shown in life – contempt.
"You'll never match up to me," it sneered in Kamari's voice. "You’ll never get out of my shadow. But that’s okay because you’ll be joining me soon."
The taunt triggered a flood of memories: long drives through Atlanta as vortexes first appeared, OutKast playing while they discussed their dreams. Kamari's real voice echoed in his mind: "Don't let their words pull you down, make you forget your vision."
Young Jelani's response: "People are always challenging me, trying to get a rise out of me!"
"Sometimes," Kamari had said, gentle but firm, "we make enemies out of ourselves and the people around us to avoid doing the real work to get right internally."
Something clicked in Jelani's mind. This thing wasn't channeling others' thoughts about him – it was manifesting his own insecurities, his deepest fears about what others might think. The realization didn't lessen the pain of his melted, broken arm, but it gave him clarity.
He pushed forward, vision tunneled on the spire above. The voices continued their assault, but he let them wash over him, focusing only on movement. Dodge. Breathe. Run. Nothing else mattered.
Angry French curses echoed up the mountain, but Jelani's world had narrowed to the crater ahead, the man would have to accept second place.
Jelani’s legs were rubber beneath him, each step a negotiation with muscles pushed well past breaking. The acid-eaten flesh on his left arm hung useless at his side, a constant reminder of how close he was to complete physical collapse.
He zigzagged up the slope in desperate bursts, threat radar screaming warnings that sent him shifting left or right as projectiles turned the ground to molten potholes. The pattern was mindless now – move, ping, dodge, repeat. No time to think, no space for doubt. Just the pure animal instinct of survival driving him forward.
The summit was close. So fucking close. A shimmer of heat-wave energy surrounded the crater housing the tower, like some cosmic finish line waiting to be crossed. For the first time since this nightmare began, real excitement tried to bubble up through the weighted blanket of psychic torment the mass had draped over his mind. He was in the lead. He was actually going to-
His radar suddenly flared with an intensity that made his temples throb. Behind him, the mass of faces had collapsed in on itself, compressing into a perfect sphere of concentrated malice. The sight sent primitive warning signals screaming through his brain – this was it, their final attempt to stop him.
"Nobody's going to stop me," he growled through gritted teeth, forcing his battered body into one last sprint. "Not now. Not when I'm this close."
The radar's ping turned blood red, flooding his entire field of vision with urgent warning. He risked a glance back and his heart nearly stopped – a boulder-sized glob of concentrated acid was hurtling toward him, all the mass's hatred and spite compressed into one killing blow.
Time seemed to stretch like hot glass as Jelani gathered the last dregs of strength in his ruined legs. The barrier was right there, just yards away. The massive projectile roared through the air behind him, its acid wake eating holes in the very rock beneath it. In that eternal moment, Jelani had perfect clarity – this was truly it. Make it through the barrier or die trying.
He launched himself forward with everything he had left, feeling tendons tear and muscles separate from bone. The world tilted into slow motion as he soared through the air, the barrier's shimmer growing closer even as the shadow of death expanded behind him.
Impact.
The projectile caught him mid-flight, a hammer blow of caustic agony that sent him pinwheeling through the barrier. He felt rather than saw the moment he passed through – a sensation like warm silk sliding over his skin. Then gravity remembered its job, and Jelani crashed and rolled across the crater floor, leaving a trail of blood and sizzling flesh.
Each rotation brought fresh hell as burns met stone, broken bones ground against each other, and the world spun like a carnival ride designed by sadists. When he finally came to rest, his lungs seemed to have forgotten how to process air. Every attempt at breathing felt like inhaling ground glass.
A scroll materialized in his rapidly darkening vision. He tried to focus, but his consciousness was already falling away into the void. Through his closing eyes, he watched the eerie light emanating from the tower pulse with an odd rhythm.