When he came out of the other side of the portal, Hudson immediately tensed and concentrated on activating the sigil for Rooted Strength. If he was George, and he hadn’t gone through the portal in the first place, this is where he would likely set an ambush.

With his breathing technique and sigil activated, Hudson felt immense strength roiling through his muscles. He quickly looked around the darkened cave, seeing nothing concerning, although it was a lot darker than he remembered.

The other participants were walking ahead of him, chatting amongst each other as they headed down the path back to the trial area. Nothing seemed out of the ordinary.

The portal at his back winked shut, and Hudson waited a few more seconds before he began to relax. Perhaps George was still worried about the consequences of attacking another participant while in the trial, or maybe Hudson was being too paranoid. In any case, he dropped his concentration on his sigil and ran up to join Cor and the others at the back of the line.

“Expect something, or someone?” Cor asked him quietly, after Hudson caught back up.

“Still no George,” Hudson replied. “Something isn’t right.”

“There’s lots of things ain’t right,” Cor said. “But you can’t be too cautious. That paranoia of yours will keep you healthy. We should be fine, but he might be fast enough to attack out of these shadows before we realize it.”

“Was it this dark in the cavern before?” Hudson asked.

“Now that you mention it…” Cor stopped, and then the color drained from his face. “No, no, no… that can’t… He wouldn’t do that. That’d be suicide.”

They were in the tunnel now, but Cor stopped and turned to look back at the cavern.

“The formation… there was no formation active in the cavern when we came through, was there?” Cor asked Hudson.

“I guess not… there was one on the other side, on the Disciples’ side, but when we came through… no, I don’t think there was. That could be why it was darker than I remembered – there was no glow from the formation on the ground.”

“Move!” Cor said, and started running down the tunnel. “Hey, trial director!” he shouted, but there was no response.

Hudson caught up with Cor, who was running down the tunnel, pushing the tired and confused members of their group out of the way with his good hand.

“What’s going on?” the annoying voice of A-yi rang out.

“Director Ix!” Cor ignored A-yi and shouted again. “We have a problem – the formation was down on the long-range portal, and we came in hot.”

The tunnel wasn’t very long, and Hudson was running close behind Cor, uncertain what was going on but starting to get nervous. Cor wouldn’t be acting like this if it wasn’t a big deal.

“Affirmative,” the voice of Director Ix finally responded.

“Was there a back-up formation?” Cor asked, his breath ragged.

“Negative.”

“Why? Are repairs needed?”

“Unknown and ongoing interference is preventing effective repairs.”

“What?” Cor swore. “It has to be him. That traitorous piece of garbage.”

“What’s going on?” Hudson asked.

Cor ignored him and asked one more question. “Director Ix, any chance we got away clean? Are we hidden by any special anomalies or black-holes? Maybe there’s a chance we weren’t detected.”

“Negative,” the cool voice of Director Ix intoned. “Silencing formation failure occured during transportation, preventing emergency shutdown. Probability of detection by silicate scout network: 89%.”

“Well, there’s your answer kid,” Cor said. “Good news: I reckon I figured out what George was up to.”

“OK – that’s the good news? And… the bad news?” Hudson asked.

“The bad news –” Cor began, then was interrupted by Director Ix.

“Silicate incursion detected in-system, orbiting solar body. Available countermeasures deployed. Estimated time to breach current planetary body: 9 minutes 57 seconds. Immediate evacuation is strongly recommended.”

“Nevermind,” Cor continued. “There is no bad news. There’s just the absolute worst news possible: silicates detected our portal, because George disabled the formation hiding its space-time signature, and they’re going to be here to suck up every last drop of life off this forsaken rock in less than 10 minutes.”

Hudson was trying to process everything that was happening, but was having trouble keeping up. George had stayed back from the challenge, and then disabled the formation surrounding their portal… which was important because it hid them from the silicates. And now they’d been found by the silicates, and were going to be attacked?

“Listen up, everybody,” Cor called out. “We need to hustle back to the cavern, fix the formation, and get another portal off of this rock.”

“First it was run this way, now it’s run back. We have injured people! You’re injured! We should go back to the trial area and rest,” A-yi interjected. “Surely we can be protected within the trial area. And if we have to evacuate, can’t the director just portal us to the mining rift instead?”

If you stumble upon this narrative on Amazon, it's taken without the author's consent. Report it.

“It wouldn’t help. We are currently on the same planet where we go to mine maseki,” Suzume answered. “Just deep underground.”

Qian pushed his way through the crowd, Suzume right behind him. “My family regularly patrols rift worlds,” Suzume said. “I know what happens when silicates find them.

“Even if we had George – our strongest cultivator – we could only fight them off for a while… without him, and with confirmation silicates are already on the way…”

Suzume turned to address everyone. “Our only reasonable chance of survival is fleeing. If you wish to stay, and die, then so be it. The director should have enough maseki left for an emergency portal to Earth. Even if the formation remains broken, the portal won’t go to Earth in order to protect its location, but they can still open a portal somewhere other than here.

“Enough talking. Let’s go.”

A-yi began to open her mouth, but Qian took one step towards her, leaned down over the shorter woman, and put his index finger over his lips. Suzume and the rest of the S.E.C.T. members pushed through the grasshoppers and ran back up to the cavern. Some caught the hint and started after them.

“Let’s go people,” Cor said, pushing on the others still hesitant to move.

As they all ran back up the tunnel, Hudson found himself towards the back of the pack. Cor was flagging from his injury, and the lack of a cultivation base wasn’t helping.

“Listen,” Cor said to Hudson, in between deep breaths. “If we get into a fight with the silicates, the main thing you gotta understand is that they are attracted to qi. They arrive in large numbers, and they swarm. So if you go all crazy pants sucking down qi with your technique…”

“They’re all going to go after me,” Hudson finished grimly.

“Hopefully George first, with the higher level of cultivation. But then you. I’ve fought them many times before, and it is not pretty when they latch on to cultivators.”

“So how do we fight? And why were you fighting them, if you aren’t a cultivator?”

“I fought them because I wasn’t a cultivator. Because I could move relatively unnoticed and punch far above my weight class. I’ve killed more silicates than all of these fancy-pants S.E.C.T. idiots combined.”

The tunnel wasn’t long, and they quickly arrived back at the cavern.

“The formation is active again,” Hudson said. He left Cor and ran up to Suzume, who was standing in the center with the rest of the participants from S.E.C.T.

“Did you fix it?” Hudson asked.

Suzume shook her head. “After we arrived back in the cavern, it came back online on its own. The trial director also confirmed that a new portal back to earth was possible with its last remaining maseki reserves. It wouldn’t open any rifts out of this system without the formation active, but thankfully it came back online.”

“Anyone seen George?” Hudson asked, craning his neck to look around the cavern.

Suzume shook her head. “It’s strange. He should be here, but he’s not. I don’t know where he is.”

One of George’s loyal minions – Hudson recalled her name was Beatrice – laughed softly at their conversation. She was holding up Eustace, the one that Hudson had fought and who had injured Cor. He was still having trouble walking.

“You know something we don’t?” Hudson asked, accelerating his cultivation technique and stepping towards her.

She cleared her throat and spat a fat wad of spit at Hudson’s feet. Qian hurriedly held out his arm in front of her, but Hudson made no move to respond. Yet.

“With the threat of the silicates, it is best if George evacuates as well,” Suzume turned to address Beatrice. “Any information on his whereabouts would most likely benefit him as well.”

Beatrice looked at Suzume with contempt in her eyes. “All of you will see your comeuppance soon enough. Especially these mouth breathers.”

Hudson knew it was foolish to respond to her provocations, but he did so anyways.

“You mean this mouth breather?” he said, pointing at himself. “The one that smacked you sideways? The one that beat your friend to a pulp?

“The one you failed to stop? Who only gets stronger and stronger? The one who doesn’t even want to be here, but is somehow better than you at this cultivation crap after just a few weeks, when you’ve been working at it since you were born?

“That particular mouth breather?”

Beatrice’s face was a rigid mask of fury. Everyone was tense. But before things could escalate further, they were interrupted by a deep rumbling. The cavern shook for a few seconds, then shook again.

“Earthquakes?” one of S.E.C.T. members asked.

“No, the silicates are here,” Suzume replied. “Standard tactics include softening the crust, cracking the skin as it were, before dividing and sending in large numbers of smaller masses.”

“We need that portal, now,” Qian said. “If…when… it opens, we need to be ready to run through as fast as possible.”

There was no response from Director Ix on the status of opening a portal. Small tremors continued every few seconds, and everyone lined up on stone dais in the center of the formation, where the rift had opened before. The S.E.C.T. members jostled their way to the front of the line. A few protested, but it wasn’t worth arguing over.

“Make a line on the other side,” Cor said, walking over himself, and pulling Hudson and many of the grasshoppers along with him. It didn’t matter which direction you went into a portal, as long as you touched. Two lines meant they could use the front and the back, and actually send people through faster.

“Won’t we end up on the backside of the portal on the other side?” Vince asked Cor, nervously.

“Yes, but the portal area on Earth will be similarly situated – big open area, formation underneath,” Cor replied. “Do y’all not remember that bus we rode in on? We’ll land in a large area, front and back. There’ll be a full security detail on site as well, full cultivator from one of the S.E.C.T. clans.”

Hudson was growing increasingly paranoid. Where was George? What was he doing? There was no way that his disappearance and the formation failing were a coincidence. The exchange with Beatrice hadn’t helped – in the more rational parts of his mind, he considered that Beatrice likely knew nothing about what George had planned, and was simply spouting nonsense to try and salvage her own reputation.

The paranoid parts of his mind had his head on a swivel, constantly examining all of the cracks, crannies, and dark parts of the cavern, preparing for an attack to come out of nowhere.

He was so keyed up that when a massive rift opened on the dais directly in front of him, Hudson was surprised and instinctively jumped backwards, pushing his cultivation technique to its max and bringing his hands up into a fighting stance.

The portal was open! They were going to go home and escape this nightmare. At the same time a ragged cheer rose up from the participants, a glowing fist materialized in between Hudson and the portal, hammering into his crossed arms, then his chest, cracking his collarbone and knocking him backwards into the others waiting in line.

He’d been expecting it – he’d known it was coming. George had finally shown up. His body appeared out of thin air, glowing the same silvery glow as his fist, standing between Hudson and the portal back to earth.