Jose took a once over of his group and himself. Carmina was still out cold, body limply hanging over Matteo’s shoulder. Whether Matteo was tired of carrying her sister around or was starting to feel the fatigue from their last encounter with the Shrike, he didn’t show it.

Joanna was recoiling at any minor movements beneath the floor or within the walls and gave everyone, including Jose, the cold shoulder. He was sure she was dependable if her life was on the line, but her dour tone was bringing the morale down for the rest of them.

He trusted that Lysa would make her own deficiencies apparent if they came up and she looked fine as they walked down the hallway in a clustered formation.

That left his own assessment and he was feeling drained. He had another pulse in him before he’d be forced to dip into the reserves he’d saved for his trump card. His body was physically drained with calves and thighs burning hot with activity levels they hadn’t seen in years. Without Emma’s training, it would have been so much worse of a slog.

“Hey,” Lysa leaned in to whisper into his ear, “You need me to take over the scouting?”

“Please.” Jose wordlessly thanked Lysa as she moved to the front of the group and sent out a pulse through the abyss ahead. Like the sacs of pus, centipedes in the pulse’s travel path writhed and wriggled with agitation, squirming underneath the floor's flesh.

“I don’t have much distance, but the hallway is just over there.” Lysa pointed to a section of wall in the distance that, when Jose squinted to look into the darkness long enough, provided the vague outline of the doorway.

“And the Shrike?” Joanna looked to Lysa, then Jose. They looked at one another and realized the thumping in their chest from the monster's footfalls was gone.

When did it disappear?

“Let’s go.” Matteo urged the group even faster now to inch towards their freedom.

Jose looked at the expanse of darkness and focused his eyes to try and spot the silhouette of the monster. The knotted rotting flesh around them was drooping in the distance and he couldn’t tell if the end of the hallway ahead of them was blocked by a thick block of meat and bone.

He paid attention to the rhythmic swinging of the flesh hanging on the ceiling and then widened his eyes, “Duck!”

The air cut through their ears as a sharpened beak flew past them, impaling the ground behind them with a stomach churning squelch. Something hot and wet started to spread at his side. He passed his fingers and felt the ripped clothing and exposed wound, wincing at the burn spreading across the area.

“Shrike!” Joanna cried out and immediately split off from the group, running towards the hallway.

“Hold on, you idiot!” Matteo shouted and ran after her. The centipedes around them began scuttling, converging on Joanna’s location.

Jose looked at Lysa, “You need to get them out of here.”

“What do you mean get them out of here? We’re going together, aren’t we?” Lysa looked concerned, eyes irritated by the putrid miasma of the Shrike’s extended neck.

Jose ignored her concerns, “We’ll run to the mouth of the hallway and I’ll hold them off there.” Was he slurring his words? No, his vision was just tilting slightly. The Shrike yanked their neck from the ground behind them and dropped down from the ceiling to the floor with a wet rumbling thud.

Matteo lifted Joanna despite her protests and ran through the hallway. Lysa and Jose trailed behind as the Shrike’s lopsided running brought it closer to blocking the doorway entirely.

“What do you plan to do, Jose!” Lysa shouted at him for an answer but he was single minded in his efforts not to collapse.

“Just go!” Jose yelled at her as they ran to catch up with the rest of their team.

The Shrike raked its claw across the floor after them. Its blackened nails wounded the floor with curls of flesh liquifyings at the touch. A mere leap away from the entryway, victory a moment away.

A whip crack came from the Shrike and Jose felt the world slow. He pushed Lysa out of the way and felt a piercing pain cut through his stomach now.

It was all he could do not to cry out in pain, to remain conscious. The horror on Lysa’s face…

“Go! Win this for the both of us!” Jose tried to best smile but coughed up a spray of blood and bile.

“I can’t leave you here like this!” Lysa reached her arm out and he could feel her helpless tugging at his sleeve. Was she getting further away?

The wind swished in his air as he realized his body was being pulled back by the Shrike. Attempting to pull himself out of the beak came with sharp pains like barbed hooks digging into his abdomen with every squirming attempt to escape.

“Please!” Jose croaked, unsure if he could make out Lysa’s silhouette standing at the entryway.

He laughed, the thought of Vanguard recruits having to deal with situations like this an ethical nightmare. He’d have to ask Emma if she ever went through this trouble before.

She’d be proud if he won, right? Tears were streaming down his face, he was proud of everything up to now in being someone capable enough to explore the world with her.

“Ah!” Jose cried out as the Shrike ripped his innards, forcibly swinging its head to the side to dislodge his body from the creature's beak. His body tumbled and rolled on that cold wet ground. The monster had its head turned to the side, staring at Jose with a glassy eyed curiosity.

He had to hope they were gone now. Jose didn’t want them to get caught up in his spell.

“An Arch Mage’s blood runs through your blood, son.” The voice of his mother rang through his ears, the hope in his growth still fresh and jubilant. “You have it in you to cast something like this.” His fingers crackled with a furious electric energy, each fingertip caked in blood and grime and sweat. “Let this be a testament to the power you hold, Jose. You can devastate whole kingdoms with a flick of your wrists. Don’t you ever forget it.”

The Shrike slowly approached the colorful light show arcing through his fingertips, a halo of roiling black clouds filling up the ceiling.

It was the only spell he could cast with her level of competency, the only connection he had to her even now. The only one he’d been forced to slot into his body, at the request of his mother. He refused to hate himself for falling back to this; it was his now and he would use it for his own needs.

“Heed me, Sundering Storms and smite down my enemies!” Jose shouted in front of the Shrike and felt the emotional fury and remaining energy in his soul drain away to cast his final spell. The squall wall of storm clouds above him responded with their white branching arms, lightning crackling above to cut through the darkness surrounding him.

They grew a mind of their own when housed long enough.

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The Shrike stopped their approach and looked above itself before seeing the storm clouds stretch out on either end of the hallway, gusts of wind and rain slicing through the walls and floor.

“Rest.” The command boomed through his soul as the enervation washed over his body. He watched the clouds illuminate with light and slice through the Shrike with a bolt of lightning, the first of many that branched out and shattered the surroundings around him.

Jose closed his eyes and saw the world around him slip away.

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He was smaller then, curled up to the side of his mothers hip staring at a children's book under the arcane light hanging over her bed. She would read it to him every night, even though he had started to read these books alone and immerse himself in the splendor of the wider world.

He asked her to. She would make voices for the various characters the caravan would encounter in their travels that set fire to Jose’s imagination. Even alone, he would hear their laughter or dialogue in her voice.

“Mami, you’re an Arcanist. Have you ever gone on an adventure?” He asked her. She stared into the distance, a passing sense of longing and joy he only saw when she read her bigger books or casted spells.

“Si mijo, I’ve gone on plenty.” She finally replied.

“And why don’t you go on adventures now?”

“Because I had you and it’d be too dangerous going out there fighting monsters when I have to take care of my little son.” She pinched his nose and he giggled.

“So you fought monsters! What kind?” His eyes lit up, staring at his mother expectantly for an inkling of her personal life.

“Many kinds of monsters. Up in the mountains and across the Great Plains. A lot of monsters in Lacrumi and even more in between.” She was being purposefully vague but Jose didn’t mind at the time. His mind was already placing her in front of the Crypt of Death in the Dreadmoors, shooting lightning from her fingertips as she blasted off arms reaching up to her from the deep pools of water that littered the area.

“Do you think I can be an adventurer like you?”

She smiled tenderly at him and embraced his little head, “Of course, mi amor. When you’re old enough.”

He felt her hand stroke the short hair on his head rhythmically until he fell asleep by her side.

At once, he shot his eyes wide open and jolted upright from a bed of swamp grass. He pulled at the knotted mess of vines and moss that had encroached onto the edges of his feet and hands off. He looked around himself.

The horizon was speckled with violets and oranges. The sky above him was a starless darkened blue, his eyes gravitating towards the statue that pierced the heavens with its outstretched arms enveloping the world at every visible distance.

The soundscape was an orchestra of whistling blades of grass and buzzing cicadas, a performance of nature in perpetual twilight. He could not disturb its stillness that even the ripples of the water he created sang in tune with the rest of it all.

There was a wrong peace in his heart, a forced lulling of the mind that his emotions resisted with every fiber of their being. It was unnatural the way this world tugged at his being to recall and relive. He wanted out. Jose ran the ends of the world, unable to see past the tips of the swamp grass that caressed the horizon line.

He had no voice. It carried a yawn or a sigh, a coerced admission to rest in the comforting embrace of the damp earth beneath him. He’d found others, some familiar and others foreign, their bodies covered in moss and overgrown, rooted curled cocoons enjoying blissful sleep.

Would he have ended up like them? Even if he could see them, his hands passed through their forms like passing through a viscous mist.

The statue with its many faces always found his gaze and implored him to relax and give in to the weight of this slumbering world. Jose didn’t trust the malaise slithering through his mind with honeyed thoughts of pleasant sleep.

He would rest when he was out of here, when he was in the loving embrace of his partner who remained patient with his inadequacies and deep seeded self loathing. He would rest in company with the only friend willing to endanger her life to help him achieve his wish of becoming something beyond the shadow of someone else.

He sat down and stared at the horizon line. He waited for this unnatural world to fade from his sight and-

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His body sunk through the earth and emerged in the sitting position he started the event in.

“Jose!” He turned and was tossed to the ground by Emma’s full weight, her arms locking around his neck in a loving embrace. She showered him kisses on the side of his head. “You’re back!”

“Huh?” Jose blinked multiple times, trying to shake away the haze from his mind. He looked around himself again and saw movement in the stands as citizens walked out of the training room. Vanguard were securing the artifact still in the center of the room in an Annals marked box.

Emma pulled him up from his seated position, the fatigue in his muscles from his experience layering onto his soreness from being in a seated position all this time.

“Do you remember anything that happened in the Realm of Tall Grasses?”

Jose remembered his time in the vessel and travelling through its bloated groaning husk. He remembered the overwhelming pressure of the building sized amber core and the Shrike.

He winced, his hand instinctively pressing onto his stomach.

“I remember my time in the vessel with the rest of them but I’m having a hard time remembering everything else. I feel like I was agitated and wandering but I can’t place my finger on it at all.” Jose confided to Emma. She rubbed his back, scratching the small of it in small circles.

“It’s the penalty that comes from dying in there. It’s why we’ve shelved that thing into your storage facility,” She looked at the statue and shivered, “Thing gives me the creeps just looking at it. It and the Whisperer.”

He stretched his body as best he could without wincing at the phantom pains. Clearly he wasn’t bisected but it didn’t make his midsection hurt any less. He looked down and saw that several other competitors were curled up in their circles with people waiting nearby. His own circle was scant of his teammates.

“Do you know where everyone else is?” Jose asked. Emma smiled and guided him out of the room.

“They’re waiting for you at the final ceremony. Everyone has.” She couldn’t contain the joy in her voice.

They walked out of the training room and Jose was immediately assaulted with a round of applause from a cavalcade of strangers. They’d set up a stage for the Elders and seats for the audience.

“Looks like he’s finally woken up, everyone!” Elder Isabella announced to the rest of the audience with a flourish of her arm.

No.

“Come on up here!” Lysa called out to him from on stage, pointing at a seat with the rest of his team behind the Elders.

No way.

“I am proud to conclude the end of our volunteer games,” Elder Nero began and waited for the applause to die down before continuing, “And am proud to announce these fine folk will be spearheading an operation for the good of our colony. It is a show of sacrifice to commit to such an endeavor and I am struck by their devotion and talents as Ileahian citizens.”

Jose’s chest tightened and he looked back at Emma, “I’m not dreaming, am I?”

She squeezed him tight and urged him forward, “No, love, you did it.” Her voice was choked by the end, tears welling up at the edge of her eyes.

He reciprocated the embrace and started to cry.