Utterly oblivious to the horror-filled looks dawning on both Val and Caro’s faces, Mike waved Leah—his teammate—closer. “I told you I joined a guild here, correct? That there is Versetti, she’s my captain from—”
“Horizon’s Silence,” Val said. Where else would a late adventurer’s daughter go if not their guild? Seeing her mother’s framed picture in the halls, wielding the worn-in training tool her father held once, listening to the adventures’ fond stories of her parents—it offered a reprieve from the deafening gap they must’ve left in her life.
She would know.
A little over fifty meters away, she watched as Leah’s mouth opened apart in pure stupefaction. She swiped the few stray strands escaping her low ponytail behind an ear, as if she needed the perfect view to confirm the sight before her.
Val didn’t blame her. Heck, she found herself doing the same thing, mesmerized by how well she remembered the girl, from her lanky frame down to her thin nose, hair a brown so light, she preferred to call it dirty-blonde.
“How do you always manage to finish my thoughts?” Mike muttered to himself, brow furrowed, and gave one last wave to the girl.
Versetti barely reciprocated, bug-eyed as her attention wavered from Striker to Striker. Compared to half a decade ago, they must make a peculiar pair.
Leah’s scoff was sharp enough to make her wince, and it wasn’t even directed at her. Tilting her head, her gaze roamed Caro’s frame. “Well if it isn’t the big bit—”
“Girl.” Caro raised a hand. “It’s been years since I’ve last seen you, and you haven’t taken a sec in all that time to reevaluate yourself?”
“Oh right,” she paused, and Val would’ve thought the girl remorseful had she stopped there. “They call you Crazy Caro now.”
“Better than… how did it go again? Oh right—spaghetti-Versetti, isn’t it?” she chuckled, likely surprised at how stupid the nickname sounded in adulthood. Even still, Leah leaked the smallest lip twitch past her indifferent mask and Caro clearly counted it as a win, her lips curling upwards. “Come on, your skinny ass wants a go. Let’s have it.”
She shook her head, and Val’s blood ran cold as her head slowly turned to her. “My gripes with her.”
“She has a name,” Caro said. “Either you use it, or you leave it be. Better yet, why don't you take a hike right now?”
Mike's shoulder twisted from girl to girl, confused lines running along his face. “What happened to introductions?”
If given the time, Val would’ve snorted at the silent death stares Lenson and Jesal sent his way, obviously frustrated at his lack of interpersonal awareness. To her dismay, Leah swooped in and snatched the opportunity hanging in the air without hesitation.
“You know what, you’re right Mike. How about a friendly duel, Valory?” Leah asked, and the genial smile on her face likely made the past few moments pass as friendly banter to the unknowing. In fact, many turned Val’s way, interested in the turn of events, and she cursed her tendency to end up in the middle of fights by merely existing.
“A little Elemental Exchange?” Leah pushed. “Always helps things move along.”
A muscle bulged beneath Caro’s jaw. “Don’t you have better things to do?”
“I wasn’t asking you,” she stressed, and those few words did the job of two—acting as a direct counter to Caro’s rebuttal and pinning the response on Val. Decline, and she’d be the one at fault. Accept, and she’d be the one dead center of an Exchange, the social importance of the phrase doing away with anything “friendly.”
Val let out a resigned huff even before the answer left her mouth.
“Sure. For old time’s sake,” she said, reeling in a frown as she examined Leah’s overeager smile.
Something about it seemed off, and she was at a loss for what it could possibly be. Maybe Vague View might help. A blue glimmer bloomed in her eyes, and she pinned her gaze on her counterpart, scrutinizing the motion she took to leap onto the elevated fighting area. The frown she tucked away trickled back onto her face. Please no.
Val rubbed at her eyelids, hoping with every blink, the vivid blue coiling around Leah’s gear faded away. It didn’t take long for her to categorize the fluid, azure elemental traces. It moved as if it were a live thing, spry and evocative, much like she’d witnessed in other Strikers. A water mage capable of using the Discipline of Invocation in a place as rainy as Storm’s Keep meant that—
“Ready to lose?” Leah called out on the other end, beaming.
Val couldn’t even reply. She did, essentially, sign up for a definite loss. With a weary sigh, she hoisted herself onto the platform, hissing a silent breath each time her combat boots sunk into the ground. If the dense sea of azure swimming around her ankles didn’t tell her anything, the marsh-like, fifty-by-seventy arena said it all.
The duelling zone was soaked. No barricades to hide behind, no divots to disappear into—just wet, packed soil. In other words, she stood in a water Striker’s perfect ideal. Oh saints, she grimaced internally, plastering on a small smile and throwing her opponent the go-ahead signal. This is gonna suck.
----------------------------------------
It took Caro’s complete self-constraint—every single speck within—to not chase away the growing number of spectators. Mike, saints bless his frank soul, had reminded her more than once that her irises burned an eerie crimson-tawny colour, and it’d only take a good magma spell to generate the right amount of havoc needed to stop this nonsense.
But she knew her best friend would hate it.
Besides, onlookers incurred no punishment for watching and she’d end up as the odd one out if she took action. Adventurers were drama-lovers at heart, devotees to campfire stories, enthusiasts of honour, and likely a minimum of a hundred—varying in expertise—hoarded behind their group of six.
Caro would bet her entire savings that, at first, Age of Atera’s shaded blue and Horizon’s Silence’s white and orange were behind the premature attention. The Second Halo’s finest guild against the First Halo’s top ten? Let’s not lie now, even she herself would buy a VIP ticket.
It only took a mere glimpse of Leah’s pleased expression and Val’s morbid demeanour to understand that this fight cut a bit deeper than rowdy fun. And I can’t do a damn thing about it. Not as imperceptible enchantments came alive and activated twenty-foot-tall barriers. Not as the crowd around began to place bets, and definitely not as an thrilled adventurer took the lead.
“Three!” someone hollered.
“Ah shit,” Jesal cursed under his breath, startling the five around him. The positive-vibes, too-cool-to-care Anchor swore at nothing, not even in the worst situation mid-battle. “She’s bound to the watergate.”
“Not quite,” Mike said. “Leah has a variant element. Her unanswered gate—her unanswered ensign, to be specific—is between the Elemental Gates of Water and Ice.”
“Two!” More joined in, and if she counted the other side, upwards of two hundred gathered.
“So what does that really mean,” Otis wondered. “She can use ice and water?”
“No.” Surprisingly, it was Lenson who answered, her usually-bored eyes full of an emotion she couldn’t decipher at a glance. Is that sadness? Caro mused, shocked at the petite girl’s slightly-crinkled nose, almost like she deemed the topic downright vile. No. No, it’s disgust. “She wields something in between. Not quite ice, not quite liquid.”
“One!” Half of the crowd chimed in, and the countdown, as loud as it was, thrummed in her bones.
Mike seemed half impressed, half-frightened. “Precisely. We refer to it as rime water.”
When bewildered expressions befell Hammer Squad, Lenson took it upon herself to clarify. “Think of freezing rain, except she decides when it remains water, or ice.”
Jesal massaged the bridge of his nose. “How do you duel safely with an element like that?”
“Exactly,” Lenson muttered. As Caro paired the girl’s distasteful look with her divination-inclined prowess, she swore aloud, unbothered by the curious glances she earned. The Support gripped her forearm, her gaze trained on the metal mage trapped within a water-filled cage. “My thoughts exactly.”
“Fight!”
----------------------------------------
In the years to come, Val wouldn’t see her short showing in Storm’s Keep anyone barely called a fight as an embarrassing performance. Retrospectively, it’d be the precise wake-up call she needed in the exact brutal manner Leah gave it to her.
For the current metal mage, though, the next few seconds didn’t just suck.
It hurt. Like hell.
She kept a solid grip on the sheathed saber clasped to her hip, whispering the frames to Metal Spike as someone graciously counted down the time. The altering colours tinting Leah’s leather-based outfit perplexed her.
It didn’t seem like the particular tone for water, ice, lightning, or any element among the Heavenly Hues. Unable to extrapolate anything from Vague View other than Leah’s high ASC, sitting at over 150, she disabled it at once.
“Fight!” the crowd roared, and Leah very well disappeared.
The conjured spell that it was, Metal Spike remained on its course for her counterpart’s previous location. She near-well did a double take when the sharp rod not only failed to break through what she belatedly realized was a wall of clear glass, but when it froze in time. Like an ice elemental, the wall absorbed the spell and somehow refroze, trapping the spell within itself.
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Following the vestiges of Leah’s elemental traces to the right, Val turned and took a step—
She stumbled forward, one leg caught in an elemental bear trap. Water had risen from the soft ground, layering on a blanket of liquid ice onto her other leg. It spread in waves, crawling up her shins and closing in on her knees. Val gasped—whether from frost freezing her toes off or from her immobile position, she didn’t know—and forced herself to find Leah.
She did it in a short fashion. It really was hard to miss a 5'8 teenager skating toward you as if she were in an ice rink. A water variant of Metal Skates annealed to the bottom of her boots, leaving frozen streaks in her wake as she glided on ice.
Does she use water, ice, or both? She wondered as she mumbled, “Metal Puppeteer.”
The chain around her arm hummed restlessly, ready to snap at something. Good, she thought, keeping a keen eye on the water mage. As she breached Val’s close proximity, the chain widened into a large loop about her waist. The movement—swift and concise—was an attack itself.
It should've caught Leah no matter where she decided to dodge, but the girl—as agile as a cat—jumped and twirled in the air, her head directly above Val’s.
Fine by me. Once you maneuvered into the air, you found it difficult to maneuver out of it. Val’s blade blurred as she lashed out, straight toward the Striker vulnerable in the air. She expected a desperate counterstrike, or an uncoordinated parry.
Rather, Leah invoked the liquid dripping off her boots, freezing it into a stepping stone in midair. With gravity tugging her back to the ground, she kicked off it and propelled herself downward.
Val swayed to the left, clicking her tongue as she made out the distinct sound of someone rolling to their feet. In haste, she collapsed on a knee and turned despite her pinned ankles, flourishing her blade in preparation.
She gave her hand too quickly.
Counting on a blind response, Leah held back and slipped a mean smile. Val’s blade swiped the air harmlessly. Damn.
Leah's arm went up, and the ice surged upwards in obedience. Her armour, built to deflect sharp strikes and blunt attacks, held no means to thwart the burning freeze in her lower back muscles. Leah dashed forward, whipping her arms outwards. Two rivers snapped into her hand like snakes under her command, and the tips hardened into daggers.
Val couldn’t suppress her chattering teeth, nor her limbs spasming against her will. She got one attempt in, a thrust Leah easily sidestepped, before the ice reached her shoulders and her saber escaped her weak grip.
Undeterred by her opponent’s helpless position, Leah’s weapons drove through layers of carbon fiber and struck flesh. “This is half the pain your Dad caused my parents.”
She forced it in further, and the spell endlessly fed into her tactic—water freezing into longer blades and the blades, upon meeting warm blood, melting into cold water. “Only fair that you feel it too, as his daughter.”
The pain was… extraordinary. Val’s legs would’ve given out under her if they weren’t frozen in place. Even as her scream came out as a muted wheeze, her breath choppy and her complexion pallid, she managed a humourless laugh. “Get over yourself.”
Anger flashed through the girl's irises, and she almost regretted her word choice, wincing as Leah prepped to do worse.
“What in the hell is this?” A commanding voice breached the force field surrounding the arena, and the cheering ever-present in the background settled into a sweet, and yet deafening, silence. “We are in a rift, people—a rift! If you plan on fighting like animals, and that includes the whole gamut of you watching, do it outside the waypoint!”
“High Mage.” Though Val’s eyelids felt heavier and heavier by the second, she made out Jesal's concern-laced words. “My friend needs medical aid.”
“I don’t give animals medical aid,” came the retort. Nevertheless, the high-rising barrier flickered off, and the plop after plop told Val she was making her way over as she spoke. The rhythmic sound, akin to a lullaby, pulled her away from the bout’s burn, the humiliating loss, and the searing pa—
Hold on a minute. She no longer felt… well, anything. The cold stung, but never for long. She took comfort in that, the sole bliss of the afternoon. Then, like her brain always did, a random factoid rekindled her curious spark even as her mental faculty shut down. Her opponent never once recited a single incantation aloud. Speechless spells, as Caro once called it. I gotta admit, she mused, drifting off into oblivion. She’s good. Really good.
…
Val braced herself the instant she returned to her able-minded body. Sticking it out in the cold in years past taught her enough of what to expect. Mild shivering, bone-deep exhaustion, and the habit to wade right back into the comfort of unconsciousness was just the beginning. Yet having the wherewithal to tick off the symptom-related boxes implied otherwise. Huh…
A tent’s polyester interior surrounded her in a tight circle, tapering off into a peak where an overhead lamp dangled. Underneath, a mixture of a sleeping bag, blankets, heated blankets, and a pillow kept her five inches above the floor.
She shot up, inspecting her legs, fisting her hands, and tapping at her injured abdomen. Or, correction, once-injured abdomen. Her muscles carried no signs of any lingering effects, and even the slight wrinkles plaguing her since enduring the water-inclined rift vanished. “The wonders of modern magic...”
Done making sure she was in one piece, she studied the homey resting site, giving an impressed nod to whoever thought it wise to reinvent footstools into comfortable chairs. Surprisingly, she found one of them occupied.
“She’s alive!” Jesal cheered, snappily equipping the glasses he stole away into his hair.
“Somehow,” she mumbled.
In response, he hefted his seat over to her makeshift bed’s edge, interlacing his fingers on his lap. “I realize that probably felt absolutely awful. Just know that she had everything going for her and more.”
She gave a shrug, her eyes finding the floor. “A loss is a loss.”
“Wrong.” He ducked his head low, determined on maintaining eye contact. “There are bad losses and good losses. What you experienced belongs in the former category. There was nothing to be gained and no way for a beneficial outcome. That’s just a downer.”
Val huffed. “You’re telling me.”
“My bad,” he laughed. “It’s just that you look like me after an argument with my sister. Between you and me, as the youngest of seven, you never win.”
“Never would’ve imagined that you’d be the baby of the family.”
“Excuse you, I’m a whole two years older than your little sixteen-year-old self.” Noticing her knitted eyebrows, he expanded. “I’m a winter baby, early birthday and all.”
“Doesn’t explain the two-year gap,” she said.
“I took a year off to resolve some… family issues,” he said. “What about you? There’s gotta be something between you and the Striker you fought. That wasn’t a duel out there, Val. It felt more like a trap.”
“Well, I mean,” she glanced away. “If you believed my dad killed your parents in cold blood for insurance money, you’d probably do the same.”
“Woah,” he blinked. “That is a lot to unpack.”
Except there wasn’t. As dangerous as rift diving was, teamwipes remained an extremely irregular occurrence. With the grading systems ensuring adventurers tread solely reasonable areas, the chance of falling in a single instance was in the lowest percentile. As promised by the CAU, families affected by any rift-correlated tragedies gained insurance money, and a known multiplier they employ was the situation's rareness.
Fortunately, the funds awarded were sufficient enough to pay up to ten years of Mom’s treatment, while keeping Val and her brothers enrolled. Almost suspiciously so, it seemed, to the grieving families. When knowledge reached the ears of Horizon’s Silence Raven’s Guild, rumours were conceived—horrid ones. Everything unravelled from that point onwards.
“Do you mind sharing?” he asked, breaking the prolonged stillness.
“Not much to it,” she answered. “All three were victims of a team wipe, one somehow got blamed for allegedly getting the most out of it. He also happened to be the captain, implying he called the shots. End of story.”
An understanding smile graced his face. He didn't press, poke, or prod at the topic, and he didn't know how much she appreciated it. He sucked his teeth and gave her shoulder a soft pat. “In any matter, your story’s safe with me.”
She planted a hand on top of his and gave it a quick squeeze in thanks.
“I got something just as confidential,” he added and his smile took on a conniving edge, green eyes narrowed behind his lenses. “But I need a second mind to confirm it.”
Reaching for the brimming clothesline at her back, she plucked her cloak and frowned. It needs repairs. Again. She rummaged through it, picking out a trail pack and tearing it open. “Alright, shoot.”
“I think Otis is hiding something,” he said.
“I noticed that too,” she admitted, throwing an almond into her mouth. “Nothing big. He simply avoided a question of mine.”
“It had to do with his element, right?”
“Not his element, his—
“Interceptive shields?” he said, and Val started.
“Yeah.” She gave him a slow nod. “Yeah, exactly. How’d you guess?”
“Because I pressured him on some stuff too, and he dodged it like crazy,” he said. “That very first question we got in tactics territory. I asked around. As the Novices we are, it’s meant to be unsolvable for the exact reason that Ekon and I got into it. There are dozens of factors that go into something as complex as familiars and he actually pinpointed the single most important one.”
“We are a smart bunch,” Val said, gnawing on a pretzel.
“You don’t find it weird, then?”
“I’m in a group with a tri-bound diviner, a high school graduate nearing 300 ASC before the start of school, a wraith of a Hunter, and an Anchor with both gravity and amplification for elements. Let’s not talk about their Aether Artifacts,” she deadpanned. “Define weird.”
“Fine, fine,” he grumbled. “I’m telling you, though. I smell a secret.”
“We’ll find out soon enough, won’t we?”
“I suppose we will,” he said, grunting to a stand. “My shift should be rounding up right about now.”
“Shifts?”
“We’re taking turns watching you,” he answered, raising the tent's flap. “See you in the morning.”
“Bye?” Val replied, stunned at his sudden departure, and even more so at his replacement. Her best friend slid into the medical ward moments after, hesitating at the threshold.
In true Caro fashion, she didn’t remain still for long, plopping onto the nearest stool. “Hey. You’re awake.”
“Alive and kicking,” she answered. “Thanks, by the way. You know, for standing up for me out there.”
“Always,” Caro replied, crossing her arms in a huff. “Only I get to pick on Valory Efron. Now go on, get to sleep.”
Val grinned at that, indulging the momentary cease-fire. The awkwardness edged in within seconds, the girls keeping to themselves in silence, save for the faint cracks of thunders muffled behind the wards. Nevertheless, she slept better that night than she had in any other rift, deciding—at the cusp of sleep—that it was about time to remedy things between the two.
It seemed like she merely blinked when someone—quite dramatically, in her opinion—ripped the blankets off her. She knew, judging by the light piercing through the plastic-film windows, the next day barely began. Groaning, she hugged her pillow tighter and turned to the other side.
“You need to wake up,” Jesal demanded. “Caro, you too. Get up.”
“Why?” Caro asked, and Val didn’t have the energy to question her overstayed presence.
“Some idiot slew the Core Guardian and harvested the Rift Core,” he got out through gritted teeth.
Wait—what? Val’s eyes flew open. “Did the rift rupture?”
“About fifteen minutes ago,” he answered. “We have fifteen more before we’re overrun with saints know what.”