The three squads—altogether deemed a pod—made it to the Campsite I without harm, greeted by Ekon’s scowling forehead and Jesal’s grinning face. Both suffered the wrath of a worried Caro upon arrival, the former receiving a soft glare and the latter a punch to the shoulder. The next day came, enabling the three groups on converging paths to split off again to their respective tracks.

Hammer Squad reached Campsite II, and the following campsite at the planned time. No earth golem or wild Lifemonger spawned to deprive the group of their lethal pace. The team tightened the loose bolts in their strategy and even went so far as to develop personal combat tactics. Metal Puppeteer, for example, may be even more useful than she gave it credit for.

Shard Bomb allowed her access to tens of little, sharp pieces able to move other objects and, most importantly, aether creatures. In the same way that she tugged the mud golem towards the pond, she would influence other elementals too. The sole problem remained, however…

Resistance.

That was the core issue of any type of pull technique. If the target braced for it, the result was a game of ‘tug of war’ neither of her or the opposition could afford to play. It made the effort to attempt it useless, as it should stand as a quick way to immobilize—or at the very least stun—them.

But if she lifted the target in the air, it would lessen the problem altogether. The idea was simple to put into play against the scurrying-type creatures amongst Bloom’s Essence. If she saw a group of amphibians that measured less than half a meter in either breadth or length, she blitzed them to oblivion and heaved any that lived in the air. Everyone had made quick work of them afterwards. But my bomb supply is running dreadfully close to zero.

Perhaps it was time for a new spell. Would she find any below Rudimentary Tier 2—?

“For someone who’s supposed to be on duty, you seem very spaced out right now.”

A whisper drew Val from her thoughts. She blinked, taking in the ten-foot tall, earthen wall a distance away. Light flared from behind the barrier, infrequent and varied. Right… Her team and six others rested at the last campsite on their designated track. Afterwards lay ahead the primary rendezvous, where the entire Expedition gathered. The ground remained a good height below, reminding her that she had perched on a boulder, taking a quick rest from watch duty. Her wandering attention found pale-blue eyes, and she nearly flinched at the intensity behind Kylee’s gaze.

“Just thinking,” Val finally got out, tapping at her temple. “I swear my mind runs at a hundred kilometers per hour. It’s hard to catch up with it sometimes, you know?”

The tri-bound Support’s long lashes fluttered as she took a newfound interest in the floor. Guess she doesn’t know. The pair fell into somewhat companionable silence atop the boulder, and while their eyes remained still, their senses were probing the distant and proximate vicinity. Surprisingly, it wasn’t Vague View in use. After all, that skill did require looking about. No, it was an internal sense that seemed to grow ever since Val awakened under Fiona and Master Winsford’s care.

“How’d you two meet?” Kylee’s soft voice, once again, fired off another question.

What? Val worked hard to hide her bewilderment as she reared back to study Kylee’s face. She traced her squadmate’s line of sight to her arm, narrowing in on the bracelet Val just noticed she was twirling around. But who is she talking about—oh! Caro had bought the piece of jewellery during their short visit to Reynor just last week, deciding on the yin-yang pair instead of the blue pearls. According to her best friend, the yin and yang idea complimented them “just too fantastically to ignore.”

“Caro, right?” Val asked, gaining a confirming nod in answer. “We didn’t really meet. We fought a lot,” she chuckled, “as opponents in the ring.”

“Still do, it seems,” Kylee said. At that, the outburst between them in the Dark Mineshaft returned unbidden, and the tips of Val’s ear reddened against her will.

“It’s rare,” Val coughed, though Kylee didn’t look to believe her, raising an eyebrow in question. “She’d give me such a run for my money in the ring, I couldn’t associate her with the girl in the rumours.”

“The one who needs carrying?”

Heavens, Val thought, dipping her chin in acquiescence. Diviners remember everything. “At one point, she talked to me, asking for pointers, and I returned the gesture. Pointers changed to suggestions, suggestions to questions, questions to conversations, and then… conversations to hangouts I guess. Didn’t take long to become inseparable, we were always in sync.”

“I see.” A soft smile graced Kylee’s face, almost like she was imagining little Val annoying young Caro in the past, and Caro doing the same in turn. Soon, though, a fondness Val couldn’t place overlapped on her expression. It was understanding, or rather reminiscent. A familiar experience, then?

“What about you?” Val tilted her head in genuine interest. As out of it as she was after the Archon meeting, she remembered a little of Caro’s rant at the hotel. It was, after all, an interesting conversation.

Kylee’s brow furrowed.

“You and Alizeé,” Val clarified, “are you guys friends?”

“I… I don’t know,” she admitted after a heavy pause. “I don’t know if we’re friends, sisters or whatever.” She sighed. “Enemies’ might be the best descriptor for now. Her past actions are not something easily forgotten, and I hope my face remains a reminder of that fact,” she muttered with such venom, Val had to restrain the instinct to wince despite being outside the crosshairs of such… ire.

Kylee curled up, hugging her knees to herself as she moved to rub at her forehead. Then she froze, snapping her head toward Val as she caught herself. Perhaps, a word too many was said. “You didn’t hear that last bit, correct?”

“Can’t say, Kylee. My ears are sharp,” Val quipped. “Although I can pretend to be a certain support and, y’know, pressure any snoopy people who might ask into silence. All that's missing is blue eye contacts.”

“Goodness gracious…” Kylee’s hand made a return to her face as she scrubbed at it, failing at suppressing a chuckle all the same.

“Hah,” a rare grin spread across Val’s face. “I've finally cracked your shell.”

“Oh shut up,” she murmured.

“What I mean to say is,” Val began, “your secret’s safe with me.”

“It’s no secret.”

In another world, yes it wouldn’t be. At the end of the day, missing a friend was not a crime. It wouldn’t even be weird to call it normal, to be completely honest. It could, however, be exploited by an unkind company to no end. News had broken that the younger Rhodes would be amongst the Advanced Combat cohorts this fall at Thales Academy. Knowledge of the top Support and top Bulwark’s strained relationship could cause problems on every scale possible—personal, professional, and beyond. There was a reason behind the Twenty’s decision to play nice with one another, and that included the scions of such backgrounds.

“Alright.” Val shrugged. “Your not-secret’s safe with me.”

“Heavens,” Kylee said on an exhale. “You and Caro are so alike.”

“We’re best friends, remember?” Val got off the rock they sat on, and trudged along. “Rest time’s over, we got places to scout.”

A surprising, albeit quiet, groan preceded a tired answer from the Support. “As you wish.”

No longer occupied by a conversation, Val’s eyes came alive as she activated Vague View. Most things could hide from her internalized perception, but little could avoid detection when seeing the world in shades of blue. If it were alive, magical or any combination of the two, she’d spot it—barring a cloaking technique, obviously. They were the last on duty, and they only needed to maintain vigilance for an hour more. It was time they took it more seriously.

Six squads rested behind the earthen walls of the campsite, relying on their capabilities. Despite each team clearing the paths that led to the protected cavern, many threats lingered in the route ahead. Then there remained the walls full of hiding, slumbering and living creatures. Thanks to the mixture of soil, plant life and such, Vague View was extremely unreliable when it came to showing contrasting images of any critters stowed away. Rick told her it came with experience; only time will tell.

“Look,” Kylee said, blue irises ablaze. Six tunnels lead to the little space a quarter of the expedition claimed for Campsite V, and Kylee pointed the one cleared by Versetti’s team, all the way to the left. A swarm of blue particles now emanated from the opening, wafting in like a cloud of billowing dust. “We should—”

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“Check that out,” Val finished. “Let’s get a look at what we’re dealing with and then retreat before we get too far. That way we have something to relay back.”

Kylee gestured toward it, as if saying after you. So Val went ahead at a jog, keeping a hand on her toolbelt. They’d cleared all six entrances before even thinking of sitting down and taking a break. It couldn’t have been more than ten minutes since the last check. Such a vast change in such a short time was alarming, to say the least. Val slowed to a cautious walk, checked behind her shoulder to ensure her partner was at her rear, and then peeked around the corner.

She returned to normal sight and began gauging the pathway. Nothing visually stood out, it seemed the same as it was during her last walk-by. Bloom’s Essence tulips dotted the moist ceilings, and a glitter-like substance coated the clay walls. A quick inquiry to Mike told her that it was there when they’d first cleaned house. The tunnel couldn’t be more than five meters in width or height. Light pooled at the edge where the walls met the ground, owing to the lanterns Veretti’s squad swiftly put up.

The minute Val retriggered Vague View, she forced herself to stifle a wince, though a hiss of pain still got through. She could hardly see shapes past the pure blue blinding her vision.

Val took ten steps forward before she called it quits. She couldn’t fight, she couldn’t make observations, she couldn’t be. “Are you seeing this?”

“How could I not?” came the quiet response. Right.

“Evac?”

“Please.”

That was all the convincing Val needed to pivot one foot and start running back with the other. Even with urgency bleeding through every stride she took, she didn’t travel far. In fact, she didn’t make it out of the tunnel. The ground gave way beneath her, and the familiar feeling of her gut dropping—or rising, in this case—to her throat wasn’t missed. I swear I fall in every other rift dive, she grumbled privately even as her mind worked to take in every detail.

Val hadn’t detected any indication of the cavern floor having a hidden, underground compartment. As the clay broke away, there were no cracks to be heard, and no shift in the level ground to be felt. One moment there was solid clay to push off of, and the next there simply… wasn’t.

With a blink, she shut off Vague View and welcomed the darkness and whistle of air passing her by. Thankfully the fall lasted a few seconds. Lacking the time to brace for impact, she tumbled into a not-so-smooth roll and popped back on her feet. Her ankles pulsed with sharp pain, and a line of fire snaked across her back thanks to jagged rock scratching her, but she couldn’t pause to nurse her wounds. Something wasn’t right. And I still don’t know what it is nor why.

A barely audible weight hit the ground behind her. “Somehow I was caught in this mess.”

Val let a sigh of relief leave her body before snorting. She could almost picture Kylee’s ever-so-graceful landing. “You too, huh? I was hoping you could message the crew, but oh well. Do you have a torch on you?”

“One moment.” A click later and cold, white light illuminated the nearby area. Val’s first thought was to survey where they came through. Only… it didn’t exist anymore. Smooth clay sealed the top shut, like Kylee and her just happened to spawn here, a cavern not particularly tall but definitely broad. So broad, in fact, the torch failed to show the girl’s the cavern's rough-hewn walls.

Something just wasn’t right. While she wanted to see past the paltry light allowed, she refrained from using Vague View. The risk of blindness was just a bit too much to dare try.

“You have another one t—” Val tried to ask. It was Kylee’s turn to cut her off.

“To throw? Yes, here you go.” The metal stick flew past Val, the glowing top twirling in the air as it sailed across the seemingly large pit. It hit a wall not too long after—which was par for the course, as none of the girls’ voices echoed—and gave an idea of the space they were working with.

That was what she thought, until the stick tumbled down to the feet of the clay wall, only to be flung across the floor back to them. Val stopped its path by setting a boot on the steel handle. Val didn’t know what to think. She sent a probe for information, only for it to return and add to the confusion. Nothing explained the unnatural way the ground swallowed them whole. Nothing explained the cloud of aether that drew the pair’s attention in the first place. Nothing demonstrated the existence of such an isolated ditch. Nothing explains the torch!

Nothing. Nothing except…

“An elemental?” Kylee pondered quietly, likely more to herself. “What we just saw was earth manipulation. Element manipulation. And the energy? The elemental probably just transformed into a later stage of its life. It’s molting.”

A molting elemental cleansed itself of its past form and energy, stepping into a new phase in every way and measure. As it remained a time of vulnerability, elementals hid away for days, weeks, months—and even years in the upper tiers—to undergo this change. The irregular series of events checked off every single box, as Kylee expressed. A slumbering elemental just kicked the torch back to the prey it subconsciously trapped—a meal to be had.

To restore energy. To replenish its aether reserves. The question was, though…

“There shouldn’t be an elemental advanced enough to molt here,” Val hissed. “It's a copper rift.”

“Normally I would agree. However, we’ve seen extremely odd things here already,” Kylee responded, and the nightmare that was the earth golem came to mind immediately. Then there were the poisonous tulips. No, very few things about this rift were normal.

“Okay, okay, okay.” Val unsheathed her sword at once and kicked the torch back where it came from. A touch less power, and it rolled to a stop right before an awakening elemental could return it. Thankfully what the torch hit before was indeed a wall. What she couldn’t see in the short time the torch hit it, though, was the aether creature perched on the vertical surface.

Although a stone shield might’ve covered most of the elemental’s appearance, the fin-like limbs tucked to the side and the orb-shaped head gave it the appearance of a… turtle?

“Okay,” Val said once more, unbuckling the chain on her arm. “We don’t have much time till that thing becomes fully aware of its lunch. It has no energy. What we do is hit it hard and hit it fast.”

“Sound plan, except something tells me its shell might be a problem,” Kylee voiced. “If we attack and don’t finish it off at once, I wonder if we’ll have the means to keep it at bay whilst pinned down here.”

“I’ll handle the shield. If you can, queue up that convergence spell of yours.”

Kylee hummed. “Overkill, no?”

“I don’t think I care much in these circumstances,” Val replied.

“Fair enough,” was the Support’s final words. The two mages got to work. Glancing at her weapons, Val couldn’t fail to hide a grimace. They have served her well since her second dive in the Darkshaft, and they’ll serve her even better in these next few moments. I should’ve packed more bombs, but they’ll do for now. From the beginning, both weapons carried inscriptions that linked them to her, enabling her to use them identically to her Shard Bombs if she so wished. So it was without doubt that she cast Metal Puppeteer, ready to put them to one final use.

No way was she getting near that thing to sneak in a Shard Bomb or two—because Vague View wasn’t an option, she had no real way to gauge its Tier. It could be Tier 3 for all she knew, and if that was the case, one mere swipe might be the end. From afar it is.

Val threw a glance behind the shoulder at her squadmate. “Ready?”

Kylee bobbed her head.

A slow exhale left Val. Here goes nothing. Aether surged to all four limbs as she raised her sword. Taking three steps for momentum—and not daring to take more—she retracted her arm as far it could go before ripping it forward. She loosened her grip right when necessary, and the sword zipped like an arrow. It felt wrong to let it go in that manner.

Swords weren’t meant to be thrown—everyone who owned one knew that. Slashing, thrusting, and hacking were fine. Throwing? You could put all the force in the world and only the tip would enter the surface of whatever you tried to pierce.

It was no different in her case, and the sword stuck out like a tree’s stray branch. That was all she needed, however. The sound of shifting rocks reached her ears. The elemental jerked, shocked out of its sleep. She needed to move quickly.

Shatter! Val commanded the sword that accompanied her through thick and thin. While it didn’t explode into fine dust as she'd imagined, the force of several separating pieces of metal—embedded previously—was enough to leave a jagged hole where stone once was. Move!

The chain ripped away from her grip and wasted no time in entering through the opening. And so, as soon as it was firmly behind the aether creature's shell, Val gave the order once again. Shatter! She could feel each shard hitting the shell with a force to be reckoned with. Even so, the shell remained in place. Val didn’t detect a chip or crack in the protective material. Molted elementals—even brand new—were something to be wary of.

Wait a minute… Underneath the shell, leftover pieces of the makeshift bomb remained, rooted to the shield. Couldn’t she just use the technique she learned and—Pull! Val wagered every aether strand at the command, downing a couple of pills while at it. Unsuspecting, the turtle couldn’t even protest as it was plucked off its wall and left to levitate in the air against its will.

A vein bulged across Val’s forehead as she kept its massive body afloat. The shards lodged in the right half of the shield were served with the call to pull while the remainder she told to push away. As a result, the turtle-like elemental twirled in the air, soon exposing its underbelly.

“Urk!” The elemental began spasming, gaining consciousness in a fit. Val couldn’t hold for long. “Hurry!”

“Wind Blades: Convergence.”

And at once, it was over.

Val would never get used to the way a living being could go from one, whole piece to shreds within a second. The blades lacked mercy for all, even rockfolk. Especially rockfolk. The wind shards were silent killers, slashing the elemental to bits. It really did end up as Kylee called it: an overkill. Val couldn’t attribute the pile of rubble to the sleeping, earth turtle that trapped them down here. Damn, how are we going to—?

A loud boom rattled her bones. Her gaze whipped to the right, spotting a boulder crash into the ground. Another one joined it, falling from above only to break into hundreds of lesser parts. Val dodged the aftermath of the flying rock pieces, cursing all the while. The elemental’s seal was coming apart, now no longer alive to keep its home as it was.

“Ice Pillars!” Thick columns of solid ice materialized, resting beneath the cracks as rows of lateral braces. Kylee cast Ice Pillars with scary precision, putting the structural elements in the all right places. The spell acted as a new foundation and the destruction of their safe place appeared to seize at once.

Val saw the girl in a new light as she jogged over, sidestepping massive pieces of rock on her way. “Saved us once again—oof!”

A gust of air shoved her straight off her feet, and she landed a few feet away. Val barely had the time to get an elbow underneath her in an attempt to get up before a boulder large enough to encapsulate her entire line of sight fell. Val witnessed the slightest bit of purple in Kylee’s eyes—divination, she remembered offhandedly—before it crashed atop the petite Support.