Unity buried the stinging of his thoughts as he ran, finding little enough exertion in remembering the directions that he could afford to let his mind wander. Mostly to imaginative ways he might kill Xenus for her insolence, were it a more perfect world.
As Unity turned a corner, his pondering moved to the prediction of who would ruin her plans first.
The odds seemed in balance.
***
Gem fought not to laugh as she flew. It seemed childish to her, far too reminiscent of the girlish attitude that had left her body a ruin and pride a memory.
But she’d not taken to the air in weeks. Doing so again, even confined within paces of the ground by whatever magic kept the walls from being scaled, filled her with an impossible delight. That, and so much more.
It had been just as long since she’d touched her magic, let the arcane make of her a conduit and leave her body strong. Long enough almost to forget the majesty of it, to forget why she’d never gone more than a day without indulging before. A single sip of the Goddess’ gift had reminded her.
Utalis was a fortitude Gem hadn’t imagined would ever reach her again, leaving her problems untouched and bringing with it the strength to face them undaunted.
She felt increased by the sensation, once more a giant in her mind’s eye. Steely faced and diamond hearted, unshakeable and unbowed by the world itself. As if Karma had taken command of her thoughts and begun to order them as she did all other things.
More than Utalis, Gem felt the animalistic power of Cutaris. Magma in her veins, gunpowder at her fingertips. The urge to act, to fight, to win. So suddenly strong in her deprivation that even the very wind against Gem’s face proved stimulus enough to excite her, almost overloading her senses with the input.
How had I ever lived without this? She demanded of herself, giggling and screaming her joy as she spun through the corridors. I hadn’t, clearly. I’ve been dead this past fortnight.
Gem turned as she reached a corner, Utalis just barely holding her wits against the primacy of Cutaris and leaving them solid enough to dredge Deka’s instructions up. She didn’t even care that it had almost slipped her mind.
A wall nearly struck her as she changed direction, and Gem found herself giggling again. The sheer danger a nerve-igniting thrill.
Danger? She mused. What danger?
The thought froze her revelry like rain amid a Javic winter. Gem thought back to all she’d dwelled on over the past days, how hot the mistakes of her first task had burned in her mind.
Joy evaporated as she began, once more, to curse her own foolishness. Surprising even herself with how quickly such a vital lesson had removed itself from her mind.
I haven’t used magic in weeks. She reminded herself, turning another corner and finding the thrill muted by introspection. Guarding against its strengthened effects, not relishing them.
The wind howled without answer in her ears.
***
Left, left, right, left. Left, left, right, left.
Crow repeated the directions like the turning of a waterwheel, terrified with every passing moment that he’d let them slip from his mind.
He was almost grateful to Deka for focusing his thoughts with their mention, the mantra left room for little else in his head. Not even the creeping fear of pursuit that had driven him to run.
Left, left, right, left. Left, left, right, left.
Again and again the words rang out in his mind, soon ceasing to even sound like words at all. And still he repeated them, still he followed them.
Mind unshaken, focus unbroken, until a sudden sound from afar snapped his silicate concentration.
He stopped rigid, stood and stared in all directions. Foolish and caused by instinct rather than thought, Crow had heard the sound clear enough to know it came from far away. A hundred yards, he’d wager.
Not so far as to be unrecognisable as a human voice.
Cursing himself, he took off in a jog once more- then accelerated to a sprint in search of the moments he’d burned in his stupor. The mantra was soon back at the forefront of his mind.
Left, right, left, left. Left, right, left, left.
***
“Where do I go now?” Unity hissed, speaking the moment he felt Xenus’s presence in his thoughts. “I’ve been waiting for a minute you stupid bitch.”
The girl ignored his insult entirely, speaking with that omnipresent, rebounding tone he recognised all too well as a Manamicist’s communication. It still made him dizzy.
“Turn right, then left, then right twice and then left again.”
He was moving before she’d left, turning the corner just as she vanished from his thoughts.
Unity didn’t like Xenus, he’d decided that much long ago, yet even he could admit she had a convenient way of cutting past the fat of a conversation.
He could only hope it would serve the rest of their team as well as him.
***
Crow nearly stumbled before recognising the presence of Deka’s thoughts, preparing to listen the moment she started speaking.
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“I’m just about to pass the last corner.” He told her. “Give me a few more moments.”
“Okay.” Came her reply. He half expected the girl to withdraw from his mind at that, but she remained. Crow wondered whether the agitation and impatience he sensed vibrating in his thoughts was mere imagination.
He turned into the latest corridor, opening his mouth to ask for the new list. Then halted the moment his eyes fell upon a familiar, terrifying sight.
A boy stood ten paces from him. Tall, lithe and with a Goddess-given face. His skin seemed the colour of red desert sand, unblemished as marble and young as his own. Eyes as green as Crow remembered, hair still white as a mountain’s crown.
Rajah turned to meet Crow in an instant, face slack with surprise. It took only a moment for his eyes to settle into their usual, smirk-pulled relaxation.
“Crow.” The boy said, grin doing nothing to abate the terror his presence inspired. “Fancy seeing you here.”
The boy’s breastplate shone as he walked, sun-kissed gold seeming artificial in its purity of lustre and shade.
Deka’s voice came to Crow slowly, the pounding of his heart and scraping of his breaths barely subsiding enough to let it reach his attention.
“What’s going on?” The girl demanded, fury bringing volume to her words. He found his answer coming thoughtlessly.
“I’ve lost.” He breathed.
“Change of plans.” Xenus’s voice rang out, surprising Unity into stillness. She didn’t pause before continuing.
“Crow encountered the enemy already, on his own. I’m concentrating everyone into his location.”
The girl gave him his new directions before Unity could even coin a question, leaving no time at all for it to be asked. He was kept company only by silence in her absence, mentally adjusting as he committed the instructions to memory and taking off at a sprint.
Urgency came naturally to him. By the worry in Xenus’s voice, it wasn’t hard to guess just which member of team Rajah the idiot had encountered.
***
Gem barely registered what Deka had said to her before the girl was gone, leaving her a dazed mess as she sifted through the hastily blurted instructions mid-flight.
It occurred to her only after she turned another corner that she’d moved wrongly, hurriedly correcting her trajectory and sending herself rolling and rocking head over heels.
She barely stopped, barely started again before falling. Barely gathered her wits as she took off down the corridors in a fury.
Crow was the centre of her rage, his grinning visage becoming a mockery and breathing air into the coals of her anger. Even in the midst of its grip, Gem recognised Cutaris’ hand in her thoughts.
Even in the midst of her magic, she recognised the fear leaving her so compelled to fight as a group.
Gem tore through one corridor after another, inertia fighting her more than the wind. Finding panic almost as great a propellant as magic. It took her seconds to surpass the range of Deka’s instructions, leaving her hovering shakily in place with an impotent, strangled desperation.
Time moved by like melting glaciers as Gem waited for her path to be made clear. When the pressure resumed in her head, it took every ounce of her control not to scream her question.
Gem’s frenzied flight continued for the length of a single corridor more, then halted as quickly as it had begun. She felt herself bobbing in the air, staring breathlessly ahead.
Crimson clothes caught the morning light like freshly spilled blood, red hair and lips making already pale skin seem a desaturated sheet. A grin twisted her enemy’s mouth into a jagged, uneven axe-wound, seeming to promise pain with the expression alone.
She’d seen first hand how much agony such an assurance could bring. As Gem locked her cyan eyes onto the ruby reds of Simona’s, she felt something surge inside her.
Unity ran like rain, sustaining a fast enough sprint to test even his magic. Stabs of pain needled his sides, exhaustion sapping strength and soon sending a caustic burn through his chest.
How he wished, then, that he had the will to match Crow. That he could simply urge his body to do what it refused, dismiss the casual degredations of fatigue and move heedless of them.
How he wished even more that his was not such a flawed and feeble form as to need it.
Useless musings. He chastised himself, pushing them down and focusing on the sprint. One more corridor would be gone before he came to need Xenus’s instructions again, he doubted the girl would delay him.
As if conjured by the passing consideration, Xenus’s presence filled his mind again. Words as heavy against it as his own thoughts.
“Are you there?” She asked.
He needed to bite back the annoyance her question sparked.
“I almost am.” Unity assured her. “Give me the instructions now.”
She began rattling them off, and he began committing them. He turned the final corner as she finished, finding a pair of people stood around it. Two contestants, both familiar to him. The boy and girl who’d been crushed so instantly in the previous task when faced with an alphoe. He didn’t bother to hide his grin as the memory came to him.
“Sia and Timi, right?” Unity called, moving slowly as he did. Both contestants fanned out, initially as surprised as him, they’d quickly overcome their shock. Neither answered.
“Unity, what’s going on?” Demanded Xenus, a panicked edge to her voice. It needled him like nothing else.
“Your instructions were misjudged, is what’s going on. Crow’s mistake must have thrown them off more than expected. Now piss off. I’m in a fight and can’t have you distracting me.”
With barely a moment’s hesitation, Xenus left his mind. Leaving Unity alone with the enemy.
“Gemini.” The girl beamed, slithering towards her with the same viperous gait she’d had when they last fought. “I was worried you might duck out at the last moment. I haven’t seen you in the contest since our last little play session. Have you finished recovering, piecing together mind and body, reforged yourself into something stronger?”
The mockery was a spark falling upon Gem’s temper, breaking down floodgates and unleashing an endless wave of emotion. All directed at the girl.
She felt every humiliation that had plagued her since losing, every doubt and fear, every worry. A tidal cocktail of pure, broken self loathing. Yet tinged by a new feeling altogether. One that Simona’s face alone had brought to the surface.
Rage birthed a tsunami of acid in Gem’s heart, and she felt every drop of it roaring for the dakaran before her.
Lowering herself sluggishly to the ground, she strode towards the girl. Tried her best to hide the hate blazing in her heart, so strong it almost hurt her to bear. Blistering-hot enough for all the fears that might have left her unmoving to barely even be felt.
Only a single thought repeated through Gem’s mind, incessant and unending like a chant.
There’s no ceiling, here.
The dakaran eyed her, doubt flickering in her sanguine irises. A pair of blades rested in the girl’s grip, triangular and almost mirror-bright. Edges unnicked, faces unblemished, tips closer to pins than daggers.
Magic weapons if Gem had ever seen them, surely expensive. It was almost a shame they would see no use.
Raising her hand, she felt power jump around in the skin beneath. Cutaris to turn will into energy, Utalis to condense it into the very air over their heads. A few moments to let the magic strengthen, grow mightier and heavier as she poured more of herself into it, then finally Patais to give its density a gravitic presence.
By the time Simona realised what she was doing, staring up to see the coiling tempest of arcane light descending like a dragon’s breath, it was too late.
Gem watched as the glare fell, striking monster and ground alike with a hammerblow to challenge He’aran himself.
It swallowed the world in an instant.