Maleki:

Miko sat his pack in his lap and dug through it, pulling out his gift from Grandfather, the twin discs. Without hesitation, he wielded one in each hand and crawled towards the northern pylon. I have to get up and help him, but my body is betraying me. Warm air caressed my skin, replacing the frigid temps that I had felt before. It was like jumping into a hot spring after a cold bath. Miko pulled himself every step of the way using just his arms. As I watched his slow crawl, the warmth on my skin turned to an itch. The air here was thin, but instead of the ice-cold air in my lungs, there instead was an uncomfortable heat. Pressure from the atmosphere collided with the warm air and shot it downwards toward us.

Those discs cut through the ground as efficiently as my scythe did and got him all the way to the next stone-metal pillar. He couldn’t stand, but he dragged himself up the base of the stone until he was half upright. Like a tight hug that squeezes the air out of your lungs, Miko grabbed ahold of the black sphere with all his might. He had no legs to brace himself nor the strength I had procured from our differing specialties, but he held tightly to the object. What I could do in seconds took him far longer since he was unaccustomed to the effort. His weaker body shook violently as he poured every ounce of effort into his squeeze. Finally, after fifteen long seconds, he endured the hold and positioned the sphere in the correct direction. He fell to the ground, his palms bearing the force of the fall as his arms trembled from the electrostatic shock.

In anger, I managed to flip my wrists over and claw up the wet snow. My body was weak; my senses were dull from the multiple attacks of static convulsion. Miko looked as bad as I did, but he was younger, smaller, and weakened by his curse. This wasn’t his job. I was supposed to protect him, but I’ve put him in danger. Miko’s words from earlier echoed in my head, ‘Let me help you when I can.’ Could I escape this need to protect him and let him endure weight of his own? No, that’s not who I was. It’s not what our father tasked me with. “Be strong in his stead. You must be the man I am not.” He had told me. What was I supposed to do with those words? They didn’t change anything; I had already embodied those things before they ever abandoned us.

Now, a hundred steps away, my brother struggled to find consciousness. As the sky cooked us from above, a chill of cold air stroked accessed my pant leg, twitching the muscles in my calves. That was the last calm heartbeat before the dark funnel consumed the remaining light gray clouds. The hair on my arms stood unnaturally, and a taste like metal grew strong under my tongue. A crack of lightning whipped towards the ground before my eyes could even track the motion, colliding with the middle pylon. Had I been of sound mind, that strike would have sent me reeling backward, holding on to my ears for dear life, but my hearing had not fully recovered from the last strike. Heartbeats seemed to quicken in my chest as I lay there frightened. The metal had distracted the lightning from the rest of the peak, keeping Miko and me safe. Another breeze of cold wind pulled through, and I felt simultaneous sensations of hot and cold. No — I didn’t have to read from a book to know what was coming next.

We grew up on flat fields safe from most of the large storms, but we were familiar with dangerous clouds and their children, tornadoes. Dark finger-like clouds disconnected from the maw, forming into sharp points that spun at impossible speeds. Five of the dark clouded tornadoes touched down all around the field of stone. The pressure from the winds in the sky lessened as they focused into these shadowy tendrils, and my body regained movement, allowing me to push up off my palms and hold myself up on my knees. Miko was still struggling, but these tornados would close in on us soon enough. I must get to the final pylon in the middle and open the gate. Since the wind speeds condensed into the twirling figures around us, the areas away from them were safe, and there was nothing touched down in the middle. This was my chance. I need to move now and quickly. Although these tornadoes were small, they were still fast enough to pick up a human and send them hurtling towards the stone floor, or worse, into or over the barrier wall.

You might be reading a stolen copy. Visit Royal Road for the authentic version.

My feet found their footing, and my grip tightened around my scythe. Looking more like Miko on a good day, I limped as quickly as my body would allow.

One hundred steps…please let me get there, I pleaded in my head. Short pants of breath left me as I forfeited the conserves of air in my body to reach my goal quickly.

Sixty steps, let the sky ignore me, I begged. At forty steps, the winds raged, rocking the ground underneath me until I lost my footing.

Just give me forty more steps, I begged. My scythe dug into the ground as a shadow cast over from above. The tornado was at my last pylon and sweeping pebbles into the air like arrows. They slid against my skin like the talons of a small bird. I kept moving, digging my scythe’s curved blade into the ground to stay standing.

Ten feet, my screams were lost in the storm. I stepped forward, and the shiny pylon was only a few steps away — then the world tilted. Crashing against me, a stone the size of my palm was sent flying, accelerated by the tornado. The piece of rock hit directly into the middle two gashes in my back that I had retrieved from the Aeternae, sending me to my stomach and knocking out the remaining breath in my lungs. If that didn’t break one of my ribs, it definitely bruised a few. My eyes drifted into the blackness. No. I’m so close.

Fight through the pain; don’t let the dread overwhelm you, I pleaded to myself. I sunk into my mind further into the void as a cool sensation flowed down my back. It was not the wind; my wounds had been reopened, and the cuts were bleeding again. In that darkness, my father’s words coasted like a breeze into my dazed mind. ‘You must be the man I am not.’ His hand reached into that dark void I was trapped in and found my shoulder. His eyes were blacker than the void. How is that possible? Was this a memory, or was I imagining it? Father’s voice was stern but calm, “Both of you shall be better than I ever was.” His fingers rubbed his temple, shading a face that wore its failures. “Be strong together.” His frame and arm dissipated into shadows, and a light opened through the void. As my eyelids flickered, my senses returned with renewed vigor. My fingernails took in the dirt as I clawed to my feet, pulling myself forward and gripping the bottom lip of the pillar.

I stared at the black cube, analyzing it. This one was different; it did not turn. Instead, it looked like it needed to be pushed down to activate. Tiny blips of lightning snickered through the air around the cube, cracking like the wood in a hearth. Lightning had recently struck this tower, so the metal was charged. In my condition, this would be impossible — this or death. My decision was made, and my palms found the top edge of the cube. This was too much, far more than the spheres. I held through and angled my shoulders above the object. My own strength was not enough, and the electricity flowing through me felt like it was burning my skin and boiling my blood. Then, he appeared.

An arm extended above the opening in the pillar, and a single palm slammed into the rune that sat at the top of the cube. Miko had crawled all this way. He must have started moving when the stone knocked me out. The cube connected the stored lightning to his body, and I could feel the effects lessen on my body. With two people, the energy transfer was shared. My forearms pulsed, and the bones in my hands clutched the cube with invigorated passion. The scream I let out was guttural, like that of the beast we faced, but it gave me power in a way I had never felt. With enough provided force, the five-sided shape dipped below and clicked into the base of the stone. A circular rune lit up blue, and my body collapsed. After a few moments, the wind calmed, and the storm above fled in all directions. We had surpassed another trial.