“What in the absolute bull-crap just happened?” Olis asked, staring slightly aghast at them all.

Rieren certainly had no answer. She had just watched the tournament official pull out the tokens from the crazier, disregarding the way her hands had burned away in the effort, and then run off into the apparently monster-infested forest. It took them all a good few moments to let that craziness settle into the proper place in their minds, if there was even a proper place for it.

As soon as the woman had departed, hurrying off into the madness, several bright shimmers had wrought the area around them. Rieren blinked. It was almost like lightning. In truth, this was the runic formation crumbling. With the tokens gone, the barrier they had been building was now falling apart.

Not good, considering they were dealing with an invasion of monsters.

“We—we need to get her back,” Galorian said, clearly trying to resort to his anger. “She can’t have gone far. Someone tell that Abyss-kissing Avatar what happened.”

“How?” Olis stared up with growing hatred. “He’s too busy wiping out the entire forest. At this rate. He’s going to kill that poor woman too.”

“Poor woman? She just plunged her hands into flames to steal the tokens and run off with them. All of our tokens, I’ll have you know.”

Rieren pulled her Comm Shell out while the others argued. She quickly called her friends. “Pick up,” she muttered, the urgency almost making her hands shake. “Please pick up.”

Thankfully, Amalyse picked up after the third ring. “Rieren? Is that you?”

“Why do you keep assuming it might be anyone else but me?” Rieren pulled her hand away from where she was rubbing her temple. “Do not answer that. Instead, tell me where you are. Are you and Kalvia alright?”

“We’re fine, for now. Just hiding. Things have gone insane.”

“Oh, believe me, I know.” She considered telling Amalyse and Kalvia about what had just happened with the tournament official, but there was no point in making them worry. First, they had to get away from the Avatar’s line of fire. “Where are you two now?”

“We’re all pinned down about a quarter of a league away from the smoke signal.”

“The green one, I hope.”

“Correct.”

Whatever Rieren might have said next was overshadowed by a furious explosion. One of the Avatar’s beams had collided with the ground nearby, throwing up a cloud of dust and debris that clogged the air. They really weren’t safe.

“Stay put,” Rieren said. “I will come and find you.”

“What? Are you nuts? You’ve reached the smoke signal already, haven’t you?”

“I have. What of it?”

“Then stay there and keep representing us. We need to act as a team. We can’t submit our tokens and then run away. What if they disqualify us?”

“I put down our names. They will find no reason to disqualify us.”

“I’m not sure I’d trust them…especially not with what’s going on.”

Rieren was tempted to curse. Amalyse was right. The imperial court and those running the tournament couldn’t be trusted farther than they could be thrown. Though considering they were cultivators, that might not be a small distance.

“Well, you are correct.” Rieren went on to explain how the tournament official had run off with the tokens. “We may have lost our tokens anyway…”

“Rieren,” Kalvia said. Her voice was deadly serious. Stressed, but still in control. “Do you know which direction she went?”

“I would not trust any estimations of direction. She did not look like she was in the right state of mind.”

“Drats. I thought we could catch her. Maybe if we tried casting a wide net of some sorts. We could spread out pretty far, perhaps even set a lure. Someone running away with the tokens clearly is running to somewhere. Were I her mistress, I would head to where the others won’t suspect my presence. In other words, we should head as far away as possible and then—”

“Kalvia.” Rieren cut through her friend’s vocal pondering. “What you need to do is stay safe until—”

“No. Rieren, we’re your comrades, not your lackeys. We’re a team. That means we need to pull our own weight while you do what you need to. So the real question is—do you know what you need to do here?”

Rieren closed her eyes. Kalvia wasn’t wrong. She needed to trust them to stay safe while she saw to real business. Namely, recovering their tokens from wherever the woman had stolen to.

“I do,” she said, opening her eyes.

“Good. Then I’ll trust you to be safe while you’ll trust us the same. Deal?”

Rieren smiled. “Of course.”

“I knew there was a reason I liked you.” Kalvia made kissing sounds.

“Farewell, and may fortune favour your steps.”

Both her companions returned the well wishes. They cut the call off. Rieren stowed away her Comm Shell, focusing on the objective ahead of her. Even if the official had run off with the tokens only to be caught up in the Avatar’s blasts, the runic formation pieces themselves wouldn’t be destroyed so easily. They were made of sterner stuff.

“We’re going after her, then?” Morel asked. He and the rest of the recruits had clearly overheard Rieren’s conversation.

The narrative has been taken without permission. Report any sightings.

She nodded. “One of you should stay here, try to help the others calm down that Avatar. We can’t have the entire forest go up in flames if we’re going to try to get back those tokens.”

Morel nodded, then turned to his companions. “Stade.”

Stade’s expression turned grim. “I’ll see what I can do.”

Rieren wondered if they were counting on Stade’s fire Aspect powers to tackle the wood Aspect of the Avatar. At their difference in strength, one Aspect’s weakness to the other wouldn’t really make itself felt. But then again, they couldn’t go around trying to fight the Avatar either.

She pushed the thoughts out of her mind and focused on the journey ahead. Rieren’s target was finding the runaway tournament official and recovering all the missing tokens. The rest was up to the others.

“Let us depart,” Rieren said. She set off.

Morel and Forys kept pace for a while. They had to spread out soon, though. Covering more ground would bring them to the official sooner. That said, they would still have to be wary of the golden beams raining in from overhead. They were in the line of fire now.

“I don’t see any sign of her at all,” Forys said after a few minutes of searching.

“We will need to spread out,” Rieren said. “I will go ahead, heading straight towards the border, in the direction we came from. You two take the left and the right. Be wary. Do not let down your guards. Even besides the Avatar’s attacks, we have been invaded by Abyssals.”

They nodded, then rushed off to either side. Even as Rieren prepared to follow suit, she was first forced to take a different direction and hold herself there for a moment. The Avatar had flung one of his auric beams down to chew through the ground and leave behind a swathe of destruction.

Rieren was lucky not to be hit. But a hopeful silver lining was that any monsters in the vicinity had also been incinerated. Still. The ones back at the brazier needed to make the Avatar stop.

She rushed off as soon as the coast was clear. The forest’s layout had changed drastically thanks to the Avatar’s attacks. It wasn’t just the one tree blasting earth-shattering attacks either. As Rieren got farther away from her original destination, she spotted more trees towering towards the heavens in the distance. It seemed the Avatars had set up a ring of defence.

Unfortunately, there was no time to check what was occurring in other areas. Rieren had to focus on reaching her own destination.

Her pace was a little too punishing, but she made sure she wasn’t going so fast that she might miss any sign of her quarry. It was getting a little worrisome. Rieren had travelled quite some distance since first leaving the brazier. The tournament official didn’t look like someone who could have travelled this far so quickly. Had she missed the woman?

A sudden snarl made her freeze. Monsters.

Rieren turned just in time to see a Blightmane charging through the cleared-up forest straight at her. So the news was true. There were indeed Abyssals invading the grounds.

This was a C-Grade Blightmane, going by the way its mane and the peaks of its fur had gone white instead of steely gray. The monsters rushed over with the speed its kind was known for, reaching Rieren in just two heartbeats since the moment she had spotted it.

But Rieren was far stronger than the last time she had fought a Blightmane. In fact, if she recalled correctly, the last one had been a C-Grade too. One that had been easily felled.

This one leaped straight for her. Its jaws were gaping wide, as though to chomp right through her, and its arms had spread wide in an effort to catch her should she attempt to evade. All Rieren did was tut, then use Fray Passage. The skill took her under the monster, positioning right beneath its weak spot.

A quick overhead slash of her Receptor sword unleashed a billowing burst of blood and guts as the Blightmane crashed to the ground where she had been a fraction of a second ago. The monster twitched for a moment or two, before falling still.

Rieren took a second to re-centre herself before quickly selling the monster to the System Shop and heading out.

Her journey only got more complicated. At one point, she was facing a horde of Armistice Enforcers with several Shadeborns and Malomen Shifters at their backs. A proper army, sort of like the ones they had faced and beaten in the Shatterlands. There had to be some reason they were here in such an organized fashion.

After all, these didn’t look like the kind that had risen from the Dreadflood’s innards during the last battle.

Rieren didn’t need to fight them. Simply staying back for a few moments brought upon the golden beam from the Avatar. That reduced the Abyssal army by three-quarters. The rest of the army had been left in tattered shreds that Rieren quickly tore through before forging onwards.

At some point, the others must have stopped the Avatar from indiscriminately using his Domain powers. No more gigantic beams ravaged the area. At first, Rieren thought that she might have come too far, where the Avatar wasn’t even bothering to protect. But no. She couldn’t hear or feel the coruscating beams landing anywhere else either.

Those things were quite hard to miss.

Still. The area had already received the Avatar’s attention. Rieren had thought she would recall the return path, thanks to having travelled through them only an hour or two ago, but that wasn’t the case. The Avatar’s attacks had rearranged the landscape.

Certain clearings were nothing more than hills of ash covering the bones of dead trees. At other spots, entirely new clearings and pathways had been opened up. Rieren’s internal map was torn to shreds. She could rely on her sense of direction to take her in a vague, easterly direction, but it wasn’t as accurate and innate as it had been the other way.

More monsters popped up in her path. Her abilities made short work of them all, no matter what kind appeared before her.

Clumps of enemy groups were easy to deal with thanks to Gale Blade turning her into a devastating storm. The Receptor sword cut through swathes of enemies, sending limbs and dark blood flying in every direction.

It was all too rote and far too familiar. Rieren killed the monsters with the least amount of fuss. When a Life Stifler attacked, all Rieren had to do was send up her Domain in a steaming geyser, destroying the monster’s smoky body. That left its core open to her attack, which she crushed to pieces after extending her sword with Rippling Blade.

Even when there was a new kind of Abyssal for Rieren to face, she dispatched it with ease. All it took was a lone Gale Blade to slice apart the Forkfang’s legs. The serpentine creature crashed to the ground, even while Rieren was completing her skill’s motion. With the last few slices, Rieren tore into the monster’s trio of draconic heads, cutting them apart to spill its blood and cranial innards.

At times, she found that she wasn’t the only one tackling the Abyssal problem personally. Or rather, she wasn’t the only competitor to do so. Sparkling silvery mist somewhere in the distance suggested Oromin had been nearby. A trail of black-and-gold flames indicated where Essalina or someone else from the Arteroth clan had passed by.

Then there was a wash of flames the colour of ice and what looked like two cranes made of paper flying off into the distance. Rieren frowned at both displays of prowess. So, they were here too. It wasn’t surprising if she thought about it.

The Trials of Ascendance presented a massive opportunity to anyone who could attend.

After a while, Rieren got tired of it. It was settled. She had seen neither hide nor hair of the runaway woman, nor a single sign of her passage. That official either hadn’t come this way or had long ago been killed by either the Avatar’s attacks or an Abyssal she had come across.

Still, Rieren found herself moving onwards. There was something compelling her to keep going, to get to the end of the battle lines and see for herself where the Abyssals were coming from.

No, that was stupid. The only place Abyssal hordes could arise from were dungeons where the core had been overtaken with corrupted Essence, dungeons that contained Abyss Rents. But that was the thing. There were no dungeons nearby. They’d made sure when selecting the tournament grounds. These Abyssals had to be coming from elsewhere.

Eventually, Rieren came to a stop at the edge of the forest’s boundary. Somehow, she had ended up at the exact location she, Amalyse, and Kalvia had entered the grounds.

She frowned. There. In the distance, the Dreadflood covered up the horizon in a film of liquid blackness.

Elder Olg had arrived at the Trials of Ascendance.