Akari opened her eyes and found Relia kneeling over her. A fire burned somewhere nearby, casting flickering shadows on the cavern walls. The warmth reached skin, but it did little for the chill in her bones.

She tried to speak, but the words got caught in her throat. Kalden brought a water bottle to her lips, and Relia forced life mana into her channels.

“Try to cycle,” Relia said in a dry voice. “As much as you can.”

Akari closed her eyes and pushed the life mana outward through her body. The numbness faded over the next few heartbeats, and feeling came back to her frozen limbs.

“You were out for a few minutes,” Kalden said. “Your portals saved us, and no one else was hurt.”

She gave a weary nod, and her friends helped her sit up. Elise and Arturo sat on the other side of the fire, which turned out to be a mana technique. No fuel sat beneath the flames, and no smoke wafted toward the ceiling.

Zukan stood closer to the cavern’s entrance, forcing more mana into a domed Construct around their group. Probably a heat containment ward of some sort.

Relia scooted across the floor to sit in front of Akari. “You okay? You almost got swallowed by a dragon.”

“Pretty sure I did get swallowed.” Akari ran a hand over her hair and hoodie, and it came back surprisingly dry.

Arturo unzipped his backpack and pulled out a stack of vacuum-sealed bundles. “Here,” he said as he passed them out. “Put these on.”

Akari accepted her package and found her name printed on the front. “Are these—”

“Cold weather clothing,” he said. “Three layers of wool and down, plus a parka that draws on ambient mana.”

“You had all this in your backpack?” Relia asked as she unzipped her own package.

Arturo shrugged. “In terms of techniques, I’m the most useless member of this team. Figured I should change that.”

Akari wasted no time removing her hoodie and slipping on the inner layer. “How’d you know Elend would send us here?”

“I didn’t.” He pulled out six more packages that looked like boots, gloves, and hats. “I just prepared for everything. But Elend’s been hinting at this for a while now. Remember that tidbit about the Espirian Special Forces? It’s not the first time he mentioned it.”

Talek. He’d also mentioned a field trip to Akari, but she’d imagined going somewhere local to fight mana beasts. Not this nonsense. Speaking of which . . .

“Where are we?” she asked the group in general.

“Vordica,” Kalden said as he zipped up the front of his parka.

“What?” Elise blurted out from across the cave. “The southern continent?”

Arturo nodded in agreement. “It’s the only place that makes sense. Espiria and Shoken have colder climates to the north, but nothing like this. Akari had deep frostbite in less than two minutes, and she’s an Apprentice. That puts the temperature at least a hundred degrees below freezing.

“Not to mention the wind speeds.” Kalden raised a compass. “And those winds were coming from the north. That puts us south of the Inner Sea.”

“Shit,” Akari muttered. Mana storms raged freely through Vordica, and most people considered the land unsafe for humans. Some Artisans and Masters explored here, but Apprentices like them didn’t get within a hundred miles of this place.

“You’re joking,” Elise said. “Vordica’s thousands of miles from Koreldon City. Only a Grandmaster Space Artist could make a portal that far.”

Akari gave the girl a flat look. “Remember that lady we saw Elend talking to earlier?”

“Sure.”

“Her name’s Grandmaster Sterling, and she’s a famous Space Artist.

“Seeing Elend with someone proves nothing,” Elise said. “This could still be an illusion. I mean—he wouldn’t put us in real danger, would he? He’d have to deal with our parents.”

Silence followed, and several of them exchanged looks of uncertainty.

Relia fidgeted with her red braid, which stuck out from the back of her hat. “I’m pretty sure this Is real.”

“What?” Akari rounded on her. “Elend told you something?”

“No, but I’m still more than a hundred mana points from Artisan. I’d be dead by now if it weren’t for all this training, and . . . other stuff . . .”

That last part probably referred to her soulshine, but they hadn’t shared that part of their training with their teammates. Especially Elise, who could easily use that knowledge to make trouble for them.

Another silence fell over the camp as Relia gathered her thoughts. “Elend knows I can’t break through without something big. That’s why he sent us here. To the most dangerous place on the planet.”

Technically, the most dangerous place was the center of the Inner Sea. No one had ever returned from there, not even Mystics. Then there were the Hollows beneath Espiria and Cadria. Explorers had charted the first few dozen levels, but no one had ever ventured deeper than that. Not to mention the rain forests in Gravago and Cracan. She’d heard of insects there that could kill a Master in a single bite.

Still, Akari saw her point. This place would push them to grow in ways nothing else would.

“It could still be an illusion,” Elise said with an air of desperation. “He’d never get away with—”

“It doesn’t matter,” Kalden broke in. “We can’t prove this is real unless we actually die, so there’s no point in trying.

“Agreed,” Zukan spoke for the first time, but he never turned his attention from his techniques. “This talk is unproductive. Our goal is the same, regardless.”

“Right.” Kalden retrieved a map from his pouch and spread it out on the cavern floor. Vordica was a bowl-shaped landmass at the bottom of the Inner Sea, stretching all the way from Cadria to South Shoken. It was also closer to the equator than parts of Espiria and North Shoken, and Akari had never understood why it got so much colder here. Probably some bullshit about mana storms and wind patterns.

The genuine version of this novel can be found on another site. Support the author by reading it there.

Kalden gestured to a peninsula on the continent’s west coast. “There’s a research base here. That’s our best chance of getting home.”

Arturo stepped around the fake fire and knelt beside the rest of them. “So where are we now?”

Kalden scanned the map for a few more seconds before finally shaking his head. “I have no idea.”

Relia leaned forward. “Remember what Elend said? We need to be home for our admissions exams this Kelsday. It will take at least a day to get back to Espiria, so that should put us within two days of the research base.”

“Unless Sterling put a portal in the base,” Akari said. “Then we could be three days away.”

“Darn it.” Relia’s shoulders sagged. “You’re right.”

“We’ll say three days to be safe.” Kalden retrieved a pen from his pouch and circled an area around Vordica’s western peninsula. “Assuming we can travel twenty miles per day, that puts us somewhere in here.”

“We can go a lot farther with Akari’s portals,” Relia said. Her smile faded just as quickly, and her shoulders sagged even deeper. “But Elend knows that too . . . ”

“And these are mountains,” Arturo said. “Can we even go twenty miles a day? Even with portals? Not to mention the local wildlife. I doubt that dragon was our last fight.”

Kalden brought his pen down as if to make a wider circle, then he shrugged and returned it to his pouch. “We’ll need to travel northwest until we reach the coast, then west from there. That’s all we know for sure.” He looked up at Zukan. “How long can you maintain these fire Constructs?”

“All day,” Zukan said in his gravelly voice. “Assuming you have enough liquid mana in your bags.”

“Even while moving?” Kalden asked.

Zukan inclined his head in a subtle nod.

“Okay.” Kalden gestured to his pouch. “I have ten gallons of water, and maybe enough food for one day.” He shot a glance at Arturo’s backpack, where he’d retrieved the cold weather gear a few minutes before.

“I’ve got a hundred gallons,” Arturo said. “And probably enough food for two weeks.”

“Bullshit,” Akari said. Her own backpack had a pocket dimension of seventy-two cubic feet, and that was high end. No way Arturo had enough mana to power anything bigger. For Talek’s sake, he wasn’t even a Space Artist.

Arturo followed her gaze and shook his head. “It’s not in there, shoka. But I can open portals to a larger vault.”

She furrowed her brow. “Apprentices are too weak to make portals that far.”

He grinned. “Not if you have a SDN.”

“SDN?” Relia asked.

“Spatial delivery network,” he replied before turning back to Akari. “My vault is considered cold storage, and it runs on a network of portals across all four major continents. Most of the mana costs are handled remotely.” He patted his backpack. “I just need to feed the sigils enough for the final transfer. It takes a few minutes, but I can get anything we need. Water, food, mana, climbing gear. I’ve even got a pair of tents. No bombs, though.” He shot Kalden a look. “Seriously, shoko. You scare me sometimes.”

Arturo clearly knew more about Akari’s aspect than she did. She had to remind herself that he’d already graduated from KU’s sigilcraft program, so he had four extra years of training. He also had a lot more money to burn on expensive services. The Darklights gave Akari and the others a fair bit of spending money, but that was pocket change for some of their peers.

What about the Solidors’ other candidates? Did they know how to make stuff like this? Did she have to catch up with them, too?

The group rested for another twenty minutes, then they set out down the southwest side of the mountain. Zukan maintained his heat shield the entire time, and Elise wrapped a larger Construct of dream mana around that. In theory, that should hide them from anymore high-level mana beasts.

Kalden led the way, digging sharpened mana spears into the stone beneath their boots. Zukan held up the rear, and Arturo’s ropes tied everyone together at the waist. Fortunately, the winds had subsided by this point, and many of their precautions proved unnecessary.

That didn’t make things easy, though. Every so often, the Master-level dragon would circle the sky, and Elise struggled to maintain her invisibility shield. She’d been a duelist before Koreldon University, so she’d never had to protect so many people at once. Much less for hours at a time.

They covered well over thirty miles that first day, thanks To Akari’s portals. She carried them over vast canyons, around mountains, and over cliffs of jagged rock. Eventually, they put the mountains behind them and came across a vast desert. Was desert even the right word? It was negative ten million degrees out here, so it definitely wasn’t warm. Then again, there was no ice or snow. Just miles and miles of barren rock.

A roar echoed over the landscape, and they all glanced to the east.

“Great,” Relia said. “Suck Master’s back.”

“Suck Master?” Akari blinked at the familiar name. “Is that a vacuum company?”

“Yeah, I think so.”

Arturo burst into laughter behind them. “You two are thinking of Dust Master. Suck Master is a company, but they don’t sell vacuums . . .”

“Ew.” Relia’s scarf hid her face, but her blush was audible in her voice. “Never mind. We’re not naming him that.”

“Suck Master’s a good name,” Akari said as the dragon turned to the north. “Not like there’s any dust around here.”

They continued across the desert for the better part of the day, but there was no end in sight. Had this been a mistake? Should they have followed the mountain range southwest, or made camp while they still could? They certainly couldn’t stop here in the open. Not with Suck Master looming above.

Occasionally, the creature would swoop down and eat something on the distant horizon, but they couldn’t make out the details of its prey. Suck Master really did look like a skeleton, though. Almost like a Death Artist had reanimated his bones with an external Cloak technique. Of course, real skeletons didn’t need to eat, so that probably wasn’t the case.

The sky darkened, the winds blew harder, and the desert went on forever. Every part of her ached from her muscles to her channels. Akari would have collapsed by now without her Cloak technique. She felt dizzy every time she made a portal, and her vision went dark whenever she slowed her cycling.

Damnit. She should have spoken up before. Kalden and Arturo had both wanted to go north, because it lowered their chances of missing the research base. But none of that mattered if they didn’t survive this desert.

All the while, the dragon circled the sky, passing over them every few minutes. The dream mana might have fooled his senses, but his instincts told him to expect food nearby.

The rope tugged behind Akari as Elise finally lost her footing. Zukan barely caught the girl before her head struck the ground.

“Stop!” he shouted to Kalden.

Kalden stopped walking up ahead, and the others all turned around.

The skeletal dragon chose that exact moment to fly overhead, but he didn’t look down. Even now, Elise maintained her shield around the group.

“Moonfire?”Arturo stepped closer and knelt beside her. “You need a break?” He glanced up at the sky. “Suck Master’s leaving soon. Maybe you can drop your shield for a few minutes.”

Elise shook her head. “If I stop . . .” She trailed off as her teeth chattered. “ . . . can’t start again.”

Akari knew the feeling all too well. Her Cloak made her whole body feel like a clenched fist. By now, it was easier to keep the technique going than to release it. And if she did release it, she’d probably pass out again.

And Elise had been holding two techniques for the past twelve hours? Akari still didn’t like the girl, but she’d clearly earned her spot in the rankings.

“Someone should carry her,” Zukan rumbled. “She can focus on her techniques that way.”

Akari looked at Relia, and everyone else did the same. Kalden and Zukan already had their hands full, and Akari and Arturo were the weakest in terms of physical strength. That made her the obvious choice.

Relia must have realized the same thing, because she gave a slow nod. “I’ll do it.”

Akari turned to Kalden at the front of the column. “What about stimulants? You’ve got some allnighter potions in your pouch, right?”

“I do,” Kalden said slowly. “But we’ll crash twice as hard if we take those.”

“We’re gonna crash no matter what we do,” Akari said. As with so many things in the world of Mana Arts, this came down to simple math. Relia and Zukan might last all night, but the rest of them would collapse long before then. Even Relia was a wildcard with her condition. Not to mention the extra weight on her shoulders.

Best-case scenario, they had two or three hours of strength left, and this desert could easily go on for another day. Elend would have predicted all their movements here, but he’d also expect them to use everything at their disposal.

“Alright,” Kalden said as he retrieved a box of potions. “Has anyone not taken an allnighter before? Some people have side effects, and we can’t risk that now.”

Zukan raised a hand. “I’d planned not to partake, regardless. It’s better if we don’t tie our carts to the same raptor.”

“Good thinking,” Relia said. “I think I’ll sit out, too. At least for now. Elend sent me here to push myself, and I still haven’t reached my limits yet.”

Kalden passed out the glass bottles to everyone else, then they continued their trek across the plain.