As per usual, the distance to the Academy was further than expected, because the building was cartoonishly large. I had to assume there were a LOT of students at the place back when the Aetherbright Empire still existed, considering the trials, their scale, and the fact that there had been a LOT more of them back in the day. Still, they'd clearly been a fan of open concept design for their internal floorplan, because the building was absolutely massive even on the outside.

I felt confident assuming the place was spatially expanded, and I'd have been shocked if the interior wasn't the size of a damned city.

As we got closer, we kept a look out for any of the others. Nat, Celine, Abel, Valk, and Perit filled us in on everything that had gone down for them since the staircase, including what had happened ON the staircase, and I'd already filled them in on the current situation vis-a-vis the Academy and the Blood Murder Palace.

We walked for a few hours, not running, though it would have been infinitely faster, but moving slowly and deliberately in case of ambush from the Blood Murder Palace initiates. When we were about three quarters of the way to the building, I stopped, holding up a hand. I felt something weird. Not my Danger Sense, but something different. I realized it was my fate sense. Since DS Mastery became part of me and my Fatewalker Path got integrated, that sense had been acting up, but this was the first time I'd felt it do something like this.

Guided by instinct, I triggered my overlay, and blinked in confusion at the arrows filling my vision. Somehow I knew these weren't for attacks, this was some kind of synergy between my fate sense and my overlay. This was real divination in accordance with my Fatewalker Path.

I studied the arrows. Some were white, some were black, some were gold. The gold ones were the least prevalent, and I was pretty sure they would lead us to our friends.

One of them was pointing into the forest, and it was fairly thick, which based on the impressions I was getting meant the target was close by. I felt a tap on my shoulder. "Shane?" Asked Callie cautiously. "What is it? I can feel your reaction kind of, but you seem confused."

"One sec." I said, holding up a hand. "We need to take a detour." I gestured for them to be quiet, and tapped into Callie's stealth Skill through the bond, leading the way slowly as I snuck through the forest, about five minutes in, I heard a series of crashes and breaking branches, followed by a lot of screaming, and we all stepped out of the way as four robed figures came barreling out of the trees, screeching in pain.

From behind them I heard a familiar bell like laugh as a crazed voice shrieked. "ATTACK MY MINIONS! DESTROY THE ENEMY!" I sighed, putting my hand to my mask as I finally caught sight of the wave of creatures following them. At first I couldn't figure out what they are, but at a closer look, I realized I was watching an army of flying squirrels swooping down on the robed figures, spitting what appeared to be exploding acorns.

Behind them, Standing on a tree branch with her hands on her hips, laughing maniacally, was Bethy. Because of course she was. She stepped off the tree, landing in a graceful crouch, and strolled happily through the woods after her apparent victims. Several of the squirrels landed on her shoulders, snuggling against her as she laughed.

Unfortunately for the initiates, they were distracted by Bethy herself, and neglected to watch out in front of them. I watched two dark shapes snatch the ones on the outermost edges of the group and vanish, and when the remaining two noticed they froze, spinning around in terror.

Rolling my eyes, I triggered Pit of Despair, and both of them plummeted into a pit of ultra fine dust, struggling to get out as the squirrels bombarded them with waves of those explosive acorns.

"Shane!" Squealed Bethy happily. "Callie! I found you guys. This place is so cool isn't it? Look at all my new friends!" She threw open her arms, gesturing to the squirrel army now perching on trees, staring down at us with terrifyingly focused eyes.

"Hey Bethy." Laughed my girlfriend. "How exactly did you manage to tame an army of flying squirrels. There's no shadow thing going on, and I didn't know you had native animal training powers."

"Well when I met your buddy Biscuit." Bethy said excitedly. "I came to a realization. Squirrels are just bats without wings! But these squirrels HAVE wings, so they're obviously bats. I'm a vampire and vampires control bats all the time. So I asked them if they wanted to become my flying rodent army, and they said yes! I talked to them when I was bats, so now I can talk to them all the time and we're best friends! Plus at night I'm going to have them all curl up on top of me like a living blanket!"

A case of theft: this story is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.

I blinked at the influx of weirdness. "Um...ok." I said. "I don't think flying squirrels and bats are the same kind of animal, but that aside, what the hell was up with the acorns."

I glanced at the pit, noting that apparently poptarts and donuts had come back for the initiates. I winced. That might have been on me. I probably should have been watching them. Bethy wasn't bloodthirsty (at least in the metaphorical sense) but she had zero chill when angry. She would absolutely kill them, and probably already had.

She grabbed my attention by holding up a fistful of seething red acorns. "Oh these? They're so cool right? The squirrels showed them to me. They use them as weapons when bigger creatures try to attack their nests. I had to beat up a big red tree to get them, but it was totally worth it because they're so pretty when they explode!"

That did sound useful. Though I had to wonder how strong that tree had been. Bethy tended to just do whatever and ignore inconvenient things like 'reality' and 'power differentials'.

Once we got everyone together, we started heading toward the Academy building again. We'd gotten most of our group, but we still needed to find my sister and Gabriel, assuming he was here. We needed to get together and figure out how to leave. Stopping the BMP assholes was important, but we had no reliable method of exiting this place and that was going to be a long term problem.

My only real solace was in the fact that I still had my wishes left. Three for the day, after the one to find Jessie, the one to send out the message, and the one to find Celine. If we got everything settled maybe we could use them to reverse the transportation protocol, or open a portal, or even just teleport us home. I suspected the last would be prohibitively expensive, but it was worth trying.

After another hour of walking and catching up, we all came top an abrupt halt as we came to a massive hole in the ground. Specifically,it was a sort of circular canyon around the perimeter of the building, sort of like a moat.

"Huh." I said as I stared across it. "You don't see that every day." The moat was absolutely full of floating pieces of wood and debris. Among the damaged materials I could see pieces of bridge, house, and even in a few spots, some sort of wooden combat wagons or siege engines, or at least what was left of them.

Pulling a rock from my spatial ring, I tossed it at one of the nearest pieces. The rock made contact, there was a flash of light as a sort of energy field surrounding the debris dissolved, and then, after about a minute, the thing dropped right out of the sky, plummeting into the chasm below, which was so deep I literally couldn't see the bottom.

"Some kind of test?" Said Callie cautiously. "That was there long enough to act as a foothold. Maybe we're supposed to jump from piece to piece."

I glowered at the bottomless pit in front of us. "I'm not sure. This feels like something that happened after the Academy fell. Why would a test use debris from the actual destruction of the school itself. I think it probably used to do something else."

Abel nodded. "That piece of debris dropped faster than it should have. That wasn't a freefall, it got sucked into the hole." He glanced at me. "If there's something going on here kid, you'd be the best person to get past it. Between your lightness skill and your Eye of Revelation, you should be able to find us the proper path. Assuming there is one."

Which there had to be. Because if not we couldn't get there, find the others, or probably even escape. Who knew what would happen if the BMP assholes made it over there before us. We had no real choice but to try to make this happen. Letting out a long breath, I turned to the others. "Alright. I can try, but if we're doing this we need to make sure we all have the best chance of survival. That means tying ourselves together."

If the magic in the pit had been different, I'd have said we needed to split up so as to give each person the best possible chance, but there was a finite number of debris pieces, and if using one exhausted the magic, then there was a very real chance of one or more of us getting caught on the other side without a path. If we were tied together we'd be able to try to mitigate that possibility.

"Right." Said Benny proudly. "I've got this." He snapped his fingers, and a truly absurd amount of rope slammed down on the ground in a huge pile.

I blinked at it. "See, I feel like Callie bought rope before the bazaar, so I get why she would have it, but why do YOU have what appears to be all the rope. Like...in the universe. What could we possibly need that much rope to accomplish? Were you planning to steal the whole Academy building and drag it behind us?"

He sneered back. "I'll have you know that I MADE this rope." He said proudly. "I created it with my inventing, or at least the beginning of it. Then I added to it over time. It's woven from a special grass I stocked up on back in the Moonsong Glade. I deducted it from the herb sales we did when you weren't looking." At my glare, he just shrugged. "It was grass, it wasn't worth much anyway."

"So what does this magical special rope DO exactly?" I asked skeptically. "Is it some kind of anti gravity rope?"

He shook his head. "Nope. It's sticky." I blinked at him. "The roped adheres to people unless personally removed by the owner. It'll make it impossible for any of us to fall. It's PERFECT!" He seemed extremely excited that this strange rope he'd been working on for an obviously long time was going to come in handy. I had to admit it wasn't a completely ridiculous idea. It wouldn't hurt at least.

"Not that this isn't fascinating." Said Callie. "But whatever the rope does we're using it now. Because we aren't the only ones trying to cross this moat." She pointed, and I glanced down the edge of the abyss to see groups of other people emerging from the woods to gather around the edges. Farther down, almost out of sight, I saw a familiar yellow clad figure missing part of a leg. Felix. We had to get a move on, or we were going to be stuck here forever.