The forest was screaming.
The horn's echo had died, replaced by a chorus of high-pitched, clicking, skittering sounds that seemed to come from everywhere at once. From the glowing green mushrooms, from the canopy of black rock, from the damp earth under our feet.
And he had his hand raised. He was going to kill me.
The monster in the black uniform, and the monsters in the dark.
I scrambled backward on the ground, my body still thrumming from the explosion of our contact. My heart was a rabbit, and I was surrounded by wolves.
"Caelen!" I hissed, my voice a raw whisper of panic. "Did you hear that?"
His Aether-blade, the jagged, screaming, unstable thing, was still in his hand. But his head was cocked, his perfect, arrogant face frozen. The horn had broken his focus.
He looked at me, his eyes, for a single, terrifying second, not cold, but lost. The control was gone.
Then he blinked, and the mask of ice slammed back down. The blade dissolved into motes of light.
"That," he said, his voice a strained, harsh whisper, "was the sound of the things we are supposed to be hunting."
He made it sound like an accusation. Like I was the one who had summoned them.
"We have to move," I said, pushing myself to my feet. My body ached from the magical recoil of shoving him.
"I am aware," he spat. He started walking, fast, into the thickest part of the "forest," away from the clearing. He didn't check if I was following.
Of course, he didn't.
"Stay ten feet away," I mocked under my breath, my voice shaking. "Don't speak. Don't touch me."
I followed, my hand on my knife. I kept my ten feet. I was happy to. The air between us was a sick, vibrating thing. I could still feel the echo of his magic on my skin, and the memory of that agonizing, white-hot bang.
The skittering got louder. Click-click-click-shreeee!
"They're too close," I whispered, my Dregs instincts screaming. This was what it felt like when you took a wrong turn into a slaver's alley. This was the sound of traps.
"Be quiet and walk," he ordered, not looking back.
A shadow moved in my peripheral vision.
It wasn't a shadow. It was a thing.
It was the size of a large wolf, but it was all legs and angles, like a spider made of black, obsidian knives. It was running sideways up the trunk of a petrified tree, its dozen, glowing-red eyes fixed right on me.
I didn't even have time to scream.
"Caelen!" was all I got out.
He turned, his hand just starting to rise.
He was too slow.
The thing leaped.
It was a blur of black, chitinous limbs and silver-flashing claws. It was not aiming for him. It was aiming for me. The weaker, smaller, slower prey.
I threw myself sideways, landing hard on my shoulder.
I was fast. It was faster.
A claw, sharp as a razor, raked across my thigh.
The pain was a fire, white-hot and instant. I screamed, a real scream, and rolled, clutching my leg. Blood, hot, dark, and mine, was already soaking through the rough fabric of my tunic.
The beast landed, skittered, and turned, its red eyes bright with hunger. It was fast.
No.
No, no, no. Not here. Not like this.
I wasn't going to die for his stupid tournament.
I was going to unmake this thing.
I shoved myself up onto one elbow, my leg a distant, throbbing fire. I raised my hand. I didn't care about control. I didn't care about Varrick, or the Archon, or the prick standing ten feet away.
I pulled.
I pulled on that cold, dark, nothing inside me, that hungry void.
And it came.
It rushed up my arm, a wave of pure, cold power.
But as it filled me, I felt... something else.
A cold, empty feeling. Not in my gut, but in my head.
I saw Elara's face, her weak smile as she whispered, "Stay..."
And then... the memory frayed.
Like the crate of apples. Like the stone in the plaza. The image of her smile, the sound of her voice... it was... unraveling.
The cold wasn't just power. It was emptiness. It was loss.
This was the cost.
My magic was a fire, and it was burning me for fuel. It was eating my memories.
The panic of the beast was replaced by a new, colder, sicker terror. I was losing her. I was losing me.
The magic in my hand, my Anima, was a swirling vortex of pure, dark chaos. It was a bomb, and I was at the center of it. I could feel my own mind, my own self, starting to shred at the edges.
I was going to detonate.
Caelen
She was going to detonate.
I had seen the beast. I had seen it rake its claws across her leg. I had seen her fall.
And my first, clean, logical thought was: Good. Problem solved.
If it killed her, she was out. The irritant was gone. The distraction was gone. The trial would be failed, but I would be free of this agonizing, magical static.
But the beast hadn't killed her.
She had raised her hand.
And I felt it.
The air pressure in the cavern dropped. It was not a magical push, like my Aether. It was a suck. A vacuum. A black hole opening in reality.
I saw the Anima she was wielding. It wasn't the small, surgical nothing she'd used in the Gauntlet. It was the bomb from the Qualifier. A swirling, unstable, un-made vortex of pure, chaotic void.
She was losing control.
And I saw, on her face, a look of pure, white-hot terror. Not of the beast. But of her own power.
My mind, my perfect, analytical mind, ran the calculation in a picosecond.
One: That detonation will not just kill the beast. It will kill her. Two: That detonation will pull all the latent Aether from this sector, creating a magical vacuum that will kill me. Three: If by some miracle we survive the blast, the magical noise will alert every single nest in this forest. We will be torn apart in seconds.
She was a fool. A suicidal, chaotic, selfish fool.
And she was going to get me killed.
I hated her. I hated her for being weak. I hated her for being uncontrolled. I hated that her stupidity was now my problem.
She had to be contained.
I didn't have time to weave. I didn't have time to think.
I just... reacted.
"Idiot!" I roared.
I did not run. I launched. I used my Aether as a kinetic force, a controlled blast from my boots, and I crossed the twenty feet between us in less than a second.
It was not elegant. It was a tackle.
I hit her, hard, my shoulder driving into her, and I did not try to catch us. I let our momentum carry us, rolling, tumbling, away from the beast, scrambling for cover behind a massive, petrified log.
"Control it!" I screamed in her face, pinning her to the damp earth.
"I can't!" she shrieked, her eyes wide with a terror so pure it was almost... innocent. "It's... it's eating me!"
Her magic was still building. The Anima was a visible, dark shadow coiling around her arm, and it was about to go.
The Skitter-Lurker gathered itself, its red eyes locked on us, and leaped over the log.
I had no time.
I didn't have time to make a blade. I didn't have time to escape.
All I could do was shield.
I shoved her onto her back, threw my own body over hers, a humiliating, filthy, Dregs-level move, and threw up my hand.
"Aether-Wall!" I bellowed.
My magic, my pure Animus, surged. It formed a bubble, a perfect, white-gold dome of hard light, just as the beast's claws were inches from my back.
I braced for two impacts.
The beast on the shield.
And her. Her Anima, the void that I was now touching, holding, pinning... I was braced for the violation. For the unraveling. For that cold, sick pull.
Neither of them happened.
Her chaotic, dark, screaming Anima... hit my shield.
And the world stopped.
It... didn't break the shield.
It... infused it.
It didn't pull. It merged.
The white-gold light of my Aether deepened. The pure order of my magic met the pure chaos of hers... and they slotted together. Like a key in a lock. Like two halves of a whole.
It was not a collision. It was a completion.
My shield, my perfect, strong Aether-Wall... flexed.
Her Anima, her void, poured into the weave, filling the gaps I never even knew existed.
My control... her chaos...
Ours.
The sensation was... indescribable.
The first, horrible, agonizing thing I felt was... relief. The Anima in her, the void, it stopped trying to eat her. I felt it. My Animus, my AETHERE, it wasn't invading her; it was... holding her. It was a cage for her chaos. A floor for her void. It gave her the control she didn't have.
And in return...
Oh, gods.
In return, her power... her limitless, raw, endless void... she gave it to me.
My Aether, which had been a finite, controlled well... was now an ocean. It was limitless.
The power that surged through me was not mine. It was ours. And it was glorious.
It felt... horrifyingly... good.
The beast's claws, sharp as obsidian, slammed into the shield.
The shield didn't just hold.
The combined, resonant Anima-Animus power flared, a flash of pure, black-and-gold light, and the beast... disintegrated.
It didn't break. It didn't burn.
It was unmade and incinerated at the same time. One second, it was there. Next, it was a rain of fine, gray, super-heated dust.
The power was... absolute.
And then... it was gone.
The echoes of the magic vanished. The shield dissolved.
And I was left in the damp, rotting forest, lying on top of a Dreg-rat, my body pressed against hers, my hand still on the ground beside her head, her blood on my uniform from her leg.
We were both gasping.
Our eyes met.
The shock. The... high. The addictive, dizzying, perfect feeling of... power.
I saw it in her eyes. She'd felt it too.
And the disgust that rolled through me was so profound, so absolute, it was a physical sickness.
It wasn't just disgust for her.
It was self-disgust. For liking it.
I scrambled off her, kicking myself away like I'd been burned. I crab-walked backward, wiping my hands on my pristine tunic, trying to wipe her off, wipe the feeling off.
"Don't... ever..." I gasped, my control gone, my voice a ragged, broken thing. "Don't... ever... do that again."
She was staring at me, her face pale, her chest heaving, her eyes wide with a matching horror and shock.
We were alive.
And we had just discovered something... so, so much worse than death.