by A. K. DuBoff
It only took a dozen strides for me to overtake Kaiden and his brief head start. I surged ahead, amazed at how effortlessly my legs pumped across the ground. Even though I’d considered myself in good shape back home, it was clear that my new body was even more tuned for athletics. I wasn’t winded in the slightest from the run up the hill, and my pulse was barely above normal. It was freeing in a way I’d never experienced before, like I’d found a calling I’d never known to look for.
At the top of the rise, Toran was sizing up a meter-tall boulder.
I slowed to a jog and came to rest next to him. “Moving on from chair-bending to rock-lifting, huh?” I asked.
He chuckled. “You’re not the least bit curious if I can lift it?”
I smirked. “Didn’t say that.”
Kaiden made it to the summit. “Damn, you’re speedy, Elle!”
“You challenged the wrong opponent if you expected to win,” I gloated.
He bristled. “Well, can you do this?”
Flames licked the end of his staff, swelling into a spherical blaze. When the orb reached the size of his head, Kaiden discharged it toward a boulder forty meters from our location. The orb exploded on impact, enveloping the tan rock in flames before it died out. A charred circle marred the stone where it had born the blunt of the assault.
I pursed my lips. “Impressive.”
Kaiden looked rather pleased with himself. “That’s the biggest one yet.”
“And this is why we agreed not to practice on the ship,” Toran stated. He wrapped his arms around the boulder. “Now, let’s see…” His fingertips found suitable grip points, and heaved the massive rock upward, releasing a cloud of dust.
“Hey, look at that!” Kaiden raised his eyebrows as Toran stood upright with the rock.
I smiled with excitement. “Stars!”
Toran beamed, though his face was red from the exertion. “Can’t wait to see what else I—”
A growl behind me broke the quiet of the landscape.
Toran dropped the boulder, his expression changing from jovial to serious in an instant.
Every muscle in my body tensed, poised for action. As if driven by instinct, I drew my sabre. The electrified edge of the steel blade glowed blue in the soft purple light. I pivoted on the ball of my foot to face whatever had made the sound.
A four-legged creature crept from the shadow between two boulders ten meters from us. Standing ninety centimeters tall at the shoulder, it had a spiked ridge down its back, which transitioned into a barbed tail, and its talon-like feet sported fifteen-centimeter claws. Three yellow eyes were recessed in a thick skull, and its jaws parted to reveal jagged teeth.
Next to me, Kaiden had leveled his staff toward the creature, and Toran’s hands were now clenched into fists wrapped in his knuckle guards.
“How are we going to handle this?” I asked in a low voice. It didn’t thrill me that my first brush with an alien creature might be a fight—especially considering that I hadn’t yet had a chance to test my own abilities.
“It might just be guarding a nest,” Toran said.
Kaiden shrugged. “Or it wants to eat us.”
The stone lizard stepped forward and hissed. Two more creatures appeared in nearby crevasses, and then a fourth emerged to my right.
I swallowed. “I think we’re on the menu.”
“All right, so maybe backing away and leaving it alone isn’t an option,” Toran concluded.
“Kaiden, you want to magic these things away?” I questioned.
“I have no idea how much damage a blast will do against these things, but I’ll try.” He gripped the crystal around his neck in his left hand and pointed his staff at the stone lizard to my right. The staff began to glow with blue light, and then an energy orb shot from the end toward the creature.
Blue electricity danced across the stone lizard’s skin as the blast connected. It shrieked and took a step back, but its three eyes narrowed with what appeared to be renewed focus.
The stone lizard in the middle right took the opportunity to rush forward, snapping at my leg.
I pulled my coat around me to block it, and it only got a mouth full of fabric. I kicked it as hard as I could.
The creature slid backward a meter from the force of the blow, then returned to the offensive line with the others.
“I already don’t like these things.” I raised my sword with both hands and charged for the same creature on the right that Kaiden had attacked. A meter from the target, I slashed at an angle to slice it at the base of the neck.
The blade carved through the armored flesh, spewing dark purple blood. With a sickening gurgle, it dropped to the ground, dead.
I stood in stunned silence. I’d never killed anything bigger than an insect before. But it had attacked me—a wild creature intent on killing. I buried the impulse to feel remorse for taking a life. I had a job to do, and that would mean cutting down anything that barred my way.
While I was frozen in reflection, Toran charged the second creature, which had attacked me moments before. He punched downward on the top of its head with his armored knuckled. A sharp crack echoed around the boulders as his fist impacted.
The creature staggered back but remained standing.
Toran jumped clear just in time for Kaiden to lob a fireball from his staff toward the wounded stone lizard. The flames enveloped the creature. It shrieked as it fell into a burned pile on the ground.
“Fire works better on these things, it seems,” Kaiden commented.
“Yes, do more of that!” I shouted while running toward the third creature with my sword.
I mirrored my first attack, swiping downward at an angle toward the stone lizard’s neck. However, it dodged my attack at the final moment and lunged for my ankle. The powerful jaws wrapped around my boot and it shook its head.
The thick material on the boot shaft managed to keep the fangs from breaking through, but the violent thrashing of the creature’s head was enough to throw me off-balance. I hit the ground hard on my back, my limbs spread to my sides. Fortunately, I hadn’t lost my grip on my sword, but I had no leverage from that angle.
The fourth creature lunged for my throat. I tried to swing my sword up, but the stone lizard was moving too fast. I braced for the bite.
A fireball flew past my head and struck the creature in the face a mere thirty centimeters away.
I squeezed my eyes closed against the light from the blast. Heat burned my face, like I’d just stuck my head into an oven.
The heat subsided after a second, leaving the creature stunned and blinded.
I took the opportunity to bolt upright, stabbing my sabre into the side of its neck. The blade pierced several centimeters in, and I twisted.
Dark purple blood oozed from the wound, and I withdrew the blade as the stone lizard collapsed into a lifeless pile on the ground.
Toran dashed toward the remaining stone lizard, a fist raised above his head. He struck the side of the creature’s skull, crushing it between his fist and one of the boulders. The stone lizard fell to the ground, blood trickling from its smashed jaw.
Kaiden slowly released a breath. “Okay, so that just happened.”
Toran took two deep, rapid breaths. “That felt weird, right?”
I scrambled to my feet. “If by ‘weird’ you mean way too natural for never having done those things before, then yeah. Very, very weird.”
Kaiden examined the corpses of the creatures. “I can’t decide if I should feel bad about killing them.”
“I was wondering the same thing,” I admitted. “I mean, they did attack us.”
“We have a mission to complete, they got in the way,” Toran said.
I nodded. “I imagine they won’t be the last things to try to stop us.”
“Almost certainly not.” Kaiden rested his staff on the ground. “I think this staff amplifies my abilities somehow—or makes them easier to channel.”<
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“Yeah, those fireballs are pretty awesome.” I grinned.
He smiled back. “It was kind of nice to let loose against a specific target.”
“And for not having a weapon, those fists did a lot of damage,” I commented.
Toran inspected his knuckle guard. “I did what I had to do to keep us safe.”
“Yeah, thanks for the help back there,” I said to them. “I thought I was done for when that one took me down.”
“We need to work as a team. For a first go-around, I think that went well,” Kaiden replied.
“I think so, too,” I agreed. “I guess now I have some sense of what I can do.”
He nodded. “See? Hands-on learning is quite informative.”
I raised an eyebrow. “Yeah, that was never up for debate. I just thought it might be nice to practice, you know, where things weren’t trying to kill us.”
“Weren’t you the one who couldn’t wait to get off the shuttle?”
“I… That’s beside the point. I didn’t go running off toward the rocks with the vicious lizard things.”
“The possibility of their presence was not something I had considered,” Toran admitted.
“Doesn’t matter. It all worked out.” I cleaned my blade on one of dead creature’s hides and then sheathed the sabre.
Kaiden cast me a playful sidelong glance. “All part of going with the flow.”
I took a deep breath. “Anyway, I believe we were about to get a look at those mountain peaks.”
“Right.” Kaiden walked over toward a boulder with a relatively flat top. “This looks like it would make a good vantage point.”
There didn’t appear to be a good way up around the smooth sides, and no lower rocks were close enough to climb. “Could I get a boost?” I asked Toran.
“Of course.” He cupped his hands for me to step in, then easily hoisted my legs to his shoulder height while I used my hands to stabilize me on the rock. The boulder curved to a manageable angle at that level, and I was able to scramble the rest of the way to the top.
I stood up and surveyed the surrounding landscape from the new vantage. The fifty meter elevation gain from our shuttle’s landing position didn’t reveal any deep secrets, but the different angle did confirm that the three peaks in the distance were a distinctly different shade than the surrounding mountains, and the configuration was remarkably similar to the map we were working from.
“I think that those mountains are our target,” I called down to my companions.
“Great, but how do we get there?” Kaiden replied. “We’ll need to go over the pass, but we’ll be flying blind through the clouds.”
“I believe we have answered the great mystery about why no one ever comes here,” Toran stated.
“Super welcoming place, isn’t it?” I slid down the side of the boulder and Toran caught me, lowering me the rest of the way to the ground. I dusted myself off. “Back to the shuttle? Maybe a path through will reveal itself closer to the mountains.”
“Guess we don’t have another choice,” Kaiden agreed.
We jogged down the hill back to the shuttle and returned to our seats on the bridge. The target mountain range was behind us based on our landing orientation, so Kaiden powered up the shuttle and rotated it to face the direction we needed to go. Strong winds wracked the craft as soon as we were a hundred meters off the ground.
Kaiden fought the controls to hold it steady. “We’ll need to fly with the proximity sensors and naked eye.”
“I’m on it,” I said, getting the display configured for him like I had before. The overlay appeared on the front viewport.
I cinched my harness tighter as the shaking from the wind intensified closer to the mountains. The foothills sloped upward into the clouds, leaving no clue as to the best way into the valley we hoped was waiting for us on the other side.
“Maybe up through there?” I suggested, pointing toward one of the hill slopes that was slightly more gradual than the others.
“Worth a shot.” Kaiden directed the craft toward it, keeping a distance of approximately two hundred meters from the ground as it angled upward.
The hillside eventually intersected with another, barely visible at the edge of what we could make out through the thick clouds. However, paired with the proximity readings, it was just enough to make our way through a pass between the mountain peaks.
As if a veil had been lifted, the clouds parted on the other side, revealing a valley dotted with crystal spires.
I sucked in a breath. “Wow.”
“You can say that again.” Kaiden’s jaw slacked. “Some of those have to be a hundred meters tall.”
“I had no idea crystals could get that big,” I murmured.
“I suspect many of the things we’ll find on this world don’t exist elsewhere,” Toran said.
“Good point.”
I tore my gaze from the amazing formations beneath us to look upward. The clouds were as thick above us as elsewhere, but they stayed above the interior edge of the peaks almost like there was an invisible dome keeping them out.
The winds had also vanished as soon as we broke through the clouds, allowing Kaiden to relax at the controls. He followed my gaze upward. “There’s something different about this place, that’s for sure.”
“A good sign we’re where we’re supposed to be,” I said.
He nodded. “But where is the Archive entrance itself?”
I hadn’t a clue what to suggest. The valley had to be at least two kilometers in diameter at its widest point, and there were so many formations around the landscape that there was no clear target.
“Might just have to walk around until we find it.” I glanced over at Kaiden to gauge his reaction to the statement, and I noticed the crystal pendant around his neck was glowing the way it did when he was casting a spell. “Uh, Kaiden… your necklace.”
He looked down at his chest. “Stars! When did it start doing that?”
“I don’t know. I just noticed it.”
“What’s going on?” Toran asked, unable to see from his vantage.
“My pendant is glowing,” Kaiden explained.
“Curious,” the large man mused.
I looked at him over my shoulder. “Have a theory, or…?”
“Where did that crystal shard come from?” Toran asked.
“It appeared with me in the bioprinter,” Kaiden revealed. “It was strung around my neck, just like this.”
“Well, you’ve indicated it’s part of whatever gives you magical abilities. If that power is all connected, then maybe it’s responding to this place,” Toran conjectured.
“I guess that makes sense,” Kaiden said. He looped the shuttle around as it approached the far edge of the valley.
At the furthest point in the arc, I noticed that the light in the crystal dimmed. “Hey, what if it grows brighter the closer it is to the power source?” I suggested.
“Keep an eye on it. I’ll take us around to see what it does.”
I watched the light intensity as Kaiden circled the shuttle through the valley. After completing a circuit, it was clear the light was brighter in one specific area near a particularly large crystal with two smaller crystals forming an irregular ‘V’ at its base. On the first pass, I’d thought the crystals had broken and fallen that way naturally, but I was starting to suspect that it marked an entrance.
“That’s gotta be it,” I said, pointing to the location.
“All right, let me set us down.”
Kaiden found a relatively flat spot with enough clearance between the other formations to accommodate the shuttle, and he landed.
I unstrapped my harness as the holographic overlays deactivated. “What do you think we’ll find inside?”
“Hopefully, a clearly labeled button for ‘Seal Archive’ and a pile of gold for our trouble,” Kaiden said with a grin.
I laughed. “That would be pretty specta
cular.”
“As nice as that would be, I suspect there will be a trial,” Toran said in a serious tone. “Colren said that someone from each of the three disciplines was required to seal the Archive, so we’ll likely each have to do something.”
“Yeah, I was worried that might be the case.” I frowned.
Kaiden rose from his seat. “No sense worrying about it until we get inside and know exactly what to do.”
“You’re right. Only one way to find out.” I followed him toward the common room.
“We just have to work together, like we did in the fight,” Toran said while following me.
I smiled over my shoulder at him. “We’re old pros now. We’ve got this.”
They chuckled even though the statement was ridiculous. I had no clear sense for how long I had been unconscious during the jump earlier in the day, but I suspected that only a few hours had passed since I was in the canyon on Erusan with my friends. I was used to physical changes happening around me due to resets, but there was always consistency in what was happening. To be thrust into a new environment with people I didn’t know was nothing short of disorienting. At least we were united by the experience of having no idea what was going on.
We exited the shuttle to find that the ground underfoot had a similar sparkle to the gravel near our previous landing site, but there were also distinct chunks of crystal here.
Kaiden’s pendant was almost blindingly bright as he bent down to pick up a piece. Curiously, the fragments on the ground didn’t seem to react to the presence of his crystal at all. “These feel different,” he said.
I grabbed a crystal chunk from the ground myself. “What do you mean?”
“It’s like there’s a current running through mine, but these are just a plain piece of mineral,” Kaiden explained. “Can you sense it?” He held out the pendant dangling from the chain around his neck.
I wrapped my hand around the crystal and tried to focus on it. There was a warmth to the stone—more than a product of being carried next to his chest. “Yeah, there is something.”
“May I?” Toran asked.
I released the pendant, and Toran took it in his hand. “Hmm. Doesn’t seem particularly different to me, but I’ll take your word for it.” He let it go.