“You’re skinnier than I expected,” she said. “Can we talk?”
“Go right ahead,” I said. “My friends can hear anything you have to say. I’m not keeping any secrets from them.”
“Very well,” the dragon said. She clicked her fingernails together and gestured for us to gather around. She didn’t say anything until we’d all leaned in so close the faint notes of her perfume found my nostrils. “The people of Shambala are not your enemy, Jace Warin. I am not your enemy.”
“You could’ve fooled me,” I said.
“It is the way of dragons,” she said unapologetically. “We are the most powerful creatures on the earth, and that frightens you humans.”
“I’m not afraid of you,” I said. “If you know what happened in Kyoto, then you know you should be afraid of me.”
“I’m not being clear.” The dragon paused and pursed her lips. She seemed frustrated and held her tongue for a moment. Finally, she continued in a slow and deliberate voice. “I mean to say that you cannot win the Gauntlet.”
And then, just as abruptly as she’d started the conversation, the dragon returned to her team without a backward glance.
“What was that all about?” Abi asked.
“That was the weakest trash talk anyone’s ever heard,” Eric said with a grin. “I don’t know what she was trying to pull, but it didn’t work on me.”
Eric might’ve been right. The language barrier could’ve made it difficult for the dragon to make herself understood. She’d certainly seemed confident, though.
A few minutes later, the blue portals appeared without fanfare. The dragons were the first ones to jump into the challenge, of course, followed swiftly by the Battle Hall of Atlantis and the Bright Lodge. The other challengers followed seconds later.
That left my team all alone in the courtyard, waiting for Clem.
“Come on, come on,” Abi said under his breath.
“She’ll be here.” I forced confidence into my voice. Clem was close. She had to be.
“Look out below!” Clem shouted from a third-floor balcony.
She threw herself over the railing and plummeted toward the ground like a stone. Her robes flapped around her like flags in a windstorm as she fell.
“Move!” I shouted, and we all scattered out of her way.
Clem’s jump was too far. I braced myself for the sight of her breaking a leg, or worse. Even with my core, I wouldn’t jump three stories onto cobblestones. It was a recipe for disaster.
With a shout, Clem flipped over. Jinsei streaked out from her extended leg, and her Tempest Sweep technique slashed through the air. Her timing was impeccable, and the sudden burst of sacred energy cushioned her fall. Clem landed lightly on the stones, then raced for our portal while the rest of us gawked at her.
“Come on, slowpokes!” she called out and leaped through the blue gate.
I followed her a split second after, and found myself surrounded by a deep azure nothing.
Which was replaced a moment later by impenetrable darkness.
The Darkness
“NO ONE MOVE!” MY SHOUT echoed back to my ears after a disturbingly long delay. Just how big was this arena?
“Don’t worry about that,” Eric called back. “There’s a breeze blowing into my face. I think we’re on the edge of a very deep hole.”
Well, that wasn’t good. Not being able to see was bad. If there were pits or chasms in the floor, that was much, much worse. After the wound the Yzlanti warrior had suffered during the first challenge, I had no confidence at all that the Gauntlet wouldn’t kill a challenger before it was over.
“Can you use one of your techniques to give us some light?” I asked.
“Let’s see,” Eric said. A moment later I heard a loud kiai from across the arena and saw a tiny glimmer of light. “Nope. The technique worked, but something’s stifling the light.”
That was frustrating. The arena must have been flooded with darkness aspects. I wasn’t sure how we’d deal with that.
“How are the rest of you doing?” I called.
“I’m fine,” Clem called back. “The ground is solid all around me. At least as far as I can reach without moving.”
“I’m on a bridge of some kind,” Abi called back. His usually calm voice sounded tight and stressed. “There’s ground ahead and behind me, but nothing to the left or right.”
“I think I’ve got everyone beat,” Hagar shouted. “I’m on a pedestal. There’s barely room for my feet.”
While I was glad to hear that no one had come through the gate and immediately fallen to their doom, our prospects didn’t sound good. Headmistress Cruzal had warned us the challenges would get harder, and that they’d be tailored to exploit our weaknesses. We needed to be very, very careful that we didn’t eliminate ourselves by falling.
The darkness was deeper than any I’d ever encountered before. I couldn’t even make out the cores or auras of my friends. If I hadn’t heard them, I’d have thought I was all alone in the arena. I crouched down, rested my fingertips on the ground, and turned in a slow circle. The terrain was smooth and flat, with a thin layer of grit. I found no gaps in the surface beneath me, and I inched forward. The ground was solid ahead of me as far as I could reach.
“What are we supposed to do here?” Eric called out. “Shouldn’t we have heard the rules by now?”
That was an excellent point. I’d been so distracted by the darkness and my worry that one of my teammates would fall to their death that I hadn’t even considered what our goal was. The first challenge had been tricky, but at least we’d had something to go on. In this one, though, we didn’t even know where to begin. I stretched out my senses again, searching for jinsei, aspects, or even the aura of an
