And then hexagonal chunks of the floor fell away and left each of us standing on a separate island of stone. A split second later, those islands drifted apart until we were separated from one another by a dark, bottomless pit.
“This isn’t great,” Eric called out.
“Silence,” Trulissinangoth shouted. “Let your betters determine our next course of action. We will tell you humans what to do when the time is right. Until then, shut your mouths.”
Eric seethed with anger. Flames burst from his hands. He looked ready to tear the dragon’s head off. If he could have reached her, I’m sure he would have done just that.
I took a closer look at our surroundings and saw that the pillars had moved so the teams were evenly split. Every member of my team was closest to a member of the Shambala team. Scattered like this, it was impossible for us to talk to each other without shouting, and the opposite team would hear any secrets we tried to share like that.
“We have to work together,” I told Trulissinangoth, who was only a few feet away from me. I could have easily jumped onto her pillar. If, that is, there’d been room for both of us to stand on it, which there definitely was not.
“I agree,” the dragon said. Her scowl made it clear she didn’t like the idea. “It’s obviously the Flame’s intent. It wants us to prove that we can cooperate when needed.”
“Brilliant,” I said drily. It had taken her long enough to figure that out.
“There are sixty pillars,” Clem called out. “And the sides facing us only show the symbols for our teams.”
“She’s right,” the dragon team’s leader said. “I’m not sure what it means, though.”
“I’ve got an idea.” I downed another one of my potions and drew more aspects into my aura. That strengthened my serpents enough to keep them around for several minutes longer. Hopefully that would be enough time.
I sent a serpent out to the nearest pillar with the symbol for my team. The instant my serpent touched it, the coiled serpent blazed a brilliant red.
Nothing else happened.
“Teamwork,” I said to Trulissinangoth. “Touch your school’s symbol with a serpent.”
The dragon leader glared at me, then grudgingly nodded. Her serpent, a brilliant golden band of light covered in a rippling, scaled pattern, zipped away from her aura and its tip touched the nearest fiery scale.
The platforms she and I were on glided forward until we were a quarter of the way across the arena.
As soon as our platforms stopped moving, though, the pillars we’d touched vanished, leaving the gargoyles hovering in midair on patches of shimmering jinsei. There was something scrivened on the bottoms of their feet, but I was too far away to read it. I’d figure it out later.
“Looks easy enough,” Eric said. “My turn.”
He sent his serpent out to touch the symbol for our team, and the dragon next to him did the same. The pair of them glided forward, their pillars disappeared, and the gargoyles stayed right where they were.
“This feels too easy,” Trulissinangoth said. “There has to be more to this challenge.”
“One step at a time,” I responded. “Let’s not go looking for trouble.”
“Very optimistic, abomination,” she said. She gestured to one of her team. “You and the rooster girl, go.”
“Rooster girl?” Hagar sniffed. “I’m at least as old as you are. And my hair’s glorious.”
“Go, girl,” the dragon said dismissively.
“Kicking your butt is going to be so much fun,” Hagar shouted as her blood serpent lashed out at the nearest pillar, igniting the coiled serpent symbol at the same instant that her dragon partner touched the fiery scale. They also glided forward, and Clem and the last dragon did the same without being told.
An ominous grinding noise filled the arena, and an enormous door opened across the chasm. An intense flame roared on the other side of the door, and the floor that surrounded it was covered in complex scrivenings.
The Empyrean Flame.
The grinding stopped, and a metallic clang rang out behind us. I glanced over my shoulder and saw another door, identical to the first, with the Flame burning brightly behind it.
Ten new platforms shot up out of the darkness between us and the far door, each of them holding a single figure. Tochi and his team were paired with Aesigr and members of the Bright Lodge. The goals were clear—we had to get past them to reach the Flame, and they had to do the same. Whoever got there first was the big winner.
I kept my fingers crossed that I’d pushed Trulissinangoth to choose the right foes.
Aesigr wanted to become a dragon slayer so badly that he might be convinced to risk the Church’s scheme for a shot at killing one of the Shambala team members. And if I convinced Tochi to work with us, we could be strong enough to end the dragon team.
“This is where it ends for you,” Trulissinangoth growled. “The other humans will help destroy you.”
“You can’t get across without my team,” I told her.
The pillars with our symbols suddenly rotated. The sides now facing us were blank.
“What do we do?” Tochi shouted. His eyes were fixed on the dragon team’s leader, and doubts closed around my heart like a fist. If he was taking orders from Trulissinangoth, we were doomed.
“Touch your school’s symbol with your serpents,” Trulissinangoth shouted. “That will move you forward.”
Our opposing teams did exactly that. Their platforms slid forward two at a time, and within a few seconds they were all lined up in front of us, a quarter of the way across the arena from their side, and the pillars had rotated to show them the blanks sides.
A quick bit of mental math showed me the flaw in what we’d all been doing. There were only sixty pillars, and we’d just gone through twenty of them to move both sides of this contest less than a quarter of the
