by Anna Webb
Allyra sighed.
Why did everything have to be quite so difficult?
* * *
The Training Room was significantly emptier the next morning with ten pairs having been eliminated from the competition. It seemed almost as if the remaining pairs couldn’t bear to live with the resulting space and sought to fill it with as much noise and mayhem as possible.
Allyra walked through the chaos, side-stepping lightly out of the way of some exuberant jostling. Everyone’s personalities seemed to have expanded since the First Final, and surviving it seemed to have given everyone a boost of confidence. Not that any of them really needed it—the competitors of The Five Finals weren’t exactly overflowing with humility to begin with.
She scanned the room and quickly found Chi deep in conversation with Henri. It looked like Henri was doing all the talking while Chi listened patiently and nodded at appropriate intervals.
The results of the First Final hadn’t really thrown up many surprises. François and Xolani, the Elemental College Fifths had finished first. In fact, the Fifths from all the Colleges had survived the First Final with the obvious exception of Don and Clara. Chi, with his no-nonsense approach to fear had finished second. Henri and Adriana had struggled a little but had still finished well within the top ten. Allyra and Jason had scraped through by the skin of their teeth, finishing fourteenth, beating out only one other pair, the Thirds from the Atmospheric College, Kimi and Kyle.
Pushing through the crowd, Allyra made her way toward Chi and Henri and slipped into the seat next to Chi, returning the bright smile he gave her in greeting. “What’s with all the noise?” Allyra asked.
Henri grinned, “Everyone’s trying to prove that the First Final didn’t affect them. Apparently, forced bravado is the only way they know how. Just ignore them. Eventually, they’ll all realize that nobody cares, then they’ll quiet down.”
Allyra glanced around the room again. “Where’s Adriana?” she asked.
Henri’s ever ready smile faded, and without its light, Allyra noticed the shadows under her eyes, dark enough to make her skin appear bruised. Henri looked as if she hadn’t slept in a few days.
“Are you all right?” Allyra pressed again. “Is Adriana all right?”
Henri nodded with a tight smile. “We’re okay. Adriana is here somewhere. She just wants to be alone. The First Final wasn’t easy, and Adi thinks that I see her fears as weaknesses. What she doesn’t understand is that all I see when I look at her is the strength inside.”
Allyra reached across Chi and gave Henri’s hand a quick squeeze. She understood Adriana’s wish to keep her distance. It seemed only natural to keep a fear hidden away, but the First Final had ripped away carefully constructed walls built over a lifetime and exposed everyone’s greatest fears and weaknesses like a raw wound.
Jason certainly subscribed to Adriana’s philosophy of dealing with the aftermath alone—in fact, Allyra hadn’t seen him since the First Final, quite a feat given they shared a room. He’d kept an uncharacteristically low profile, arriving in their room well after she’d fallen asleep and leaving in the morning before she’d even managed to crack one eyelid open.
Normally, she wouldn’t complain about his absence, especially since she wasn’t particularly excited about him having seen her reduced into a whimpering, useless puddle by a swarm of wasps, but she couldn’t help but be curious about what exactly had scared Jason so badly. She had witnessed something he’d kept locked away in the shadows, something he’d not wanted anyone to know. Her insatiable need to know things meant she wanted to press him on it, to push his buttons as he did to her. But in the time since she’d fallen into the Between, Allyra had come to realize her relentless drive to uncover hidden secrets was perhaps not a trait to be proud of. It had landed her in trouble on more than a few occasions, and she saw it as a true sign of personal growth that she was taking the high road of giving Jason the distance he needed.
“Hey! Watch it!”
Allyra looked up at Henri’s sudden exclamation. Someone had toppled into her and Chi, probably trying to prove their courage through some expansive display gone wrong.
“Go take your childish crap somewhere else,” Henri said with her face scrunched up in disgust, shoving away the person who’d landed in her lap.
He got up and ran a hand through his short, spiky hair, and Allyra recognized him as Jeong Lee, recently revealed as Chi’s partner.
Jeong looked down at Henri and held up his hands in a gesture of insincere apology. Then, his eyes lit up with real malice as they landed on Chi.
“Guys,” Jeong called over to his band of loyal followers. “Look, it’s my partner,” Jeong said lazily, wearing a twisted and spiteful smile on his lips like a gash across his face. “Did I tell you guys how he basically melted into a puddle of fear in the redwood forest? I had to drag his sorry ass out of there.”
The crowd laughed viciously, and Chi dropped his eyes and studiously examined the ground, ever careful to avoid confrontation. Allyra tightened her fingers into a fist—she hated bullies, and it was clear that Jeong was a first-class bully.
“From what I heard, it was you that needed dragging out,” Allyra said lightly with a serene smile on her face. “It’s really too bad he didn’t leave you in there.”
Jeong turned to her as if noticing her for the first time, and his dark eyes filled with venom. “Stay out of this, little girl,” Jeong retorted, turning from her as if she wasn’t worth his attention.
Allyra started to get up, but Chi’s fingers wrapped quickly around her wrist, stopping her. He shook his head at her. Allyra took a deep breath and settled back into her seat. And that’s where it would have ended if Jeong knew how to leave things alone. He didn’t.
“That’s right, little girl. Stay down,” Jeong taunted.
She spun her head to him, for once, a retort ready on her lips. But she didn’t need it. A new voice joined the fray.
“Who are you calling a little girl?” Jason drawled out, the crowd parting as if by magic to allow him through.
Allyra wanted to roll her eyes—why did Jason feel the need to jump to her rescue only when she had a perfect comeback?
In a tiny, almost imperceptible move, Jeong straightened his back as he turned to Jason, as if finally recognizing an adversary worth his attention. Jeong ran his eyes along Jason’s arm, which was still covered in the new, pink skin of a still-healing burn.
Jeong let out a low, vicious laugh. “It’s the funniest joke I’ve heard all year—an Inferno who’s scared of Fire. I’m surprised you have time to stand up for your partner—shouldn’t you be spending it learning to control your Element?”
Allyra stiffened. Jason might not be her favorite person, but he was her partner. Also, Jeong had just slithered past Jason up her list of least favorite people. She got up, and this time, Chi didn’t try to stop her.
Allyra stood next to Jason and shot Jeong an ugly look.
Jeong narrowed his eyes at her. “Am I supposed to be intimidated, little girl?” he asked.
“Well, from what I’ve heard, it doesn’t really take much to scare you,” Jason said with a careless laugh. “The funniest joke I’ve heard—ever—is the one about the guy that wet his pants when confronted by a Sentinel.”
The vicious smile slid off Jeong’s face.
Jason leaned casually toward Allyra and said conspiratorially, as if sharing secrets was something they did all the time. “You might not have heard this one—it’s about a privileged, egotistical guy who thought he was so special that he could enter the Great Hall all by himself. But, of course, the Sentinel stopped him. When the Terra High Master found him the next morning—still being held in place by the Sentinel—he was standing in a puddle of his own urine, whimpering for his mother.”
Jason let out a bark of laughter, as if relaying his story brought him great enjoyment. “You’ll never guess who it was,” he said, turning his eyes to Jeong.
The crowd had
fallen silent, and Jeong looked as if he’d just swallowed a lemon.
“Not brave Jeong over here?” Allyra replied with mock surprise. She curled her lips into a smile. Jason certainly didn’t do things by halves. Seeing a bully being put into his place was always a show worth watching, but Jason’s performance was a masterpiece.
With startling speed, Jeong threw a punch at Jason’s face, but his fist simply whistled past as Jason stepped nonchalantly out the way.
“Uhn-uhn,” Jason said wagging his finger theatrically at Jeong. “You wouldn’t want to be thrown out now, would you?”
Jeong fisted his hands, as if weighing up the cost of actually killing Jason, but ultimately, he turned on his heels and stormed away. The crowd drifted away in the resulting vacuum of silence, and Allyra turned to Jason.
“Thanks,” she said simply.
Jason scowled and then proceeded to ignore her by walking away.
Some things would probably never change.
* * *
The three weeks leading up to the Second Final were some of the toughest Allyra had ever experienced. Every night, she fell into bed, asleep almost before her head hit the pillow. And every morning, she woke up with still-aching muscles and a deep weariness that just refused to dissipate.
There had been no time to go chasing after memories or to even try to do research in the massive library of books. On more than one occasion, Chi had found her passed out on a book, which always prompted him to chastise her about the potentially damaging effects of drool on books, after which he would chase her to bed.
Every day was filled with training. Mornings with Master Akerman, and afternoons sparring with Jason.
Master Akerman continued to be both sarcastic and demanding, and with only three pairs from the Elemental College left in The Five Finals, he seemed to have stepped up the difficulty on his training sessions though his focus had changed abruptly from teamwork to outdoor survival skills. He spent his time quizzing them on different ways to find north, from using the sun to star navigation and finally to using plants and animals—she’d learned more about lichen in the last three weeks than she’d ever thought possible.
She’d also learned to make fire with nothing but twigs, but she was perhaps the only person who’d concentrated on that particular lesson. Almost every one of the remaining pairs had at least one Inferno, so they were all confident in the knowledge that having an Inferno would mean Fire on demand whenever necessary. But life, and Alex, had taught her that things were rarely so predictable. And she was in the uncomfortable position of not being able to trust her partner to provide Fire even if she needed it. So, she dutifully rubbed twigs together, waiting patiently for friction to build up enough heat to start a fire. Jason took sadistic pleasure in nearly singeing her eyebrows off by dropping a particularly spectacular fireball on her pile of twigs.
Jason continued to be a mass of contradictions. He would do or say something awful, wearing his arrogant mask, making her think they would never learn to work together, much less like each other. But then, he would go and do something kind like sticking up for Chi.
For all her attempts to figure out the type of person who lay hidden behind that beautiful, arrogant mask, Allyra was no closer to figuring Jason out than the moment she’d first met him. Perhaps she never would, but right now, he was exactly what she needed him to be—an exceptional sparring partner.
Allyra and Jason spent every moment they could sparring, mostly in the sparring room, but when that wasn’t available, they’d push the furniture aside in their shared room and fit in some hand-to-hand combat. As an Elemental, Allyra understood she should have a massive advantage over Jason. But that would be true only in a fair fight, and a fight with Jason was never fair—he liked to fight dirty. For someone so young, he had wide and varied experience, and for every trick she’d ever learned from Alex, Jason seemed to have two to counter it. Because of this, they were the perfect sparring partners, so well matched that they constantly pushed each other to be just that little bit better.
He woke a competitive streak within her that she hadn’t realized she possessed. Neither of them ever wanted to end on a loss, and so, often they would keep pushing each other well into the night, unwilling to stop until both were satisfied they had nothing more to give.
Today’s weapon of choice was metal batons. The sparring room used to contain wooden ones, but between the two of them, they’d splintered so many to pieces that Master Ackerman had the batons replaced with metal ones better suited to their vigorous sparring sessions.
Allyra spun and ducked under the swing of Jason’s baton, and as she passed under his arm, she sunk her elbow into his midriff and heard a satisfying gasp of pain from him. Carrying her momentum, she used her left baton and hit Jason in the back with it, sending him stumbling forward.
“You’re getting slow,” she taunted with a smug smile, bending over to retrieve one of Jason’s dropped batons.
Jason didn’t reply. Instead, he took advantage of her momentary distraction and flung his knee directly into her face. As she spluttered in surprise, trying to spit the blood from her mouth, he followed up his advantage by swinging his one remaining baton into her shoulder with bone-shattering force.
“And you’re getting cocky,” Jason mocked, ironically appearing like the quintessential image of cockiness.
Allyra wiped the back of her hand across her face, wiping away the blood from her lips. She gave Jason her smirk, bloody teeth and all. “Again?” she quipped.
He raised his eyebrows at her and then nodded before spinning into action and charging at her.
* * *
The Tunnels were dark around her, and in the distance, she could hear rock scraping against rock, the sound of the Tunnel’s constantly changing nature.
It hadn’t really come as a surprise that they’d been challenged again. Winning their last challenge and eliminating the Atmospheric College Fifths had not changed the overall view that they were the weakest pair still in The Five Finals. Their poor showing in the First Final hadn’t helped either.
At least they hadn’t been the only pair to be challenged this time or even the first pair to be challenged—that questionable honor had gone to the other remaining Firsts in the competition—Caleb and Gabby from the Oceanic College, who’d been challenged by François and Xolani.
Allyra and Jason were up against Aiden and Dave, the Fourths from the Atmospheric College. Aiden and Dave were both Infernos and had been high on the list of favorites in The Five Finals, but they’d had a poor showing in the First Final, coming in only tenth. Now a challenge was their attempt at redemption or at least regaining some lost dignity.
Allyra and Jason had moved through the Tunnels swiftly. They’d run into a couple of Sentinels but had barely broken their stride in getting past them. There was still a lingering sense of distrust between them, but in the last few months, under Master Akerman’s critical tutelage, some semblance of teamwork had grown between them.
The Tunnel wall shifted violently, and Allyra leaped to the side to avoid being squashed like a bug, making sure to pull Jason with her.
Jason got back to his feet, studying a long scrape on his arm. “Have I said how much I hate this place?” he asked, shaking his head in disgust.
But she wasn’t looking at him, her attention captured by the dark room they suddenly found themselves in. It was a room filled with cots, one she’d seen before. Frantically, Allyra started searching through the cots, fumbling through the bed sheets, searching for a pair of piercing green eyes, for the Cleaner she’d promised to help.
Each cot was filled with Cleaners, their silver masks covering their faces, but it was impossible to mistake their sunken appearances. Paper-thin skin did a poor job of hiding jutting bones.
“What is this place?” Jason asked, horror clear in his voice.
Allyra ignored him, continuing her desperate search through the cots. Even as she pushed aside blankets and shook each Cleaner, no
ne of them responded—trapped in a deep but troubled sleep.
The wall moved loudly behind her, but Allyra was oblivious to it, her mind caught up in a promise she’d made to the green-eyed Cleaner. His pain and fear were as clear as newly blown glass in her mind, and she could feel them as if they were her own. Surely, that pain had been real, and surely, it couldn’t be so easily forgotten. The green-eyed Cleaner couldn’t be François, monstrous and arrogant, who’d looked at her without even the slightest hint of recognition.
Jason grabbed her arm and tried to drag her from the room. She fought him unthinkingly and was rewarded with a sound slap across her face.
“Are you insane? Get your mind back! We need to get out of here,” he whispered angrily. “This is none of our business. Anyone could come in and find us.”
She lifted her hand to her face, where she could still feel the sting of his slap. For a second, she felt nothing but a deep loathing for Jason, but the pain had snapped her from her thoughts.
“Anyone, but most probably a Revenant,” she replied, vengefully trying to shock him. What did it matter? Soon enough, he wouldn’t remember any of this.
Her words resulted in the desired effect. He gaped at her. “Have you lost your mind? What are you saying?”
“A Revenant was here—I’m sure of it—sucking the life out of these Cleaners. We have to help them.”
Jason pulled her away from the cot she was still searching and forced her to look at him. “A Revenant?” he hissed. “Explain—before you get us into any more trouble.”
“I remember everything,” she said scathingly, throwing the words at him. “I have a Gift for the past. These Tunnels have no power over me. I remember every time I’ve been down here—the Second Trial of the Elemental Trials, the first challenge when we beat Don and Clara. That’s how I know the Sentinels won’t follow us or how Rosalie killed Pierre or the fact there’s a Revenant down here feeding on Cleaners.”
