“Wait, guys, think this through,” Volis said, hands out in front of him.

  He was standing between the four timelocked Starborn and the perimeter of the camp. He didn't want to let them leave. He had seen them work together. They were good Starborn, and if they left they would surely be failed immediately from the assessment.

  “As soon as Lodi notices that you're gone, there goes your chances of becoming a registered warrior.”

  “We have to,” Arden stated. “Let us go, Volis.”

  “If you fail this way, you'll be prohibited from becoming a registered warrior in the future,” Volis warned. “Are you still going to do this?”

  “Yup.”

  Arden vaulted over the short stone wall that only really signified where the edge of the camp was rather than actually defended, and was quickly followed by Vera, Sya, and a less coordinated Kepler, who stumbled upon landing on the sand outside of the camp.

  “Wait!” Volis called out, but the party ignored him.

  He wanted to give chase. With his blink step ability, they wouldn't be able to outrun him. But he had his own tail to look after. He couldn't risk being blacklisted by the Association. Indigo Flash would suffer if he couldn't get his license. Not to mention the other people in his party.

  As the group disappeared into the dark cave, Volis sighed, and wished them the best, hoping that Lodi would be lenient with them.

  *****

  The group had been running for a little more than five minutes. With the five minutes Arden and Vera had spent with each other in the sensory veil and the brief interaction with Volis, they had very little time to make it to Gettle before Lodi went berserk.

  No one said it, but everyone was wondering if Lodi would slay out in camp or come for them all the way out here if they ran out of time. They hoped neither would happen, but Arden was far too used to things always getting worse.

  ‘Hope into one hand, shit into the other, and see which one fills up first.’

  Arden reached into his inventory, and pulled out the picture, thankful that it was still there and not in between Lodi’s fingers again.

  “How far out do we think Gettle is?” Arden called out.

  Vera was supporting Kepler as they ran. As the one with the shortest tenure of being a Starborn, and one who joined the warrior assessment because she had nowhere to go, she lacked stamina, so Vera was helping her so she wouldn't fall behind.

  “I don't think he's running back to the entrance,” Vera answered. “There shouldn't be any urgency. Schrell is a one-armed red-tier, while Gettle is a chiseled orange-tier.”

  Arden’s face contorted slightly at the remark, but he said nothing. He knew that Vera wasn't comparing his looks to Gettle's, but he couldn't help but feel inferior nonetheless. Sya snickered at his dejection.

  He was about to fire back at Sya, but he suddenly lost his voice. A tingle of dread ran up his spine. Something was wrong. Or rather, something else was wrong.

  There was something wrong with him.

  It felt like a phantom limb. Something that wasn't part of him, but something that he still undeniably felt. Thankfully his disturbed breathing rhythm could be explained by the running, because he knew that his breathing was out of whack. And it wasn't because of the physical exertion. No one else noticed.

  He felt a strange disconnect between himself and his body. The feeling of disassociation continued until he barely felt his body at all. Until everything looked and felt and sounded like static. And when he was beyond the static, he felt something approximating language.

  ARCHON // YET NOT

  YET NOT // HUMAN STILL

  PARADOX INCARNATE // SOURCE POTENTIAL

  WHAT

  ARE

  YOU

  REDSHIFT

  This was different from the true voice that the Archons and the Stargazer spoke with. It didn't demand anything. It didn't even have an aura or a presence. It was something entirely unknowable.

  Arden was back in his body, still sprinting with his team. As soon as the strange feeling ended, he fell to his knees, gasping for air, which stubbornly refused to fill his lungs.

  “What…was…that?” He asked.

  Sya was at his side immediately, as Vera was still preoccupied with Kepler. Both of them looked at him with worry. From their perspective, they had all been running together when Arden collapsed.

  “What was what?” Sya prodded.

  Arden looked up at them. Cold sweat poured off his face, matting his hair to his head.

  “You didn't hear that? That feeling?”

  Sya knelt down next to him.

  Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

  “Was it a feeling or a sound? Cause I didn't notice either.”

  “The voice…” Arden spoke, paling by the second. “It grazed me…I felt it everywhere.”

  Sya put a hand on his forehead. She pulled it back immediately, feeling how hot it was. It was like someone had turned his brain into a geothermal power plant. She swore she could hear the hiss of steam rising from her hand.

  “Something's wrong with him,” Sya said, looking to Vera for guidance. “He's actually burning up. Like literally.”

  All of them knew that they didn't have time to play doctor for Arden, but none of them minded losing a bit of the little time they had left. As hypocritical as it was for Vera to feel this way, she believed that there was always the next life to do it right.

  Vera's hair switched colors as she changed her primary stellar core to the one that focused on ice. After a moment of concentration and a minor amount of stellar essence expenditure, she rubbed ice crystals on the back of Arden’s neck.

  He jumped at the sensation, crying out in surprise. Light returned to his eyes as he placed a hand on his neck where the ice slid down the back of his armor. He looked at Vera, betrayed.

  “Why would you do that?" He asked.

  “He seems fine now,” Vera said.

  “Don’t say that just yet,”Sya said.

  Sya pointed a finger towards a sloping mound of sand in the direction of the camp they fled from several minutes before. Despite there being almost no air movement inside of this giant bug nest, they all saw Lodi’s clothes billowing behind her alongside the loose particulates of sand.

  “The sand must be a bitch for her huge eye,” Sya pointed out.

  *****

  The sixth iteration got off to a flying start. Every minute, every second counted. They needed to make it to Gettle before the transfigured Lodi made it to them.

  This time, they changed their strategy a bit. When they all reunited, Kepler floated a suggestion.

  “W-what if I stayed here t-this time?”

  “Why?” Sya asked. “Do you feel we're pushing you too hard?”

  Kepler shook her head.

  “Pushing hard is the only way we'll get out of this. W-we'll need someone here to see what happens to the instructor after she changes. W-we need to know if she comes straight for us, o-or if she kills anyone else.”

  All eyes were on Vera as she made the decision for the group. With a nod, she gave her consent.

  “Tell us what happens in the next life.”

  And like that, they were off. Kepler went to Volis and his team to distract them from her escaping partners, and made sure to keep an eye on the instructor.

  As for Arden, Sya, and Vera, they were making much better time now that they left Kepler back at the camp. In only half the time as the last run, they made it to where they were killed. Throughout the sprint, the two girls shot nervous glances at Arden.

  “I’m fine,” he reiterated. “I don't know why, but I can actually think without my mind being turned inside out. Maybe I needed to die for it to be fixed.”

  “What was it?” Sya asked.

  “I don't know. It was like a severe episode of disassociation. Almost an out of body experience. It felt like something was communicating with me, but not from the outside.”

  “What does that mean?”

  Before Arden could give an answer, Vera pointed ahead of them. Next to the oasis where Sya killed the bone rending centipede and the nefarious sandworm was the star athlete-looking Gettle along with a restrained Schrell by his side.

  They made it in time.

  ‘Did we?’ Arden wondered.

  He pulled out the picture of the dark matter beetle, relieved that he still had it, and that it hadn’t been scattered to the cosmic winds to wind up with Lodi yet. But it could still happen at any moment.

  “Gettle!” Arden called out, stopping the orange-tier in his tracks.

  Sya and Vera thought that they were going to sneak up on Schrell, but Arden changed their plan. Not that it would have been feasible as Gettle had an orange-tier aura sense.

  He turned around to face the group, as did Schrell. When the former saw them he readied an eyebrow in confusion, and the latter strained against his restraints, wanting a second chance to kill the mouthy Starborn.

  A jet of highly pressurized water blasted from Gettle’s fingertips into the sand in front of the approaching Starborn. Droplets of water fell from Gettle’s outstretched forefinger and middlefinger.

  “You shouldn’t be here,” he intoned.

  “You have to come back to camp with us!” Arden cried out desperately. “Lodi’s dying!”

  “What?”

  “She’s being changed! She’s not herself anymore! Before she fully lost control, she told us to come get you! She said that you’re the only one who could keep her at bay! You have to head back! She’s killing them!”

  Vera and Sya fell into the plan rather quickly. A sense of urgency entered their body language as Arden prophetically lied to Gettle.

  ‘Is it really a lie if it is going to happen?’ All three of them wondered.

  Gettle looked at them with an unflinching gaze. He didn’t believe that Lodi had been the victim of a mysterious monster that left her possessed. To him, it seemed like the group of interesting interviewees were just making a scene again. Although…

  Gettle glanced between Vera and Sya, the two of the group that didn’t disembowel themselves to be a talking point. Their expressions mirrored Arden’s. Gettle could also tell that their exhaustion was real. Would those two really come along with a troublemaker like Arden just for a farce?

  Furthermore, how did they make it out of the camp with Lodi there? Either she let them go, or she wasn’t there anymore. Either way, the trio had been given justification for being out here away from camp.

  Sparks both red and orange came together to form a longbow and a single arrowhead respectively. The bow looked like it could be found in one of a hundred different elven forests across all of fantasy with its dark wooden frame that curved back at the top and bottom, while the arrowhead was entirely made of water the color of sapphire.

  “Stay here,” Gettle commanded, notching the arrow and aiming the bow towards the camp. “I’ll be back soon. I shouldn’t have to tell you what will happen to you three if I find out you’re lying.”

  “Just go!” Arden urged. The picture was still in between his fingers.

  The arrow of water arced through the air, just barely missing the ceiling of the cave. As it flew, Gettle's body dissolved into water and followed behind the arrow like he was part of it. Once Gettle was gone, the trio rushed towards Schrell.

  “What do you want?” he glared with diggers in his eyes.

  “Stay still,” Arden said. “And look at this.”

  Arden quickly held the picture of the dark matter beetle in front of his former assailant’s eyes. As the trio hoped, silver shined from the depths of Schrell’s eyes.

  “It’s working!” Arden cheered.

  Schrell yelled out in pain as silver flames engulfed his eyes, burning the mouth of his face and setting him on fire that worked its way through his body.

  “Shit! It didn’t work!”

  At the apex of the roaring silver blaze, a silver comet flew out of the desiccated husk of Schrell and flew towards the camp. The three of them had no time to be apologetic towards Schrell. They knew where the comet containing the beetle was headed. Who it was headed to, more accurately.

  Giving chase, they began running back to the camp. They wouldn’t make it back in time. A few minutes after the beginning of the journey, a familiar reaper met them out in the outskirts of the camp with the sounds of panic and fear as a backdrop to the camp that was going up in flames behind her.

  Lodi was more injured than she had ever been in any of the previous iterations. Bleeding gashes decorated her body, but her large eye was still intact in all of its unholy majesty. Arden heard the chittering of mandibles from inside of the eye.

  Judging by her injuries and how she was completely soaked, they could infer the outcome of the battle between Gettle and the transfigured Lodi. It was obvious even if they overlooked the jagged chunk of dark elven wood stabbing into her side.

  “Goddamnit!” Arden swore.

  He charged toward the monster that was still insurmountable. Vera and Sya were at his side. Once again, they all died together.