Now bathed in the flares red light, I finally get a good look at one of the statues. For a moment I just stare.

  It’s… beautiful.

  Easily seven feet tall, carved from pristine, pale marble so smooth it could’ve been poured, not chiseled. Runes curl across its surface like vines—glowing now, a soft cerulean that pulses gently in time with those on the floor. Even its eyes—empty sockets etched with countless layers of runes—shine like twin stars. There’s no face, though. No mouth, no nose. Just that lidless gaze.

  Then it moves, and every hair on my body tries to flee.

  It starts with a shiver, just barely perceptible. A hairline crack slithers up its arm, then another blooms across its chest. Light bleeds from the fractures, not blue now but red, pulsing to a different rhythm.

  Before I can blink, the marble splits open in full, and there is flesh. Real flesh—red and glistening, bleeding and exposed. The runes come to life on the creature, twisting and spiraling as they carve deep into its broken tissue like they want to rewrite it from the inside out.

  In less than a second, it’s alive. I hear it, then, too.

  The groan of stone being crushed under its own pressure.

  The sound of death.

  Only then do I realize that it is looking right at my party.

  “Uh… Darius! We’ve got company!” I shout, pointing at the now rapidly approaching monstrosity of stone.

  “I see it. Fighting retreat, back to Ydra! Agora, stay close for the big ones. Derek, distractions,” he says, sword and shield already in hand.

  I didn’t even notice them pull out their weapons, but I immediately chalk it up to the System and its ridiculous boons.

  In my moment of distraction, the statue had already reached us.

  Gods, they’re fast.

  Its fist is a blur when it slams into Darius’ shield, but almost just as quickly its arm is sent flying away by Darius’ counterattack.

  Then Agora is behind it, her twin blades coming down in streaks of bright purple, cleaving the statue into four parts.

  Then, in a blur, she’s gone again.

  “Keep moving!” Darius roars, taking steady steps back towards me and where Ydra’s party is.

  I move, carefully back-stepping. At a glance, I can see Ydra’s party has a large blue dome up, protecting their space from attackers.

  It doesn’t look like it went up in time for some of her party, though. Three of the mages lie in pools of blood, with several shredded and scorched statues littered around them.

  There aren’t any more inside the shield though.

  Darius fights off two more of the smaller statues that make it to him through Agora and Dereks interference, dealing with them with an almost casual ease.

  One is bisected at the waist, and the other is simply beheaded outright. Despite their injuries, though, they keep moving. The one without a lower body crawls towards us on the ground, still frighteningly fast, while the headless one seems completely unaffected as its clawed hand rakes off of Darius’ shield.

  He curses in frustration, but just continues to steadily dismantle the creatures before him while slowly retreating. The ground shakes again, but we keep moving. When Darius cuts the headless one in half straight down the middle, it finally stops moving.

  Then three more are on him, and it’s all I can do not to turn and flee.

  He uses a skill, then. A wave of force explodes from his shield, sending all three statues flying away from us, and he uses the moment of reprieve to pull something from a pouch at his side.

  It shines a telltale blue from its crystalline form, and he brings it to his mouth.

  For a moment, I think I must be seeing things, because I know for a fact that's a shard of arcanite.

  He eats it, and my heart sinks.

  Oh…

  Its at that moment that I know I am going to die here.

  There are fanciful stories and cautionary tales, both famous and infamous, ancient and recent, of those who consumed arcanite. It was always done as an act of desperation. A last ditch effort to win and maybe survive.

  Most of them end in death and tragedy.

  Arcanite is, in a way, just a container. But contained within it is raw, unfiltered, unaspected Mana. In a word, power.

  But it is not a power that is meant to be taken into our bodies. Our bodies, all living creatures, violently reject arcanite when consumed or absorbed in any way. Oftentimes explosively, while still inside the body.

  It does, however, grant an incredible boost in ones power—temporarily. The stories in which people do so purposefully are of those in dire situations. People who are about to die anyways, so they risk it and hope they survive the aftereffects.

  If Darius—the Darius of The Strikers, the most powerful front-line tank in the city—is resorting to consuming arcanite, then…

  I can’t see the levels of anything.

  He can.

  He turns to face me, but he doesn’t look at me. In a blur, he dashes past me towards where Ydra is currently shielding the surviving mages as they work their magics. We are far enough away that it’ll take even him a few moments to get there, but I’m not worried about that.

  He ran right past me. Left me, knowing full well he could have just tossed me on his shoulder and taken me with him like I were a loaf of bread. He’s too smart to have thought otherwise.

  A case of content theft: this narrative is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.

  He left me die.

  On purpose.

  Rage fills me then, but I don’t let it stop me. I don’t have time to be angry, I need to move. I turn to follow him a fraction of a second later. I may be hobbled by old wounds and Faulted, but I’m not immobile. I’m just slower.

  If I can reach Ydra’s shields, I’ll be fine.

  When the ground shakes with a particularly violent fervor, this time I do stumble. I fall forward gracelessly, slamming face first into the ground. There’s a sickening crunch, and a sharp stab of pain as my nose breaks, and I cry out in pain. But the pain centers me. I realize then what the shaking in the ground means.

  I almost don’t see the giant statue to my right as I frantically scramble to my feet, its massive spear baring down on me.

  Unfortunately for me, seeing it doesn’t mean I can do anything about it. It’s approaching far too fast, my feet too unstable. It grows in my vision, too quick to process where I need to go or what I need to do to get out of its path.

  For a fraction of a moment, time seems like it slows to a crawl. The spearhead is so close I could touch it, but I can’t move. I close my eyes to what is about to happen, regret filling my belly with its poison as an unwanted memory burbles to the surface.

  I dig with broken, bloody hands.

  The hole isn’t big enough.

  Dirt falls atop my head, and I look up, confused.

  Momma stares into the hole with hollow, maggot-filled pits for eyes.

  Her rotting hands push more dirt into the hole, landing atop me once more.

  But I can’t move.

  I’m too weak.

  So, I dig. I have to dig to show her I’m strong enough.

  The dirt gets heavier and heavier, surrounding me.

  I try to dig faster.

  But my arms can’t move anymore.

  I’m too weak.

  I look at my mother. I want to apologize, to beg for forgiveness, to cry in her embrace.

  But my mouth won’t move.

  I’m too weak.

  Too weak to even cry anymore.

  I am buried under the weight of my failure.

  My eyes open once more, and I’m standing at the edge of the hole, looking down at days of my work. It still seems so small… but today will be the day I bury her.

  It has to be.

  “We dig the hole so deep to show we are strong enough to let them go. We bury them within to show they were loved,” she’d said to me, after I’d asked why we buried my baby brother.

  I can feel it coming, like a shadow looming over my shoulder. The hunger and thirst, gnawing endlessly at my need. The pain in my left side, burrowing deeper into my core with each passing day. The weakness it all forces into me.

  I don’t have any more time left to dig.

  Today is the day.

  With a painful breath, I move behind my mother. She lay there, peaceful as ever. Nature has taken it’s toll on her, but I know that if I succeed that all will be forgiven. She’ll know, finally, just how much I love her.

  And when it’s all done, I’ll finally join them.

  As gently, but firmly, as I can, I start to push.

  If I can just roll her in, it will be enough. I’m too small to lift her.

  But no matter how much I struggle, she doesn’t budge.

  Not even a little.

  I don’t give up. I push and pull from every angle, ignoring the agony it all brings from my own burrowing rot.

  But I’m still too weak.

  Night falls, and I’m forced to stop when I collapse, utterly exhausted. My left side pulses in agony, keeping me from closing my eyes.

  I’ll just have to try again tomorrow. No matter how hard it gets to wake up each day, I’ll do it.

  She has to know I love her.

  I curl back into her cold embrace and weep without tears, the fear returning in force once again. The shadow looms ever closer, threatening to take me away from her once and for all.

  But then, warmth.

  A gentle heartbeat.

  “Shhh… it’s okay. I’m here now,” she says.

  The voice is familiar, but also not. Still, it soothes me.

  “Rest now. You are safe.”

  The shadow takes me finally, but it’s not cold anymore.

  I’ll get another chance, tomorrow.

  It’s gone in an instant when a feminine roar reaches my ears the same time a flash of purple light crashes through my lidded eyes, and I snap them open.

  Agora.

  The crack-boom of her speed splitting the air follows shortly after, instantly deafening me to anything else. It happened before I could even blink, her passing unlike anything I’d ever seen.

  Whatever she did, the spear misses me by a breath, slamming into the ground just behind me with so much force that both it and the ground explode.

  I barely have time to register even that, though.

  The sheer power behind the forces at play sends me flying, packs and all, bodily through the air so fast that I can’t even begin to process where I’m going. I only know that it’s away from Ydra. Away from Agora.

  Away from safety.

  Countless fragments of stone slam into, and then through, my aching body all over, and all I can think to do is curl up as best I can. I fly, unable to scream, unable to tell up from down or left from right, and then I make contact with something and all sensations cease.

  When I come to again, every part of me shrieks in pain, filling my mind entirely. I try to let out a whimper, but it hurts even take in a breath. As I twitch and shake in agony, my sight in one eye returns, albeit very unfocused.

  There is a red glow around me from the floor.

  Oh, arcanite? It’s red too? Cool… wait, is that my blood?

  My gaze focuses on the red spreading along the floor around me, steadily growing in size.

  That can’t be good…

  In a brief moment of clarity, I try to move, to reach into my belt for a healing potion. Only my bad arm can move though, the other sending stabs of agony each time I so much as twitch it. Even so, I reach down, and find nothing but shards of glass where over a dozen potions once were.

  Shit… just… have to survive long enough… for the party to save me. Just gotta stay awake. Pain? I’m used to pain. This… ain’t too bad.

  Heh, it’s really sparkly.

  My gaze refocuses on the red stone, and I welcome the helpful distraction. It glows brighter and brighter, even as my vision darkens around the edges.

  My blood creeps into the runic carvings nearest the stone, then quickly spreads to surround it entirely, almost like it was pulled into place. When it’s finally encompassed by now glowing red runes, an excruciating jolt of agony shoots through every part of me.

  I’m reduced to a twitching mess as a every still functioning muscle in my body spasms at the same time, and then I can’t even breath.

  ERROR

  Every sound there is assaults my mind and every color I’ve ever seen—and even more that I haven’t—all muddle together into a kaleidoscope before me, pushing away the darkness.

  ERROR

  ERROR

  My taste and smell vanish completely, and I can feel body tearing itself apart with excruciating clarity.

  WARNING!

  System tampering detected.

  Attempting to remove tampering.

  …

  …

  ERROR

  ERROR

  ERROR

  ERROR

  For a split second, if feels as if every bone in my body breaks all at once, and every bit of flesh melts and shifts into something else.

  WARNING!

  System error detected.

  Locating.

  …

  …

  Multiple users identified, Designations: ERROR

  ERROR

  ERROR

  Designations incorrect.

  ERROR

  Update required.

  Blessedly, my consciousness begins to fade, overwhelmed by all the stimuli. I eagerly leap into the embrace of nothingness, and for a time—whether seconds or days—I am untethered, floating in a sea of oblivion where pain and thought no longer plague me.

  WARNING!

  System Updating.

  …

  ERROR

  ERROR

  Notice

  Update complete.

  All errors removed.