Xeno had thought long and hard on the best tactic she could employ to maximise her chances of surviving against the mapload of older, more experienced Mystics against which she was competing. In the end she had found one which had, so far at least, proven completely effective. Unfortunately hiding, while excellent at preserving her wellbeing, did not earn many credits. This forced her hand.

Her hiding place had been atop one of the many large buildings littering the area, about a hundred metres tall and made from that strange new substance that had been discovered in Singularity a few years ago- cement. Upon calming down slightly from her initial panic, Xeno had descended to the roofs of the much smaller wooden buildings below. The wood in question was old, constant rainfall had seeped into it and caused rot. That same rot had softened and weakened it, making it vary from less sturdy than usual to shockingly easy to deform under even Xeno’s modest weight. This made moving significantly harder, and while that alone would have been bad enough it was made a thousand times worse by the fact that she was tailing a Theraphosa Gondi.

The Gondi was an enormous spider-like creature about three metres tall, twice Xeno’s height. Its body was rather longer compared to real spiders, however, and its abundant chitinous plates gave it a very strong resemblance to a lobster or scorpion. Every inch of its form was covered with small hairs- or at least what would have been small were it not for the enormity of the creature from which they grew. Xeno knew that were it not for the extremely subtle scent of the decaying organic building material on which she stood, those very same hairs would likely have alerted the Gondi to her presence even from the twenty metres separating them. The monstrous spider-thing walked almost gracefully, almost lazily. Its legs reached out farther than its body length, taking an age due to how slowly they did so. And then the moment they met a surface, they contracted and dragged the multi-tonne exoskeleton forward in a fraction of a second. It was an amazing sight. And, in the context of knowing that the Gondi was a hyper-aggressive carnivorous man-eater which would attack the moment it saw potential prey, a terrifying one.

The Gondi continued moving, and Xeno continued following. She had activated her physical enhancement the moment she first saw the creature, or rather the moment it had moved and made her realise with a lurch it was not simply a very realistic statue. Nonetheless she could feel her sides beginning to sting as she struggled to keep up. Fae were not as big as humans, Xeno herself was only slightly below average height for her species despite being under five feet. On top of this inconveniently small stride size, for whatever reason her kind could not focus magic into their bodies quite as efficiently as other species. That was why relatively little of her potency had actually been put into her physical enhancement, as well as why, despite the Gondi not moving much faster than a human could, she was winded just by stalking it.

Her target reached an especially tall building, disappearing over it within moments despite being only a fraction of its height. Xeno knew she had to hurry to avoid losing it, and so with great reluctance pulled in a breath and splayed her palms forwards to engage her second ability. She'd heard that using magic for others was like channeling a great tempest through sheer force of will. Whether this was true or not, it was certainly not the case for her. For her it was instead a matter of very carefully slotting inert building blocks into their rightful place, with as much force as a light breeze, and as much precision as would be required to hold a single grain of sand between one’s fingernails.

With her arms stretched and her fingers dancing around as if drawing on an invisible canvas, she fought the urge to grin as she watched her power take shape. A polycoloured mist fell from her palms and wrapped itself around her digits, eagerly awaiting her command. Xeno gave it to the blue.

Part of the mist liquified, turning to droplets and sliding down her hands. As it fell from them it began to thicken, almost coagulate. One drop joined to another, then another. All of this happened within a few moments, and all of it while it was still falling. Finally the liquid light had become a waterfall. It hit the ground before Xeno’s feet, then snaked out into the air. Widening, lengthening. Expanding from a stream to a small river, as though it were coming from an ever growing gap in a great dam. Finally it reached the top of the building the Gondi had scaled, and the moment it did there was a sudden popping sensation in Xeno’s head. The light hardened, solidifying into the exact shape it had held as a liquid. Leaving a great streak of crystalline magic.

It was rather steep, and hardened light did not generate a lot of friction, so Xeno was forced to hurry up her newly minted creation rather than take a few seconds to admire her own handiwork. Even with her haste, she felt the seconds go by as she stumbled and slipped time and time again. Each temporary loss of footing made her come close to regretting hurrying on her way, surely a railing wouldn’t have taken too long? Whether it would or would not, she cleared the fifty metre bridge in as much time as she could normally have moved a quarter mile, however the vantage point of the rooftop onto which it led let her immediately pinpoint the position of the Gondi.

She looked behind to see the bridge evaporate into a gaseous rainbow, then turned her attention back to the creature and walking to the edge of the building. The Gondi was about thirty metres from her now, but still close enough for its terrifying size to be made clear. Xeno found herself strategising, pondering the best angle and method of attack. That thick exoskeleton meant that her attacks probably wouldn’t even make the creature flinch, and while she could weaponise her light, she couldn’t do so with enough precision to target its joints effectively. She tried to remember whether spiders needed to blink or not, reasoning that if they could it may be possible for her to blind it. Then again, those scent-detecting hairs it had all over would make such a thing pointless…

In the end, Xeno decided on a tried and true method for killing Gondi. The very same method that had been coined by the ancient warriors who’d first started hunting them in their natural habitat of Dewlz. Then again, unlike those warriors, who would become the Olympians after a few dozen generations, Xeno wasn’t over six feet of muscle, sinew and boobs. Still, she had a pretty good brain. There was no reason not to use it and improvise.

She felt a familiar vibration from her gauger and, despite having experienced it twice more over the past fifteen minutes, still nearly jumped out of her skin. She stared at the slate in annoyance, yet there was no new alert. Was it malfunctioning? No matter, she couldn’t let it distract her.

Xeno kept her physical enhancement burning and rushed forwards, leaping down from the edge of the building. The twenty metre fall took less than two seconds, yet her quickened perception of time dragged those seconds out to more than half a dozen. That gave her plenty of time to aim her palms at the ground and release a gout of light to fall beneath her. She felt the familiar tugging in her gut as she poured magic into the substance, deliberately using far less than she had earlier. The result was a mass of semi-solid fluid which made for a far softer landing than the stones beneath it. Xeno fell into a full two metres of the magic-given-form, speed plummeting with each inch she passed through.

Her feet touched the ground an instant later, and she bent her knees as she landed properly this time. The orange had slowed her descent considerably, and so even with her relatively fragile form she felt no pain- only a dull shake moving up her bent knees and stopping at her hips.

She glanced up, gaze locking on the Gondi as it began to walk up another building- about as high as the one Xeno had just leapt from, but not nearly as wide. And then a thought struck her. No, it didn’t. Xeno’s thoughts did not strike her, they were never so disorienting as that. It would be more accurate to say the thought pulled her, or perhaps launched her. Whichever verb would best have described the actions of her thought, the result was that it sent her sprinting towards the building with her heart racing like never before. She had had quite a brilliant, and similarly insane, idea.

Xeno sprinted forward, her annoyingly short legs carrying her absurdly fast, and the ground coming up to meet each step with similar swiftness. She wasn’t sure what it was that made Mystics fall faster while sprinting, probably the same mysterious force that anchored them in place when grappling or punching. Whatever it was, she was glad of it. There would have been no point in her legs moving faster if she needed to wait just as long as an Inept for her body to drop after each stride.

She ran around the building this time, taking advantage of it being far thinner than the last. Once she was directly next to the structure the Gondi was blocked from her sight, and yet something told her it was still there making its way over. That something, she reminded herself, was the knowledge of how fast it had been moving. Gut feelings were not something Xeno made a point of trusting. She held out one of her hands and concentrated magic into it, gathering the multicoloured mist and pouring all the magic she could muster into it.

After years of carefully measuring the amount of power she used with every construct, it felt strange for Xeno to simply throw everything she had into a single effort.

However the Gondi was not something she could take chances with, if she failed to seriously wound it with her first attack then it was unlikely any follow ups would be effective. A sphere formed in Xeno’s hands, shimmering blue and the size of a small cannonball. The size of a small cannonball, but the weight of a very large one. The only reason she could hold it up at all was thanks to her physical enhancement, and even with that she keenly felt gravity’s pull on it.

Xeno rounded a corner and rushed forward a few more paces, staring up as the Gondi stalked over the building. And then she froze.

The creature’s eyes were cold and… empty. Not the eyes of a predator, or any animal. There was no life to them, they were nothing more than the sensory tools of an unliving killer. She had feared the Gondi when she looked upon it from behind, and now that she saw its front that fear turned to terror. It had fangs, like ordinary spiders, but they were somehow more vicious. On this scale Xeno could make out all the little barbs that ran along them, as well as the globule of deadly toxin which dripped from one of them- splashing against the tiled roof below and instantly beginning to eat away at it with a hiss and a cloud of steam. This was not something she could fight, no matter how many credits she had to motivate her. This was death itself. And now, though she could not read anything from those monstrous eyes, she could tell without a shadow of a doubt that it had decided she was prey.

The Gondi extended a leg out, the limb lengthening impossibly as it darted forwards like a bayonet thrust. Xeno stumbled backwards, feeling air strike her in its wake as the spear-like appendage met the cobbles of the ground. It split the rock apart like eggshells, spraying dust and chipped stone in all directions, and then two more legs hit the ground a few metres from the first. Before she knew it the Gondi was plucking itself free of the roof and shooting down towards her, ready to sink those arm-sized fangs into her and liquify her insides. She felt panic grip at her spirit, and she felt the frantic desperation that followed rob her of her composure. She couldn’t do without her composure. Her magic was leaking out of her by the second, and though it could not harm her no matter what Xeno was all too aware of the sharp drop in the mass and durability of the sphere she held in her right hand.

So it was now or never.

Resisting the urge to close her eyes, Xeno hurled the construct at her enemy. She pushed more magic behind it, a stream of gaseous light propelling it far faster than she could throw and making it approach the speed of the artillery rounds she had just compared it to. The construct soared through the air and broke against the creature’s underside. Its relatively soft, relatively unarmoured underside. Xeno wasn’t sure if insects or arachnids could be winded, but this one certainly looked like it had been.

The legs which had already stabbed into the ground folded inwards, as did those the Gondi kept by its side. With its support gone, the controlled descent turned into an erratic plummet. Xeno backed away, not being able to take her eyes from the monster even when compelled by the fear of being crushed, but she needn’t have bothered. It landed some thirty paces away.

The Gondi hit the ground hard, its body carrying staggering weight behind it. Thousands of kilograms of chitin and flesh met with the cobbles, crushing them into dust and sending a concussive force through the ground that Xeno could feel even from the distance between them. Pulverised stone filled the air, obscuring the predator from her sight and making the scene resemble the sight of a small artillery barrage. And then, before the dust had even settled, Xeno saw movement behind it.

The dust shifted, and the Gondi tore through it like a fae locomotive. The creature made no screech or roar, the only sound which came from its body was the splitting of stone under its legs. Xeno had known Gondi were sprinters, but the sight still froze her. How could something so big be so fast? It defied reason. It wasn’t fair.

She snapped herself out of the stupor and frantically began to think. She couldn’t hurt it, if a direct hit to the underbelly hadn’t even slowed it down then she hadn’t a hope of harming it anywhere else. What did she know of it? What weaknesses could she use? Knowledge was a weapon, it was ammunition. How powerful was hers? It took until the Gondi was nearly halfway to her for Xeno to find a solution.

She gathered more magic, feeling it rush through her arms and into her fingertips. Then she concentrated on a point a few metres behind her and sent it trickling there. She used as much of her magic reserves as earlier, probably more, and yet the force of will required of her was far lower. She didn’t need to compress the light in on itself and harden it, only to spread it around into a single shape. She pictured the gondi in her mind’s eye and went to work, paying attention to as much detail as she could recall. The scraping of its steps began to grow louder, but she didn’t pull her attention away. If she gave up on this effort and tried to run, she would die. There was no way in hell Xeno could outpace a gondi.

It drew closer, then closer still. Xeno felt her stomach lurch and needed to fight the urge to curl up into a ball, as if that would offer any protection. Her skin crawled with dread as her demise came nearer by the second, and then she finished her construct and stared up at the gondi.

For a long, terrible second it only continued moving forward. And then it halted, its entire body stiffening as though suddenly filled with cement. She grinned as the monster remained there, frozen in place with every motion-sensitive hair on its body standing on end. She knew why. Behind Xeno was another gondi, one which towered over the first. The difference in size between them was not only enormous, but impossible. No natural gondi could ever grow to the towering ten-metre heights of the one that had just appeared. Of course, the giant gondi in question had also not naturally grown to such heights. It wasn’t actually a gondi.

Provided she was careful, Xeno could produce rather lifelike images using her constructs. Of course the one behind her was too big to have any great concentration of mass or light, in fact had it been a windy day there would have been a considerable risk of it being broken apart by the movement of the air. Not to mention it being a rushed job. Xeno had had to skip on a few details, the face in particular would never have convinced an actual person.

Luckily for her, her enemy wasn’t a person.

The gondi began to move again, however it was farther from the rapid forward sprint than simply staying still had been. Ever so slowly, its limbs began to shift its body backwards. It inched away from the enormous projection, travelling a tenth of a step at a time. Xeno felt her breath catch in her throat as she saw the monster go. It was a primitive thing, its mind more akin to the simplistic processes of a steam automaton than a higher, intelligent species, or even most animals. All the same it was no small relief when its enormous form disappeared from sight around the side of the building. Xeno felt her lungs empty in a deep exhalation, suddenly feeling incredibly tired.

She’d failed to kill it. Her time spent carefully stalking it and coming up with a plan had been wasted, she hadn’t gotten even a single credit from the endeavour. And all because she couldn’t keep her magic stable. It made her want to scream.

“That was pretty impressive.”

The voice was deep and came from Xeno’s right. Upon hearing it she spun, staring at its source and locking eyes with a tall human. He was around seventeen with brown hair and a stupid moustache. Xeno was sure to take in as much information about him as she could before answering.

“You think so?I’d have said it was more like a massive failure.”

She didn’t feel the need to lie to this person, though his magic was impressive she got the feeling he wouldn’t use it on her no matter what. He had a kind face.

The kind faced boy in question raised an eyebrow curiously at Xeno.

"You don't think what you did was worth praise?"

She let out a sigh. "Surviving isn't worth praise."

"I disagree, I think surviving is something we should all praise." He chuckled softly. "When we survive, we learn from our mistakes, I've entered the Bermuda sieve three times now and each time thanks to my surviving, I make it just a little bit further."

"Oh." Xeno found herself smiling a bit, she hadn't thought about it like that.

"Which is why I think you should quit."

Xeno took a second to properly register his words due to the disarming smile still across his lips. When she answered, it was slowly and stupidly.

"What?"

"Give up your spot, let me knock you out, it'll be quick and you'll still have a few more years to try and learn from your mistakes." He spoke as if all he was asking for her to give up was a seat on a carriage.

"I...I can't do that." She found herself saying, fists clenched without her conscious instruction. "I'm sorry."

He cocked his head then let out a sigh. For a second it looked as though he was going to argue, but instead he smiled wearily and answered.

"That's fine, I understand." He shook his head. "Guess I'll have to take you down by force."

Xeno should have been ready. She should have stopped his prior friendliness from slowing her reactions, seen through any facade or self-rationalisation that had been responsible for his gentle smile or otherwise avoided being taken by surprise after someone announced his attack before it began. Instead she barely had time to splay her arms and project a sheen of light to block his attack before it landed.

The shimmering wall splintered under his punch, then shattered from a second one. Xeno went to replace it, but as she raised her arm it was seized around the wrist. She yelped, bringing her other hand up to launch a projectile at her attacker and make him let go. She didn’t get the chance. His grip tightened until she swore she could feel her bones grind together inside her arm, and then she pulled her so hard she thought her shoulder might be torn out of place. Her vision was nothing but conflicting information, the world blurring into an intelligible mess with the speed at which her head was being swung. And then the pressure on her wrist disappeared.

Xeno would have sighed if there had still been breath left in her. The relief was great enough that she tried to do so regardless, for all of the precious moments she was able to enjoy it before her back hit something solid and a million glinting stars danced before her eyes. She gasped, her chest instinctively trying to replace the air that was dragged from her lungs by the impact. And yet before her first breath was finished, it was cut off. Something wrapped itself around Xeno’s neck and tightened, cutting off her air supply.

Still unable to see, she flailed around. Her arms slammed into something, then again. Xeno swung them around more, and while she did so her vision slowly began to clear. She saw through blurry eyes that the boy who’d attacked her now had his hands around her throat, he was strangling her.

His face wasn’t gentle or kind anymore. It was savage, terrifying. How hadn’t Xeno seen that before? He lifted her from the ground, and she suddenly felt a pull at her feet as gravity attempted to bring her back down. It failed, apparently her small frame was practically weightless for him.

“I really am sorry about this.” The boy whispered, his lips parted and teeth grit together. Xeno began to feel her heart beating in her ears. She was fairly sure that wasn’t normal, and yet it didn’t seem to deter her attacker in the slightest.

“I’m so, so sorry.”

How bizarre. Apologising for something even while doing it.

Xeno was vaguely aware that she had started kicking out, though her hands and moved to the boy’s wrists in a pointless attempt to pry them free. Fae were weak. Even had her magic been working properly, even if she could use all of it and not just whatever dregs didn’t leak out of her in panic, she wouldn’t have been as strong as him. A jolt went through one of her feet as it collided with something hard and unyielding. It might have been the stomach of the strangler, but he didn’t give any indication he’d been hit. Could he simply have not felt it?

The world began to darken. First at the corners, just a tiny black edge to everything. And then the colour seeped from everything else. The blue sky, the green trees in the distance… it all turned to grey. Desaturated and lifeless.

Xeno wasn’t sure what her legs were doing now, she couldn’t feel them. Nor her hands. Only a strange numbness. She felt the panic begin to leave her, replaced by a sudden calm. Was this what death felt like? Why had she been so scared of it, exactly? She tried to remember, then gave up. She’d rather just sleep. If only that strange rushing noise wasn’t there, whatever was causing it it was distracting.

She saw lips moving without making sound, or maybe any noise they did produce was just being drowned out by the rushing. What was it they were mouthing? Xeno could lip read, but it was so hard to focus…She blinked, the rushing noise lessening somehow. It took a few seconds for feeling to return to her body, and slightly longer for colour to return to her sight. Realising she was lying down on her back, Xeno sat up with a groan. Then felt her confusion replace itself with amazement at the sight before her.

A blonde girl was fighting the boy who’d attacked Xeno. Or at least something vaguely resembling a blonde girl was, Xeno’s physical enhancement must have been deactivated as she neared unconsciousness because the motions of both fighters were impossibly quick. After a second of consideration, Xeno rekindled her magic and the world slowed as her perception was supercharged. Yes, definitely a blonde girl. And definitely a formidable one. She was ducking, dodging, practically dancing while she clashed with the other Mystic. Compared to her those monstrously fast attacks which had overwhelmed Xeno appeared to be sluggish and clumsy.

The girl’s fist crunched into the boy’s stomach. Then a heel was brought down on his ankle, followed by a heavy looking elbow landing squarely on his mouth and sending him stumbling back with blood leaking from it.

The boy blindly swung an arm out in much the same way Xeno imagined she herself had earlier, but his attacker simply stepped back to avoid it. He stared up at her, lips parted to reveal a mouth full of crimson stained teeth.

“NO!” he snarled. “I WILL NOT LOSE. I WON’T FAIL, NOT AGAIN. NOT NOW. THIS IS MY LAST CHANCE AND I WON’T-”

Whatever it was that he had been announcing his disinclination to do, Xeno would never find out. A distorted red oval about as high and wide as a door appeared behind him and the blonde, who leapt backwards the moment it did. The girl disappeared through the patch of light and shot out through the one behind her opponent, slamming into him elbow first with her entire body weight behind it. The boy’s eyes widened and a strangled cry escaped him, then he simply went limp and dropped to the ground.

Xeno’s eyes remained on the unconscious form of the boy right up until the moment he disappeared in a shimmering display of magic, at which point her focus immediately shifted to the blonde. Her head had cleared now, as had her vision, and she could see very clearly both in a literal and physical sense. The girl, who was now walking towards Xeno, was quite tall, at least for how young she appeared to be, and had the slender build of a sprinter. Her small chest and round face betrayed her youth, she couldn’t be any older than fifteen regardless of her power. Her body was adorned in clothing Xeno didn’t recognise, certainly not something that was commonplace in Bermuda. To top this all off, her eyes were a pale green- certainly not the light blue common to Pangaea. Though she had the pale complexion of a Unixian, she was likely from a rather remote region.

And Xeno had given up her only chance to run away.

She’d lost. She hadn’t been able to put up a fight against the strangler, and he in turn had been almost helpless to fight this girl. There was nothing Xeno could do now, her only opportunity for escape had been when the blonde was distracted in combat. Xeno remained sitting down, resisting the urge to flinch away from the finishing blow as the girl stopped just a few steps from her.

Instead of a strike, however, Xeno felt her gauger vibrate. It was ridiculous given her present circumstances, but she glanced at it all the same. It wasn’t as if she’d be any easier to defeat just because she was looking away. And yet when she saw the new message displayed on the slate, her heart skipped a beat.

Teammate Located

“Hello.”

Xeno’s head snapped back to the blonde as she heard her speak.

“My name,” the girl continued “is Astra Tempora. I’m not sure if you noticed, but since our gaugers vibrated everytime the distance between us decreased, that means we’re teammates. And luckily for you, that means you’re going to pass this stage in first place.”