As the crowd disappeared behind a wall of warping colour and rushing air, Crow found that the feeling of eyes resting on every inch of his body wasn’t diminished by even a fraction.

It pierced through the nausea of the transportation, through the vomit-inducing fear of going up against team Ra, even the odd conflict he felt at besting the people he’d joked and laughed with during Gem’s task.

When the ground finally solidified beneath his feet, nearly toppling him off balance as he readjusted, it became clear that his apprehension hadn’t even been the half of it.

He stood in what first appeared to be a corridor. Great walls protruded on either side of him, each a full five yards high, and at least as far apart. Their surfaces were smooth stone, dark grey and scarred by neither the touch of the elements or the hand of time.

Crow wasn’t sure whether that stood testament to the toughness of whatever material they’d been built from, or merely demonstrated the recency of their construction.

As he studied them further, he realised how much their pristine condition reminded him of the Sieve’s entire design scheme. Looking down at the breastplate adorning his torso, supplied for and unique to the task in which he found himself, he found no more fault in the slick surface of the gilded metal than he did the hard walls about him.

He wondered if that meant the stone would be as fragile as the armour supposedly was. Before he could give the matter, or anything else, much thought, a voice filled his ears.

“Is that you, Crow?”

He whirled, thoughts turning to magic, mental fingers frantically clawing at the burning reserves of power in his core even as he knew there was no chance of bringing it to bear before whoever had spoken could strike.

As his eyes raked across both ends of the corridor, then the tops of the surrounding walls, he felt his panic take on a new form. More primal, less reasoning. A fear that could come only from knowing an enemy was near, yet failing to detect even the slightest trace of them.

“Calm down.” The voice rang out again, and Crow froze.

Pushing his fear to one side, or as much of it as he could shift, he tried to concentrate on pinpointing the origin of the words. Yet they seemed to come from nowhere, as if their speaker were inside his very head.

Hold on, he mused. That voice sounded familiar…

“It’s me.” Xeno said, her words still sending a shiver down his spine from the unnatural intimacy of hearing them in such a way.

“Xeno. I’m talking to you from… uh, actually I don’t know how. A big magical… thing. Regardless, I know from your reaction that you can hear me.”

For a second, Crow didn’t know how to respond. Then, on a whim, he spoke with a low, hushed voice.

“Uh… hello?”

His teammate’s reply came almost instantly.

“Excellent, I can hear you. Were you trying to speak with your thoughts?”

Before Crow could answer, she added.

“Wait, hold on.”

She fell silent, and Crow found himself unsure of what to do. Had her connection been interrupted, somehow? By the magic of the enemy team? Or perhaps simply a limitation of whatever she was using to talk.

Whichever it was, he couldn’t afford to stand around doing nothing while he waited for her to return.

His first steps were hesitant, though they quickly grew both swifter and more certain. By the time he heard Xeno speak once more, they’d taken him a full thirty paces. Almost to the end of the corridor, in fact.

“Crow? Are you moving?” She asked, a frantic tone to her words.

“Yes…?” He answered, suddenly worried.

“Stop.” Xeno snapped. “How far did you go? Have you turned a corner?”

Surprised by the question, his reply came as a fumbled mess of words. Thankfully, Xeno seemed to relax as she heard it.

“Alright. What I want you to do is remember each corner you turn, then tell me when I’m able to speak to you.”

“Hold on.” He cut in. “Surely your memory’s better than mine, can’t you just-”

“I will keep track of it for you.” She interrupted. “But I also need to do the same for Gem, Astra and Unit… Well, not Unity. But still, my attention’s split three ways here.

You only need to remember a few turns at a time, once you’ve told me I’ll memorise them and you can focus on tracking the next few. Understand?”

“Yes, but-”

“Excellent. I need to go.”

Suddenly, Crow’s head felt vaguely empty. As though a pressure he hadn’t even noticed had suddenly been removed from the inside. He realised from instinct more than reasoning that he was once more alone, both in his head, and the stage.

With a jolt of irritation, he realised Xeno hadn’t even given him a hint as to its layout.

Calm down Crow. She already told you herself, she needs to focus on two other people as well. You’re lucky to have gotten as much help as you did.

He began to make his way back down the corridor, quickly covering the remaining few fathoms until the end. As he glanced around either corner, seeing whether there was anything that might make it easier to decide which direction to turn, his heart sank.

It was another corridor, bisected by the first and virtually indistinguishable from it. The sheer sight of such a mirrored structure sent fearful snakes squirming through Crow’s guts, quickening his pace with his eagerness to verify the fear suddenly plaguing him.

Such was his haste, that he barely remembered to memorise the direction he turned in.

Right. He mumbled, still jogging. Right. Right. I went right.

The repetition fell from his head as he reached the end of the second corridor, peering around both sides to reveal the one thing he’d been most scared of.

Yet another stretch of ground. Perhaps a little longer, or shorter. And, unless his eyes deceived him, angled slightly compared to the last two. But similar enough to confirm his fear all the same.

Crow was in a maze.

Xeno’s voice resumed, filling his head anew as he stared hopelessly. As if his eyes might rearrange the very structure of his surroundings.

“Alright,” she said. “Which directions did you turn?”

***

Xeno sectioned Crow’s turns off into her memory, locking them in place and adjusting her mental map of the maze to fit the new information.

Whichever organiser had designed the task, she owed a debt of gratitude. When Xeno had first found herself in her position, a small and cramped room with smooth black walls lined with strange runes, she’d been given a single image of the maze in which her teammates were competing.

That image had soon faded, and wasn’t repeated anywhere in her surroundings. Thankfully the twenty or so seconds she’d had it for were just enough time for her to memorise it. Along with the temporarily highlighted locations of each of her teammates, of course.

Combined with her knack for tracking and processing information within her own thoughts, this gave her a perfect start in enacting the plan.

Each contestant was given a breastplate, large and fragile, designed to break under sustained magical attack.

This meant that, regardless of the contestants’ own durability, whoever could attack the fastest and heaviest would be at an enormous advantage. And no matter how powerful, few could out-match the combined power of several times their own number.

However, the fact that her skillset was perfectly suited to the role she’d chosen- guiding her team through the maze and constantly keeping track of their location based on directions given by them- didn’t mean that she wasn’t hard pressed to accomplish it.

The first issue came simply from the number of plates she was forced to spin. Father had liked to test her with such things, back before the Unixian Alliance had taken her. And while she excelled at the test compared to all others, she was still limited.

Nobody could multi-task perfectly, the humanoid brain simply wasn’t built for such things. Even in fae.

Xeno had never seen the sheer difficulty of trying to split one's concentration in such a way demonstrated more perfectly than in her current endeavour.

Then again, her problems were only half down to the scale of the task before her. She’d have been far more secure in her ability to track all three of her teammate’s positions if it weren’t for the fact that she couldn’t quite be sure none of them would make any mistakes in what they reported.

Intelligence and reasoning, no matter how transcendentally perfect, were dust if given only flawed information. And Xeno’s inability to verify the data she was receiving sent an unscratchable itch deep into her spine.

Closing her eyes, she reached out her thoughts- feeling them seep into the walls around her like mist into a rag.

It didn’t take long for her to feel the connection with the arcane mechanisms humming around her, and the moment her mind became fully enveloped in the magics, it was filled with images of Crow, Astra, Gem and Unity.

She concentrated on the mental picture of Astra, and felt a strange lurching sensation as though she were swinging about an extreme arc.

“Do you hear me?” She thought out, still unused to the sensation of communicating with nothing more than the movement of her mind.

“Yes.” She heard Astra reply, notably in-between panting.

Xeno had gathered that, rather than hear her teammates' thoughts the way they heard hers, she was instead having sounds relayed to her from around them. It meant that their communication could be interrupted, or even dangerous depending on the situation in which they found themselves.

“Alright, I’ve gotten a grasp on where everyone is and what should be done. Now I’m going to start giving you instructions regarding which way to turn, do you think you can follow them?”

“I can.” The blonde answered, with the strained tone of someone whose sarcasm was held back only by their lack of breath.

“Excellent.”

Xeno recounted the directions, careful to keep her voice clear and her irritation, upon being asked to repeat them twice, hidden. When both Astra and her were certain they’d not slip the girl’s mind, she switched her focus.

Gem was, surprisingly, far more receptive to the instruction than Astra had been. Xeno had heard tales of Gilasev Menza, the Pinnacle of Magic and a man whose memory was almost as famous as his charisma. It seemed that his daughter had inherited that trait.

Crow was by far the most difficult one to work with. It took four repetitions before he was confident he’d remembered Xeno’s instructions, and that was after she’d deliberately given him five steps less than the first telling.

Even then, she made a note to check on him more often than anyone else in their team.

It took Unity only a single time to memorise Xeno’s words, yet the artificial somehow made their brief moments of communication feel like they lasted hours.

With all of her teammates on their way, each moving at a jog and with their physical abilities fully enhanced by magic, Xeno had a spare few moments to turn her attention elsewhere.

For a reason that Xeno struggled to comprehend, the organisers had seen fit to give her magical chamber the ability to track the members of the enemy team.

She pushed aside thoughts that turned to discerning why that was the case, knowing that if she began thinking about it, her drive to receive an answer would threaten to eclipse her drive to win.

There was no time for distractions, not with her friends fighting a team led by an enemy as strong as Ra.

Something was headed towards Astra’s general location, visible in Xeno’s thoughts as a faint blip of magic. By volume, she was certain it didn’t belong to Ra, but could rule no more out than that.

“Astra, how far have you gotten since I last asked?”

“I’ve taken two right turns and one left.” She replied.

Damn, another few hundred paces and her path would intersect with the member of team Ra.

“Turn right,” Xeno said to the girl, connecting as quickly as she could. “And pick up your pace, you’re closing in on an enemy.”

“Alright.” Astra answered, voice quietened. Whether by fear or caution, Xeno couldn’t tell.

She broke contact with the girl, stretching her senses out once more and touching her mind to Crow’s.

“Crow, which directions did you turn?”

He fumbled in telling her, but Xeno got what she needed. Adjusting her map to his new position, she quickly worked out a new set of directions for him to follow and relayed them.

Though she hastened to turn her concentration back to the map as a whole, Xeno found herself moving through the mental calculations painfully slowly. By the time she realised another enemy was on the path for one of her teammates, they’d all but met.

***

Gem managed to keep herself from jumping as Xeno’s voice rang out in her ears, and yet the haste with which the girl spoke jumbled her words up, robbing them of their coherence and rendering them a soup of mismatched syllables.

Even with the words slowed down by her use of magic, she could scarcely make them out.

“Turn right.” She heard Xeno say, with a desperate edge to her voice so strong that it spurred

Gem’s jog into a sprint as she hurried to the end of the corridor. She cleared the remaining twenty yards in moments, then scrambled to a stop and fought to turn.

“Which way do I go after that?” She asked, hurrying forwards.

There was no answer, and Gem felt her heart begin to pound harder as the end of the new passage grew nearer still. If Xeno didn’t direct her, she’d have to simply guess which way to go. That might bring her further from the rest of her team, interfering with the plan to rendezvous.

Or it might deliver her straight into an enemy’s lap, isolated and alone, with her powers well known. The thought of fighting completely unaided sent a shiver down her spine.

“I’m back.” Came Xeno’s voice, nearly making Gem miss a step with the abruptness of its return. “Turn right again, then once more, then turn left.”

“What the pit was keeping you so occupied?” Gem snapped back, only for her words to meet another wall of silence.

Biting back frustration, she continued on her way.

***

Crow wracked his mind to try and recall Xeno’s instructions, repeating the words over and over again, desperately searing them into his thoughts. Left, then left again. Followed by a right turn… Or was it another left?

If he turned left when he was meant to go right, he could end up moving in the exact opposite direction from what he was supposed to. Increasing the distance between him and his teammates with every step, and making it that much more likely they’d be forced to fight alone before reuniting.

“Which directions have you turned?” Came Xeno’s voice. Not a moment too soon, though perhaps a few later than he’d have liked.

Crow quickly told her, trying to keep the shaking from his voice.

“Alright, then next you’re going left for the next two turns, and right on the third.”

“Thank you.” Crow gasped, as much from relief as the strain of running. Xeno didn’t answer.

He came to the first turn, continuing left with barely any loss of speed, and was halfway to the next when a great pillar of sand erupted into the sky a hundred yards ahead of him.

The sight of it stunned Crow, bringing his body to a stop and leaving his mouth agape. He recognised the magic in an instant as belonging to Ra, and though it was only a distant thing, he’d seen enough of it up close to feel a creeping fear at the mere sight of it.

After only two heartbeats, the great silicate jet dropped back down to the ground, falling into the shape of an arch before disappearing beneath the outline of the maze’s walls.

With the sky empty once more, a sea of unbroken blue and wisps of white, it was hard to imagine there had ever been anything there in the first place. Crow didn’t need to imagine though, he’d seen it.

Realising how long he’d remained still, he brought himself back into a sprint. He turned right the moment he reached the end of the corridor. It was everything he could do not to sprint as fast as possible in the opposite direction from Ra.

***

“What do you mean sand?” Xeno asked, panic giving volume to her voice.

Having a person scream inside her head was among the most peculiar and disturbing things Astra had ever experienced.

“I mean the tiny grains of stone you find in deserts.” She snapped back.

She regretted it the moment the words left her mouth, it wasn’t Xeno’s fault the task’s set up left her feeling so vulnerable.

“Ra.” The fae practically whispered. “And you said he was over the wall on your left?”

“Yes.”

“Alright, give me a second.”

Astra could practically see the mental beads sliding along an abacus in Xeno’s head, and a mere ten heartbeats later the girl spoke once more.

“Your directions are the same, no need to alter your course. But you may want to hurry. I need to go now.”

And then she was gone.

***

“Right and then left.” Xeno blurted out, then disappeared along with the pressure in Crow’s mind.

She spoke and left so quickly, that he paused for a moment to run through the words once more in his head to make certain that she actually had said what he’d thought she had.

The wind seemed to strengthen in his ears as he tore through the maze, walls turning to streaks of grey in the periphery of his vision.

It took no time at all for him to turn as he’d been told, and when he began down the final corridor his velocity was such that it wasn’t until he’d already cleared the first twenty feet that he recognised the boy entering from the opposite side.

Taller than him by an inch, ash blonde hair protruding from his scalp like a bird’s nest and skin the colour of bleached oak. Ra’s yellow eyes fell straight upon Crow, seeming to pin him in place even with a gaze no heavier than a feather.

He stepped forwards, mouth lifting into a lop-sided grin.

“Nice to see you again, Crow.” He said. His tone seemed genuine, his friendliness real.

Neither served to banish the bone-freezing terror induced by his sheer power.

“It’s nice to see you too.” Crow answered, not managing to keep the fear from his voice. “I don’t suppose you’ll be giving me as many tips as last time?”

The widening of Ra’s eyes was his only answer. A slight gesture, and one Crow barely even caught from the five paces separating them. Yet one he keenly recalled being drilled by Galad about the importance of. Grimacing, tightening of the jaw and the slight widening of a person’s eyes were all signifiers of an attack.

He leapt aside, body moving only a hair after his brain. Following by a hair again was the slashing streak of sand that whipped through the space Crow had just been occupying.

The sound of grinding stone and pattering debris told him exactly what the attack did to the stone of the labyrinth, and what it might have done to him.

Something shifted around the Jyptian’s feet, another stream of sand flowing like a veil in the wind. Crow landed hard on his arm, pushing from the ground and rolling just as he’d been taught- using every scrap of his magically enhanced strength to push himself to his feet.

It was just enough to let him duck the second attack, this time a horizontal wave that soared over his head and broke against the wall just feet behind him.

Crow felt chips of stone batter his skin even as grains of sand fell over him like a desert wind. He realised instantly that dodging would be impossible to sustain on speed alone, and as he reached into his core to activate his future sight, something closed around his ankle.

A great whip of sand, held together by magic and coiling like a million muscle fibres, convulsed and dragged him upwards. As he flew, he followed the length back to its source- seeing it protruding from a greater mass of sand at Ra’s feet.

Then it snapped downwards, relaxing its grip on him and leaving his body to fly towards the ground.

***

“What do you mean you just saw Crow?” Xeno asked, feeling a flash of fear and confusion mix with the claustrophobia.

She tried to push her mind further into the matter at hand, ignoring the monotonous, agonisingly smooth walls even as they seemed to creep closer towards her. It wasn’t easy.

“I mean I just saw him.” Gem snapped. “Or glimpsed him. It was over a wall, maybe thirty feet in the air.”

Xeno considered the possible explanations for such a thing.

Could Crow have leapt that high, seeking to spot his teammates? Of course not. He’d not have made such a brash move, not without asking or at least telling her. Even if he’d tried, she doubted he had nearly the leg strength necessary.

She realised that her thoughts and confusion were wasting precious moments, and pulled herself from Gem’s mind without another word. Almost as quickly, Xeno pressed her thoughts against Crow’s.

The thrashing inside his head nearly forced her out from sheer shock.

“Crow, what’s happening?” She asked, fearing that the boy would give her no answer.

“Ra. Fighting, can’t talk.” Came his words, spoken through clenched teeth and tight lips- a curtain of exertion and pain.

Fear crawled into her stomach, growing heavy and threatening to drive bile into her throat. Xeno banished the thought, concentrating on her mental map and attempting to adjust her information.

Crow was locked in battle with Ra, based on where Gem had seen the boy, and assuming she hadn’t taken any wrong turns, that meant that the boy was likely some hundred paces from her. In a direction he couldn’t have reached following her instructions properly.

The number of assumptions involved in the reasoning began to drive the fear from Xeno, replacing it with sheer, impotent fury. She coolly pushed past that, having neither the time nor the energy for such an emotion.

Reaching out to Gem, she kept her voice level and her words clipped as she spoke.

“Crow’s a hundred paces to your right, can you fly to him now?”

The girl’s reply came as fast as was typical for a mind accelerated by magic.

“Are you insane? That’ll give away my position to the enemy’s entire team.”

“I know, but you don’t have any choice. He’s fighting Ra. You can maneuver faster than any of them by skipping over walls, but he can’t last long in a straight fight against someone of that level. If one of us is knocked out this early, it’s all over.”

“And if they start scaling the walls after seeing me fly overhead?”

“Then they’ll still be slower than you, now hurry up and stop wasting time.”

It infuriated Xeno that she couldn’t see the girl. Couldn’t make out her expression, look for the decision on her face before it reached her tongue. Gauge whether more prompting was needed to tip her in one direction.

After what felt like a decade, Gem finally sighed defeatedly.

“Okay.” She said. A moment later the sound of rushing wind filled Xeno’s thoughts, transmitted from around Gem’s body.

She leaned back in her seat, allowing herself a relieved sigh as she recognised the air resistance of high-speed flight for what it was.

***

“Unity, which directions did you take?” The fae’s voice shrieked, scraping against his eardrums like a lunellum against goat-hide.

“Right twice, left thrice, right and left again then right once more.”

She paused, and he just knew she was altering that map she’d kept inside her mind. When her voice rang out once more, there was a touch of panic to it.

“Wait… shit. Have you moved at all since we last spoke?”

“No.” He snapped. “I’ve been waiting for more instructions.”

“You need to run now, you’re about to-”

Something shifted at the end of the corridor, snapping Unity’s eyes into focus and muting all else with his concentration. His hands curled into fists, raising slightly as he recognised Sia of team Fate.

Unity had been hesitant to simply stand and wait for the girl’s directions, but had eventually decided in favour of it. When weighed against one another, the risks of being caught as he stood still were outweighed by the benefit of not throwing her maneuvering of their team out of balance.

“Nevermind, Xeno.” He muttered under his breath. “Focus on the others, I’m already in combat now.”

To her credit, the fae didn’t hesitate to break contact.

“I was hoping I’d run into you.” The boy said, voice chillingly steady. He was ten yards from Unity but closing by the step.

Perhaps due to his expression, the fleshiness of the boy’s face seemed far less pronounced. Pinched and hard, in place of soft and relaxed. The look in his eyes seemed intense enough to tighten the flab around it, and he seemed to stare through Unity, rather than at him.

As the boy came to within a half dozen yards, Unity noticed the fabric under his glinting breastplate. Dark, with a texture that reminded him very much of Gem’s armoured apparel.

It seemed team Ra wasn’t intending on taking another loss.

“Is it because of my winning personality and amazing sense of humour?” He asked, hoping to keep the boy from noticing as he took a step back.

His words brought a smile to his enemy’s face, but it was far from the kind that would settle nerves.

“Do you remember what your last opponent said to you? Before you murdered him, I mean.”

Unity saw the lure clear as day, felt the scratching of irritation at it, but still found himself biting.

“He said lots of things. Quite a talker, that one.”

The flash of disgust that ran across his opponent’s face at his words told him exactly where things were going.

“I’ll be more specific then. Do you remember what he said about your reputation? About how many people still think you’re anything but scum?”

“My memory’s a bit hazy in regards to that fight, I’m afraid.” He answered.

That earned him another sneer.

“Let me guess, you don’t remember murdering him?”

Unity felt his collar grow hot. Murder. One word, one synonym. Not kill, murder.

“I remember killing him perfectly.” He answered, fighting to keep his voice under control. “But it wasn’t murder. I wanted to stop him, to win. Hell, even to hurt him for… provoking me. I misjudged my power. It was an accident.”

Even to him, it sounded weak. His voice and words both.

Of course he hadn’t meant to kill the idiotic boy. Even he realised that now. His magic was the most destructive on his team, and Unity had poured everything he’d had into it- unthinking, unrealising.

His potency had far outstripped the boy, and he should have realised how fragile his body was. That he hadn’t was a failing, but Unity was not so deluded as to see it as a moral one rather than an intellectual one.

“Right. I’m sure that’ll be common knowledge soon, explained to all corners of Unix by the Factions themselves.”

“Probably.” Unity answered, truthfully. “But it’s also true.”

“How convenient.”

Unity considered answering, but the look in the boy’s eyes told him everything he needed to know about his chances of reaching him. Instead, he adjusted his footing, raised his hands and wrapped them with forks of crackling magical power.

***

Gem realised almost as soon as she lifted off that it had been an age since she’d flown. Her feet had remained on the ground ever since her task.

Just thinking about that day made her sick, and yet the queasiness was barely even within her notice. As the wind rushed into her face, pulling at her hair and screaming into her ears, she couldn’t help but grin.

Eclipse, how she’d missed the skies.

Realising her eyes had been far from the ground below, Gem hurriedly turned back to study the maze. She cursed upon realising she’d already flown a quarter-mile further, then quickly concentrated on changing her course.

The wind redoubled its push against her as she contorted in mid air, flipping over and bringing her legs around before releasing another jet of magic to propel her back.

Her stomach did acrobatics at the unfamiliarly sudden change in velocity, acceleration threatening to squeeze vomit from her as though it were a fist closing on her guts.

She paid the dizziness and disorientation no heed, focusing only on the direction of the ground and carefully scanning the tops of the maze for any trace of Crow. Silently kicking herself for her stupidity all the while.

From her position a hundred paces in the air the structure seemed bizarrely small, almost flat. As she descended to look closer, however, the maze quickly grew more daunting. Becoming more akin to a labyrinth by the metre.

Gem was so caught up in studying the place, with its sterile Zoric architecture, that she almost missed the heart-stopping sight peering out at her from beside one of the walls.

She was closer to the ground now by over a hundred feet, yet still too far to accurately make out a person’s expression. And yet Gem could practically see Simona’s grin, even with her face rendered barely more than a blur by distance.

Suddenly, Gem wanted to keep flying. To pick up speed, clear the edge of the stage and continue until she was out of Bermuda. She wanted to put as much distance between herself and that monstrous freak as she could.

Memories of the girl’s laugh filled her head, spliced with her own screaming. Thrashing, flailing, scratching.

Failing.

Helpless as a baby bird, and wracked with so much pain that she could scarcely even breathe.

And then her thoughts turned to somewhere she hadn’t expected, filling her with a bizarre sense of calm. An almost numbing detachment.

Strength is a choice, so is weakness.

Karma’s words seemed to have a weight to them, one which doubled as Gem recalled the woman saying them herself. The look in her eyes, strained and steeled, yet no less warm than she’d needed.

Honest words, surely. Delivered like that, how could they be anything else?

Gem glanced again at the ground. She’d been fifty paces from the space above the vampire when she first glimpsed her, but now she’d just about lined up directly with the girl. With her position in the air, and her speed moving through it, she doubted Simona could catch her if she chose to flee.

And yet that would be to choose weakness. Whether she used helping Crow as an excuse, or simply accepted her own cowardice, the result would be the same.

Feeling her teeth strain under the pressure of her tightening jaw, Gem twisted in the wind once more and began to dive for the girl waiting below.

***

Xeno felt for Astra, reaching out with speed in place of subtlety. Her roughness brought their minds together in an instant.

“Directions.” She said, panic and haste robbing her of tact.

Astra gave them without hesitation, and Xeno could practically feel her brain heating up as she hurried to factor the positional information in.

“Okay, I need you to head South- I mean left. Then take two rights, then another left and then one last right.”

“Are you sure?” The girl asked, and Xeno felt her face burn with annoyance at the question.

“Yes I’m sure, that’s where Crow is, it’s where Gem’s headed and it’s where you need to be.”

After a hesitation, the girl mumbled. “Can you repeat the directions?”

Just as Xeno was about to, she heard a gasp escape her teammate.

“Astra?” She asked, voice only a hair from a scream. “What’s going on?”

The girl didn’t answer, but as the sound of shattering stone filled Xeno’s ears, she realised for herself what had happened.

Cursing as she pulled out of the girl’s mind, she quickly pushed back to Gem’s.

“Gem, I need to know whether you’ve reached Crow yet.”

The screaming wind should have been answer enough that her teammate was still in flight, yet she caught Gem’s raised voice too, barely audible over the sound of air giving way before her.

“Sorry Xeno, there’s been a complication. I’m in battle already, Crow will have to make do on his own.”

“What do you mean?” Xeno demanded, unable to keep herself from screaming each word. “Can’t you just fly away?”

There was no response on Gem’s end, save for the heavy thump of magically strengthened legs colliding with stone. Xeno caught more words from someone other than Gem, then retreated from the girl’s mind.

Four teammates, each relying on her to guide them to one another. Their only advantage being her unique ability to do so, and even then Xeno had failed.

She leaned forwards, burying her face in both hands and venting her frustration in the wake of a great roar. Tears blurred her vision and stars danced before her eyes with the sheer fury wracking her.

It was all on them.