Chris remained frozen at his spot, staring at Tayte and Adisa as they pushed their locked blades against each other.

It was like watching the world’s most intense arm-wrestling match. There was no sign of movement from either side. The physical effort being tested wasn’t visible, but their network of muscles were being strained well past their limit, vibrating shock waves jolting all the way deep within their bones as they stood at that single spot. At least that’s what Chris chose to believe watching them.

Bang!

Widened eyes darted over to a rattled Chris as he yipped and jumped in the air. He looked down at the smoking barrel of his gun. His finger was tightly wrapped around the trigger as he made a face. Stupid curse. Making him pull the trigger by accident.

“It’s a miracle that you’re still alive,” Mayumi said with her eyes glued to the small screen as it flashed random colors.

Chris glared at Mayumi as Tayte and Adisa continued their silent challenge of strength. Tayte let out a cry, alerting Chris. He aimed his gun, the red dot on the scope pinning the side of Adisa’s head. Looks like Tayte’s gung ho attitude wasn’t enough to assure victory against Adisa’s single arm.

Mayumi plucked out a kunai from Andre’s right hand. Ignoring the blood spurt and his muffled cry of pain as she sprung up and pointed it at Chris.

“Hey, can’t you see Addy is enjoying himself?” Mayumi rasped, pressing Andre’s face deeper into the ground under her foot.

Chris challenged Mayumi’s glare with one of his own. Of course, if it were anybody else, being threatened by a gardening tool while equipped with a gun would mean nothing. But this wasn’t anybody else, this was Mayumi Kanno—the Aragami—people of the underworld called her. It was coined by unfortunate Japanese grave robbers who learned firsthand what one can do with just a pair of weapons no bigger than knives you’d find in a modern kitchen.

Chris looked down at Andre. “Can you at least let him breathe?”

Mayumi lifted her boot with a groan, like it was too much work.

Andre let out a large gasp and coughed up some dirt. “Thanks, Chris.”

“You should be thanking me. I’m the one who lifted her boot,” Mayumi said, frowning down at him.

Tayte shrieked, finally losing to her challenger and gave out, dropping onto her back.

“Tayte!” Chris shouted.

Tayte sat up with her Relic rested on her lap as Adisa titled his head back and yawned.

Walidah, with her back against the tree, breathing rapidly fixated on Tayte. “Now, run, you idiot!”

Tayte got herself back on her feet and went for seconds, shocking everybody but Chris.

Adisa and Tayte’s blades bound once again.

A moment of confused silence followed.

“Is she crazy?” Andre asked.

“Is she dumb?” Walidah asked.

Mayumi squinted at Tayte for a while, and then her mouth fell open. “Ohhhh, hey, it’s the gray-haired girl from the museum.”

Adisa studied Tayte, focusing on her eyes. “Tayte… right?”

Tayte nodded. “Tayte Enberg. And you’re Adisa?”

“Adisa Swain, nice to meet you,” he responded cordially.

“Hi,” she said back.

“Hey!” Mayumi waved at Tayte. “I’m Mayumi. I really like your hair dye!”

“It’s my natural hair color,” Tayte commented, focusing on beating Adisa’s strength, but her shaky legs suggested that wasn’t going to happen.

Mayumi’s eyes widened. “Really? Wow, it looks so nice though.”

Chris froze with a perplexed look. It was like watching a group of serial killers get together and make small talk about the weather. It made the violent situation seem much more harmless and gleeful. He suppressed the part of him that wanted to yell at them to take things a little more seriously, reminding himself that psychos in a good mood make things easier for everyone. Right now with three on the premises, keeping them happy is even more paramount for his survival.

He stole a glance at Andre’s dirt smeared troubled face and at the panicked look on Walidah’s—showing appropriate expressions like regular people should!—and considered the idea of running off with them. Venturing with level-headed people would skyrocket his chances of making out of the Trials alive for sure.

To Chris’s surprise, Tayte made a cowardly but tactical move and jumped away from Adisa. They lowered their weapons and had a stare-down, exchanging smirks and chuckles as if they were having a whole mental conversation.

Mayumi grabbed her arm and smiled. “It’s happening.”

“What is?” Andre asked.

“Something beautiful—”

“Cula!” a lively voice shouted. And then a green lightning bolt flashed past Mayumi.

Chris, startled, looked to his side and found another element to the chaos in the form of a geared young man shielding his face with a gas mask. He held up an old-looking axe. He had dark, wavy hair and wore a quilted jacket with the insignia of the Maltese Cross on the shoulder. Richard Takato was his name.

Chris eyed the lime green electricity circling the blade of the axe, almost the same color as his eyes, and then his gaze wandered over to Mayumi. He noticed something that caused the others to stop and stare.

Mayumi looked down on the GameGuy in her hand and could see the ground speckled with electronic bits through the burnt hole in the screen. She gave Takato a look.

Takato took off his mask, revealing his Asian features. He made an expression that can only be described as the look one makes when they rethink all the decisions they have made in their life that has led them to this very moment—or simply—the Oh, I fucked up look some scholars would call.

“This was a limited edition,” Mayumi hissed.

Takato gave her a nervous smile. “All your saved data is fine though, right?”

Mayumi pushed out the fried memory card from its slot and held it up. It was still exuding smoke.

“You have your data saved somewhere else, right?”

Takato allowed his eyes to avert away from Mayumi’s fiery gaze and looked around. He caught Adisa shaking his head slowly. Takato stopped and compressed his lips.

“You're dead, Richard!”

Takato bolted as Mayumi pounced after him. “I’m sorry!” He ran screaming and fell into a hole.

Chris watched in disbelief as a raged Mayumi jumped into the pit without hesitation, their screams echoing up from the depths. On instinct, he straightened his aim on Adisa and caught him glancing at Tayte while walking away.

“Don’t die now,” he said to her softly and ran up to the pit Takato and Mayumi dropped in and allowed himself to fall in with a single step. No screams arose from the hole.

Chris holstered his gun and waited till his breathing returned to normal. He let out a quick exhale and moved up to Tayte. “Okay, we got out of that alive—”

Tayte zipped past him. Chris whipped around and glimpsed her gray ponytail shooting up before she disappeared entirely into the hole. He gave out a grunt of frustration and stomped up to the hole.

Bang!

Chris was staggered by the gun going off in his holster, falling onto his back and rolling into a hole behind him.

He was surrounded by darkness. If it weren’t for the wind gusting into his face, there’d be no tell if he was moving or not. He plummeted towards nothingness while upside down and deafened himself with frantic screams.

Chris cut off his screaming by clenching all over. “No, stop, I need to calm down and come up with a plan,” he said to himself with his eyes shut. He flipped over, now falling right-side up with his jacket flapping upwards, and opened his eyes. Pitch black was all he could see. He looked up and squinted, making out a silver dot of light that shrank as he continued to fall. “There’s always a plan,” he said, looking around in the blackness. Despair quickly took over again. “Is this going to be my life now—?”

He hit dirt.

“Shit!” he exclaimed as he began to accelerate down a muddy slope. The frantic screaming returned. He flailed his arms, attempting to block the sludge shooting up at him, but ate some spoonfuls of muck throughout his ride, scoring some extras up his nostrils as well.

There was a sharp dip out of nowhere and the slope curved upwards, sending Chris flying through the darkness. He glided forward, like a missile, nearing a faint dark blue light. As he got closer, he noticed that the light was wing-shaped, and then it fluttered.

Chris slammed into a rock wall, arms and legs spread like a starfish. As he fell back, he reached out his hand and grabbed a blue plant vine that dangled in front of him. He grabbed onto it with his other hand and wrapped his legs around it.

A glowing, dark blue moth was by his side on the rocky wall. It was a large one and had a skull pattern on its back. Chris stared in awe. He had seen a death’s head-hawkmoth before while doing jobs across Africa, but one glowing in the dark was a first. Thinking that only lunar moths could do that.

Silently, more moths on the wall revealed themselves by emitting their supernatural glow. The wall before Chris was marked with an eclipse of glowing death’s-head moths and between each of them was a plant vine that hung from a small hole between the rocks. Chris looked up and climbed till the end. Over the small hole was another dangling vine. Chris peered down and there was nothing save for the wall and vines, seemingly going down forever. Everything else was shrouded.

Am I supposed to go up or down?

Chris pressed himself against the wall and moved his feet around until he found a grip he was comfortable with and descended, on his way to the other end of the vine he replayed one of Ryder’s future funk tracks in his head and then wondered if that’s really the kind of music he wanted to die to.

He switched out for rap music on his mental radio.

After reaching the end, he looked down at the infinitude of vines awaiting for him and then looked to his right. There were just as many vines and found the same to his left.

“How long am I supposed to do this?” he hissed and then started to groan. The pain was coming from his arms. He huffed and puffed a couple of times and then checked all directions again. “Down. I have to go down. That makes sense.” He nodded to himself and stretched his leg downward.

It slipped off an embedded rock, and Chris fell towards his death.

Free-falling for a couple of seconds; he beat the odds and grabbed onto a new vine. He hugged it while panting. His bad luck was going to kill him long before he made decent progress.

He looked over at the glowing moth by his side as he swayed. “Ya think you can help me out with a hint, little buddy?” he asked gingerly.

The moth flickered off.

“Oh, fuck you, too!” The vine’s sway lengthened. Chris tightened his grip, regretting the drink he accepted from Tayte the night before. “Tayte,” he said aloud, somberly. He paused, scrunching up his face. No! He had to scream to himself in his head. There was no point feeling bad for whatever happened to her. Any dumbass who chases Adisa after surviving a confrontation with him is just demonstrating Darwinism at its finest. The downside of having Tayte out of the picture is that her Relic will fall into Adisa’s hands.

Chris shook his head. That girl has been nothing but trouble since she showed up that fateful night, although she helped him take down both Ayo and Melissa. But he would’ve been able to do that on his own. Wouldn’t he? As soon as the thought popped up in his head; he got rid of it before it could cause any more damage.

A thunderous thud came up almost causing him to lose his grip.

Chris looked to his side and Andre had his shoulder pressed onto the rocky wall, clenching the plant vine with one hand; the scowl on his face was feral. He pulled out a machete from under his shawl like a magic trick, stretched it to his side, ran across the wall, and zipped past Chris, slicing his plant vine.

Chris caught onto the vine below, but there was no time to recover from the fall as Andre came swinging back in his direction, stretching his weapon downward. Chris moved his head back for a dodge, the swinging machete missing the tip of his nose by a few inches.

Andre ran across the wall in the opposite direction, backtracked with just as much speed, and lunged with his machete above his head. Chris scuttled across the wall to his side and Andre’s slash missed the mark.

He peeked down and the machete-wielder had one hand gripped onto a plant vine. Chris clenched his jaw and climbed up the vine till the end.

There was a strong whoosh coming from above.

He looked up and Walidah was diving towards him, holding a blowgun up to her mouth. Chris spun himself out of the way and back. He looked down and Andre held his machete between his teeth and had one hand grasped onto the ankle of his twin sister. The trapeze act had Walidah hanging upside down, still with her blowgun equipped and aimed up at her target.

A dart shot up at Chris, which he evaded with a panicked movement. As Walidah continued to fire, Chris gambled and leaped to a plant vine to his side; making the jump with success. “Lukwata!” he called out. He held up the shield with his arm and the darts bounced off its surface. As she ceased fire, Chris dropped to another pendulous vine below, locked his knees together, and channeled his playground memories to gain speed, pumping his legs—pulling them as he swung back and raising them as he swung forward—watching Walidah as she hurriedly reloaded her blowgun as fast as someone hanging upside down could.

The time to attack arrived, and Chris’s feet propelled at the twins with great speed. Andre flipped his sister over and she kicked at Chris’s feet mid-air, sending him spinning back on the vine before her brother caught her by the wrist just in time.

Chris lost his grip mid-spin and flew off the wall to his side. With no time to think, he put his other hand behind the shield and pushed it forward. “Amazzi-go!” He commanded his Relic, turning into a water torrent, and rushed at the two.

Andre took the hit, dropped Walidah, and was ground across the wall. Wet rocks and snapped vines flew off in every direction, as they dug deep within the wall, leaving an increasing drag mark. The Relic’s attack let up, slowing them down as they reached the bottom of the wall and splashed into a body of water.

There was a moment of silence interrupted by a loud thud in the distance for half a second and then the area became noiseless again.

After about twenty minutes, Chris was the first to stand up in the shallow water, aching and groaning audibly, but that all went away when he noticed the blue neon glow the water gave off. Upon closer inspection, a collection of corals and fungi were responsible for the cool luminesce. Chris didn’t even try to think of a scientific explanation and just appreciated the beauty.

Andre arose from the water behind Chris, dripping wet, and hunched over.

They glared at each other, but only briefly, as Andre averted his gaze to look around. “Walidah?” He waded off, calling out for her.

“Hey, we’re not done here,” Chris said, stopping him. As Andre turned back to him, he raised his shield. “Let’s finish this.”

Andre stared and then plodded away. “Walidah!”

“Hey!” Chris yelled before a shock of pain caused him to double over. As he straightened himself, Andre was already a good distance away. The sloshing coming from him was faint. He glanced down at his shield, let it splash into the water, and equipped his gun. He slogged after Andre.

There were black rocks of various sizes spread across the water. Then, the faint sloshing coming from afar had stopped and Chris could only hear the noise from himself. He raised his gun once he was just a few feet away from Andre, staring at the back of his head.

“This isn’t personal, Andre, besides you attacked first.” Chris pulled the trigger. Click. The hammer dropped, but the muzzle stayed silent. He clicked repeatedly, and the gun didn’t make a sound. “Fuck!” He threw the gun into the water and it fired after the splash, staggering Chris. He took a moment to regain his composure and then smacked his palm into his forehead.

Throughout the entire blunder, Andre hadn’t moved a muscle.

Chris fixated on Andre, who had his back turned to him and stood alarmingly still. He walked around Andre and got a look at his face—it was warped with pain and confusion. His welled-up eyes were focused on something to his left. Chris followed the direction and Walidah was arched over a beam-shaped rock. Her body was locked in the shape of an upside-down U. He stared back into the unfocused eyes of her expressionless face. Her blowgun sat underwater next to her dangling hand.

Once Chris had enough, he turned back to Andre. His face had grown more twisted.

“H-h-how could you?” Andre said with a quaver.

“You guys attacked me. I was just defending myself. Wait, why am I explaining myself?” He pointed at Andre. “You know what this is!”

Andre smacked Chris’s hand out of the way. “We weren’t trying to kill you,” Andre said. “We just wanted to get you to give up your Relic.”

“Swinging a machete and shooting poison darts at me say otherwise!”

“You’re dead.”

Chris got into his grappler stance. “I’m not going to lose these Trials.”

Andre halted midway getting into his stance.

Chris whipped back, and there was an enchanting black mermaid resting on a large rock. She had a golden yellow tail with a massive, sparkling fin.

She stared at the two with glowing white eyes. Her long black hair flowed outward as if she was underwater.

“Walidah?” Andre uttered.