Daimona and Will climbed the long, descending rope of yellow handkerchiefs dangling down from the bottom of the rival squad’s tower. Every breeze that blew by caused them to sway violently in the air, and Daimona ground her teeth against one another harshly as she tightened her grip around the knotted fabric.

  “It’ll hold,” Will shouted from beneath her, after a particularly perilous gust had sent them so far to the right, Daimona could almost reach out and touch the middle island. “They enhanced the rope to keep it from snapping. We just can’t fall.”

  Daimona rolled her eyes, shimmying up the rope with an annoyed grunt. “Oh, we just can’t fall? You gonna remind me how to breathe too?”

  “Actually, practiced breathing is a very important part of effective climbing--”

  “Will,” Daimona huffed, pausing her ascent to glare down at him. “Shut up, or I’m going to accidentally plant my boot in your face.”

  Sheepishly, Will closed his mouth in a careful line and remained silent for the rest of the climb. After what felt like hours, they finally reached the lip of the island, and Daimona hoisted herself over the rocky ledge. Dusting off her sore, chafed hands, she gazed up at the full height of the rival squad’s blackstone tower. It mirrored their own in every way, save for the flag still billowing from the pole at the very top. Daimona squinted at the sight. Bootcamp had been an ordeal-- the relay race, the rescue mission, the exchange and now here, the final trial before the end. Everything was serious now. Even Norok, her normally self-centered, neurotic brother was giving it his all somewhere down below. She recalled his slackjawed face just before leaving him-- shocked, offended even, but he hadn’t made any moves to join her. The Norok she had grown up with wouldn’t have stood for her abandoning him. Clearly, he had to be ready to fight too. Daimona was certain he’d thank her for trusting him later, already envisioning the look of undeniable gratitude on his face.

  “Are we climbing the sides?” Daimona asked, as Will dusted his knees off right next to her.

  “We can’t,” he replied. “That’d leave us vulnerable to Bash’s monsters.”

  “The meatballs,” Daimona said lightly.

  “Yes, the meatballs.”

  “So we go in, then,” Daimona remarked, raising her eyebrows at the ominous entry way to the tower. “Fight our way to the top, knock Bash out and toss her off the edge before she can wake up.”

  She moved forward, arm reaching towards the doors. But Will interrupted her approach, quickly grabbing her by the wrist and turning her around. With a stern sense of urgency, he whispered, “No, Daimona. We subdue her and make her a non-threat, but we do not render her unconscious.”

  Daimona opened her mouth to argue, but Will pressed his thumb harder against the flat of her wrist. “That’s an order,” he said bluntly before dropping her hand back at her side.

  How annoying, Daimona thought. Here she was, doing all the real work, and amping herself up to fight to big bad Bash, but Will was still clearly doubting her. The hazy uncertainty in his tone screamed skepticism at her abilities. It wasn’t that he didn’t want her to take down Bash; he didn’t think she could. Or worse, Daimona thought grimly. He wanted to hog the glory all to himself. And after everything she had done for him too!

  Will pushed the door to the tower inwards. It creaked against the stone floor. The entryway to the rival tower was no different from their own floating base across the way, and yet to Daimona, this one appeared to be much darker. She could still make out the same banners, fluttering quietly with the gust trailing in behind them, but something about the tower seemed emptier than their own. Will turned his nose up with dismay as he muttered, “Damn it, Avsten…”

  Stepping behind him inside the space, Daimona’s eyes fell upon the source of Will’s woe: the spiral staircase winding around the sides had disappeared. It appeared as though someone had pressed the whole thing into the wall, collapsing it into a mere zig-zag line standing less than a millimeter outwards. Daimona ran her fingers across it lightly, letting out a soft gasp as the thin steps crumbled under her touch. Looking up, the hole at the top of the tower still boasted the proud sight of the billowing flag. Eerily, Daimona noticed, there was no sign of Bash nor her creatures.

  The story has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.

  “We’ll have to find another way up,” Will sighed. “Who knows what traps Avsten set here in the stone…”

  As if on cue, the sound of a loud, rumbling crash came from the outside. The entrance they had just come in from was suddenly blocked off. The light from above was simultaneously cut off with the noise, leaving Will and Daimona in the dark. Instinctually, she reached her hand out, grasping onto Will’s jacket with enough force to rip it to shreds.

  “Ow-- ow, Daimona--!” A circle of bright sparks illuminated the darkness, followed by a crisp snap. Daimona blinked in the new amber glow, as Will presented a lit lantern while his portal vanished at his side.

  “Wow, you really can keep anything in there, huh?”

  “Growing up with magic like mine, you learn how to make it work for you rather than the other way around,” Will beamed with pride. Daimona let go of his arm with an apologetic nod, her lips pursed in embarrassment.

  “Do you have any snacks in there?” She tried meekly.

  Will frowned at her flatly. “Not unless you want to eat metal.”

  Images of Frode’s impaled arms splintered through her mind. Her stomach churned with what she deemed uncomfortable disapproval. “Nevermind, I’ll uh-- I’ll wait.”

  Will didn’t reply. Instead, his eyes flicked behind her, squinting at the walls. “Do the walls seem… Different to you all of a sudden?”

  Daimona shrugged, then turned to join his examination. The bricks certainly seemed darker now. Daimona wrote that off as a bold trick of the light. But narrowing her eyes, she could make out movement around the edges, and a spindly, hair-like texture encasing each individual rectangle. Slowly, she approached the wall, Will hissing a series of nearly unintelligible warnings and orders to stop. Daimona ignored him pointedly.

  Gently, she brushed her knuckles against one of the bricks. It shivered animalistically under her touch, shaking out its quills. A piercing green eye opened blearily, the pupil slow to focus on Daimona. Suddenly, all of the bricks were waking up, revealing matching eyes and squirming out of the walls. As they fell to the floor, short, stubby legs formed to catch them, and a single bat-like wing stretched from their rodent bodies.

  Sleepily they gathered their bearings, yawning to life with small mouths of sharp teeth. They were almost cute, Daimona thought. Then a shrill, ear-splitting shriek erupted from behind and turned her blood cold. She whipped around to see a stone-faced Will pulling his boot up from the green remains of one of the creatures.

  “Well,” Will huffed. “Can’t say this was going to go any other way.”

  The creatures stampeded all around them, rushing like an unrelenting tidal wave and piling onto Daimona and Will. Her face, arms and legs were all scratched and bitten, hundreds of tiny wounds all inflicted at once. She tried to shield herself, opening her mouth to command them, but one of the creatures wriggled past her hands and wedged its back into her mouth, shoving its pointy quills down her throat. She sunk her fangs into it and shook it off ravenously. The taste of acrid rot spread dryly across her teeth, as though she had bitten into a sour cotton rag. Will’s lantered was seized, shattering as the creatures overtook his body. Daimona reached one arm in, crying out as another wave bit and tore at her. She searched blindly, balling up her fist and shoving against anything that felt uncomfortably hairy. Once she found the clammy, flailing hand of her captain, she grabbed him by the wrist and pulled him painfully through the pile.

  Wordlessly, Daimona led them through the gnawing teeth, kicking and squishing anything in her path. With her open hand, she led them to the wall, feeling for the hard stone standing in her way. With a few short, rapid breaths, she threw her fist into the wall as hard as she could. Cracks of light emerged, and she wound up for another punch to bring the wall crumbling.

  Something slimy engulfed her fist before she could break the wall. This one was bigger than the others, she realized, as she felt its teeth sink into her wrist from both sides and snap violently at her vulnerable tendons. Daimona felt her head tilt nauseously from the pain.

  “Will, I--”

  “I got it,” a confident, stern voice replied. Daimona was about to write it off as some vision from the great beyond-- her captain had hardly sounded confident about anything, especially since they began this trial-- when a loud gunshot went off. The light poured in, and a pair of arms were wrapped around her waist, pulling her over a strong shoulder.

  The creatures hissed from behind as Will carried Daimona outside. He set her on the ground, and they both watched as the creatures smoked and disintegrated in the light of day. They both appeared worse for wear, with matching scratches covered just about every inch of revealed skin. Will offered her a relieved grin.

  “So we’re definitely not going back in there,” he said breathlessly. But Daimona wasn’t listening to him. Instead, her attention was turned back to the top of the tower, where the daunting figure of Bash Lotsvatinus stood watching them.

  Her facial expression remained vacant, almost disinterested, as she called down, “And here I thought the little ones would do the job. I guess I should study more after all…”