-Callia-

  The moment passed as quickly as it happened. Sent more arrows at different angles, all arching towards Lexia as she began erratic but controlled movements with precision timing. My arrows slammed into the tree, narrowly missing Lexia. Finally she was nearly up to me. Instead of closing the distance, I moved along the branches, sending more arrows. Judging from how they couldn’t land a hit even when Lexia was exposed and her hands occupied, I suspected they would have minimal effect. It might have a different outcome if I were using my good bow with my special arrows, but it was too lethal to use on anyone I didn’t intend to kill.

  Still, it was apparent my skills outshone Lexia’s in canopy traversal. While I couldn’t land a decisive hit with my bow, Lexia couldn’t close the distance. The only issue was that my quiver, which had been specially designed to hold a surplus of arrows, was already beginning to thin out. It seemed despite holding the range advantage, the most it could earn me was several minor glancing blows and wearing out my enemy. I stopped running and moved closer, intending to use my last arrows before switching to my close-range options.

  Three arrows left. I pause as she gets only one tree away from me. I imbue the arrow with the power of growth and send it full force, aiming for the crossing point from her branch to mine. The other arrows I let loose flying behind Lexia to keep her moving forward. I toss aside my bow and switch to my knife, rushing forward.

  Lexia moves forward without hesitation now that I’m finally in range. She easily adjusts her leg so my arrow slams into the branch, just missing her foot. However, she didn’t expect that arrow to suddenly burst into a cluster of new growth. The branches snag her foot, giving me the edge I aimed for. While she’s distracted and unbalanced, I thrust my dagger towards her.

  Despite having her foot caught, Lexia’s reaction speed was beyond what I anticipated. With the incoming attack, she bends her caught leg while pressing off with the free one, completely reversing her momentum and clearing my reach as she bends over backwards. I still press forward, trying to take advantage of her backward-bending dodge. She’s gone from off balance to nearly on her back.

  Her arm reaches the entangled foot before I fully close the distance, her hand glowing with blade aura as she easily swipes away the roots. My blade gets closer and closer to her as she continues to bend back further. Just as I reach her, she rolls off the side of the branch. I swing downward, partially nicking her leg with a surface-level cut. Lexia falls, but at the last moment her hand grabs onto the edge of the branch. She swings under and back up towards me from behind in a high-speed kick. I barely have a chance to brace before the kick sends me flying.

  I catch myself on a branch below. The kick was a clean hit, but Lexia wasn’t able to get enough power behind it to make anything worse than a bruise. I spend only a moment stabilizing myself on the branch below before turning my attention back to Lexia. However, in the moment I lost sight, she had vanished. I remembered Callen’s comments on how he couldn’t visibly see her without his mana sight. I focus not on my eyes but on my instincts and immediately track her. She dropped down from the branch we were originally on to one of the ones closer but still above me. Just like Callen said, against vision and sound, she was flawless.

  She wanted to turn this into a guessing game of hunter and hunted, but she had no idea that at this range I could find anyone I wanted with perfect accuracy. I put on a face of distress while visibly scanning the trees up above. My mind locked on to her movements as she began to stalk above me. I kept my eyes vigilantly just close enough upward to keep her waiting for an ambush. I needed to figure out what kind of trap I could set.

  I was wearing my standard fighting gear, which meant I still had my utility wands. Most wouldn’t be much use, I paused as I found what I wanted. I carefully pulled the wand into my sleeve in my empty hand and shifted my gaze towards the tree trunk, clearly showing my intent to jump upward and away, just like how I originally ascended the trees. Lexia didn’t disappoint. I never heard a sound as she leapt from above. Even my normal instinct for danger didn’t register Lexia’s approach. I let the wand slip from my sleeve into my hand and dumped my mana into Callen’s enchantment.

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  The neat thing about wand runes is that because the enchantment creates the runes, they function at maximum strength according to the input mana. Callen had explained why at some point, but the key was if you wanted sustained use, you had to keep feeding the wand. However, I forced as much mana as I could through that poor enchantment. My wand was supposed to be a flashlight for making light. I held the wand upright in Lexia’s path while it burst like a flashbang.

  Lexia’s startled yelp made what came next even sweeter. I spun around with a fierce spin kick straight to Lexia’s gut. She was sent flying, but even blinded, she still scored her own hit. Her fingers dug through my leg like razor blades cutting deeply. Immediately I bent over and focused on reaching into the void space. I was losing a lot of blood, but I managed to keep myself up long enough to apply a tourniquet. Even with one leg out of commission, getting down from the tree wasn’t an issue.

  Getting down, I saw Lexia, who had grabbed ahold of the tree with her hand and had slid all the way down as her fingers sliced through the bark like a knife through fabric. The front of her shirt was soaked with blood she had coughed up, and her balance lacked the grace from before. Despite that, she was still ready to keep going.

  “Wait!” My call takes a moment for her to register, but she slows and stops.

  “I need to get my leg fixed up before we continue. Callen is a decent healer, so how about we take a break and start fresh?”

  I can’t say how relieved I am when she finally relents. Tourniquets are great at stopping blood loss but not suitable for extended use. I didn’t want to lose my leg because Lexia wasn’t satisfied. If I’m honest with myself, even though I got a clean hit catching her off guard, Lexia came out the winner of that exchange. We barely even begin heading back when Callen shows up. Seeing the ribbons that my leg has become, he wastes no time getting to work applying the necessary treatments to save the leg.

  “Callia, we’re going to need to take you to the hospital to fully treat this. I haven’t had much practice on injuries this serious. It’s stable, but it's still riddled with healer scarring.” After treating me, he went to Lexia and got to work. Lexia wasn’t much better than me. Her intestines had ruptured, and her spine was fractured. A little more force and it would’ve been broken. He fixed what he could, but the intestine rupture meant Lexia would have to get someone to clean out her internals to prevent damage and infection.

  As we entered the hospital, I saw Crescent in the side room treating someone, but more importantly, I felt the weird joyful fluttering feeling from Callen. It seemed someone was finally making progress. The aching in my leg stopped me from pressing the issue now, but as soon as it was treated, it was time to tease. I can’t help but wonder who made the first move: Callen, Crescent, or could it have been the mayor?

  Elvish Trial Ground Memories

  Yeomarr spent most of her days looking off towards the trial grounds. Her mind whispered of failure, but she held hope that her child would return. Memories of her own were fragmented just like the others who returned. It was forbidden to share stories from the trial grounds, and it was common knowledge that everyone who survives forgets within a week of leaving. She pulled out her diary from her journey. Technically it was forbidden, but she had been clever enough to leave it just outside on her way back. When she presented her artifact, she joined in the festivities, and like all who came before, the memories faded.

  The story in her journal was hard to accept when she first recovered it, but the desperation in her careful blood-written scribbles detailing the monsters in the ruins was always meant to be a gift to share with her future children. Knowledge to help them prepare even if it meant cheating. The monsters of the ruins weren’t like everywhere else. In the ruins it was the other children who became monsters. Yeomarr detailed how she had felt something inside her puppeteering her body and the expressions of the others when they watched themselves kill each other. The only thing she controlled was her face. She could shout, scream, and warn the other to run, but they wouldn’t listen, instead using her kindness against her.

  Possessions only occurred among groups. When she was alone, she was free to mourn the bodies of the fallen. However, only for a short time because the corpses of the fallen would also become unkillable monsters hunting their slayer. Years of evading monsters and kin culminating in the recovery of a small amulet that purifies food and drink of the wearer. She was the only one in her year to survive, and some years went with no survivors. The others didn’t pay much attention, but their population was dwindling, and the number of survivors every year was less. The artifacts on the outer edges of the ruins had been collected, and the inner ruins held the bodies of every child who had passed, waiting to consume whoever trespassed.

  Yeomarr’s only hope was that Freema found the relic she had secretly stashed and returned soon. She quietly thanked her past self for preparing so meticulously. With how little she has accomplished since, sometimes she can’t help but wonder if she lost some part of herself in the ruins. She shakes her head free of those thoughts and quietly stores her journal away before it’s noticed.