I rushed to the floor and caught the top of his wrist, his weight nearly pulling me over.
"Phew," Taron breathed. "Nice catch."
"Just hold on. Let me try to get you up."
"Yeah, no worries, take your time."
"This isn't the time for sarcasm, Taron."
"A bridge just crumbled beneath my feet and nearly killed me... SARCASM IS MY ONLY COPING MECHANISM RIGHT NOW!"
Shaking my head, I braced one knee against the bridge.
However, it was all for nought, as the part of the bridge that my knee was bracing started to crack.
Taron and I both looked at each other.
A low crackle reverberated through the broken bridge.
"Kael—"
The remaining support holding the bridge collapsed, and suddenly the world dropped.
All I could see was stone, dust and the clear blue sky.
There was nothing beneath us.
"TARON!"
"KAEL! GRAB MY HAND!"
I twisted my body during the fall; the wind was tearing at my eyes. I could barely see Taron, but his hand was already stretched toward mine.
I caught it.
Hard, as if my life depended on it.
Taron rotated his body beneath me.
His left arm pointed toward the ravine floor.
Aether flooded into it.
Far too much.
Green light compressed around his palm until the air bent visibly around the focal point.
"Taron, what are you—"
"VENTUS: GALE MAGNUM!"
The world cracked.
A hyper-dense sphere formed in his palm.
For a fraction of a second, the surrounding air was dragged violently inward.
Then it exploded.
A deafening sonic boom tore through the ravine.
A visible cone of vapour blasted downward with such force that it shattered the rubble beneath it. The compressed-air column ripped into the ravine floor like an invisible cannon, pulverising stone and blasting dust outward in a circular wave.
The spell's recoil hit us immediately.
Our fall didn't cease, but it slowed.
It was enough.
We crashed through branches and other surrounding shrubbery.
We hit rubble.
We rolled.
Pain erased the sensation of everything else, and then...
Darkness.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The first thing my eyes landed on was a rock, as I tried to hurl myself up from the floor.
Surprisingly, the rock was ordinary, which irritated me for some reason.
'I wonder how long I was out for.'
I groaned.
Every part of my body seemed to complain at once.
My right shoulder hurt.
My ribs hurt.
My left knee definitely hurt.
But nothing felt broken.
I think.
I pushed myself upright.
Dust covered everything.
Chunks of the bridge had collapsed around the ravine floor, and several nearby rocks were broken from the impact of Taron's spell.
I looked up.
The opening above looked much smaller from down here.
Far too small.
'Whoa.'
I remembered the blast.
The compressed air.
The sound it made.
The sheer output that was released from the palm of Taron's hand.
'I knew Taron was strong, but I didn't know he had a spell that powerful. I guess there's a reason they're called heirs of the Ten Great Houses.'
"Stop staring; it's rude."
As I turned to see behind a slab of broken stone, Taron emerged. He was alive, but quite badly bruised and covered in dust. He also had this look as if he was deeply offended by the universe.
His usual carefully styled auburn hair had dishevelled into something between a bird's nest and a tragedy for a shampoo commercial from my old world.
He pointed at me. "I know what you're thinking."
"I highly doubt that—"
"Yes, you are indeed right; I really am that handsome."
"That's not what I was thinking—"
"But no, I can't use that spell again."
"I wasn't thinking you were handsome—"
"Your eyes were."
I paused.
Then sighed.
I didn't have enough energy for this.
Taron lowered himself beside a rock.
"Gale Magnum uses too much Aether, and I haven't mastered it."
"That explains the unreasonable amount of destruction it caused."
"I prefer the term 'impressive amount.'"
"... Well, considering the situation we're in, we should probably use our Aether sparingly."
His expression became more serious.
"Yeah, we should."
For once, there was no joke that followed from Taron's mouth.
We rested.
For fifteen minutes.
Maybe slightly more.
It was long enough for the tremor in my hands to finally stop.
Once I finally found a level of calm, I checked the examination band. The display flickered, and nothing showed. I touched the emergency rune signal we were given, but it didn't respond.
I tried again.
Nothing.
"How's the signal?" Taron got up and brushed off leftover dust he found on the top of his Academy uniform.
"Lost."
Taron checked his examination band, too.
"Looks like it's the same result for me as well."
I pulled out the map we were given at the start of the assignment, but unfortunately, given our predicament, it was useless. The entire ravine lay outside the marked route we were instructed to take, and the bridge behind us had completely sunk. Even if we climbed through the rubble, there was no obvious path back to where we were supposed to be.
Taron decided to look around. I thought that maybe he had secretly come up with an ingenious plan to get us out of the situation, until he arrived back six seconds later.
"So."
"So?"
"Looks like we're lost."
"Oh? You don't say."
I shook my head in disappointment.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Taron and I decided it would be better to delve deeper into the ravine. Several metres in, we noticed a structure that was partially buried against a rock wall. It looked like old, rusty metal with faded runes.
The Academy sigil was still visible despite years of damage.
Whatever the structure was, it wasn't active, and it certainly wasn't maintained.
An instant realisation hit as my stomach tensed up.
"I think I know where we are."
"Where?"
"I think we're in one of the decommissioned sectors Professor Anlor was talking about."
Taron's face deflated.
"Great. We're stuck in God knows where with God knows what, and my hair is all shrivelled up."
I stared at him.
"Seriously? You're concerned with your hair right now?"
"Hey! It takes a while to get my hair set up the way it was this morning."
"Then why don't you just cut it?"
Taron froze.
Slowly, he turned.
"What did you just say?"
"I said, cut it."
"You take that back."
"Why? It would solve your problem."
"This is why the analytical ones are the worst to deal with."
"That makes no sense."
"KAEL. You cannot optimise beauty."
"Yeah, and apparently you can't maintain it either."
Taron's mouth opened wide.
Then closed.
"That hurts."
"You'll survive."
"Barely."
After our little spat, we kept walking until Taron stopped a few minutes later and glanced up.
"Hey, Kael, if we rest here for a while, do you think I could use Gale Magnum again?"
I frowned. "For what?"
"Same idea as earlier. Except instead of using the kickback to slow us down, I use it to launch us up."
I looked above.
The ravine narrowed near the top, and branches crossed parts of the opening, with broken stone projecting outward.
"Hmm, maybe."
Taron brightened.
"Wait, but look at the gap. Even if you were to generate enough force to bounce us up, there's no guarantee we'd fit through that cleanly."
His expression fell.
"And what if we encounter something dangerous while we wait for you to recover?"
"That's a good point—"
"Or worse, what if it doesn't work? Then you've burned through most of your Aether again, and I'm the only one left capable of defending us."
Taron stared upward and sighed.
"Yeah, I guess you're right. There's a lot of risk involved, and on the off chance it doesn't work, then we really are screwed."
"Indeed we are."
A beat passed.
Taron smiled.
"Are you sure it isn't because you don't want me to princess carry you again?"
I stopped walking.
"You didn't princess carry me."
Taron put both hands behind his head.
"Sure, bud. Whatever you say."
"I was held under one arm while being violently hastened through a forest."
"Sounds romantic."
"Taron."
"Kael."
"When we get out of here, I'm going to push you into another ravine."
"Why not just push me back into this one?"
"That would make it too easy."
"Ah, yes, the hate. I live for the hate."
Taron laughed, and weirdly, so did I.
Though only slightly.
We continued deeper into the ravine. It gradually widened, and trees started to appear again, until sunlight could reach certain spots between the cliffs. Plump roots crawled over decrepit stones, and an army of vegetation scarfed sections of the Academy fence that had once been used.
If this sector of the forest had once been active, then it was clear it had been abandoned for years. Maybe even decades.
This raised another question.
'What on earth could possibly live here now?'
The answer to my question arrived through my nose.
Taron flinched first. "Egh! What the hell is that smell?!"
With my sleeve over my nose, I could focus my eyes on only two things.
Rot and blood.
There was something vile beneath both.
"Something must be dead, or someone took the foulest shit."
"Thanks, Taron. Excellent analysis."
"Thank you."
"I was being sarcastic."
"Oh. I didn't know you could do that."
We tracked the smell.
Reluctantly.
It kept intensifying until we inevitably found the source of it behind a bundle of dark brown oak trees.
It was a carcass. An E-rank one, too, judging by the residual Aether it was emitting. It was large enough that whatever killed it must not have done it by accident. Its throat was ravaged, but not bitten through cleanly, and it had deep punctures that openly showed torn tissue. It was clear that the Aethren's blood had dried black around the wound, but the rest of the body...
Untouched.
There was no clear feeding, no missing flesh, and zero signs of scavenging.
Taron crouched beside, pinching his nose with two fingers.
"Whatever killed this wasn't doing it cause it was hungry."
I looked at the wound.
Then at the ground.
There were tracks.
Hard to distinguish, with several overlapping impressions, but then something else.
'A trawl on the ground?'
No.
'These look like— they look like someone or something just relocated from one spot to another without having to actually move.'
I stepped past the carcass. The forest ahead was darker. The trees were denser here, their branches overlapping enough that midday light struggled to reach the ground.
"Oh no."
Taron looked over.
"What? What is it?"
I stared between the tree trunks.
A shape moved. It was low and fast.
My skin crawled.
"Ohhh no," I repeated.
"So, are you planning on telling me what's got you so worried or not?"
I paused.
My understanding of the situation became absolute.
"You're right, I don't think it killed that Aethren because it was hungry."
I shifted my gaze towards Taron, my eyes holding the faintest look of dismay.
"It killed it for sport."
A shuffle between two shadows caught Taron's and my attention.
But then it disappeared.