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Jawbone waves them off, glowing green door snapping shut as Fabian, bringing up the back, passes through the threshold. It’s a grand tournament ground. Beautiful brick work, countless moons.
Fabian resists the urge to try climbing up the gates, knowing they have work to do here.
He studies the arena, trying to memorize the space before it fills with monsters and his thoughts get dijointed in the heat of battle.
His friends squabble with the proctor, clarifying the rules. Fabian knows he if asked, someone would pause the conversation to explain what the worry is. But he trusts that his friends have it handled.
They’re being told that they’re going to die here. Fabian’s been told that a lot of times. Been told it's a miracle that he’s alive. He doesn’t buy in so much to the idea that something’s going to happen no matter what.
The timer starts to go and they all rush off.
He summons rats with Adaine’s gift, lulling them to do his bidding. He knows he can help, he knows he can bring allies. Even if he hates the rats, he’s going to do his part.
His body doesn't always move the way he wants it to, but today is a good day. Today is a dance.
The gates open and he darts toward the hydra, hearing but not registering Adaine’s warning about needing fire. It's just him and a danger he can keep from his friends.
He slashes and rolls and jumps and spins.
When jerky movements happen, he leans into them, targeting different heads, different necks.
Blood sprays everywhere and he scrambles away from the headless beast just in time for the Hangman to roar. Flames envelope the writhing mass and then it slumps back.
He smiles. Bows to the Hangman.
Time to take the exam.
Normally, chronomancy is used to give Fabian and Fig time and a half on exams. With their principal gone, Jawbone sent home the Common and Performance questions last night.
They fed their responses through a screenreader for Riz to proofread their spelling errors.
All Fabian has to do is pull the essay from his back pocket and place it in the desk.
The desk, of course, tries to eat him.
His muscle burning from the fight with the hydra, it gets a bite in. He grunts against the pain. This isn’t where he dies. This isn’t what gets him.
Fabian’s been in a lot of hostile places. His mom’s womb, to start. Elves don't usually stay sober when pregrant. Elves don't usually have half-human babies.
He keeps going. He always has.
Would life be better if people didn’t stare at him? If he wasn’t teased for not understanding things on the first go? If he didn’t need to justify his own life over and over?
Almost certainly. But those things aren’t on him.
He has work to do, friends to protect, worlds to save.
And right now, he has a crab man to kill.
All of the exams are in a large font. Probably Jawbone, knowing Riz would be darting to his party’s desks, shouting out questions to his friends.
He used to be able to get by with a thick pair of glasses and a magnifying glass, but around the end of sophomore year (Riz can’t help but narrow the timing to when Kalina was uncoupled from his sensory system), his vision started deteriorating.
The blurriness worsened and black spots started to appear in the center of his vision. They don’t go away when he blinks. They’re worse every time he stops by the school nurse. It's too expensive to see an optometrist all that often.
There’s a white cane at home that he hasn’t started practicing with, but he knows the day his peripheral vision is blotted out is coming sooner rather than later.
Today, he’s relying mostly on sound, smell, and the outskirts of his vision. It’s not uncommon for goblins living in well lit areas to have trouble with sight. Riz remembers the concerned notes meant for his parents after the all-school vision tests. He remembers wearing glasses since pre-school, every year a slightly worse prescription.
The summer of darkness was honestly a reprieve, but the sun’s back now and with it, the knowledge that he can’t see like he used to.
But he uses the sight he has to observe the arena they’re in. Flicks his ears around and sniffs the air.
Kristen had guided him to his desk and he’d ducked behind just as the gates opened.
One last deep breath. He centers himself, lets the noise of the stadium rush around him. Locates each of his friends through their shifting footsteps and humming spell energy. Fabian, easiest to find, with his poorly played pipes.
School first, he allows the monsters to approach. The exams are all in large font, big bold black letters against a white sheet of paper. Bright lights of the arena helping to clear up shadows mixing with the unshakable spots in his vision. (His immune system bearing down on where Kalina once was. He wonders when his hearing will start to go. He wonders if it already has.)
He unscrambles the Night Yorb anagram and Misty Steps toward the sound of a grumbling monster. Stabbing and running, listening for dampening effect of the center platform Adaine described.
Traces his fingers along its edge as he returns to his desk.
He connects the electric lute back to their sophomore year quest and taps one of his arm band twice. An electric feeling pulses out around him, pinging back like radar.
Celestial accessibility gear. Only the best from his dad.
The alarms blaring above only serve to sharpen his understanding of the swarming monsters.
When he lifts his gun, an illusory trajectory thread springs forward. It's a dark blue today, a significant contrast to the sandy colored arena. It centers on the gorgon he heard menacing his friend before. If he angles his head just right, he can see its blurry outline. He shoots (maybe a little too close) over Gorgug’s head to kill the creature.
Riz can smell the concrete dust of an attempted petrification and is thankful for the bit of cover in the center of the arena.
He takes his time between each shot, making sure he's always got the element of surprise, making sure his bullets aren’t wasted.
Riz packs a lot of punch and he’s learned to be careful with where it's aimed. He’s thankful for the years of muscle memory he gained when his vision was less blurry, less obstructed.
He thinks his sight will keep getting worse. As he races toward Gorgug’s desk, he commits himself again to a life of adventure.
Alarms blare all around her and Fig tightens her grip on her Daymare. She watches as the fortified gates lift up and give way to monsters she thinks she would recognize on a good day.
It’s like her mind's eye presents her with a textbook filled with blank pages. All the information she’s learned in the few classes she’s attended is out of reach.
If she’d gone to Mumple like her mom wanted, she would’ve been allowed to take this test tomorrow or the day after. When the fog cleared and her focus returned.
Aguefort doesn’t work like that. Adventuring doesn’t work like that.
When Fig woke up this morning feeling like her head was full of cotton, her mom pounding on her bedroom door, she didn’t have the option to stay home. Adaine was in the kitchen and kindly provided the steps to make toast and take her meds.
At school, Kristen held her hand through the halls, concerned she might go to Barbarian class instead of to Jawbone’s office. Probably the right call, although Fig doesn’t have the capacity to think about it beyond the distant gratefulness she feels right now.
Each thought she has is stretched out like taffy. They’re there, but they’re enveloped in thick bubble wrap that takes too long to rip off.
The brain that allows her to spend hours in the recording studio, focusing intensely on her next work of art, is the same one the skitters across any attempt at making sense of her present moment.
The proctor yelps as a swarm of raw, flying bats thunder past him. Fig blinks hard, willing herself to do something.
Her Daymare skittishly steps back and Fig’s perspective wobbles. She sees old hands, a blue dress shirt rolled up to her elbows. Khakis.
She squints, trying to remember why she’s wearing these clothes, if this is what she dressed in this morning.
Gorgug yells something.
Around her, the disgusting bat-mosquitos surge. She flinches away only to watch moshing red crystals shoot into the chests of the flying beasts. They drop to the ground, wet and twitching.
The red crystals look so familiar. Fig’s pretty sure she summoned them. Object permenance has never been her strong suit.
Gorgug’s warning, “Fig, look out!” processes in her ears.
A moment later, Kristen shouts, “Let’s go Spirit Guardians!” from the other side of the room. Arena. Coliseum. Are they in a coliseum?
She replays Kristen’s words in her mind. Thankfully the statement only takes a single time to become understandable. Spirit Guardians. Kristen taught her how to cast it last night. Walked her through the movements twice this morning before the test until the crystals encircled her.
Kristen was worried about her. They’re still taking the test, right?
Across the arena, Fabian yells out, “Do we need to die before they kill Gavin?”
Gavin. Fig disguised herself as Gavin earlier, reflexively when they entered a new environment. That’s why all the monsters are coming after her.
She feels hot acid against her back and urges her Daymare away. Blasts fiery sunlight behind her and hears another body hit the ground. Time, people, creatures. It all moves past her quickly.
Everything hurts. She can’t remember when the test ends. “Do we have to die?” she shouts back, still stuck in their conversation from before the monsters appeared. When no one responses, she suggests, “Let’s kill all the monsters and if we feel like we’re going to fail, we kill each other?” Sluggishly, she works through the odds of surviving this battle.
Riz disagrees but the words don’t process fast enough so she sticks with her own plan. Kill the monsters.
The paper glows yellow with another correct answer bubbled in.
Most powerful form of magic? Chronomancy.
Easiest object to entrap an opponent? Gem.
She looks around the sandy arena. Only stairs, so there’s no getting closer to the proctor or any of her friends on the upper levels. She’s happy where she is with only the desk mimic and Gorgug’s Artificing exams to contend with. But the rest of the party? That won’t do.
They need to reorganize where they’re sitting. Or, standing, for the rest of them.
Her gaze moves across the battlefield, noting the exact location of each ally and enemy with pinpoint accuracy. At the same time, her mind flashes through the Telepathic Bond she set up as they all arrived at school this morning. A newer habit, now that they’re protecting the name of a dead goddess.
Fig’s thoughts are molasses slow, but Adaine recognizes that her friend can get to where she wants to be atop her new steed. From Fabian, she gets mostly swears and the wordless straining of gotta get away. When she sends the suggestion of moving him from the jaws of the roper, he insists that the Hangman accompany him wherever he goes.
Fine by her.
It’s common sense to get the proctor away from the center of the gates and Moggy the Doggy has to go with him, otherwise it’s a waste of her previous efforts and spell energy.
“Don’t worry about me,” Riz thinks, tapped into the Bond and waiting for Adaine to consider him in her scheme. Still, she’s certain she can handle Scattering one more person.
From Gorgug, she gets the rhythmic certainty of fight, dodge, hit, throw, over and over. His rage a drumbeat she doesn’t want to interrupt.
Even without the telepathic link, she can see Kristen eyeing Buddy in between blasts from her Staff of Doubt.
Adaine sends the mental image of their new positions on the battlefield and gets urgent assent from Fabian and Kristen.
She reaches down to lock the wheels on her wheelchair, knowing that this particular spell might result in her blasting back several feet if she’s not careful.
She holds the image in her mind, takes a deep breath, opens herself to the well of endless possibilities that constantly lap at the edges of her consciousness. Words spill out of her mouth, many she doesn’t recognize, yet understands intuitively.
When Adaine opens her eyes again, the battlefield is as she envisioned it. The proctor atop the tower, Fabian with the umber hulk, Kristen with Buddy.
She flicks off the brakes on her wheelchair, body tense with all the mayhem around her. In the brief moment of confusion as monsters reorient to her party’s shifted positions, she lets herself smile.
A year ago, she wouldn’t have imagined sitting through a battle. Meeting Lydia, learning about wheelchairs equipped for combat, broaching her muscle fatigue with Jawbone… a lot has changed since then.
She chose to take the Last Stand in her wheelchair today. She wasn’t in a flare up this morning, but she knows her body better now. She knows where her energy is better focused.
With one last burst of oracular magic, she ducks away, commanding her smoke mephits to attack where she can’t be. Gorgug’s exam awaits her.
His crystal is going off in his pocket, telling him he should take a break. Usually in Barbarian class, he pauses every fifteen minutes to try and avoid straining muscles that don’t know to tell him they're hurt.
Not really an option this time around.
Gorgug takes a second to flick off the alarm, the beeping noise combined with the blaring alarms from the stadium knocking him off his rhythm.
A purple worm, gaping maw, has erupted from the gates.
He does what a barbarian is meant to do. Leaps at it head first, slashing with his ax, pumping up the volume of his music to drown out the gurgling of its stomach.
Stars dance in his vision and cool night air is sucked into his lungs. Kristen must have heard his alarm go off. He feels some of the cuts and scrapes knit themselves back together. More scars to decorate his skin.
The worm writhes underneath him, even as he knocks it to the ground. Its tail comes up and slashes him across the back. He feels something wet against his skin which he hopes is blood and not something coming from the worm. It doesn’t hurt but nothing ever hurts. Sort of the problem.
It’s normal for orcs to have some insensitivity to pain. The harsh environment his ancestors evolved in made it advantageous to not feel every scrape and bruise.
In seventh grade biology class, they talked about heterozygote advantage. A term burned in his mind as his teacher talked about pain insensitivity like it would never affect one of his students.
As if Gorgug didn’t exist. As if his body—half human, half orc—didn’t live the list of symptoms written in an ugly, serifed font projected onto the wall. All because of one mutation passed down from his bio dad.
No wonder his parents worried about him becoming a barbarian. He’s always been a little angry.
The warm, wet substance slides down his back, seeps into his clothes. Gorgug tightens his grip on his ax.
If he were in class right now, the cleric para assigned to him would send her earthen-scented healing magic over. Even without the injury-checker alarm going off. He’s not in class right now. Kristen is halfway across the arena with an intense look in her eyes.
He cries out because he knows it will get her attention, remind her that this isn’t a controlled setting. He doubts she needs to be told.
Sweat on his brow, blood on his back. The worm’s tongue wraps around his middle and drags him in.
His fingers wrap around the top teeth and his feet hook against its bottom lip. He can feel the tension in his muscles as he braces himself.
Gorgug thinks if anyone else were here right now, they would let go. He thinks his muscles should be burning and his back should be stinging.
Instead, he’s trying to ignore the uncomfortable sensation of his socks being slightly off center and his breath being slightly off rhythm.
Out of the corner of his eye, he sees Adaine’s signature glowing blue magic. In the form of a fist this time, it plunges down onto the worm. It groans in pain and Gorgug tightens his hold.
If he falls in, he dies.
Adaine shouts a biology question his way.
If he gets it wrong, his friends will fail out of school.
Equally pressing concerns, even though he knows he’s supposed to prioritize the former over the latter. He’s gone to occupational therapy to practice prioritizing the former over the latter.
He locks his muscles and calls out manticore. Ignores how much he hates biology.
It’s been burning a hole in her tracksuit pocket since the moment they left the Vulture Dimension. A rotting eye, humming ever so slightly with feathery magic.
She sends out motes of light, stardust of healing energy, with one hand. With another, she pops the eye in her mouth.
It’s disgusting, bad texture and bad taste. But her worries circle around the fiber content making its way to her stomach.
Kristen pushes it out of her mind. Either she can digest it or she can’t. Either she goes into a flare or she doesn’t. She argued for the eye, knowing she’d have to eat it, knowing her friends thought it was a bad idea.
Battle rages around her and she turns to face Buddy.
“Everything alright?” the other cleric asks. His unblemished white skin, straight teeth, unhunched shoulders. She wonders if he’s ever taken a sick day, ever needed one. She wonders if he’s ever hurt, needlessly, for the ones he loves.
She doesn’t know why anyone let her be the Chosen One of Helio when her body can’t even digest corn. Didn’t stop her from eating it in Holy Communion, in sack lunches, in family dinners. Just meant a lot of time curled up around the toilet, pain radiating from her stomach.
The months with Yes! and Yes? where she didn’t eat vegetables, refused to on account of all they symbolized in her past life, were some of the healthiest days she’s ever had. Maybe that’s why she strayed so quickly.
Kristen knows what foods will make her sick now, and she knows why.
She smiles at Buddy and registers the exact moment the eye meets stomach acid.
The intense pooling of doubt in her intestines, the nervous twitch of peristalsis. Magic fades in and out of her vision and then her opponent locks eyes with her.
Kipperlilly kills her party cleric with a certainty that feels feverish against Kristen’s skin.
Kipperlilly kills her party cleric and expects Kristen to go next. Expects each one of the Bad Kids to fall here. The Last Stand, a practicum in dying.
It’s funny. Kristen Applebees, Saint of Mystery and Doubt, rushes to Revivify Buddy, devout follower of Helio.
Once again, doubt is on her side. Kipperlilly believes, heart and soul it seems, that the Bad Kids will die during the Last Stand exam. So much so, that she leaves this plane without reconsidering her options.
Belief that they don’t matter, that they won’t make it, has followed each member of Kristen’s party for as long as she’s known them.
The belief that Kristen needs to be healthy in order to heal others.
That warriors must feel pain in order to inflict it, must lean into the touches and sounds that Gorgug flinches from.
That Adaine needs a body stronger than her own to fortify against glimpses of the future.
That Fig shouldn’t be able to toggle all her different sources of power with the amount of brain fog she muddles through.
That an investigator like Riz needs to be able to see in order to solve a mystery.
That Fabian’s body is too uncoordinated and his mind too weak to be a fighter.
They’ve all been told that they shouldn’t be alive. They’re here anyway. Everyday is a last stand and everyday they live to see the next.