Jossie
I looked over at my cluster as we leaned against the massive trunk of a world tree. We were exhausted from fleeing the behemoths that roamed this forsaken place.
I wasn't like the other Arbiters who were heirs of great clans; I wasn't blessed with great power, and I wasn't blessed to have the favor of a High Pantheon. I was the child of hard-working merchants who sacrificed a great deal to ensure I could attend Xhatal Academy.
But at times like this, I wished I wasn't. I wished I was more, because then I would be better equipped to handle this rift.
I looked at the map my truth seeker put together. It was structured poorly, leaving a lot to be desired, with only a single path plotted in the entire rift.
I did my best to hide my disappointment when members of the cluster fell short of my expectations. I was the arbiter after all; I had to raise our floor and push our ceiling.
"Alright everyone, we've rested long enough; we've got to keep moving towards the central pyramid."
My cluster grumbled at my words as they started cracking glow sticks that our armament tech handed out.
With our space illuminated, I realized that we were down two members. We were missing our concordant and our vitalist.
"Where did Jackson and Hilary go?" I asked the rest of my cluster.
They all looked at me, dumbfounded.
I called out their names, but the only answer was the rustling wet leaves nearby.
What are those guys doing?
I used the connection our tether provided to trace their cosmic energy signatures. They were only a couple hundred feet away, thankfully. But when we caught up to them, Jackson and Hilary staggered from side to side, repeatedly bumping into the trunks of the world trees.
"Guys, come on, we don't have time to play around."
My cluster mates didn't say a word, didn't even turn to acknowledge that I was there.
I stepped towards them.
"Does anyone hear that?" My astronomer asked, his eyes darting back and forth high above us.
I tried to focus in and listen to see if I heard anything out of the norm.
Sadly, my ears were not that good.
I took a few cautious steps toward Jackson and Hilary. The moment my foot sank into the wet moss-covered ground, I heard it.
The sound of large wings flapping over us, followed by a high-pitched shriek.
"Duck!" one of my cluster mates shouted, tackling me to the ground just as a powerful gust of air swept over us.
What was that?
I quickly got to my feet and saw dark, shrouded figures swoop down toward Jackson and Hilary.
I screamed for them to move.
Their bodies continued to sway, left and right, moving forward inch by inch, leaving me with no other options.
"I command you to move!"
I hoped that the command art would snap them out of whatever was going on.
Jackson and Hilary stopped swaying and turned and looked back at us, their bodies forcing them to spring towards us.
A spear whistled overhead, forcing the creatures to evade, giving my sleepwalking cluster mates enough time to regroup with us.
It didn't take much time for the flying creatures to regroup and surround us.
I took a long, hard look at my cluster. We were all down to our last bit of cosmic energy, and the ointment our vitalist had made was wearing off, causing our skin to blister and burn as we stood, stuck inside the radiation zone.
"Jossie, what do we do?" My armament tech asked through our tether link.
I gripped my blade.
"Pray to your Pantheon, that's all we can do"
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Stravos Vortaris
For the past couple of hours, my cluster and the other stragglers we had found along the way had been pushing through a radiation zone Kuru had warned us to avoid.
It was the fastest route to our goal. Taking any of the other paths would have added days to our journey. As a leader, I am responsible for the cluster; however, if the weak ones don't make it, that's their own incompetence.
It didn't matter that I had just ascended to the Adept stage. I was still overexerting myself, trying to make up for the added responsibilities that came with a larger cluster.
I needed to reach the central pyramid, where most of the students and teachers would likely be heading.
So that I could gather resources, find the rift guardian, and defeat this rift, cementing myself as a conqueror like my forefathers before me.
While I led the large group of students, my titan would leave to scout as I instructed.
With my spatha in hand, I carved through the tangled growth like a butcher through meat, cutting down man-eating plants hidden within the brush.
After traveling another mile or so northwest, my titan stumbled upon something, making me stop in my tracks.
"Stravos, why are we stopping?" Ida said, running up to me from the middle of the group.
I communicated with my cluster through the mental link and asked him to come to the front.
When they arrived, I filled them in on the fact that my titan had found more students up ahead, and they were engaged with flying behemoths and losing. I wanted them to take extra precautions to watch our blind spots, because this could easily lead to a situation that may cause our weak-willed members of the party to act irrationally.
My cluster members nodded and went back to the positions I assigned them.
We proceeded down the path for another couple hundred feet before I felt several ominous signatures of cosmic energy.
"Everyone, arm yourself. We have company!" I yelled out as we caught up to my titan, which was guarding the battered cluster.
My eyes darted in every direction.
Then a blood-curdling scream came from behind me.
I turned and saw several students pointing to the sky.
Three-winged creatures descended on us, fangs bared, with their glowing crimson eyes.
"Shield them. Now!" I commanded my titan.
I sprinted towards my titan, and it catapulted me in the air.
Floating high above the bats, I swung my blade overhead, crashing down on them, aiming to sever the wings of one of the behemoths.
The creatures were too fast. They slipped past my attack, leaving me hurtling toward my titan.
Before I could crash into it, my titan leaped up, caught me, twisted its body, and launched me back toward the behemoths. My blade carved through one, but the other two folded their wings and plunged toward the group.
"Back up, my titan, as it takes the brunt of the attack, and cut off their wings," I said through my mental link with my cluster as I fell back to the ground.
My cluster mates were a well-oiled machine; I wouldn't accept any less from them.
My titan took hold of the incoming bats, and Ida and Kuru tore their wings apart, leaving the bats to wail in pain.
I dealt the finishing blow to the grounded bats and wiped the blood off my blade.
Then another scream came from the group. A horde of bats erupted from the tangled growth, swarming us.
Damn it!
"Run!" I yelled, slashing my way through the horde of bats with my titan.
The group stampeded forward.
I stopped conserving cosmic energy and let it surge through my body, becoming a raging cyclone of war.
My primal instincts took over. I slashed, parried, flipped, punched, elbowed, and even bit at the swarming group.
My titan and I carved through the horde, cutting down nearly three-quarters of them.
A couple slipped through. But I trusted Ida to handle them; she was a capable vassal of war in her own right.
I took one peek up ahead toward the group, and saw that a bat used its hind legs to throw a boulder at Kuru, who just appeared from the shadows.
The boulder hit him in the back of the head and knocked him out.
No!
Imbuing cosmic energy into my spatha, I unleashed a wave of slashes and finished off the last remaining bats.
Ida was holding off the couple that snuck through while the rest of the group moved forward, following my Truth Seeker.
I sent my titan to catch up to my Truth Seeker, while I ran and dug my blade into the core of the bat that was attacking Ida. She finished off the last one, running an axe through its neck.
I hurried, picked up Kuru, and ran up to the rear of the group.
"How bad is the injury?" Ida asked, catching up to my side.
"It didn't look fatal, but I don't know when he will recover. He had been using a lot of his cosmic energy trying to hide our group with his shadows."
"That changes our plans for finding the massive cosmic energy source Sigmond detected earlier. Traveling through this jungle is hard enough already. It'll be even harder without our astronomer, and we still haven't found anyone else who happens to be a good one."
I bit the inside of my cheek.
"I doubt we will get sooters to go back out without one… Unless you force them."
I let her words hang in the air.
"I'm the Prince of War, Ida. I will always have people to raise a banner for my cause."