Sora Brontarion
Back at our camp, I finally got a good look at our companion. If I didn't know any better, I would have mistaken him for royalty. But his personality and his witty demeanor proved otherwise. I appreciated that, despite being in a treacherous situation, he still found a way to make light of things.
After Nernea reluctantly got him some water, his raspy speech was gone. It was smooth, almost melodic. I could feel there was something underneath it, but I didn't want to pry.
A shadow loomed over me. Looking up, I saw my brother sprawled across his nimbus, floating above us. "So we have another straggler."
"Not a straggler, Jace. A comrade." I shot.
"His name is Voen. We rescued him from Stravos's War Titan."
"Thanks, I was at my wits' end. My luck has been rotten this whole game. First, a group of students jumped me, then a behemoth came after my partner and me. I even ran out of water. Total mess."
"You have a partner? Where are they?"
"Well, that may be a poor choice of words. It was more like a contractual agreement. He only agreed to stay with me until I was fully healed. He was amazing, took out an embryonic stage behemoth with his bare hands."
"We need more comrades, what's his name?"
"If you are trying to recruit him, good luck. He's one of those dark, broody types. Name's Cyrus. Ring a bell?"
My brother and I recognized the name, but Nerena's subtle change caught me off guard. The first real expression her face had shown since she had joined us.
"I do know him, actually. Your description is spot on." An alert dinged on our devices.
"Sora, it looks like the leaderboards are changing." I hurried to look at the new standings. Two-thirds of the students were eliminated from the game, leaving only 100.
We were still holding a spot in the top five. Stravos was first, but his lead was shrinking. New teams seemed to be rising quickly. Cyrus was in fourteenth place.
Mira was now in tenth place. A group of kids from the Zmei Clan were in third. The team, made up of kids from the Arkanos and Morphalis clans, was in fourth place.
The three from the Shademaul family were sixth, and the Morzeth sisters were in seventh. As expected, kids from the twelve great clans were leading this year's class. I was surprised that my cousins from Kazehoshi joined Stravos's team.
Between chewing charred meat, my brother said, "Looks like we got work to do if we're gonna win."
I could see Nerena give Jace a look of discontent and whip Jace's food out of his hand with a conjured tentacle.
"Watch it, squiddy," Jace said, pulling out another piece of food from his dimensional storage.
"Is that how you get girls?" Voen said, scratching his chin, as we both watched Nerena continue to slap the food out of Jace's hand.
Making his cloud fly higher in the sky, Jace responded, "No, I do nothing; they bother me instead."
"Really, maybe I was doing it wrong this whole time," Voen said, as he turned toward me.
"Sora, you ok? Your hair just turned into puff balls."
Quickly, I patted my hair down, "Any suggestions on how we should move forward, Jace?" I said, shooting a spark up to his cloud.
"I am the defense force for our base…. So I should stay." Palming my face, I wondered why I even asked.
"Besides, we've got a new comrade to round out the dynamic duo into a trio. You don't really need me."
"Is he always like this?" Voen asked.
"Since birth, sadly."
Rolling my eyes, I pulled out the map. We now saw where all the students were clustered. There were a few groups to the south of us, but they were smaller in number. I figured we could leave that to Jace if they ever made their way up.
My eyes were set on Stravos's base.
I wanted to prove that I was a better leader, so I had to find a way to take out the frontrunner. Since his group had the lion's share of the totems, winning there would all but ensure our victory. I had Nerena and Voen huddle up as I divulged my plan.
We made Voen brief us on his constellation's abilities, which were interesting to say the least. He had a constellation I had never heard of before, which wasn't uncommon but tricky to plan around.
But I couldn't be picky, I needed all the help I could get since the base we were going to pillage outnumbered us five to one. My plan was a long shot, but in games like this, they were necessary.
After the conversation, Nerena and I made sure to get Voen situated in the base. Voen was the complete opposite of my brother; he didn't know when to stop talking. I didn't mind it, but Nerena gave him a couple of disgruntled looks, almost as if she was being overloaded with information.
With the meeting done, everyone found a place to be alone in the base. Voen's soothing music gently suppressed the anxiety in the air.
Nerena, as usual, sat by the river fidgeting with shells she collected. I assumed she was making some kind of trinket, something she did to ease herself. I did find it strange how she would hide the object whenever I approached her.
I rested my head on one of my brother's clouds he sent down, and I stared into the dark sky. Streaks of lightning once again danced above the clouds, illuminating the woods every few minutes.
Memories resurfaced of the first time grandma taught me how to read lightning. Back then, things were simple, and my clan wasn't lost. Grandma foresaw it, pouring all her knowledge into me, entrusting me to bring back the old ways. I needed to succeed here at Xhatal to do that. I just prayed my idea would work.
It needed to work.