The atmosphere surrounding their team reminded Ekki of the IndieMagie finals. The two girls flying beside him had closed themselves off, as if they were curling up to brace against a winter wind. Even though they were close enough to touch, they may as well have been a million miles away.

  The facade of confidence on Iris’s face might have fooled anyone who knew her less well than Ekki, but the thinness of that veil was obvious to him. She always spoke and moved with ease, almost without effort, like a leaf floating along a stream. She knew how to mimic the appearance of her usual smile, but she could never replicate it without forcing it. The more she tried to keep up appearances, the clearer her strain was to Ekki.

  Clair was still an enigma to him in many ways, though even she had her tells. She stayed as quiet as ever, but that didn’t mean she wasn’t speaking. She mouthed silent words to herself. For her, putting her mouth through the motions of forming words was no different from someone twiddling their thumbs or fiddling with a pen. When Clair was at peace, she was as still as she was silent. When she was stressed, she worked her thoughts out through her lips.

  As for himself…

  “It’s going to work,” Iris said. “Once we learn how it likes to attack, we’ll find our opening. We just need to give Clair one good shot and we can take control of the battle.”

  Iris stared at Ekki as they flew beyond the city limits of Padoux. He had been the only one to argue with her about accepting this mission. Clair, he had assumed, felt as trapped as Iris did. To the two of them, other teams were still the enemy.

  “Maybe it will work,” he said, “but we don’t have to risk it like this. If you ask Adah for help, she will come. I’m sure of it.”

  “She’ll come to rub it in our faces,” Clair said.

  “I’d rather give up than ask for her help,” Iris added.

  “But you won’t give up either,” Ekki said, staring back at her now.

  Iris turned her head away from him and flew in silence for a time. When she spoke again, the words were soft, like her voice had hidden away in fear.

  “If we can’t even lead our region, what can we hope to achieve? This mission is our best chance to prove ourselves.”

  “Prove ourselves to who?” Ekki said. “It’s not the fans who asked us to do this. What do we care what anyone else thinks?”

  “It’s a matter of pride,” Clair said. “You’d think a knight would—”

  “I don’t care about pride!” Ekki yelled. “I don’t go searching for things to be proud of. We didn’t form this team to protect each other’s pride at the expense of everything else. We had a goal, and this mission doesn’t have anything to do with it!”

  They did have a goal, though it had been so long since any of them had said it aloud. Without speaking it, the idea seemed to have faded into a phantom.

  “Ekki,” Iris called out, drifting closer to him in the air. “It’s not about pride and it’s not about the fans. It’s about the way the world works—who gets power and who doesn’t. Until we have the power required to change the rules, we’re going to have to abide by those rules. If we fall behind Heartbreak and them now, we might be stuck in their shadow forever. This is our only path to power.”

  “You change the world by changing it, not playing along with it,” Ekki said. “If we fight alongside them, nobody has to be in anyone’s shadow.”

  “Whomever the light shines on casts a shadow,” Clair said. “And they can’t help but cast it.”

  She flew farther off to the right of Iris and Ekki, her white gown fluttering in the wind. She didn’t bother looking toward them even as she spoke.

  “I wouldn’t have made this play if I didn’t think it could work,” Iris said. “The three of us can do this, even if it takes every drop of essence in our bodies.”

  She held out a hand to him, which he took almost without thinking. It was a gesture anyone else would have misunderstood. The two of them had no doubts about the status of their relationship. They both knew the limit of their mutual affection. They understood: neither of them would declare their love until they achieved what they desired. And so, even as they flew hand-in-hand for the next few minutes, there were no sweaty palms, nervous glances, or racing hearts.

  Iris and Clair were silent for the remainder of their flight to the interception point. They were pushing aside the last of the doubts that they pretended not to have. That was how they decided to forge ahead.

  As for himself… His biggest flaw remained the same.

  He could never be sure of the right decision.

  ???

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  The hydra Cruelty had spawned at the center of Lemont, a satellite city some fifteen miles outside of the region’s capital. Lemont was probably the wealthiest city in the region, or at least that was the reputation Ekki knew it for. It was where everyone who worked in the capital but could afford to live somewhere a bit less cramped, with a bit less hustle and bustle, chose to live. Instead of tall office buildings and tightly packed storefronts, Lemont was full of luxury apartments, an upscale shopping district, and a flood of medical offices and specialty grocery stores. Every building in the city looked like it had been painted that same morning, their exteriors practically sparkling in the sun.

  Even though Ekki had grown up in the capital, and continued to live there after joining DreamRise, he had never had much reason to visit Lemont. Part of that was the fact he went from being a broke college student to a slightly less broke magic user. But, even if he had money, he couldn’t see himself visiting. Lemont felt like an anomaly in Region 4—a glossy wart in the middle of a bunch of farm towns and rusted cities. There was nothing for him here.

  Thus, it was only fitting his first trip here would be on account of a Cruelty he hadn’t wanted to fight either.

  Ekki and his teammates flew over the evacuating civilians long before the hydra itself came into view. That was the first sign they were dealing with a monster far more dangerous than any they had fought before. The evacuation zones for lower-ranked Cruelties were tiny by comparison. Even for a C-Rank, it was common for civilians to hang out close enough to the battle to watch without binoculars or anything of the sort. Sometimes, they’d be as close to the action as they’d be in a sports arena.

  For today’s mission, it looked as though every human within several square miles of the Cruelty’s spawning location had fled to the opposite end of the city. Crowds of cars and people had gathered like a massive parade, leaving the shopping district where the hydra had spawned a veritable ghost town. This ability for people to evacuate in advance was a major benefit of the Magedar’s improved detection capabilities in recent years, but in this particular situation, the effectiveness of the evacuation filled Ekki with dread.

  That feeling surged when he finally lay eyes on the hydra itself.

  He had seen B- and A-Ranks in person before, and even the rare S-Rank on a news broadcast, so he had known what to expect. However, no amount of mental preparation could negate the visceral human reaction to seeing a creature designed with such a clear, singular purpose. The hydra had no reason to exist except to destroy.

  The Cruelty’s body alone towered above the surrounding shops and restaurants, a gray mammoth in its own right. Then, the hydra’s three heads only grew taller from there, snaking their way into the sky. When the heads moved, they seemed to writhe and slither as separate entities from the hydra’s body, and for a moment Ekki thought they might reach up to take a bite out of the clouds above. As the serpent heads writhed around, the beast’s body moved as well, stomping its way down the boulevard with steps that shook the air.

  The hydra moved faster than Ekki expected, making up for its stocky body with swift steps. As soon as it spotted the approaching DreamRise members, it charged at them like a stampeding elephant. The serpent heads took practice lunges as the body ran, as if showing off their own reach and speed. With their jaws extended, each serpent looked like a tunnel large enough to drive a car through.

  As a final show of intimidation, each head of the Cruelty unleashed a roar at a different pitch. Their battle cries echoed on top of each other. The dissonance was enough to make Ekki nauseous.

  “Shut the hell up,” Clair muttered.

  Fast as the Cruelty was, Ekki and his teammates still had some time to prepare for its assault. Clair began to chant as she cast a spell: [She Sighs Sweetdreams]. It was her foundational spell, and one which DreamRise had built so many of their strategies around.

  Clair could chant through a magic channel, just like the ones magic users used to communicate with each other, in order to access the “minds” of Cruelties. According to Clair, the monsters didn’t have thoughts in the same way a human did, but their consciousnesses were defined by similar boundaries. Every mind had a “door,” she explained. Through her spell, Clair opened these doors, either by coaxing her target to let her in or by essentially picking the locks. Once inside her target’s mind, she could whisper them a sort of lullaby to pacify or even outright incapacitate them.

  Putting Cruelties to sleep or turning them into sluggish, disoriented messes usually allowed Iris and Ekki to fight without reservation. Their team had plenty of tools to defend Clair as she did her chanting, as well. Iris could shield Clair within her [Bulwark Bud], or Ekki could set up escape paths for her via the portals of his [Vanishing Vapor]. The only problem with Clair’s spell was if their opponent was strong enough to resist her attempted entry, or if their mind had some other defense mechanism.

  Ekki was afraid they might run into one—or both—of those problems today.

  “What do you see?” Iris asked Clair.

  The hydra had made its way down half the boulevard. In under a minute, it would reach the four-way intersection that Ekki and his teammates hovered above. This wide open space was the best arena they’d get for this battle.

  “They each have one,” Clair whispered between her chants. “The heads and the body. I need time or… something.”

  “I don’t know about ‘something,’” Iris said, “but we can buy you time.”

  “Wait,” Ekki said. “If each head has its own door, what are the chances any new heads will have one, too? If we sever too many of them, we’re going to be overwhelmed physically and mentally.”

  “Four is already fucked,” Clair said. “Don’t create any more.”

  Despite Clair’s explanations, Iris and Ekki still only understood the basics of Clair’s spell. Her descriptions of what she saw inside a Cruelty’s mind didn’t shed much light on the details either. However, Ekki at least knew Clair well enough as a person to understand that if she admitted something was a burden, then it must already be pushing her to her limit.

  “We’ll hurt them, but we’ll leave them attached,” Ekki said. “If you need to hit the kill switch, don’t worry about us. Just do it.”

  “That’s not something you need to tell me.”

  All three DreamRise members had unlocked a third spell, as well as their weapons. Like with Clair’s other spells, she had kept these new tools a secret from everyone but her teammates. Ekki saw some strategic value in that, but Clair claimed she only did it because her spells were nobody’s business but hers.

  This new “kill switch” of hers could very well be the line between life and death for all three of them.

  Though, Ekki would give everything he had to make sure this battle didn’t come to that.

  “Well, then,” Iris said with a smile. This expression looked almost like the ones Ekki had grown to love. “Shall we change the world?”

  The hydra stepped into the arena.