2.5

Content warnings: violence typical of fight scenes

The first thing Juli was aware of was someone letting out a string of curses in English and Spanish. As Juli slowly came to, they realized that the someone was actually Dani, and that her voice sounded pained. And then—

“Oh god, oh god, you have a dagger in your leg,” Juli realized. They shot upright and ran over to help. “We gotta get that out or you’re going to keep feeling pain. I can cauterize the wound—“

“Don’t bother,” Dani grunted. He gestured towards an unconscious Ridwan. “I’m gonna get that bastard to heal me.” Dani turned to Karyme, who was standing nearby, anxiously wringing her hands. “How long til Ridwan wakes up?”

“Shouldn’t be long,” Karyme said, a nervous edge to her voice. “That’s not really what I’m worried about, though. There’s—”

Something in the distance let out an ear-splitting shriek. Karyme flinched.

Juli took a look around. To the right, the terrain was rocky, flat, and frankly, quite boring to look at. To the left, a gaping canyon opened up. Bands of colored rock alternated up and down the walls of the canyon, and a river of lava cut a course through the bottom. The sun shone brightly overhead in the cloudless sky.

“This is kind of what I thought hell would look like,” Juli mused.

“This is hell, all right,” Dani grumbled. “We’re stranded who knows where, and the only person who might know where we are is unconscious.”

“Hey, give them a break. Getting stabbed in the neck is difficult,” Juli said playfully. Dani gave Juli a withering look.

When Juli had passed out between being in the arena and ending up here, they’d dreamed of Dani, Peter, Lian, and Ridwan in that godawful hallway, except this time the dream had shown the truth—that Ridwan had gotten stabbed in Peter’s stead. Juli didn’t know how to feel about Ridwan after watching that, though it did make them feel better that the immortals were willing to go to such lengths to keep them alive.

Ridwan chose that moment to awaken. They sat up with a groan, clutching their neck with one bloody hand. The wound had mostly closed, but it must have still hurt, because Ridwan flinched as they turned their head.

“Dani,” Ridwan said hoarsely. “M’gonna heal your leg.” Their speech was slurred, gaze clouded, and it honestly looked like Ridwan was pulling out all the stops just to stay awake. Still, the immortal crawled over to Dani, wincing with every movement. Their hands hovered hesitantly over the dagger.

“Just pull it out,” Dani mumbled.

Ridwan nodded. With glowing indigo hands, they yanked the dagger out, eliciting a pained gasp from Dani, then started healing the wound. Under indigo light, muscle fibers realigned, and skin stitched itself together. That wasn’t what caught Juli’s eye, though—it was the streak of white tracing its way through Ridwan’s hair, growing brighter as they healed Dani.

“Thanks, asshole,” Dani muttered, rubbing a hand over her leg. “Don’t see why you had to let me get stabbed, but thanks.”

“Sorry,” Ridwan sighed. “Couldn’t protect all three of you. Didn’t have the energy.”

Juli wasn’t sure Ridwan should be using the past tense there, but they weren’t going to argue with the immortal.

“Your hair,” Juli said instead. “Is it…?”

“Temporary,” Ridwan said wearily. “A side effect of power overuse. It’ll go away when this body dies.”

“When,” Karyme said flatly, arms crossed. “I don’t like how you said that.”

Ridwan let out a bitter laugh. “This is Dimension X. It’s hard enough for me to escape alive on my own. With three of you to protect…” Ridwan grimaced. “Let’s not think about that.”

In the distance, an orange signal flare rose into the air, intertwined with gold. Then, a second flare of the same color. From the west, twin streams of green and blue light pierced the air twice, followed by two bursts of red and pink from the east. To cap it off, Ridwan sent three pulses of indigo light into the air.

For a second, nothing happened. Then, a line of orange light pierced the air, curving towards some random point in the distance. Ridwan extended a hand, and an indigo line arced upwards from their hand. Juli watched in awe as lines of light—all in different colors—shot towards that same point, meeting in the middle. And then, just as quickly as they’d begun, the lights faded.

Something roared in the distance.

With a pained groan, Ridwan rose to their feet, swaying slightly. “We need to get moving. The shadow beasts are on their way.”

Juli blanched. “The what?”

“I’ll explain as we move,” Ridwan said calmly. “Now, let’s go.” Karyme helped Dani up, and the group of four started walking north along the canyon’s border, keeping a quick pace. Every now and then, Juli glanced over the edge, marveling at the river of lava below. Juli had always hated swimming in bodies of water, but swimming in a river of lava? That could be kind of cool.

“So, that light show earlier,” Karyme said curiously. “What was that about?”

“The color of each signal flare tells you who sent it,” Ridwan explained. “Green and blue were together, which means Jinal and Kai landed next to each other. Pink and red were also together, so Minerva and Mateen ended up in the same place, too, and orange and yellow—that’s Ven and Haku. The number of bursts indicates how many mortals are with them. It looks like all nine of you got pulled in.”

“And then the last part showed a rendezvous point,” Dani guessed. “Is that right?” Ridwan nodded, then winced at the pain of moving their neck.

“We’ll be meeting the others in the center of the dimension—at the point that is equidistant from where each of us landed,” Ridwan confirmed. “It’s the only way out. In the meantime, there are some things you should know about this place.”

“First off,” Ridwan said, counting off on their fingers. “Anything that looks edible here is actually poisonous. Assume that every living and nonliving thing in this dimension is trying to kill you.”

“Peachy,” Juli muttered. Ridwan ignored them.

“Because there’s nothing edible in this dimension, you’ll want to save your energy,” Ridwan continued. “We’re going to be here for at least two days. That means two days without food and water.”

“Can humans even last that long?” Karyme said weakly.

“Well, sure,” Dani replied with a shrug. “I’ve done it plenty of times. It’s not optimal, but it’s possible. It’s the third day that really gets you, though.” Juli nodded in agreement. Karyme didn’t seem so sure.

“Third thing you should know,” Ridwan interjected. “This place is chock full of shadow monsters that will try to kill you on sight. There are several variations, and all of them get stronger at night. I’ll do my best to keep you out of fights so you can save your energy, but…” Ridwan gestured to their throat. “As you can see, I’m not doing so well myself.”

Juli swallowed. They didn’t like their odds.

“What is this place, anyway?” Karyme asked. “It seems built to kill.”

“Because it is,” Ridwan said grimly. “This place exists purely as a punishment. The fact that The Necromancer has brought you here indicates that he considers you a real threat.”

“Oh, fantastic,” Dani said sarcastically. “I feel honored.”

Another roar pierced the air. This one felt closer, and as Juli looked on the horizon, they could see a faint dust cloud. Ridwan cursed.

“Get ready for a fight,” they commanded. “The beasts have found us.”

~.~

Of all the ways Ilia had spent her birthday over the years, getting assaulted by pixies in a hell dimension was probably the worst.

As one of the pixies came darting towards her face, gnashing its teeth in an attempt to take a bite out of her nose, Ilia ducked out of the way. She wasn’t fast enough to swat the pixie out of the air, though, and then another pixie was coming at her with its leg outstretched, ready to kick her in the eye.

Ilia let royal blue flames envelop her form, and the pixie burst into dust as soon as it made contact.

A satisfied smile crossed Ilia’s face as she leaned out of the way of another attack, then fired a small, bullet-sized orb of royal blue light at the offending pixie, vaporizing it. Behind her, a gun fired three times, and three pixie corpses fell into the grass, stirring up a cloud of spores.

Don’t breathe in! Minerva warned. The spores are poisonous.

Is anything here not poisonous? Morgan said bitterly.

No, Mateen shot back.

Ilia tried to keep track of the battle while the others chattered away in her head, but she wasn’t quite used to her new powers. She had a headache from suppressing the future visions—she could still hear Morgan’s screams from the past ringing in her ears—and she was starting to feel dizzy from holding her breath. It came as no surprise to Ilia when a pixie managed to slip through her defenses. She braced herself, ready to feel pain as the pixie bit at her neck—

And then a sword slashed through the air, cleaving the pixie’s head from its body.

Careful, Mateen warned, stepping back. Before Ilia could thank him, the immortal had already launched himself at the next wave of enemies, dual hook swords drawn. Ilia watched in awe as Mateen maneuvered through the cloud of pixies, xis swords moving too quickly for the eye to follow. Xe ducked under one attack, then slashed with the sword in his right hand, and then his left hand was moving before he’d even finished the first attack. The two swords danced in perfect harmony, decimating Mateen’s foes. Mateen wasn’t even using xis powers, nor was xe powering up xis attacks with aura. This was sheer raw strength.

Ilia was snapped back to reality by a wave of heat. She looked up just in time to watch Minerva incinerate everything in the immediate vicinity with a wave of pink flames. Before the remaining pixies could regroup, Minerva rocketed forward on twin jets of flame, grabbed a pixie in each hand, and crushed their skulls. Ilia winced.

As she looked back and forth between Minerva’s flames and Mateen’s sword strikes, only one thought ran through her mind: I’m glad they’re on my side.

~.~

Rae could feel the blood rushing to his head as the large, sentient vine monster dangled him upside down. The vine wrapped around his ankle was doing something to suppress his powers; the more he tried to attune to the nearest twig and teleport out, the stronger the vine’s grip became. At least Rae wasn’t hanging alone; the monster also had Lian and Ven strung up by the ankles.

In fact, the only one who was still free was Haku.

Rae watched with bated breath as Haku removed their glasses and stepped forward, eyes closed. They took a deep breath. Light seeped out from beneath closed eyelids. When Haku’s eyes flew open, they were masked over by orange.

Haku clapped their hands together, and suddenly the forest was burning. Flames licked at the trees, their warmth almost uncomfortable against Rae’s skin as the fire started to eat away at the vine monster. Rae squirmed uncomfortably in the vine’s grasp. Xe really didn’t want to burn alive.

The fire was only the beginning, though. As Haku waved their hand through the air, three bullets pierced the vine monster’s hide, followed by a flaming knife, and then a metal bat was slamming into the vine monster’s other side, and a silver laser blast eviscerated the monster from a different angle. The monster roared in pain as it dropped Lian, Ven, and Rae.

Rae wasted no time scrambling backwards, putting as much distance between xyrself and the monster as xe possibly could. And then, xe simply watched as a barrage of attacks trampled the beast: a wall of force from above, a wave of bullets, a fireball, five metric tons of water. A lightning strike.

Rae’s jaw dropped. Now that xe was watching more carefully, xe recognized these maneuvers as attacks from the team’s most recent battles in the arena. Even the vine monster couldn’t survive the onslaught, and within seconds, there was nothing left but a wisp of shadow on the breeze. The orange glow around Haku faded.

“That was incredible, glasses man!” Lian exclaimed, eyes alight with excitement.

“I don’t know why you’re so surprised,” Haku said, slipping their glasses on. “Didn’t anyone tell you? My ability is to bring any of my memories to life. And since I spend so much time reading futures and pasts alike…”

Haku’s eyes glinted dangerously in the light.

“There’s very little I can’t do.”

~.~

Peter briefly wondered if flinging Joshua at a shadow beast would be more effective than whatever the hell they were doing. Joshua had already tried bashing the beast’s head in three separate times with a bat, using his super speed to shoot through the air with deadly precision, and it hadn’t done a thing. Peter’s bricks and knives were similarly quite useless.

It made sense that physical attacks did nothing, considering how stocky the shadow beasts were. Their limbs were as thick around as tree trunks, and Peter could see shadowy muscle fibers running across the beasts’ backs. The beasts themselves were shaped vaguely like four-legged animals, but their heads were cuboidal, with tendrils of liquid shadow extending from the top, almost like hair. Every time a projectile hit the shadow beasts, their bulk simply absorbed the attack.

Which brought Peter back to the original question: would it be worth it to telekinetically throw Joshua at a shadow beast?

Before Peter could come up with an answer, the nearest shadow beast unhinged its jaw and launched a fireball at him. He dove to the side, faceplanting into the sand, then quickly scrambled to his feet to avoid the claws of another beast. He was distantly aware of Joshua’s pained gasp as a shadow beast clawed through the bird man’s shoulder.

Peter frowned. He did not prefer fighting in such tight quarters, and apparently, neither did Joshua. It wasn’t like they had a choice, though; there was a sandstorm raging, and Kai could only suspend the wind and sand in a small dome around the group. It looked like it was taking the immortal’s full concentration to hold the storm at bay.

Peter telekinetically launched another knife at the nearest shadow beast, and this go around, he timed the attack so that the knife hit at the exact same time that Joshua swung his bat. The simultaneous attack seemed to do more damage than either hit would have done alone, and the beast actually staggered back, reeling from the blow.

Just as Peter pulled his last brick out of his backpack, a burst of sky blue light shot over his shoulder, slamming into the nearest shadow beast and vaporizing it. Tendrils of water tripped the two remaining beasts, and Peter watched in admiration as Jinal hopped between translucent blue platforms, sword drawn, and sliced through the two downed beasts in one fell stroke.

With the last shadow beast gone, Joshua landed, clutching his injured shoulder.

Let me look at that, Jinal said gently. For a second, Joshua simply glared at the immortal. Then, with great reluctance, Joshua shed his jacket, exposing the rapidly purpling shoulder.

I’m really sorry about this, Jinal murmured, running glowing blue hands over the injury. I still can’t believe The Necromancer brought you all here. This is our fault.

“Sorry” stopped being enough the moment you involved us, Joshua said thinly. His words lacked their usual heat. Focus on getting us out of here, and stop wasting time and energy on apologies; it's grating.

Peter had always thought Joshua was too angry to be a good teammate, so he was surprised when he found himself nodding in agreement. Joshua was right—the constant apologies were grating. Peter didn’t even think the immortals owed him an apology at this point—he’d long since gotten over the blackmail, and his powers hadn’t ruined his life, necessarily. Maybe that was where he and Joshua differed.

As Joshua took to the skies once more, the group kept moving, trudging through the endless sands. Around them, the sandstorm started to ease up, and Peter could practically see the relief on Kai’s face as the winds began to slow. In the meantime, Peter materialized a jacket. If the rapidly dropping temperature was any indication, it was going to be a long, cold night, and Peter preferred to stay warm.

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