Reborn: High Strung | ONC2024

Chapter 14

Zev woke with a startle as he heard shuffling and shouting outside in the courtyard, stomping in the halls of the manor, shaking him and Meira awake. Meira stands up with a jolt of panic, quickly getting dressed in her training tunic and strapping on her oversized satchel. Zev was bouncing around the room, fitting into his own training tunic, in confusion, following her as they ran after the other trainees. Out in the courtyard, Lavan was standing next to the man who had come two weeks prior, Saar. They stood in the center of a traversal ring. Saar looked disheveled as he leaned down to touch the ring and push his sethra through it. Meira pushes past the bigger trainee in her way as she and Zev run right to the edge of the glowing ring. Zev stops in place, seeing the look of nerves on his teacher's face. Meira calls out quickly. "Sir, What's going on?"

Lavan looks up to meet their eyes. "I have to go alone, It's too dangerous. I'm sorry, you two. I promise when I get back, we'll discuss plans to traverse at a later date."

Just as his words finished, the cylinder of light shot up around the two men with a burst of sound that made Meira wince back from how close she was. Zev took a few steps forward before stopping just before the traversal ring. He stared down at it, all of his thoughts swelling and roaring in his ears like he was trapped in a hurricane. How could he wait even longer? What if Simon was hurt or worse? Zev took a step into the ring, examining the damage it had received from the usage. As his foot passed the edge of the ring, it felt like he had walked right into the eye of that hurricane. His thoughts calmed, even though the world around him still felt like a raging storm. Zev turns back, looking at Meira. A few tears well up in his eyes. "I have to go, Meira. I have to help him this time. I know he's down there."

Zev dropped to his knees in the traversal ring and planted his hands against it, sethra filling his arms and surging down into it. Meira didn't have long to think; her legs moved faster than her mind. Meira leaped next to Zev in the ring as white light gathered around the rim. "You'll die if you do this alone, you idiot!"

Zev grit his teeth as his peak flame sethra worked its way through the circle, Meira's inferno sethra quickly following alongside to smooth the flow. Traversing an extra layer from their soul links was exponentially harder for them, Lavan had told them to not even try it until they were both Infernos. "I know but I can't just wait for Simon to die again!"

Meira could hear the desperation and pain in his voice, but then she could see the physical damage he was taking from attempting this already. Purple energy bursts from around his forearms and up his neck, leaving behind deep sethra burns. Zev lets out cries of agony as the white traversal light grows around them both. Meira turns her face down and focuses all of her attention on keeping the traversal as stable as possible; she knew if this went even slightly wrong, Zev could die. This was even harder on the energy in her inferno body due to the slight damage to the ring. She let out a low-pitched yell as pain shot up her arms. The other trainees stood frozen and watched as another pillar of light flashed into existence, leaving Zev and Meira nowhere to be seen when it faded.

***

Simon was swinging through trees with his shadow serpent's blade in the lush jungles of layer three. It had taken him almost two weeks to rest and regain his strength, as well as get the hang of his newly reborn body. Now he was flying through the tall trees, dodging vines and lesser beasts, as two inferno-level soulkindlers from the Roc tribe chased him from the ground. They weren't near the peak of inferno like Simon was, yet they still traversed all the way up to layer three in only two weeks. Simon's stomach turned as he realized what that crazed Nova had done to his own people, but after what he had put Simon through in those six months, he believed it. One of the kindlers, a shorter, more broad woman with dark brown, shaggy hair, shouted up at him while hurling a stray ability made up of rock sethra. "Get down here and fight us, you snake!"