You Fall, I Fall

thirteen (pt.2)

~When they reached a crossroads at a larger hallway than the one they were walking down, Fitz stopped along with the rest of their party to hear what Aurora had to say.

"For your next trial, you will be separated and be put at different ends of a labyrinth. Your job is to find one another," the woman explained, "and no other special abilities may be used." She then walked over to the left passage, and Harold moved to the right.

Noticing his tenseness somehow, Sophie turned to him, and promised, "I'll find you."

"I know you will," Fitz smiled shakily, and took a breath, "see you on the other side." They then went their separate ways, Fitz following Aurora and Sophie following Harold. Aurora didn't talk the entire time, and the quiet only made him feel more jittery.

After a few more twists and turns, they reached a low entry way with a dark iron gate, and Aurora opened it with a key, informing him, "The maze is designed to mess with your tracking abilities, so work to overcome it somehow. Once you find one another, work to find the middle, where we will give you your final trial. You'll be judged on how fast you meet up, and then how fast you can get to the middle. You can start when the bell rings." She then held the door open for him, locked it behind him, and that was that. She didn't wish him luck, but he supposed that wasn't the kind of person she was.

Fitz pressed his hands against his arms and took deep breaths. They could do this- they could get through these trials. He had to shove the doubts fed to him by the fear of losing her away, because he believed in them. He believed in them being together and conquering this. They could do it- he just had to stay focused on the matters at hand.

When the bell's ring reverberated in his ears, he immediately started tracking Sophie thoughts. They were garbled and scattered, as Aurora had hinted, but he could get the general direction she was in- forwards. He started by staying on the same path, the shadows from the walls of the maze that reached so high they almost touched the ceiling loomed over him. He turned right a few times, he turned left a few times, and reached a few dead ends, a result of the walls messing with their thought tracking, it was making this whole ordeal take longer than it should.

Gradually, after making dozens of turns and turn-arounds, he started running, wondering where on earth Sophie could be. He had already passed the middle of the maze, but it wasn't until after he found a gateway he didn't recognize that he stopped and transmitted to Sophie, "I just passed your gate, I think we went opposite ways."

"I think so too," she replied, "I just passed your gate, but I know where the middle is."

"I do too, I'll meet you there!" Fitz resolved, a newfound energy buzzing through his veins. He started running again, going back exactly the way he came, making all the right turns and everything... until his memory of the maze stopped. He couldn't remember where to turn, or how he had gotten to this point, so he stopped in a dead end, his body starting to tremble as doubts started to pillage his hope for kicks. Sophie was probably already at the middle now - she had a photographic memory after all - and was probably waiting for him to meet her there, but he probably wasn't even close.

These tasks were all a breeze for her, she was so far above his level... Was he even fit to be her cognate? He walked to one of the walls of the labyrinth and slid down it to think for a moment. No- she chose him, they had a connection that no one else had. Sophie was born extraordinary, and he hadn't been, but then again, no one else had either. She was a league of her own, but out of all the elves in the Lost Cities, he was the closest thing to it... he could do this, he just had to pick himself up and think this through.

He started walking again, humming quietly to try and relax himself, when he heard a voice from the other side of a wall, "Fitz? Is that you?"

"Sophie?" He called out, pressing his hands against the cold surface, "Yeah, it's me." Little did he know, Sophie's hands were right over his on the other side of the wall.

"We're so close..." she transmitted to him quietly, and he rested his forehead against the metal, just to be nearer to her presence.

"... yet so far," Fitz finished for her, his eyes watering a little. "There aren't any entry ways along this hall."

"So we'll have to find one another somehow somewhere else," her voice cracked a little, and Fitz realized that she was struggling with this trial too.

"We can do this," he told her, speaking to himself as well as a traitorous tear slid down his cheek, followed by a couple others, "we're a a good team."

He heard his cognate laugh a little in agreement, a sound that made him smile, "The best... I'll see you soon?"

"I'll see you soon," he echoed, though he didn't want to leave her yet. He waited until he heard her walk away to continue down the hall himself. After a few minutes, he was getting even more lost. Fitz rubbed his temples for a moment before he had a thought, and sent it to Sophie, "Let's mind phase, I'm sort of lost." He didn't just need directions, he needed the feeling of being close to her.

"Me too," her reply shocked him, but she didn't appear to have noticed as she continued, "but what will that accomplish?"

"We both know this maze pretty well by this point, so if we can see we each are, it'll kind of give us a sense of direction," reasoned Fitz.

For a few seconds, she seemed to contemplate this before agreeing, "Yeah, okay. That makes sense."

He closed his eyes as his heart started to beat faster, and reached out to Sophie with his mind. When he found her reaching, the two tied their minds together, and suddenly, Fitz could see out of her eyes. "You're just two rights, three lefts, and another right away from the middle," he thought.

"Really? You just need to take the hallway you're on now until you see a third left, then take the next right, then the next left, and then walk that hallway until you see the middle," he heard her think, and felt certain for the first time in these trials. This was it. They were going to find one another.

Grinning like a fool, he started, running, following the directions Sophie gave him, and listening to when she corrected his memory. He got tunnel vision, and could barely answer her questions of which way to turn again without a few seconds passing. They could do this- he could do this. One more trial, and they would be cognates! He was ready, he was prepared, he was rejuvenated for the next trial the proctors could throw at them. When he entered the square, he saw Sophie run in from the other side. They smiled at one another, and untied their mind phasing knot as they began to run towards each other.

From somewhere above, Harold announced, "Great job, guys. Now for your last trial-" Sophie and Fitz were only a few feet apart before the ground gave way from underneath them, and they free fell. "Tell each other your deepest secret before the timer runs out and the chamber is completely filled with water. No special abilities are to be used." Fitz managed to grab Sophie's hand before they hit the water beneath them, though the dark matter broke them apart before they could get a good hold on one another.

The room was quite big, about the size of the size of Sophie's room, though with a high ceiling, and the water was already deep enough so that Fitz's feet couldn't touch the ground, causing for him to go under. His thoughts were cries of despair when he came to the surface and he couldn't see her. Frantically, he searched the water, calling out to her, and plunging into the dark water in hopes of finding her. He knew she could swim, so where was she? Across the room, he heard her yelling his name in the distance and he began to paddle over to the sound, but just when he was starting to get close to her, Aurora announced, "Your time starts now," and water began pouring into the room through four thick pipes that resided in the corners of the ceiling. The water became restless over time and waves started shifting him closer to or farther away from Sophie on a whim. When he was finally close enough to grab her hands and start to reel her closer, a wave sent them under and set them apart, the last thing he heard before going under was a frantic, "Fitz!"