8. Kaelor #2
I have been aware of this in pieces for a long time.
In the pod when I couldn't look at her. In the arena when she jumped the platform and I moved before thinking.
In Arena One the first time, when she looked at my outstretched hand and made the calculation and took it.
The pieces have been assembling themselves without my permission and what sits in my chest right now, in this hollow, with her leaning against me in the ash-quiet of a dead arena — it is not a piece. It is the whole thing.
I love her.
Not the bond mechanics. Not the relic amplification or the proximity or the Malquaran engineering of attachment — those things are real and have done their work and I'm not pretending otherwise.
But they are not the full explanation for what it costs me right now to believe our time has run out.
For the kind of grief of having found this — her — in a place designed to take everything from you.
I would burn alive in the lava myself, every reset, indefinitely, if it meant she got to go home.
I don't say any of this. Because it gives a glimpse of hope that is no longer alive.
I just sit with my arm around her in the ruins and breathe.
Outside, I hear footsteps. Syrox in the main passage, circling. His pace slows at the Arena One threshold — considering — and then leaves, toward Arena Two.
They’re looking for us. We weren’t in Arena Three so we have to be in one of the others. They will find us. Eventually.
Olivia doesn't move. She is sitting very quiet, staring into space.
"It’s the pull," she says.
Her voice is different. Not to argue, something more tentative, like she's following a thread and isn't sure yet where it goes.
"What?"
"When we first entered Arena Three." She's still looking in the middle distance.
"We felt the pull before we crossed a single platform.
Do you remember? The relic calling us toward it.
Our connection to it." She pauses. "We've felt it every attempt.
Even from the archway. Even from the pod, sometimes. "
"That's how the relics function," I say with a shrug. "They draw the bonded pair?—"
"Toward them." She nods slowly. "Yes." Then a longer pause.
"The bond pulls us toward the relic. We feel it and we respond.
We move toward it, cross toward it, reach for it.
" She turns her head to look at me. "But what if the connection runs in both directions, like it does between you and me?
It's not a one-way signal. What if the twist in this arena is that we can pull back?
" She gets to her feet and begins to pace.
"What if… we can pull the relic toward us? "
I just look at her.
She's not presenting a strategy. She's thinking out loud, following the thread in real time. I watch the idea take shape in her eyes as she speaks it.
"Think about it. The third relic has no basin.
No fixed mechanism like the others. What if we were never meant to be able to reach the end platform?
What if it was always meant to come to us?
" She's speaking faster now, the tentativeness giving way to something more certain. "So why can't we draw it to us?"
I turn her idea over.
Think about the resonance. The way the third relic felt different — more alive, more responsive. The way the bond had flared when either of us touched it.
Not just waiting to be touched.
Waiting to be claimed.
"The bond is stronger when we have the relics,” I say. “So maybe we would need the armor and the crown to amplify the strength. We don't have them. Not anymore."
"I know." Something settles in her face. The idea landing fully, the last piece of it clicking into place. "We don’t worry about that right now. For now, we test the idea. If we can get the relic to move — even just a little — it’ll be all the confirmation we need."
“And if we need all the relics?”
She looks up at me and a hard look cuts across her features. “Then we damn well get them back!”
I don’t tell her how difficult that would be. How hard Varketh would fight to keep them. Or how few resets we likely have left at our disposal. Now is not the time for realities. It’s for hope. And if that’s how she wants to end these games — either way it happens — then so be it.
She shifts to face me. Takes my face in both hands and looks at me with total openness. Not the strategy. Not the management. Just Olivia, looking at me from six inches away in the ash-quiet dark.
"I need you to trust me," she says.
After everything. After every arena and every reset and every platform and every moment in a pod with my hand against the glass waiting for the chance to touch her face one more — after all of it, she is asking me if I trust her?
"Always," I say.
She holds my eyes for one more beat. Long enough for me to see what she's carrying. The fear underneath the idea, the potential cost of it, the thing she hasn't told me yet that I'm already beginning to dread.
Then she leans forward and presses her forehead against mine.
I close my eyes.
Her breath. The bond at full frequency. The warmth of her hands on my face.
She pulls back just enough to look at me.
"Then let us try again," she says. “Even if it doesn’t work. Even if we’re wasting our time. Let’s go out fighting rather than cowering in here.”
A rumble shakes the floor and snaps the floorboards in half before she can say another word. The whole arena lurches — walls cracking, ash cascading in a thick grey sheet. She grabs my arm and I pull her against me, her face against my chest, my arms around her.
For one second: just her. Just this.
And then comes the dark once more.
"Ten."
I open my eyes.
The reset chill. The pale light of the terminal chamber. The countdown already running.
I look to her pod before I've finished registering where I am.
Olivia is already looking back.
Not with a careful expression. Not with the managed neutrality or the strategic assessment. She is pressed close to the glass and her eyes are bright and there is something in her face that believes in a direction.
I look at her and I think, with everything I have:
Please let her be right. I want to see that face every waking moment of my life.
The countdown ends and the pod floor releases.
We don’t talk as we run. But the same thing is running through our minds:
If it pulls us toward it, we can pull it toward us .
We clear the archway into Arena Three.
The arena is smaller. Even between this and the last round, I can tell that. The platforms are fewer, the gaps between them wider, the surface area of what remains maybe half of what it was in the first attempt. The lake churns below, indifferent.
At the far end, barely visible through the ash fall and the heat shimmer, is the relic platform. The relic sits on top of it burning with that warm urgent light.
The feel the pull in my chest immediately.
Olivia stops at the edge of the ledge. She plants her feet and looks across the full width of the lake at the relic platform. She spreads her arms.
I put my back to her.
The rivals are coming — I hear them clearing the archway, two of them, registering our position.
I move before they've finished deciding.
The first reaches the ledge and I meet him cleanly and he goes off the steps.
The second comes wide and I redirect him and use the ledge edge to resolve the problem.
Then—
CLANG.
The sound crosses the whole arena. Metal on stone — sharp, clean, loud. Nothing like any sound this place has made before.
I turn.
And see the relic.
Fifty meters away, across an active lava lake, it has fallen from its stand. It’s lying on the stone with its glow pulsing sideways against the ash-dark air. Olivia stands at the very edge of the ledge with her arms still raised and her lips parted in shock.
I feel it through the bond — it too struck like a bell .
"You did that?" I say.
"Y-Yes. I-I think I-I did," she stammers in disbelief.
She lowers her arms slowly. She looks at her hands — both sides, turning them — and then she looks at me.
The brightness in her face has shifted into something with more weight.
Not triumph, exactly. The expression of someone standing in the gap between believing something and knowing it to be true.
"From here," she says. "Without touching it."
We stand there a moment. Neither of us speaking. The relic lying on its side across fifty meters of lava and the bond still ringing between us.
This is it, I realize. This is our way out of here.
Then she turns back to the arena.
"I need to pull it further," she says.
She spreads her arms again.
I watch.
This time I feel it even more strongly through the bond.
The reaching, the full force of her concentration traveling along the connection toward the relic.
Her jaw tightens. Her arms tremble — not cold, not fear, but the trembling of someone pushing a muscle past its working limit.
I join her, copying her stance — though I have no idea if it helps with doing this or not.
The relic moves. Six inches. Eight. A skitter across the stone, the glow stuttering, and then it stops.
I gasp. It’s like lifting the real thing… but holding it at arm’s length. It’s heavy and cumbersome but you can still move it if you really try.
Olivia makes a short, sharp sound — effort hitting its ceiling — and drops her arms.
She bends forward, hands on her knees, breathing.
I cross to her. Put my hand on her back .
"I’m not strong enough," she says.
"No. I’m not strong enough. I can feel it. The strength it needs to move."
"I can feel exactly where it stops." She straightens. "You were right. The bond needs the armor and the crown. Without them we can knock it over and move it eight inches from the ledge. But without them, we’ll never pull it across the lake."
The ground shakes.
One? Two? We’ve been so focused on the relic that I haven’t been counting.