7. Olivia
OLIVIA
I have never been this happy in my entire life.
That's the thought running underneath everything as we cross the threshold — underneath the ash in my lungs and the heat on my face and the sound of pursuit behind us. Yet, underneath it all, quiet and certain: I have never been this happy.
Two relics. Kaelor's hand in mine. One more and we're free.
I keep turning that over in my mind. One more.
One more and I never have to watch him die again.
Never have to burn alive again. Never have to calculate my own death like a shift schedule.
One more relic and the Malquarans release us and I go home — or wherever people go when alien species are done using them as romantic competition prizes, which is a sentence I’ll deal with after the freedom part.
The archway ahead reads III. Three vertical strokes carved into black volcanic stone, older than anything I can imagine. We run through it hand in hand and for one perfect second it feels like a finish line .
Then the arena opens up and I stop.
Kaelor stops beside me.
Neither of us speaks. Neither of us can speak.
Below the archway the path drops down a series of rough stone steps to the edge of a lake.
Not water. Not anything even freaking close to water.
The surface moves with slow, heavy certainty — dark at the edges where the crust churns, orange-red where the channels run deep.
All of it moving, crawling. All of it alive.
The heat radiating off it presses against my face like an open oven.
A lake of lava.
We're standing on a narrow ledge above its edge.
Ahead of us, scattered across the surface are platforms. Dozens of them.
Different sizes, floating on the lava, dark and unsteady, tilting slightly with the movement beneath, like breadcrumbs leading to the far end.
The path they form isn't straight or random.
Like someone designed a route and then shook the table.
Opposite us, barely visible through the ash and the heat shimmer: the relic.
It sits on a raised platform, elevated above the others, glowing with a light that's different from the first two. It’s tinted a warmer yellow hue and pulses in a rhythm I feel in my chest before I've fully registered seeing it — a pull that runs along the bond between Kaelor and me like a third thread, connecting us both to that thing across the lake.
Above it all rears the volcano. Like God watching his playthings.
I've lived in its shadow for however many rounds we've been here but I'm still not ready when I look directly at it.
It fills the sky from its peak above the ash cloud, flanks visible base to summit, erupting with the full committed energy of something that has been patient a very long time and is done waiting.
Fire and debris shoot skyward at regular intervals.
Ash falls constantly, grey and thick, collecting on my shoulders.
And the ground shakes.
RUMBLE.
A deep sustained tremor that travels up through the stone steps and into the soles of my feet and up through my legs and into my chest. Four seconds. Then it stops.
I look at Kaelor.
He's already looking at the lake. His jaw is set in a way I've learned to read.
"How bad?" I ask.
"Bad," he says. "But we've had bad before. Come on."
He takes my hand and we run.
Behind us: footsteps. More than one set. I hear Syrox first — that quiet, deliberate pace — then heavier impacts as others clear the archway.
"Move," Kaelor repeats.
The first platform is three yards out and a yard below the ledge. I jump and land and the platform tilts hard to one side.
“Shit!” I screech.
My stomach drops. I throw my arms out to regain balance. The lava is right there, half a yard from my left foot. The heat punches my face but avoids burning off my eyebrows thanks to the crown's protection — and I scramble right as the platform seesaws?—
Kaelor lands on the opposite side.
His weight corrects the tilt. The platform levels .
I breathe.
"Balance together," he says. "We need to mirror our weight."
"Noticed that," I say.
We take the next one the same way — him to the far edge, me to the near edge, reading each other's weight and movement. Our bodies find the rhythm fast. Third platform. Fourth. The tilting is manageable when we move as one unit.
The ground shakes again. A long, rolling tremor. I feel it in my back teeth. The lake churns and two platforms behind us spin off their axes. I hear a competitor go into the lava. I don't look back.
We keep moving.
Fifth platform. Sixth. The relic pull builds with every step, that pressure in my chest deepening, reaching.
Then I see what's in the lava.
The lake surface is busy enough that the shape between platforms almost doesn't register. I catch it in my peripheral vision — something large, low, moving against the current. I stop on the seventh platform and look directly at it.
It surfaces.
Just enough. A wide, flat face. Eyes set far apart and pale, built for reading heat shimmer. The body beneath is long and dense, moving through the lava with the easy muscular slide of something that evolved specifically for this. No armor. No protection. It doesn't need either.
It looks at me.
I look back.
"Kaelor," I say.
"I see it."
"What is it?"
"Varketh. "
Is it? I can hardly recognize him with the lava rolling over his face in thick rivulets.
The creature slides beneath the surface. I watch the shape of it tracking our position under the crust — patient, unhurried, with the attention of something that is deciding something.
"He's not attacking," I say.
"No."
"Why?"
He doesn't answer. Which means he doesn't know. With Kaelor, I don't know means the answer is something he hasn't seen before, which in these Games is never good news.
The ground shakes — harder this time, a deep structural shudder that rocks the platform under us. I grab Kaelor's arm. He grabs mine. We ride it out.
"How much time do we have?" I ask, when it passes.
"I don’t know. Until the volcano fully erupts. Each rumble is bigger than the last. Then the arena is destroyed. Everything in it."
I stare at him.
Then my focus slides to the platforms between us and the relic. Four more jumps. Maybe five. The math arrives fast and lands badly.
"Then we have to move," I say.
Eighth platform. Ninth. The relic is close — the pull almost uncomfortable, a pressure that matches my heartbeat. I can see the raised platform clearly, the relic sitting in the open on top of it.
The ground shakes.
The lake erupts in small bursts along its edges. Lava arcs upward and comes down hissing on the stone. Two platforms ahead crack and separate .
"Jump!" Kaelor says.
I do, and make it to platform ten. One more between me and the relic platform. I turn to check his position and the ground shakes — hitting with no warning, no grace period — and the volcano above us stops being a threat and becomes a full-blown fact.
Then, finally, after all the threats, the volcano erupts.
It isn't something I hear. It's something I'm inside. Light and pressure and heat, all at once, and the platform beneath me is gone in an instant. I'm in the air before I know it. Then the lava takes me and the armor rises from my skin but the wave is faster than the armor and?—
“Ten.”
Cold.
It’s back in the pod.
I press my cheek against the glass and stay there.
The reset restores everything. Clears the damage, returns me to full working condition, as if none of it happened. I’ve done this enough times to know the feeling — the unreality of waking up whole after something that should have ended me.
I stay against the glass and think.
We crossed ten platforms before the final tremor hit. We were fast — faster than I thought we could be — and it still wasn't enough. Because the tremors aren't tied to our progress. They run on a fixed cycle. Like this whole damn place. Faster doesn't change when the final tremor lands.
We need to cross faster.
Which means we need a different way across.
I peer over at Kaelor's pod. He's watching me, not hammering the glass. Waiting, the way he waits when he knows I'm working through something.
I hold up one finger. Again.
He nods.
But I have a churning sensation in the pit of my gut that just won’t quit. I sense that no matter how fast we run, how quickly we race, we’re just never going to reach the relic in time.
Then how? How?
The second attempt is cleaner. We've memorized the platform sequence — sizes, distances, tilt patterns. Our bodies move together without discussion, weight correcting weight.
Syrox reaches the third platform behind us and Kaelor intercepts him in two moves. Syrox goes into the lava and costs us thirty seconds, but we keep going.
Eight platforms. Nine. Ten. Eleven.
RUMBLE.
The relic platform is one jump away.
RUMBLE.
The lake surface churns. I feel it through my feet, the arena vibrating with something building below.
"Jump!" Kaelor instructs.
I jump to the relic platform and run toward the relic. The pull toward it is so strong now it's nearly a sound?—
RUMBLE.
The platform shudders. I stumble, catch myself, keep running. Six feet. Four. Two?—
RUMBLE .
The lake goes vertical and I’m once again unceremoniously tossed into the fire.
I’m beginning to get used to being chargrilled.
“Ten.”
I drape my arm across my eyes and stay lying on the floor.
The pod hums. The air is cool against my skin. I let the relief of it sink into me for as long as I can afford to, which isn't long because the countdown is already running and the rivals are already waking up.
And the arena is already waiting.
Again, it demands. But it won’t demand that forever. Eventually, we’ll run out of chances… and then what?
I keep my arm across my eyes.
The problem is still there when I'm ready for it. It'll wait thirty seconds.