There was, logically, enough stacked against her that Azia’s fear was reasonable. It had been a while, for one. She didn’t bother reverifying the quantity of dispatch units at the Institute with Klare, although she knew the number to be sickeningly small. If the researcher’s words were true, their experience was nil, and darker toxins had never tried to choke them out.

  Yvette was combat-certified. Part of Azia wondered if Rae was the same, lest she be left to teach a helpless army in the worst way. She’d question the prediction discrepancy later. For now, she’d be lucky if all involved could survive the next fifteen minutes, at minimum.

  Circular as the Institute was, Azia fumbled her way back to the entrance eventually. There were those that streamed past her, sprinting opposite her flight and away from what vile poisons clogged the sky outside. Even now, she wanted to scream at her back, begging a librarian and an anomaly to surrender stubbornness in favor of self-preservation.

  One was at least predictable, and she knew Kassy would stray from battle. One was unstable. Azia worried about his reaction far, far more. As with so many things, it was all she could do to pray, and she ran yet faster with Klare in hand.

  The boom that came with her barreling into the front doors wasn’t loud enough to overshadow her heartbeat. It wasn’t even loud enough to overshadow the rumbling above, nor the sporadic crackling that left the blackened sky flashing blue. It was the worst kind of blue, and Azia would’ve given anything to trade it for true purity she’d grown so fond of.

  She hadn’t seen it in years. It was incredibly distracting, and she nearly stumbled down the steps in the process of tracking it. Azia lamented too late the way by which Klare stumbled at her side, given her haphazard descent.

  Thirty seconds hadn’t been nearly enough time to navigate the building. She’d shirked five precious minutes in favor of apprehension, and she paid the price with blue of another kind. It was minute, granted, only the absolute slightest peeking shades mingling with overwhelming black. They were stable. They were solid, composed, immune to the sloshing and sloughing she’d learned to expect from murky browns.

  If Azia envisioned a venomous person, she could level her gaze with plenty beyond. There was always something distressing about the lack of transparency, by which she could at least peer deeper into the forms that usually cursed her. Here, her eyes stopped where skin didn’t exist, and she stared only at shadows given structure.

  Shadows weren’t supposed to move on their own. Shadows weren’t supposed to cast themselves, nor descend from on high as the sickest of angels. Shadows weren’t supposed to outnumber every terrified researcher present, masked behind false confidence or not. For every one they had, Azia counted four poisons given form. Given the severity, and given their incompetence, it was nearly a death sentence.

  Azia wanted to vomit. She almost did, and suppressing the reflex was Hell. For a moment, she only drank in the coagulating sickness with her eyes. The Precipitation was hardly stagnant. If it was, it wouldn’t be for long, and what gap each of them clung to would be shattered frighteningly fast. They had no way of knowing, to be fair.

  Azia unfurled her hand from Klare’s at last, and her fingers almost ached in the wake of her death grip. She gave what attention she had to the horizon and what shaky touch she possessed to a polearm.

  “Azia,” Klare breathed, her voice shaking severely.

  “I’m not leaving your side,” Azia reassured, clinging to what confidence she could scrounge together. “I won’t let anything happen to you.”

  She didn’t process the noisy world until she tried to speak, nor the abundance of stimuli that shredded her senses. A siren still screamed in the distance, and the clouds still growled at her. Pouring disgust beat down upon her and splattered against her suit, thick droplets of polluted black beading down her arms. There were shouts, panicked as they were themselves.

  She’d hear bubbling she loathed soon enough, up close and in her ears as she slashed with all she had. If Azia waited too long, it would probably come to her, instead. There came an urge to squeeze her eyes shut and hold fast to silence, at least briefly. She didn’t have the luxury.

  Azia gave her eyes to those defenseless behind her, instead. She’d been hoping for the same misty veil, thick and wavering against challenging downpours. Seleth offered it up and split it wide, his arms spread as he raised them high. Draping blue smothered himself and a librarian in turn, a pure stream rippling above serving to blunt every toxic blow.

  With certainty, there were far more charging droplets than last time. He still soaked up every last one with aplomb, and his crystalline barrier was the cleanest shield he could gift Kassy with. It was Azia’s one and only relief.

  She didn’t want his gaze. She didn’t want to know what was behind it at all. Azia threw it back to figures much too near, familiar and not all at once. With tentative steps, she inched her way forwards along saturated sands, following where adrenaline saw fit to steer her voice. For a moment, it wasn’t her voice at all. Given what was to come, blending in was useless, and survival took priority.

  “Everyone!” Azia cried.

  She earned eyes. She didn’t know how many, nor did she check. She felt them on her back, and that was enough. Klare gave her the same. “Azia?” she murmured.

  “My name is Azia, and I’m an alchemist from the Tenaveris Alchemist Institute!” she called over the raging storm. “I’m combat-certified, and I’m going to fight alongside you today!”

  Klare didn’t ask what she was doing. No one did, and Azia was grateful for that much. The hush in commotion around her eased exactly one of the many noises tormenting her. It was just enough reprieve to gather her thoughts as she leveled spearing metal with the looming silhouettes. “Speak up now if you’ve ever dealt with a Thunderstorm before!”

  They didn’t. Azia found only silence--the mortal kind, at least. It was confirmation of Klare’s words, if not permission to continue. “Tier Three isn’t like Standard! It’s faster, it’s deadlier, and it hits harder! No matter what, don’t let your guard down!”

  In truth, even she wasn’t certain if she could take multiple at once. Azia didn’t have a choice. If she gave it everything she had, she could probably pull it off. She doubted the same could be said for them, although she’d never admit it aloud.

  Instead, Azia offered up what confidence she could afford to part with. Logically, for who they were, they knew what to do. Actually doing it was a different problem altogether. “It’s still Precipitation! The storm cores are still in the same place! Aim where you usually do, and you’ll be able to destroy them! It’s not impossible!”

  Either she inched closer to Klare, or Klare inched closer to her. One of those was true, at some point, instinctive as it surely was. It fit her words well enough. “Stay together! Don’t get separated, and watch each other’s backs! Don’t try to take them on alone! Follow your training, and do what you always do!”

  Of one of those sentiments, Azia was absolutely being a hypocrite. She saw movement, murky and foreign as it was. Speed didn’t matter. It was mobile, and that was her greatest concern. She was lucky that she’d gotten as much time to speak as she had.

  “Azia--”

  Azia didn’t give Klare the chance to talk, cutting off her own name thrice over. “Back me up. I’ll do the hard part. I just need you to cover me. Can you do that?”

  The soft clink of metal rising into position was a solid answer. “Y-Yeah.”

  “I’m probably gonna end up dealing with more than one at once. Don’t panic if that happens, okay? I’ve got it.”

  “Yeah.”

  Whether or not that was true was debatable. For Klare’s sake, it needed to be.

  Azia didn’t throw her eyes behind her. She knew he’d catch it, if she was loud enough. “Seleth,” she called.

  “I’m here,” Azia heard.

  It wasn’t the response she’d expected. She didn’t argue with it. “Do not move.”

  “But--”

  “Don’t come out here at all. You wanna watch so bad? You do it from there, and you stay the hell away from here. Don’t move a muscle. Take care of Kassy.”

  “What if you--”

  “I don’t care what happens to me,” Azia shouted, not bothering to stem her climbing ire. “No matter what I do or what you see, do not come out here, Seleth! I mean it!”

  He’d offered her his confidence, last time. Granted, she’d given him far more of her own. Now, he was silent. Seleth didn’t so much as gift her with an affirmation, and that was equally as distressing. Azia didn’t have the time to dwell on it. She had just enough time to breathe, and she made the most of the deep inhale she could steal.

  “Ready?” Azia asked.

  “No,” Klare whispered.

  As with so much else, she didn’t have a choice. For once, Azia wasn’t the one who moved first.

  Streaming black wasn’t quite a blur. It got close. Had Azia not been as fixated as she was, it more than likely would’ve caught her off guard. At this severity, she kicked herself for not expecting it. The speed discrepancy wasn’t sickening, and yet it was enough to leave her heart slamming against the walls of her chest. Long before she took the first step against soaked sands, Azia was questioning if every researcher would make it out alive.

  Terrified or not, she very much respected the way that Klare could keep up. Already, whatever sounds of desperate conflict and slashing blades dotted her surroundings were irrelevant. There was a girl at her side, and there was a toxic silhouette that bore down on her. There were two, actually.

  Azia highly, highly doubted it would stay that way. It took effort to outrun Klare, and smashing footsteps fought to overtake the researcher. Azia raised her glaive, she steadied her hands, and she braced for the inevitable end of her collision course.

  “Back me up!” she reminded.

  “Got it!”

  She hardly heard Klare at all. The bubbling was louder than she was used to, whether or not Azia had heard it twice over before. She’d sparred enough times in her life, and Precipitation was far from a human person. Even now, even here, even sturdy as it was and shapely as it stood, Azia refused to make the full comparison. Still, the way it blighted her was borderline indistinguishable.

  Frothing black was closer to fingers than ever before, and it didn’t hesitate to trace perfect paths to her throat. Coalescing sickness matched flawlessly with the clouds above, unleashing yet more pouring toxins down onto the desert. Azia had contemplated modifying her glaive to be double-ended, once, by which the tail would be just as deadly. Today, she regretted turning down the idea.

  This story is posted elsewhere by the author. Help them out by reading the authentic version.

  Where she met resistance before her, she found the same on her left. It was her fault for taking the lead, whether or not she’d anticipated it happening. Azia saw the streak of gushing black out of the corner of her eye long before she heard it. Swift jerks of her arm were all that spared her from false fingers clinging to her face.

  They got close enough to her suit already, and what sweeping slashes she offered up snagged on afterimages. It took effort to view both forms at once to begin with, cornered as she was. Azia embraced defense, doubled down, and did what she could.

  Splattering liquid came to splash her clothes, whether or not she’d claimed it herself. Given the grunts of effort that followed, Azia gave silent thanks to her brave backup. Polluted hands were never severed, and two flavors of noxious shadows still swiped at all that was vulnerable. It was taking more effort to shield her face than she would’ve liked. At the very least, it was her face alone that Azia feared for right now. She gritted her teeth, and she rebelled with a blade.

  She had little room to work, whether or not Klare could earn her precious space. Precipitation simply moved too quickly. It left Azia cramped, fighting to outspeed rushing disgust with what curbed swings she could muster. A blade snagged on liquid wrath, and she finally earned spraying debris of her own. Horrid as it was, it was progress.

  Azia was multitasking to a dizzying degree, battling to account for four hands that trailed to her neck. One of them deviated, at some point, and she didn’t enjoy the way it drifted towards her eyes. That hand, at least, she took for herself.

  A hefty swing at close range took effort. It was effort well spent, and Azia cried out as she made the only cut that mattered. So, too, did she steal the second one moments later, face-to-face with empty black as her ears grew clogged with bubbles. She could’ve sworn they were getting worse, sludgy sounds sinking into her blood and weighing her down. By proximity alone, it was overwhelming. It was one more way that Rain hated her. Azia went for a heart that wasn’t real.

  Finding the leeway to thrust was a crisis. Shining metal took the plunge deep into poisonous black, and she was satisfied with the steady pressure against the blade. That, too, was worse than usual, curling with a force that left her gripping the shaft harder. Azia strained her muscles in the process of slicing upwards, tearing her way through the worst the sky had to offer. When her blade erupted from a false head, it was hardly a victory.

  Even a rupturing silhouette left little cause to celebrate. So near to her as it was, the explosion was awful. Her skin was collateral damage, and Azia had no time with which to guard her face from bursting black. Liquid toxins smashed into her cheeks with such force that it hurt. She was incredibly lucky that she hadn’t gotten any in her mouth, although the sharp burn that gradually settled onto her skin was highly concerning. She had no room to suffer. She had to do it twice.

  Klare was beside her, and Azia was relentless. Where she slashed left, Klare slashed right. Where she went for one rising wrist, Klare’s blade bit into the other. What clotted was faulty beneath a double-sided assault, and her support was a blessing. Once more, Azia thrust soaked metal into the center of the silhouette, blocking out bubbles in favor of swirling pressure.

  She found what she wanted, she stole it away, and cleaving cuts left her nearly drowning. The second time, erupting poisons snuck past her lips. When they stung her tongue fiercely, coughing was instinctive.

  Klare’s face flooded with worry. “Are you alright?”

  “Keep your guard up!” Azia shouted.

  She’d been correct about the quantity, and she was cursed to endure far more than two. If they were still spawning, she wouldn’t have had the chance to keep track. She hadn’t lied to Klare about the Downfall record, and she truly had never exceeded ten minutes on a normal day.

  This was not normal, and ten minutes was not applicable. If memory served, fifteen was still her closest guess as to an average, given the tier. Azia had no idea how long it had been. If she’d been fighting for hours, she would’ve believed it. If she hadn’t even reached a full minute, that would’ve been just as feasible.

  The second time, Azia earned three.

  “On your right!”

  “I see it!”

  They were movements she knew, reflexes she’d absorbed. They were actions that had long since become instinctive, regardless of severity. Precipitation was Precipitation, and the sentiment carried nothing but truth. The number was irrelevant. Speed was irrelevant. Azia sized them up and cut them down, battling every miserable sensation all the way there.

  “Higher!”

  “I know!”

  She had no room for concern, as to those she didn’t know. She had no room for pain, as to the toxins that once more burned her mouth. This time, Azia was fairly certain they’d crawled slightly further back, and she felt the same awful sting in the back of her throat. Her vision swam the moment discarded liquid irritated her eyes, and still she refused to stem her slashing. She thrust. She found pressure. She sliced. She repeated.

  “Are you alright?”

  “I’m fine! Focus!” Azia yelled.

  She both preferred to be a shield and loathed the same. With certainty, it had been minutes. It might’ve actually been hours. The distant crack of hellish lightning was a concern of its own, and Azia had always wondered if it was possible that she’d be struck.

  For now, flashing plasma paled in the face of liquid black. It lived in her ears, and it lived on her clothes. She was utterly soaked, and she grew yet more so by the moment. It was unavoidable. Her lungs were burning, and not in the way she was used to.

  “Azia, are you sure you’re--”

  “I’m fine!” she screamed twice over.

  Azia had lost count of how much her blade had claimed. She’d lost count of what had claimed her, just the same. She’d lost even the slightest guess of how much time had passed. With certainty, it had been far, far too long.

  She had the briefest window by which to turn her head, her glaive once more liberated of gushing pollution. What hadn’t come to crush her was devastating on either side, with or without support. The number was ridiculous, and Azia counted no less than thirty venomous figures at a glance.

  Their own ranks still numbered less than that, collectively. Most weren’t half as filthy as her, and that told enough of a story. In their defense, they’d never so much as seen the spearing lightning above until now.

  There was enough fear, evenly distributed and etched into every face. There were enough shaky hands and heaving shoulders. There were enough wavering shouts, and there were more than enough knees that had dropped to the muddied sand.

  Glaives had followed them down, in some cases. Some stood up for those who could no longer stand, granted. Azia hated that they still had to stand against the vile storm at all.

  Reds once quick and brave slowed to a stop at Azia’s side, transfixed by the same horrors. “There’s so much of it,” Klare murmured, her voice trembling fiercely. “How long has it been? How long can it even--”

  “Pay attention!”

  Azia almost wasn’t fast enough. With a shining blade, she didn’t make it at all. Her body was the closest thing to a shield she could offer, and she barely made the leap in time. What blackened appendages trailed towards Klare’s neck closed around her own instead, and she bore the full brunt of a poisonous lunge.

  It was an awful sensation, fleeting as it was. Azia caught her name, screeched in panic. She lost her air, and her gaze filled with nothing but false darkness so near.

  A flashing glaive was her one salvation. Ten murky fingers were no more, and hands born of clotting Rain crashed to the ground in sickening puddles. Azia coughed heavily, clutching at her throat as she gasped for air. It was all she could do to keep her eyes open, blurry as the world slowly became. It had definitely been fifteen minutes. It had to have been.

  “Azia!” Klare screamed, never stilling her sloppy slashes. “Are you--”

  Her well-being was irrelevant. It didn’t matter how many toxic touches she stole away. It didn’t matter for either of them, really. What they destroyed, the sky returned threefold. Azia had her oxygen back. Klare lost hers, in turn. No amount of self-sacrifice would’ve kept it safe.

  Azia was half-convinced they weren’t annihilating anything. There were two. There were three. There might’ve been four. She’d given up on counting those, too, and she didn’t want to know how many were at war with the others. One alone was enough to choke the researcher, brackish fingers locking around a different throat entirely. Klare staggered, jerking her head futilely as she flailed.

  Weak fingers of her own rose to claw at her neck, delving beyond the polluted surface and into useless disgust. The angle of her glaive meant nothing. Klare could do little more than scratch at a wavering body, and she could do little to keep her footing.

  Severity was hardly enough to change Azia’s approach. She was more than conscious of the power discrepancies, granted. Still, the sight of Precipitation strong enough to lift Klare clean from the dirtied sands was heart-stopping. Klare kicked weakly, the shaft of the glaive slipping from her fingers and falling to the earth below. Two hands battling that which wasn’t solid were worthless. Azia had her turn with screaming, slow as she was to register it.

  She’d hardly lurched forward before interloping black fought to blight her with the same. Weaving between swiping grasps and clawing assaults was miserable. Azia paid for it with excessive wetness, wasted toxins splattering against her suit in grotesque waves.

  The skin of her hands was beginning to burn, although she wasn’t certain if it had hurt all along. Adrenaline was a poor bandage. She was a poor runner. Sopping metal was a poor savior, and it barely did the job.

  Azia cried out as she brought the glaive down hard over her head, slicing clean through what touch had kept Klare aloft. She’d gotten the other wrist, too, and she counted her blessings for that much--close as it had come to Klare’s eyes. Klare didn’t fall with grace, hitting the sand with a thud violent enough for her to bounce. With certainty, she’d hit her head. Azia waited for her to cough. She didn’t.

  “Klare!” she shouted. “Get up!”

  That, too, she didn’t do. It was a miracle that her shoulders rose and fell. Azia should’ve been grateful for that much, her breaths shallow and her suit drenched in toxins. Bound to the sands below, every attempt to stir was feeble at best and pitiful at worst.

  To fall to her knees was suicide. Azia almost did anyway. “Klare, get up! You’re--”

  That which besieged her missed her neck. It might not have been aiming there at all, ultimately. Her face was enough of a target.

  Azia was screaming into nothing. It was the worst way to drown, muffled by venom and burning alive. She hadn’t closed her eyes fast enough, and what straying droplets stung her corneas left her in flames. Her own garbled cries were lost. It hurt. It really, really hurt.

  In regards to flailing, Azia wasn’t much better. It was probably instinctive, and desperate slashes of an angled glaive left her swiping blindly at the blackened figure. At the very least, she never left the ground. What little leverage she had was borderline useless. She hit something, eventually. The most strained twist of her arm was just barely enough to clip an arm far less genuine, and toxic fingers uncurled from her cheeks.

  Azia stumbled. She choked. She heard her own name, carried on distant screams. Were she to witness one singular crossbow bolt sail past her head, her heart would’ve exploded. More than her own safety, she prayed to witness wavering black alone--if not a parting storm, instead. As it was, she could hardly witness anything, and her vision only blurred ever further. The eternal searing in her eyes wasn’t helping. She nearly raised the glaive too late.

  No longer could she stand tall before wounded reds. It was a miracle that she could stand at all. Azia wasn’t sure exactly what it was that kept her on her feet, nor if anything drove her to absorb every blow besides pure instinct. She forewent swinging altogether, and reaching hands clawed at the shaft of the polearm.

  It was a poor deterrent for the three shadows that pushed forward still. If she moved any further back, she’d trip over Klare’s body. She didn’t even have the room to check if the girl was breathing.

  One assault was too much. Polluted grasps went for her chest, and Azia tripped anyway. If it was fatigue, she would’ve believed it. If it was pain, that was just as feasible. Either way, she staggered, collapsing to the sand with a cry of shock.

  She held fast to the glaive all the way down, whether or not it would do her good on the ground. Looking up was a mistake, given the poisonous droplets that stung her aching cheeks. Looking forward wasn’t much better. Encroaching silhouettes dripped disgust down onto her suit from above regardless.

  Her own name was muddied. Her own name was pleading. From whose lips it came, Azia wasn’t sure. For now, raising a glaive high was the best she could do.

  Bound to the slick sands as she was, reaching one core would be impossible--let alone three. She didn’t have a choice. She contemplated draping herself over Klare, and the researcher’s shallow breaths didn’t ease her heart in the slightest. It hardly mattered that they still existed, ultimately. Azia’s head spun. The rest of the world followed suit.

  She might’ve hit her head outright, for how fiercely her ears were ringing. It was the first interruption to eternal bubbling she’d found in some time. She hadn’t so much as realized it was eternal in the first place, engraved into her eardrums as the noise had become.

  It grew louder, once more. She didn’t keep her peace for long, nor did a useless blade serve as a deterrent from below. Even plagued by bubbles and surrounded by black, Azia didn’t dare close her eyes. There were certain emotions she should’ve been battling, probably. For the life of her, she couldn’t settle on which ones.

  She wasn’t sure if she should be grateful for backup or resentful of the need. The moment she heard footsteps pounding against the sand at her back, she thought to beg for distance. In that way, at least one of them could be spared. They could take Klare, maybe. Azia was still conscious, and she could still hold a weapon. As such, she could buy what precious time would spare a life from more frothing bubbles.

  They were loud. They were so, so loud. They were faster, thinner by sound alone. She was used to sludge, sickening and slow. Azia wasn’t used to what was pure, and she wasn’t used to gorgeous blues in the midst of a storm. She was used to glaives and toxins in the heat of battle. The boy who sprinted to bar her path was a new fixture, and the clothes on his back left a different black cursing her eyes. As was so often the case, he was out of place.

  His hands were aloft, and his arms were spread wide. Rippling tides born of his touch were perfect, steadfast and resilient against every unnatural droplet that kissed them. It was the closest the sky would come to the true rain it deserved, his misty shield traded in place of wavering streams. Azia had never seen them so lively, if not still beautiful. He was too splendid for the storm.

  Seleth’s fingers tensed, and his curling waters were a threat. “Leave her alone!” he shouted.