Every leap was less controlled than the last, every landing grew more rough, and every sudden change in orientation messed with his sense of direction more and more. His route was entirely gone — lost as he threw himself at the closest platform he saw.
A reckless move — for all he knew the route through was designed to trap him in an infinite loop.
He didn’t have a choice. Nearly every jump he was faced with the death waiting below.
Kaius just grit his teeth and kept jumping — trusting in his abilities to see him through. Slowly, his balance returned. Slowly, his confidence came back. He found a rhythm.
Then the beat changed.
Spotting the next platform, Kaius counted down the moments before the platform he was standing on was ripped into the chasm below. He jumped.
The platform fell early.
Wind roared, as invisible hands snatched his ankles while he was kicking — and yanked.
Kaius screamed — an explosive burst of force detonating immediately behind him. He sailed forwards, touching the next platform.
Another puff of displaced air and he was somewhere else — pitching forwards towards the black.
The platform wobbled, a second sudden change that brought nothing but terror. He jumped.
Too late.
Pure terror welled in his soul as the darkness below welcomed him with open arms — an implacable force wedging him to the stone with the force of a titan.
No.
No.
Kaius cast Expedient Shunt — an eruption of blue mana showering from the glyphs on his feet as explosive force tried to hurl him upwards.
The trap refused. He didn’t budge.
Desperation ignited within him. He cast again instantly, layering as many Shunts as he could — fighting off death with every weapon he had. Whatever gravitational magic held him in place couldn’t complete with the storm of power released under his feet.
He bowed under the force — bones quaking as the trap tried to claw him back down. For a moment, Kaius felt nothing but the cold kiss of his coming demise.
Barely a second after he first fell, Kaius broke free — sailing upwards. Pure unbridled relief flooded him.
It shattered like glass when his worst fear was realised. Above him — lingering in a floating trail over a strip of light — every platform shot down. Gravity took hold and pulled.
Burst after burst of force exploded beneath him — desperately trying to even slow his descent. It didn’t work.
He fell, screams echoing.
The black waited, cold and hungry.
VOS!
Truth filled his mind with a terrible weight of uncompromising knowledge. A sight that brought pain and confusion — that stretched the boundaries of who he was to breaking. Kaius wailed before it. A moment of transcendence that crushed him beneath eternity.
It was all he could do to burn Redoubt of the Speaker.
The blow softened. His soul stopped flaring. It still hurt — but he was him. Whole. Injured, but not broken. Kaius tried to pull back — to cut the connection down to something that didn’t tear at his very soul.
Yet desperation sapped at his will, and VOS filled him utterly.
Expedient Shunt!
A formless concept of expansion filled his spell. Empowered it by a means he only barely grasped. A weight.
The detonation hit him like a giant's hammer, uncaring of the jealous hold of the black.
Kaius shot upwards at a sharp angle — faster than he had descended, he shot towards the path forward. Blinded by wind, he could just barely make out the rapidly approaching light above. He kept screaming.
The edge of the chasm passed, he flew over the patch of path covered in holes. Bolts fired with concussive bursts, tearing through his flight path.
Pain bloomed as half a dozen ripped through his chest and stomach, exiting his back.
He was moving way too fucking fast!
Attempting to bleed off his momentum did nothing — the counter burst unempowered by VOS. He started to tumble, spinning uncontrollably. In desperation, he unleashed Shunt after Shunt in an attempt to slow himself down. It only made things worse — spinning him so fast the hall turned into a blur.
He hit something. Every bone below his chest broke. Sliding to the ground, Kaius fell mute as a wave of agony washed over him. He crumpled in, shards of bone shifting as they moved like worms through his twisted flesh — seeking their old homes.
Not all of them would. A wave of blood poured from his hip — all that remained of his left leg was a handspan of crushed meat.
Kaius coughed, weakly looking up.
Back the way he had come, there was a red smear on the ceiling. A rebound that had shattered him utterly.
Much more concerning were the thousands of glowing dots of white light, spinning in dizzying patterns directly above him. They grew brighter.
He howled in rejection, clawing at the ground as blood gushed in a trail behind him. Not now, not when he had so much left to do — his friends needed him.
The lights pulsed, searing bars of white light connecting them to the ground a heartbeat later. They punched through his chest and what remained of his legs, narrowly missing his head.
Survivable, if they hadn’t still been swirling.
Kaius felt his body come apart at the seams.
The black welcomed him with open arms.