I don't move a muscle. I don't have to.
The voices swell, delighted, ravenous, cooing in a way that makes my skin crawl.
Yesss…Break them.Make them kneel.Make them nothing.
They tried to stop me but this time they were to slow, my focus was already on them the illusions hit them like a divine hammer.
Both of them freeze.
Their eyes widen.
Their pupils dilate.
And then they start to fall.
Not physically. Not at first. Their minds fall first.
Ala gasps sharply and clutches her throat as if air has vanished because in her illusion, it has. She sees what I see in her at her core: her body unraveling into mist, strands of herself thinning, dissolving, the wind pulling her apart molecule by molecule. She tries to grab herself tries to hold herself together but her fingers pass through empty vapor before those to disappear into nothing
Her horror is so intense I can feel it scraping across my mind. And I love it.
Alexandra's terror is different. More intimate. More pathetic.
I see her on her knees in a dark alley so similar to Lont it makes me pause for a second. A ragged blanket over her shoulders. Painted lips trembling. A man's hand gripping her hair as she begs him not to hurt her. She's small again. Weak again. Powerless again. Once again an object that men used to torment.
For one stupid, useless instant, pity flickers in my mind.
A mistake.
The voices pounce on it like wolves.
She tried to kill you.She would have carved your bones out of your flesh.You owe her nothing.
A cold shiver runs down my spine as that tiny moment of softness is swallowed whole. The pity is gone.
Alexandra drops first.
Her bone shard slips from her hand as she collapses to her knees, clutching her head, shrieking into the floor. Her fear is loud in my mind so loud I taste it. Ala hits the ground next, her breath coming in frantic, panicked gasps as she tries to keep her body "together." Her fingers pass through her own torso as my illusion peels her stability away. She claws the ground, convulsing as if fighting to not vanish entirely.
I smile at the scene.
My temples throb with pressure. My thoughts feel stretched, pulled taut like a bowstring drawn too far. The world devolves into fractured layers of color and the sounds of their suffering.
Somewhere in the haze, I realize however that I'm losing sight of the test. The goal. The flag.
For a full, dangerous moment, I don't care. I want to kill them. I want to watch them both choke on their fear until their hearts give out.
The voices seethe.
End them. End them for daring to stand above you.Kill them them first then retrieve the prize.
I take a step toward the girls curled on the floor.
Their minds burn against mine pushing back, refusing to fully surrender, clawing at the mental prison I wove around them. Their resistance is weak, broken, pathetic.
But it exists.
And the strangest thing punches through my fury.
Respect.
A flicker. Barely a breath of it. But it's there.
Even crushed under illusion and fear and agony they think they feel they don't give up. Not immediately. Not completely.
I hate that I admire it. The voices hate it too.
RESPECT? they snarl. FOR WHAT? For these insects?
They hiss in pure righteous fury.
They wanted you dead. They wanted you broken.Give them what they desired. Twice over. Hundreds of times over. Bugs deserve no respect.
I inhale slowly, my breath shaking. Then I force myself to turn away. Barely. Just barely.
Letting them die slowly in the illusion is enough. The illusions intensify on their own, fueled by my unstable mind, by the voices laughing in delirious delight conceding my option. Their bodies twitch on the ground as the false worlds tighten around them, every nightmare deepening, swallowing their sanity and ability to fight back.
They won't get up again. They won't interfere.
The voices purr in admiration.
I ignore them pretend to anyways, and lift my gaze to the destroyed throne room.
Rubble. Dust. Shredded stone. Bone spikes like a forest stand before me.
The floor is torn to shit. The walls are barely standing
Amid the ruin, something catches my eye a sliver of color buried under shattered marble at the far right of the room.
The flag.
Huh. I tilt my head, genuinely confused for a moment. How the hell did it get all the way over there?
Then I follow the devastation across the room with my gaze, mapping the eruptions of bone, the jagged lines of impact.
Alexandra's power must've blasted it aside without meaning to, carried it across the room like a leaf caught in a storm.
I laugh under my breath. A slit, humorless sound.
"I swear to the gods," I mutter to myself, "these fucking year fives…"
Cocky idiots. They had me pinned. Completely dead to rights. One one more well-timed burst from Alexandra and I would've been paste on the throne room floor.
Instead they toyed with me. They gloated. They got arrogant and they decided to give up their overwhelming advantage of ranged attacks and approach me.
"Should've just vaporized the spot I landed," I say softly as I look back at their crumbled struggling bodies. "Would've saved you both the trouble."
The voices chuckle with me, their amusement cold and malicious. I step through the rubble toward the flag, boots crunching over debris. My body a wreck of pain, my clothes torn and blood covering my body i must have looked like a demon from hell.
I reach the flag.
For a moment, I just stare at it—half nestled in cracked stone, fabric torn, the wooden pole snapped at the end.
This stupid thing caused all of this.
All this violence.
All this rage.
All this pain.
I crouch down, rubble shifting beneath my feet as I reach towards the broken handle.
My fingers hover over it for the briefest heartbeat.
And the voices breathe into my mind, warm and poisonous.
Take it, little Reaper.Take it and rise.The Academy will learn your name in screams.
I smile faintly. Then I wrap my hand around the flag.