Astral latched herself to rope and maintained a healthy distance ahead of Seth. She moved up the wall, glancing down at him from time to time. He had no doubt that she was furious with him; she had every right to be. But that look carried more than just a threat, maybe concern. She'd never voice it of course. She wouldn't always be there to dive in at the last minute to save him from his horrors.

He bit back against the pain in his muscles, 'I will get stronger.' He took a breath and pulled himself up another length, 'I will not give up.' He repeated his mantra, pushing all other thoughts from his mind. It didn't make the climb easier. It didn't make his body ache less.

Climbing over the vertical drop was gratifying. Seth crawled through the dirt away from the ledge, unable to convince his legs to support him. It was a small relief that Astral had collapsed nearby. She rolled over on his approach, lifted her head and scowled before falling back into the dirt. She breathed heavily against her attempts to control her lungs. He was familiar with the tactic. He opened his mouth to speak, finding the words caught behind a dry throat and a veil of grime.

Astral waved him off. He rolled over to face their scores. All of Squad VII's participating players were still in the game. The wall of resistance and the eternally late duo were benched for first game of the season. Seth's decision made a strong statement across the campus and within his team. This year, his word was law and he would not tolerate the usual whining and bargaining.

He smirked. At the Entrance Ceremony, he would have never had imagined that he'd dish out orders and cut out weak assets with calculated intent. He had no time for political games and hurt egos. There was work to be done and time was limited. His breath caught in his lungs as his nerves forced the urgency to his brain. He climbed to his feet, his body resisting his will.

"Do you have the code?" He shut his eyes against the pain in his arm. He could feel the slow burn of the remnants of Astral's failed purification aura climb up to his shoulder. Her spell was losing strength. Despite her retraction, her aura clung to him hungrily, soaking into his pores. The numbness in his fingertips was going to make handling his gun awkward.

Astral's exhausted snort was ominous. She fished the key card from her jacket and tossed it him. It fell somewhere between them. "We're on the wrong side aren't we," Seth said, deadpan.

"Ye-up."

He picked up the semi-transparent key card. “We have two options: track and disable the two remaining enemy combatants. Or find a way to get this key card to our team.” He hoped she'd chime in with an opinion.

Instead he got, “Aye aye captain,” she retorted with a mix of sarcasm and gusto and threw in a mock salute by pulling her closed fist to her shoulder and releasing her fist to the air above her.

He regarded the field, weighing his options. The field was barren, made up of stone, moss, and dust from years of combat training. Foot paths were worn into the stone, leading from dying bridges to the opposite end of the field. Tall stone pillars towered over the field, blocking a direct line of sight to anything beyond the next series of pillars.

He had seen the rendered schematics for the field hundreds of times, committing every nook and cranny to memory, like any good squad captain would have. He knew the exact number of stone pillars, two-hundred-and-five, and their average heights, eighty-four feet. He knew the tallest one was two-hundred and fifty feet tall and the second tallest was two-hundred-and-twenty feet tall, each on one side of the field but both within throwing distance of the canyon’s ledge. The typical distance between the structures was between twenty to fifty feet. And the pillars got shorter the closer to the edge of the combat zone they got. It was too well balanced to be anything less than man made.