Dimensional Descent

Leonel sighed.

"Alright. The exit is around the corner but there's nothing guarding it."

"And?" Aina asked.

She was smart enough to know that this was definitely not a good thing. Different species aside, the Rapax were clearly intelligent. They wouldn't make such a rudimentary mistake.

"There's nothing guarding it because they don't need to guard it, at least not this exit in particular. We're currently surrounded by three other identical entrances that lead to other hives identical to this one. In fact, we're in a field of nests right now and my Internal Sight doesn't spread far enough to tell if we're nearer the middle, an edge, or what direction we should go in."

The expressions of the three youths sunk when they heard this. They had thought that they were close to at least leaping over this first hurdle, but there was actually so much more to go? Who had set up this Selection? Did they want them all to die?!

"So you want to fly up and check which direction to go." Aina finished.

"There's no real other choice."

"Of course there's another choice. You could make an image probe to check for you. If that doesn't work, there's Blackstar. His stealth is much higher than any of our own. He could probably do it without risking being found out at all."

"An image probe would require materials and a Force Art that wouldn't be eroded by Anarchic Force, neither of which I have on hands right now. As for Blackstar, that is a more legitimate possibility, but I don't like it."

comes down to you being

efficiency. There's no amount of stealth that will help Little Blackstar hide

just relativity. Blackstar is far smaller than any one of us and also has the best evasive maneuvers. At the same time, the Rapax likely know that there's a bunch of humans running around in their territory by now, they might not be ready to spot a

think it's still better if

"You aren't explaining."

"It's hard to explain."

go. For one, you don't want to put Blackstar in danger. And, secondly, you trust in

to respond but suddenly found

Blackstar's head bobbed back and forth between them as the two 'argued', if it could even be called that. He seemed very curious about how this would end and even seemed amused

took into consideration. The first was what the situation was at face value, and the second was what the situation

his analysis to veer off path, the more likely it was that he would rather take on

faster than he could. In fact, one of the only people to ever impress him with their adaptation ability—Emna Beiceran from Crimson Hall—was a woman he almost immediately invited to become one of his generals. To this day, she had still been the only person he had ever tried to recruit like that. Sometimes he still lamented that he didn't manage to win her

if Emna was here, he would still

liked to cut out variables as much as possible, even way

to this point, Leonel closed his eyes and took a breath. When he opened them again, he rubbed his thumb on Blackstar's small little

"Ready, little guy?"