Somewhere to her left Allayria hears a muffled scream, and then light flickers on above her. Yes—she was right: if she leans against one side of the room and stretches out her hand it will easily touch the opposite side. She looks around and up at the low ceiling. It too can be easily reached and there's something about this Allayria doesn't like. 

"No need to panic, no need to panic!" Ruben shouts, and Allayria turns to see a small slot at eye-level open on the door. She watches as he strides past, looking unruffled by the cries of alarm and protest.

"This next task is very simple: look at the wall directly in front of you. On it, you should see four sliding metal disks with numbers written on them. Directly above these disks are a set of runes. Solve the code, set the disks to the answer, and get out of the room."

He pauses here, and Allayria thinks she can hear a long stream of cursing coming from the room to her left.

"Now, those with unconventional items: do not despair. As you might have seen, the walls of your room are not bare. You may be able to find some information on them to help you out. Alright, everyone ready? Go!"

Allayria turns back, looking at the strange symbols in front of her. She's trying to study them, trying to decipher what they mean, but all she can think about is how small the space is, how close the walls are, how if it fell over now it would be like laying in a tomb.

She lets out a shaky exhale, closing her eyes for a moment.

That's not helpful, she tells herself, opening her eyes and fixing her gaze on the disks and the symbols—nothing else. Panicking is not going to get me out of here.

But staring at the symbols won't get her out either. Ignoring the jolt of pain, she tries to think back to Lethinor, to the codebook Ben had, the symbols he deciphered, but none of them looked like these. She's never seen anything that looks like these and, suns and moons, she wishes she had that damned codebook...

She hears a rumble to her right—way down but, aside from a few shouts of alarm, nothing else happens. She places a hand on the wall, trying to feel through it—see if she can see anything—and something curious happens. She runs flat into another metal wall around the stone ones.

So none of the Nature-callers can get out, she thinks, impressed. Of course, they probably could bust through the door, unless...

She presses a hand on the door and feels the same layering. Ruben must have used a Smith-caller to meld the metal together after they entered the rooms. Despite being perfectly capable of Skilling away both elements, she feels a pang of alarm, an unwilling feeling of being boxed in.

Turning back to the code, she flips open the watch, staring down at it then up at the symbols.

A question queries itself in your head:

Is it perception you'll need or a language never said?

"Perception..." she whispers, holding the clock up next to the symbols. "Perception, perception, perception..."

She hears a door rattle somewhere, then a shout.

Perception...

"I can't be in here!" a voice shrieks. "Let me out!"

Time—will something happen when the hands move to a certain position? If I stand here...

"Let me out! I need to get out!"

Someone bangs on the wall near hers, shaking the box she's in. She nearly drops the watch, bracing herself against the walls as it almost teeters... Her knees bend as she sinks a little, sinking her center of mass lower, stabilizing it. Her breath comes out erratically as someone starts screaming now, screaming in high, panicky wails that seem to ring through her head.

She fumbles with the watch, holding it up, but it's hard to concentrate, and someone else yells too. Is the air becoming thinner?

No, no, she thinks to herself, shaking her head vigorously. Concentrate. Perception. Perception.

She holds the watch face up at eye level, glaring at it.

Do the hands need to be in a certain...

She stares at it now, stares at the minute hand, counting seconds in her mind.

It doesn't move. The watch is stuck—stuck with the short hand pointing to four and the large three notches before the two.

He gave me a broken watch, she thinks furiously, fingers digging into the metal. He gave me a damned broken—

And then she freezes as it hits her.

The watch clatters to the floor as she begins turning the dials, the screaming like a wheedling ring in the back of her mind, prodding and burrowing.

"Zero," she mutters, just to try to drown it out. "Four..."

Someone's causing a commotion next to her—Durai?—they seem to be trying to rock the box, trying to break out that way. The walls around her shiver, tilting, and she crouches, concentrating all she can on the dials in front of her.

Zero... Seven.

She twists the final dial into place and hits the button next to it, lurching forward as the wall falls backward, crashing onto the training arena ground.

Dust puffs up and she wheezes, hands and knees pressed against the fallen stone.

Peter's watching her from across the way and she stands up quickly, patting down her clothing.

He nods when she approaches and says, when she glances around: "It's just us."

"Who's making all that noise?" she rasps, calling a thin strain of water out of a nearby basin and washing her face and hands with it.

"Bora mostly," he answers. "Nina has screamed a bit too."

Allayria half-glances at him. She knows Nina is one of his teammates, but he doesn't seem too concerned.

Suddenly, the box next to the remains of Allayria's begins to violently shake.

"I think Durai is trying to smash the thing open," Peter says. "He probably has more of a shot at that than actually figuring out the riddle."

Several boxes down, a wall hits the floor with a loud clap. Finn jumps out, looking mildly surprised at the whole thing. Hearing, perhaps, the third player escaping, a box on the other side of the line begins to shudder and Bora screams again.

"Someone help me! Help me get out!"

"Do you think they're alright?" Allayria asks, growing concerned.

Peter shrugs.

"I don't think he likes small spaces," Finn supplies very helpfully.

Another box breaks open and Fae tumbles out, looking a little harried, but also immensely relieved.

"How the hell—?" she pants, looking at them all. "What was your clue?"

Peter holds up the clock, showing her it.

"It's frozen on the code."

Fae swears.

Another box breaks and Caj jumps out this time. Someone else starts joining Bora in screaming—it's a high-pitched, panicked voice barely intelligible above the other screams.

Allayria makes the decision as the Smith-caller walks over to them. She grabs his arm and turning him back—even as he shoots her a sharp, searching look—to the boxes.

"C'mon," she says, "Let's get those two out."

They go to Bora's box first, and Caj pulls the metal back. Allayria raises her hands, ready to pull the stone apart, but part of the stone cage is already gone and the rest of it blasts apart.

Debris punches her in the stomach and Allayria is flung back, hitting the ground with an oof of air.

"Hey!"

"Wait—"

"KNOCK IT OFF."

The last shout comes from right beside her, and Allayria, curling painfully up from her sprawl on the ground, sees Caj, the ire billowing like smoke in his thunderous expression as he points an impressive metal club at a white-faced, crouching Bora. The Nature-caller has a wild, unfocused look in his eye, and his breaths are sucking in and out in sharp, beating pants. The other three are a few paces back—both Peter and Fae have their arms out, eyes locked on the hulking man. Finn is just standing there, head tilted, looking vaguely surprised.

Allayria opens her mouth to tell Bora to calm down but all she can do is rasp—he's winded her, and blasted skies, it hurts.

"You should sit down and take a few deep breaths," Fae says to Bora. "You're out; everything is fine."

Allayria rolls up to a sitting position, fighting back against the stitch in her side. Caj suddenly turns around, extending one of his dark hands toward her. She grasps it, lurching up onto her feet.

"Nina," she gasps, pinching the cramp in her abdomen. "L-let's get her out too."

Caj gives her another dark look, eyebrows raised.

"We'll stand a little farther away this time."

Two more boxes break as they pass and Allayria hears Hiran's cheerful voice as she and Caj approach another shuddering, wailing box. They make sure to stand several paces away this time and Allayria moves quickly after Caj begins to pull the metal away, gripping all the stone with her Skill and wrenching it out of the grasping tendrils of Nina's call. The Solveig woman stumbles out with a pale-faced whimper, her arms shaking as they hit the ground.

Peter and Hiran walk over to her, and when Allayria turns around she sees Lei crouched beside a hunched over Bora.

"I'm sorry," the hulking man says when he sees her approach.

Allayria gives him a one-shoulder shrug.

"I need to work on my reaction time."

Over the next hour people tumble out of the boxes. After a bit more shaking, Lei and Caj free Durai from his box and he emerges, red-faced and huffing, glaring around at the lot of them as he stalks over to the water basin.

More and more break out until there is only one box left, and they wait. And wait. And wait. People begin to glance around at each other as the minutes tick on, and Allayria turns to Lei, and asks: "Who's left?"

But at that moment Fae steps forward, sprinting up to the box, and she calls in a loud, clear voice: "Yasu? Yasu, are you okay?"

The rest of them fall silent, but no answer comes from the box. Fae turns around, brows furrowed, and she looks at Rahul, the other Keesark recruit.

"Yasu?" she tries again, tentatively, and Rahul walks over, calling to the girl as well.

"Wasn't she the one who got the poison?" Peter asks and Hiran murmurs an affirmation.

"Help me," Fae says suddenly, turning around and grabbing Caj, who starts at the physical contact. "Please, take the cage down."

He shifts, looking distinctly uncomfortable, but moves forward, pulling the metal back as Rahul quickly follows with the stone.

Yasu is curled in the corner of the room, arms folded on the tops of her knees, but the poison vial lies unopened on the opposite side of the floor.

"Suns and moons," Hiran murmurs sympathetically as Fae falls forward onto the ground next to the girl, hand grasping her shoulder.

"What was Master Ruben saying the first day about admitting personal limits?" Kali adds, watching the two girls with narrowed eyes. "She needs to go home before she gets herself killed."

And, hours after Yasu was taken to the infirmary, Ruben confides to Allayria and Lei that the Keesark girl did go home. It was, Allayria privately admits, for the best. There's still the third task.

"What are we doing tomorrow?" Allayria asks Ruben then, rubbing her eyebrows to fend off sleep as she pulls her feet up into her chair. Her brain feels like jelly and she rather wishes she could go to bed.

"You'll be training," Ruben answers, popping a cube of cheese into his mouth. "I need time for the third round. I have to put you all into teams... How was working with the Smith-caller, by the way?"

Allayria shrugs.

"Fine. He's not much of a talker. He can bellow if you need him to though."

"Anyone can bellow if you need them to," Lei says tartly from his stiff perch. He doesn't touch any of the food, though his eyes occasionally dart toward it.

"But not quite in the same dulcet tones," she answers, picking a cheese cube up with deliberate slowness. "He has a way with words that makes it clear he'll bash your brains in if you don't cut it out."

"A true lyricist," Ruben murmurs, turning the wooden spoon in his coffee cup with an absentminded spin of his finger.

Allayria grins and eats the cheese with relish.

Ruben keeps his word: the following day consists of a very long return lesson to Skilling unseen objects. For reasons best known to himself, Ruben insists that Lei learn it too and, much to Allayria's delight, Captain Obvious is just as abysmal as she is.

Maybe, she thinks smugly, watching as his face turns purple and the rock sitting behind him doesn't even twitch, even worse.

At lunch Allayria hears murmurs from the others that the courtyard and some of the surrounding woods near the base have been cordoned off, that soldiers are being denied access on Ruben's orders. Allayria steals a glance at Lei when she hears this, but there's a small twitch in his brow, a slight furrowing, that makes her believe this is news to him too.

When they meet up at night, she grills Ruben but he answers her only in half shrugs and one-syllable mutterings.

"You'll be in teams and it's a scavenger-esque thing," he finally says wearily. "I'll tell you all what you need to know tomorrow."

"We should be on the same team then," Lei interjects importantly, leaning in over the table a little. "We can run in the middle of the pack, focus on observing how the other teams work."

"I have the perfect team for you both," Ruben murmurs, absentmindedly tapping his soggy spoon on his forehead, his bushy brow crinkling as he stares down at the paper in front of him. "They'll all have what they need..."

He doesn't explain this, but the spoon keeps tapping on his forehead and Lei has an amusingly wide-eyed look on his face, as if he thinks Ruben's brains must be addled, not just sleep-deprived and preoccupied.

"Everything fits," the Skill master murmurs, eyes drooping. "Everything will be... balanced."

A/N: Ruben is my spirit animal right now.

Hi, yes, hello, I am early this week. Why, you ask? I am leaving you, the internet. It's just for a little while. I need to spread my wings, fly a little... to get some gelato.

I'm kidding, but not really.

In English: I'm out traipsing around in Europe like a lunatic this weekend and can't get a reliable internet connection. But I can get gelato.

I really want some gelato.

In tangential, but less ridiculous news: Paragon has reached over 30,000 views! It is nuts and crazy and thank you guys so much, new readers and old readers, vocal readers and silent readers. I'm so flattered and I really appreciate all the feedback. You are the silver lining amongst looming deadlines and stress eating.

Aaaand, back to our normal programming: a full view of the (unrelated) artwork,"Sorrow" can be found on my deviantart account here: https://asimsluvr.deviantart.com/art/Sorrow-193865301.