Rising Shards

The ground was close to giving in under us. My first thought was to use my powers. I could make earthquakes mainly, so I controlled earth and stone. Maybe if I channeled the power to shake the earth the opposite way, I could buy us some time? I reached out with my powers. Experimenting with Cani powers just based on vibes had about a fifty percent success rate. One time I tried to make a pyramid out of sand with my ability, and ended up with a dodecahedron instead. Another time I wanted to move some dirt for a stone staircase on campus that had a big gap from the ground to the first step, and that worked perfectly. This time, as I channeled Cani energy as far as I could around us...I wasn't sure if it did anything. I could just feel the ground rumbling more.

On the little mobile desk mini tank thing I sat on there was a microphone attached to it with a curved wiry part. I flipped it on, hoping that this thing would somehow detect the others' wristbands. And that Kalei's stretched somehow for her bigger Downside form.

"Can anyone hear me?" I asked.

I shut my eyes, mentally readying myself to run out there and shout it if they couldn't hear me.

"Hey, what's going on?" Aira answered like she was just picking up a casual call.

"I know you're dealing with these guys being like invulnerable to your attacks or whatever, but there's another problem," I said. "I scanned around, the ground, like the sand layer!"

"Slow down!" Syval said. "It's hard to follow when we're punching and junk!"

I scoffed. "The ground you're fighting on is only a bit of sand. If you keep fighting the way you're fighting, you're gonna fall and it's gonna be bad, it's like a huge chasm."

"Well, I can teleport and Syval can fly, so we're probably good! Thanks, though!" Aira said. "Oh, wait, but you guys are here too..."

"Yeah, so I dunno, win this quick without dropping us?" I said.

"I don't even know how," Aira said. "It's like these guys are invincible!"

"Jeans says they got stronger since the last time we saw them," I said.

"Huh..." Aira said. "Well, I wasn't there for that, I only made it to the part where everyone was at Kitty Land. So this is my first time seeing them, right?"

"I guess, I don't know!" I said. She was really calm about this impossible situation we were in, which on one hand I respected because I wished I could be that relaxed while stressed out and in danger, and on the other I found really frustrating coming at it from a not wanting to be dropped into a pit perspective. "Kalei, if you can hear me, the ground's about to give out so be careful. There's like some big blobby things, I dunno if they're rocks or something else!"

"Probably Sharai ruins," Jeans said. "A lot of their older buildings are buried under these sands. They were big fans of using spikes as much as possible, so falling into a pit of their structures would be bad for a lot of reasons."

"Great," I said.

"Whitton, maybe we should just go and keep an eye on them from afar?" Roux suggested.

"You think we can drive this thing away?" I said.

Roux's ears went back. "Not sure!"

I hated that we both looked to Jeans. She had gotten us into this mess, and I made the idiotic choice of thinking we'd get anything out of it.

"If you really want to go, and give up completely, I won't be too upset," Jeans said. "I can tell you what to do."

"I'm thinking it's a better idea each second," I said. "They can't put a scratch on these Sharai sprites, the ground's about to give out, and what do we even get if we do win? I don't care what info Jeans has, she's blatantly toxic as hell and really a pain to be around." I didn't even look Jeans' way as I turned the volume up on the mic, hoping that wouldn't just blast my own voice back at me and would be more for the ones I was trying to reach. "We should just go, this isn't winnable!"

Aira and Syval stopped mid-attempting to grapple one of the Sharai down. I didn't see Kalei until a shadow cast over me, and I realized she'd leapt all the way from the fight to me. The sand shifted under me when she landed, not settling until the moment I was certain I was about to fall into a chasm of doom filled with lots of spikes. She held both hands out, letting out a grunt that came out like a dog yelping when its tail gets stepped on.

"You don't wanna go?" I said.

Kalei shrugged, grunting in a deeper tone.

"Really, your pride's gonna be that hurt by giving up now?" I said.

Kalei growled, scratched the back of her head.

"It is a bit embarrassing, you gotta admit," I said. The next thing I said just kinda fell out, and I didn't realize it until I saw Kalei's reaction. "If you're just trying to impress me, I'm already impressed by you all the time, so."

Even when she was in this monstrous form, her face like a monstrous werewolf you'd glimpse at in the dark corners of the woods at night, her eyes still had a softness to them, the same as when she was her regular self. Even when she looked like a nightmare that could rip me to shreds overall, the softness in her eyes gave away her surprise at my suggestion. Hell, I was surprised too, why did I think she'd be doing any of this just to impress me?

"Sorry, that's ego talking, I'm sure you have better reasons," I said.

No grunts or growls that time. Just as I wondered if that silence meant she actually was doing this to impress me, Aira teleported and Syval flew back to us.

"Yeah, we got nothing," Syval said.

"They're not like, chasing us. But nothing we're doing is working," Aira said. "Jeans, can you maybe give us a hint—"

As Aira started to ask that, the sand shifted under us again. I saw pits open in front of us, more and more sand tumbling in them, the Sharai sprites falling as well. It happened too fast for us to adjust, too fast to find some control on the machine to pull us back home. I had one objective in trying to stop this, and I completely failed as we fell into the abyss.

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