Mantle of the Gods

Trent Vowler and Rix Zeb walked in.

I couldn’t stop the tears as I jumped out of my seat. I forgot about the cuff and ended up on my rear beside the desk. "You’re alive!”

“You killed me?!” She shook her head, but walked over and held out her hand to help me up.

Trent snapped his fingers and the cuff vanished.

I pulled my newly freed right hand over and accepted the outstretched hand.

“What..? How..? When..?” There were too many questions.

“Not here.” Trent motioned for me to follow him.

I followed Rix out of the room into a much larger and well-lit room. It almost looked like a Dispatcher's Hub, with screens and Dispatchers issuing orders in the center of the room. There were people in Enforcers armor bustling about. My eyes swept the room until I saw the woman who had interrogated me. She was talking to six other much younger Enforcers who all had their helmets off. I stopped when I recognized them. It was the Yellow team.

Wrye saw me staring and waved at me. The malice that he had given off earlier was nowhere on him.

I waved back before I realized what I was doing. My head began to spin, I had no idea what was going on.

“Atlas!” Aelin crashed into me, wrapping me up in a hug.

I squeezed her back. "Aelin! Where is..?” I looked behind her and saw Justia and Ether. I disentangled myself from the blonde and wrapped my arms around Ether. “You’re okay.” I realized the tears from earlier when I saw Rix had started falling again. I turned to Justia. "You’re all okay.”

Ether grabbed my head and kissed me, spinning my head even more. I pulled her even closer to me as I kissed her back. All the chaos around me seemed to melt away as it slowly just became the two of us.

I don’t know how long we stayed like that, but I felt Justia tapping on my shoulder.

“We’re in public.” The green-skinned woman whispered into my ear.

I pulled back and realized that everyone was watching me. The Yellow Team and Trent included.

My face turned red as I tried not to look at anyone. Ether ducked to my left side and pulled my arm against her chest and half buried her head in my shoulder.

“If you’re finished...” Trent motioned at the door.

“Yeah.” I nodded.

We started walking through the maze, but after a few turns I got the feeling I knew where we were. It seemed like it had been a year since we’d followed the halls to the dungeon mouth.

We reached the dorms and Trent grabbed the chair to his desk and pulled it to the middle of the room.

“Grab a chair.” He motioned for us to do the same.

We each grabbed a chair and brought it over to the middle. Justia sat to Trent’s right. Aelin sat to Justia’s right and Rix was directly across from Trent.

I sat down on Trent’s left and Ether put her seat right next to mine on the left.

“What’s this about?” Aelin seemed to be her usual cheerful self.

“I’m sure you all have questions.” Trent looked at each of us. "And I’ll provide you with as many answers as I can, but first I want to congratulate you all. This is the twelfth team I’ve taught and none of them survived as well as all of you did on opening week!” He smiled. "And all level two in under a week! A school record! We won’t be able to log it, and I’ll touch on that later, but know that I am proud of all of you!”

“Wait.” I looked at Rix. "You’re level two?”

I actually saw her smile.

“Yep.”

“How?” I looked at Trent. "The Yellow Team had her.”

“The monsters on the third floor aren't that bad, actually.” The golden-skinned woman was beaming.

“Level three! How’d you get to level three?!” I looked between Trent and the ginger.

Trent held up his hand. "Just give me a minute and I’ll explain everything.”