Rising Shards

The instructions on our wristbands informed us the challenge was to stand on specific tiles, where we’d each be presented with an icebreaker question. The class would get a chance to guess first, then

“What are the tiles for? To make sure we’re not lying?” Kalei asked. “They brought us to the void for this?”

“I think they just wanted something real easy for us to come back to the void to.” Oka said.

“Have you noticed a lot of void challenges are tile based too?” Kalei asked.

“I’m curious if they hire Cani video game designers to construct challenges like this,” Lillia said, stroking her chin. “They are remarkably similar to dungeon paths and the like.”

“Yeah, exactly!” Kalei said.

It was just one question we had to answer, and everyone had the same one.

“What’s something about your family others may not know?”

I wanted to question the grammar on the third one but held my tongue. Laenie wouldn’t been first had she been there. That thought made me shuffle on my feet.

I also found it unfair the questions were about family. What’s with today and family stuff? It was like the universe demanded I think about it even though I didn’t want to. Or, I did want to, but thinking about it made me confused and sad, and made Stella mad at me. I looked at the faint glow of the tile I stood on to avoid eye contact while I tactically held tears in. Instead of Laenie, Amara was first.

“I come from a family of hunter fox Kanibari,” Amara said. “If you’ve heard of the Eastern Litus Empirica Hunting Society, the older Allegros are all high-ranking members.”

“Uhh,” Iris said. She looked like she had to go again already. “My dad’s a teacher at Falling Shards, and my mom’s a manager of a restaurant.”

“I was born from coffee.” Latte said. “Birthed from the beans themselves. Coffee is my family."

I debated lying as my turn got closer. Maybe I could just say Arctus was related to me, and that the Kathron sword belonged to me. It wasn’t necessarily a lie; the Exumi elder Mawiril told me to wield it. And maybe Arctus was related to me, and that’s why he wanted to find me. Or the void version was, who was maybe the same as the guy I talked to. I have to stop thinking about this or I’m going to get a headache.

“I have two sisters, one attends a school in Sky Clay, while the other you may know as she is a nurse here at Rising Shards.” Lillia said.

Finally, it was my turn. All the lines I rehearsed in my head vanished and I was left with nothing, so I had to wing it.

“I…” I started, feeling all eyes of the class on me. “Don't have a big family. I don't live on a big farm and have parents I call 'ma' or 'pa'...I don't even know my parents or anything about them. But I do have an older sister. She’s really hardworking and I owe a lot to her. She’s pretty much my only family. She’s into acting and she’ll be working here as a librarian soon. She’s cool so she’ll do great. And…I did a whole speech there…” I trailed off waiting for everyone to laugh at me but just got some polite nods.

“Everyone’s got family working here, huh?” Kalei asked.

“You don’t,” I said.

“Ah…true.” Kalei said.

I felt like I’d given that speech not just to my class, but somehow to Stella herself as well, so I was a bit buzzy as the rest of the class did theirs and couldn’t focus too much, but I did gleam some useful info from them. I kind of figured Kalei was an only child given her personality. The Matora sisters having ancestry from the fighting nation of Haven made almost too much sense given how much the two wanted to wrestle each other and anyone nearby. Oka looked a bit sad when it was her turn. With all the Kilander stuff she had to deal with, she probably wanted to just distance herself from it.

When we wrapped up, a wayback pedestal appeared for us to go home. The teachers were waiting for us, with Caya at the front. Diast was now lying on the ground, presumably from her back pain.

“Wow, you guys took a while,” Caya said.

“Just play along,” Oka muttered. I didn’t know why she bothered, but it was kinda precious that she made the effort. “Yep, Lillia tried to get some order going but there were some really rowdy students, you know?” She laughed nervously.

“She’s lying,” KJ said. “None of them could figure out where the start button was, and they were all too afraid to ask for help with that.”

“Right.” Caya said, marking some notes down before dismissing us.

“Great work, gang,” Diast said weakly as we walked over her. “Hey, Zeta? Can you hand me that ice pack there?”

I turned in the direction she kinda pointed to and picked up a yellow ice pack on a nearby chair.

“Oh, that’s funny,” I said, handing Diast the ice pack. She immediately put it under her shoulder blades. “Stella and I have a yellow Brambler Co. ice pack just like this.”

“How about that…” Diast said. “Kinda weird to have a yellow ice one, makes me think like. Yellow snow. So I put it out of sight because the idea of using yellow snow as an ice pack is nasty.”

“That’s what Stella always says!” I said.

“Great minds, and such,” Diast said.

"But then she usually snort laughs so I think she also finds it really funny." I said. 

"Does she now?" Diast asked before chuckling. "Oh, moved too much there, hoogh..."

“I’ll…leave you to it, then?” I said.

Diast groaned from her back pain but nodded.