My body felt like it was burning up before being dunked in freezing water. The prickling pain coming in waves. As it flowed away the fmes licked at my nerves. I tried to put out the fmes, to run from the freezing water, tried to flee the pain. Yet nothing I did worked. In fact, it seemed to do the opposite. The various sensations grew worse as time went on. Only one spot seemed immune to the effects and that was the spot just off my neck.

  In one of the rooms I had flown through in my flight from the test fire, I spotted a mark at the spot. It looked like a tattoo, one that I could not remember ever getting. Before I had a chance to study it more, the door I had run through was engulfed in fire before freezing into ice. I barely made it through the next door as a cracking sound filled the room behind me.

  A wave of water rushed through the open doorway. The force of it was enough to sm the door behind me. Only my reflexes, and a previous experience, had saved one of my ankles from being caught in the doorway as it smmed. Returning to my running, I tried to put as much distance between me and whatever was chasing me.

  I didn’t know how long I had been running, but it had to be days if not weeks. My body was bruised and battered. Shallow cuts across most of my skin. Yet I did not stop. I stumbled through door after door. Searching, ever searching for an exit from this nightmarish hell.

  My worst decision was to hide in a crevice high up on the wall. To try and sleep so I could recover some of my strength. It nearly cost me my life. Only when I started to breathe in water did I wake up? Neither of the doors would open. In fact, the only exit I could take was one I had never been able to before. The skylight that provided each room with illumination took several hits to break. Nearly out of air, the darkness creeping in on my vision, the skylight finally broke.

  As soon as it did, the pressure of the water forced me up and through. Shooting my body up as a geyser of water rushed through. Flying through the air, I got a look at where I was and it was not good. Hell, I was pretty sure it had to be hell. Where else would there be a building that went from horizon to horizon? Not in one direction either, but in every direction. I wouldn’t be surprised if someone had told me that the pnet was covered in this one building.

  Upward momentum spent, I started to fall. Without control, I crashed through another skylight a couple hundred feet from where I had started. Luckily this room was empty and I had not broken anything upon nding. Taking this opportunity, I worked to stand and head in the opposite direction I had flown from.

  I was spent. A couple of rooms earlier, and the rooms around it, were bisected by a giant fissure. With a raging fire on my heels, I jumped the gap. Landing safely on the other side with a bit of room to spare. My problem had been with the nding. While I had rolled to dissipate the excess energy, my right leg caught in a small crack.

  Still rolling with considerable momentum, the caught leg jerked my body to a sudden and complete halt. I heard something crack. Yeah, I screamed like a scorned toddler. Still, I couldn’t stop. While my conscious mind was dealing with the pain, my body was moving. Practically dragging the leg as it ran from the fire.

  However, there was only so far I could go in such a condition. Next to another fissure, I colpsed. Not caring if the fire consumed me or the water drowned me. The water flowed past me and into the fissure. Stealing my body heat as it filled the fissure.

  Closing my eyes, I calmed down and tried to rex. Finally, the water rose above my head. Pouring into my mouth, down my throat, and into my lungs. I hacked and coughed. Filing around and jerking as my body tried to survive. But, as with everything else, there is no escaping death, just deying it. And thus, I drowned.

  My eyes fluttered open sometime ter. Everything felt perfect, as if the burns and bruises had never existed. Sitting up, I looked around. A small ke sat a short distance from me. Pnts of all types and sizes grew around it. I was lying in the one spot that wasn’t completely overtaken by pnts. A small fire crackled and popped just to my left.

  I could now say I was feeling utterly confused. Now that I wasn’t running, I could finally sit and figure out just what was going on, maybe, hopefully. My mind wandered over everything I could remember. The furthest back I could recall was running, constant running. But every once in a while, I would get a glimpse of a memory of someone or something, only for the memory to vanish again.

  Sitting cross-legged, I rexed before attempting to pry deeper into my memories. Looking for those glimpses of before. I knew there had to be something there, but what was it? The soft rustling of branches and leaves above me, the popping of the fire, and the sounds of bugs kept me grounded as I dug through my memories.

  Finally, I found it. I don’t know how long it took; the sun never seemed to rise in this pce. The first non-running-reted memory was one of a girl feeding me something. After that, memories of her streamed into my mind's eye one at a time. Once done, the rest just flooded into my mind.

  While I didn’t know where I was, I knew where I had been and what we had been doing. Victoria and her mom had been working to unlock my mana. The pain had been so great I had passed out. The next thing I knew, I was being woken up by a fire burning me.

  Now that I knew what had happened before I got here, there were a few questions I had to answer. Where was I? Why was I here? How did I get here? And, most importantly, how do I get back?

  Of course, while I was thinking about those questions, another one came to me. Just how long had I been here? While it had felt like I had run for weeks on end, I had never felt the need to stop and eat or sleep.

  Feeling the need to test something, I walked over to the water. Using my hand to scoop some to my mouth. The water burned as it went down. As soon as it hit my belly, electricity shot through my body, causing my muscles to twitch and jerk.

  While it didn’t do any damage to my body, I was not going to try that again. Instead, I walked around the ke. Looking for some sort of door or path. There was nothing. Even walking directly away from the ke ended up with me reentering from the other side.