Chapter 2: Part 1 - Chasing Shadows

Jean’s first impression was one of cold, and white so bright it seemed to burn his eyeballs. He squinted against the glare, and when his eyes finally stopped watering, made out a vista of snow and tumbled grey rock.

“Lornar’s Pass,” Marissa said, behind him. “Oska?”

“Somewhere behind Highfirn Passage,” Oska confirmed. “The north-south road is on the other side of this hill.”

Now that he could see again, Jean found himself in agreement. He wasn’t intimately acquainted with the Shiverpeaks – no right-minded human would be, in his opinion – but he knew how to read a map. The snow gave way to green pastures to the south, and rocky peaks to the north.

Oska pointed that way, and a little to the left. “The Durmand Priory is in that direction. There’s also a hunter’s lodge just to the north. Either one could be a good base of operations.”

Marissa nodded, but she was paying more attention to the card in her hand. From Rata Sum, Yinn had activated a device that, according to him, would deposit each team in the vicinity of their next task. Unless their arrivals were being staggered, though, they hadn’t all been sent to the same place. The rest of the hillside was empty.

“‘Follow the white rabbit’,” Marissa said, and it took Jean a moment to realise she was reading aloud. She lifted her head, shaking the card in frustration. “That’s all it says. Our only clue.”

“There must be thousands of rabbits out here,” Jean said.

“Hares,” Auri said dreamily, her gaze distant. “In a place like this, they’re more likely to be mountain hares.”

“I don’t care if they’re three-headed lions with flaming eyes,” Marissa said. “We have to be the ones to win this round. Oska, have a look around. Jean, keep us warm.”

Jean didn’t need asking twice. As Oska slipped over the ridge and out of sight, he summoned a globe of fire, batting it into the air to hover in their midst. Marissa raised her hands to it, glaring at nothing, whilst Auri continued to watch the horizon. They were all on edge – even the twins, who rarely showed their anxiety. They had no way of knowing what to expect here, or what the other teams might attempt. Marissa, meanwhile, was still smarting at being rebuffed by Yinn, and brooding over what the extra, unknown rules of the game might be. She didn’t like not being the one in control.

Oska returned with his usual panache, gliding out of a shadow that Jean hadn’t even noticed was there. “If it’s a white rabbit you’re after, we’d better move quickly.”

He set off again, and the rest of them followed, Marissa regaling Oska with questions.

“There was another team already chasing a rabbit,” he said, by way of explanation. “Just one, though. I didn’t see anyone else.”

Marissa, to Jean’s surprise, looked positively jubilant at the news. “There isn’t another team in the competition who can move as quickly as we can,” she said. “If this is a race, we’ll be in our element.”

They crossed the ridge in less than a minute, to look down on the gentle slopes of Bouldermouth Vale – where, just as Oska had said, a chase was underway.

There were two teams now present, one of asura that might have been the Nth Degree, and another too distant to be sure of. Jean strained his eyes in that direction, and came to the conclusion that there wasn’t a massive charr amongst them, which ruled out the presence of the Marauders. Both teams were rushing backwards and forwards across the valley, following something too small for Jean’s eyes to track. It might be a rabbit, he supposed, but so might the windblown lumps of snow that littered the hillside. He’d just have to take Oska’s word for it.

Indeed, it was Oska who pointed to the north-east. “There’s another, heading towards the road. Shall we go after it?”

Three rabbits, for three teams? That didn’t sound like Yinn’s style. Where was the breathtaking unfairness?

Marissa, frowning at the frankly ridiculous sight of the two teams already in motion, seemed to be thinking the same thing. “Oska, if you can catch one of those things, do it. Otherwise… Let’s keep our distance for now, shall we?”

Jean fell into step beside Marissa as they climbed the slope towards the road, even if he had to slog through the snow whilst she seemed to float over it. “You think this is some kind of trap?”

“Not a trap, exactly.” Marissa looked unusually thoughtful. “Does this strike you as consistent with the first round, though? If there’s really a rabbit for every team…”

“There has to be a catch. We’re missing something.”

Indeed, as they scrambled higher up the slopes of the vale, Jean suddenly saw one of the rabbits – and this time, despite their slow approach, it had popped out of the snow barely six feet away. It stared at them, pink nose and black eyes the only points of colour against the snow, and didn’t even twitch when Oska took a step towards it. If Jean hadn’t known better, he would have said it was taunting them.

“Allow me.” Auri suddenly stepped forwards, brushing Jean’s hand as she passed. “Jean?”

Jean knew instantly what she wanted. They’d had a game, when the twins were younger, and in the early stages of learning to use their abilities. Oska had been almost as slippery as he was now, able to hide in a heartbeat and run as fast as the wind – except between them, Jean and Auri had a way of slowing him down.

Jean raised his scepter, a dagger in his other hand. An attunement to earth had always come easily to him – it took only a second’s concentration to set the ground rumbling beneath the rabbit.

He broke off the spell before it really had chance to connect, but it was enough. The rabbit bolted, stumbled on the churning ground – and was caught by Auri’s ice.

Auri’s elemental magic had always been a thing apart. Jean had trained with dozens of other elementalists, and whilst a handful had Auri’s finesse, none possessed her raw power. When she’d been younger, it had almost scared him – this tiny, fragile child, with the strength to move mountains. Thankfully, as she’d got older, control had accompanied power, until he felt almost certain her magic would never get the better of her. Almost.

Now, Auri’s ball of ice, faintly glowing, rose from the ground. The rabbit was trapped in its centre – or it should have been. Even Auri, always hard to read, looked surprised to see the ball was empty.

She let it dissolve in a rush of water, sloshing into the snow. Even before it had settled, the rabbit showed its head again, emerging from a hollow even closer than before.

“Ha!” Marissa gave an uncharacteristic shout of exultation. “It flickered. Did you see that?”

Jean didn’t; the rabbit just looked like a rabbit to him. Marissa didn’t wait for a reply, though.

“Mesmer magic. Those poor, dumb souls down there are chasing shadows.”

Jean glanced down into the vale. There were now three teams crisscrossing the valley at considerable speed. Perhaps, in the heat of the chase, they hadn’t realised what a merry dance the rabbits – or illusory rabbits, if Marissa was correct – were leading them on.

“If we couldn’t catch one, they won’t either,” Marissa said dismissively. She gestured towards the rabbit that had escaped them, still sitting passively in the snow. “I could dispel the illusion, but there wouldn’t be any point. Those creatures are a ruse.”

“Are they?” Jean wished he could share his sister’s certainty.

“Of course. This is the second round. It was never going to be easier than the first.”

On that, at least, they could agree. Whatever task Yinn set them here, it would require skill, and there might well be a twist to it. There’d always been a chance the first rabbits they came across would be a red herring.

If, Jean mused, the ‘white rabbit’ in the clue was a rabbit at all. It would be just like Yinn to have even the clue he’d given them be misleading. No doubt he’d thrown them into Lornar’s Pass in such an unceremonious fashion – and had the rabbits appear so quickly – so that they’d all run off like idiots. If Yinn was watching, which he almost certainly was, he was surely laughing now.

Trust Marissa to see through a ruse that aimed to puncture her dignity. “We need to think this through,” she said, “and we need somewhere secure from which to do it. We’re certainly not joining in with that.”

She sniffed, and gestured down the hillside. If Jean was honest, he was glad. Running around in the snow didn’t appeal one bit. “What about the Durmand Priory?” he suggested. “We’d at least have a good view of the area from up there.”

For the first time, Marissa hesitated, and Jean knew he’d put his foot in it. Oska had made the same suggestion quite innocently, but then Oska didn’t know what Jean did. In fact, there was such an age gap between him and his sister that even Jean almost didn’t remember Marissa going to study with the Priory as a youth – and coming back only weeks later, refusing to say why she’d left. As far as he knew, she’d never talked of it since.

“A sensible choice,” she said suddenly, as though there’d been no pause in the conversation. Perhaps, Jean thought, memories of the Priory held no sting for Marissa any longer. He wished he could be so sanguine about his own past. “They may have something that can help us. Let’s go.”

Marissa turned towards the road, the twins following, and Jean trailing after them. He found himself thinking not of Marissa, or the Priory, except to wonder which of the other teams would have had the same idea. Perhaps he could take some of the burden off the others and scout out the competition himself… Even if there was only one team he was really interested in.