The Ultimate Regressor System

They ran until their legs screamed, until every breath felt like inhaling the sand in the air, the desert around them detonating in pillars of random merciless bursts of fire and collapsing earth with no pattern Lucas could find to predict and exploit.

Exhaustion clawed at all three of them now, muscles burning, lungs raw, the adrenaline that had carried them the first several minutes finally starting to wear off.

Pyra’s steps had grown ragged, her legs barely able to keep her running, and even Mark’s usual bravado had changed into grim focus as every ounce of energy was now poured into simply staying alive one painful second at a time...

"Arghh—!" Pyra stepped wrong wrong on a shifting dune, and she stumbled sideways, the sand giving way beneath her exactly the way it had beneath Lucas in the last round...

"Pyra!!"

Lucas changed direction instantly, sprinting hard toward her as the ground around her feet began to sink, sand pulling at her legs with the same slow and patient hunger that had once buried him alive and killing him.

He reached her just as a pillar of flame erupted directly beneath them both, the blast throwing them upward together in a violent burst of heat and displaced sand.

"Shit—!"

He wrapped both arms around her on instinct, twisting his body to take the force of the flame himself, and felt nothing but warmth where any other person would have felt their skin peeling away.

He held, and Pyra’s scream cut short into stunned silence as she realized mid air that the fire wasn’t touching her at all.

"You’re okay..." Lucas said, [Ignition] flaring around both his feet now, driving them both away from the fresh sinkhole already yawning open where they would have landed otherwise. "Hold on!"

They crashed down a safe distance away, rolling clear of another patch of suspiciously soft sand, and Pyra scrambled upright, staring at her own unburned arms in open shock and disbelief.

"You’re actually fireproof," she gasped. "That was not just a rumor."

"You can talk about it later!" Mark’s voice came, distant and strained. "For now, try not to get roasted!"

Lucas turned to find him weaving between three separate pillars at once, gauntlets doing nothing to protect him from flame the way Lucas was, his boots skidding through sand that seemed hell bent on swallowing him with every step he took.

"MARK!"

"Gimme a sec!"

A pillar erupted directly in Mark’s path, too close and too fast to fully dodge, and he threw himself sideways at the last moment, the very edge of the blast catching his shoulder and searing through his jacket with a hissing sound that made Lucas wince.

"Argh! Son of a—" Mark rolled clear, patting frantically at his smoking sleeve, face twisted in pain. "That one actually got me..."

"Are you—"

"I’m fine, keep moving!!"

Lucas forced himself to move, sprinting back toward Mark instead of waiting, [Ignition] flaring hot around both feet to close the distance faster than his exhausted legs alone could manage.

"You know," Mark gasped, falling into stride beside him as they ran, "between the fireproof skin and the flying feet, you’re basically a walking advertisement for unfair advantages right now."

"Focus, Mark."

"You truly are a Fireproof Flying Princess," Mark wheezed, half laughing despite the burning shoulder and the sheer terror of the last several minutes. "I’m putting it on a banner the second we survive this."

"IF we survive this." Lucas corrected...

"Optimism, Lucas. Optimism."

Ahead, the desert night flickered oddly, a strange, vertical fracture rippling against the darkness. Lucas squinted through the chaos, through fire, smoke and flying sand and pointed...

"There!" He shouted, adjusting course mid sprint. "Go through there, we leave this hell hole."

"Are you sure?" Pyra shouted, sprinting to keep pace even though he muscles were screaming otherwise...

"No! But anywhere’s better than staying here"

They ran for it with everything they had left, the fracture glowing brighter as they closed the distance, another pillar erupting just behind them close enough that Lucas felt the heat of it against his back even through.

Mark’s breath came ragged and desperate beside him, Pyra half a step behind, and the three of them threw themselves through the shimmering distortion together in one final, desperate leap.

The world seemed to warp around them...

For one second, Lucas couldn’t tell up from down, the desert gone entirely, replaced by open sky and the sickening sensation of falling from a height he had no way to measure.

Wind roared past his ears, and beside him he heard Pyra’s scream and Mark’s cursing voice, all three of them descending through open air...

Soon, they finally reached the ground...

Lucas hit hard, rolling instinctively to displace the impact, and came to a stop sprawled across chunred earth. Grass—actual grass, beneath his fingers instead of sand. He lay there for a moment, his chest heaving, waiting for the world to stop spinning as he was dizzy.

[Ding!]

[You have survived the Blazing Sands.]

The notification hung there, and Lucas let out a long, shaking breath that turned,, into something close to a laugh.

A few feet away, Mark lay flat on his back, staring up at an ordinary-ish sky, his chest rising and falling with each ragged breath. "We made it," he said, voice hoarse with disbelief. "We actually made it."

"Barely," Pyra managed, curled on her side in the grass. Her claws finally retracted, hands shaking too hard from the adrenaline crash...

"Blazing Sands," Mark said, "I never want to hear the words again in my entire life."

"Agreed." Lucas said, closing his eyes against the relief flooding through him. He could still feel the sand on his body even now...

For a long moment, none of them moved, three exhausted bodies sprawled across solid, ordinary ground, simply breathing, alive, and grateful beyond words for a night that they had somehow survived.

Somewhere above them, an unfamiliar sky stretched calm and in the early light of what might have been dawn, or something close to it, and Lucas let himself lie there a while longer, listening to the steady breathing of the two people who’d thankfully made it through the desert alongside him...

He should have probably kept moving, he knew that. But he just lay there taking deep shaky breaths....

For now, surviving was enough....