Who are you, behind that mask?

They materialised on the sandy path of a desert, their clumsy feet stumbling over sandrifts.

Sora coughed out the little grains of sand that had took up residence in her throat, the swirling, hot and sticky wind clinging relentlessly on her Exillium uniform. With her hand clasped against Soreas, Sora felt her heartbeat rise to a fever pitch, thumping faster and faster against her chest. But despite that, it felt like her whole world had switched to slow motion, her footsteps stuttering to an abrupt stop.

Sora's mind wasn't fully focusing on the things that were happening right now, instead wandering off to the secret conversation she and Mr. Forkle had had last night, right before she had dozed off. She didn't know whether only one person was in the Black Swan, but at least she knew they would have a safe shelter under their heads as they attended Exillium.

"So… this is it," mumbled Soreas in Maori, snapping Sora out of her daze. His gaze wandered off to the giant raven-black arch, which swept over the cloudy sky, looming over them ominously. An glimmering oasis sat itself right under the arch, and Sora was sure that it wasn't a mirage.

Though she wished that her life could become a mirage instead. Her life— it wasn't worth living at all. It was hard to get high when she was living at the bottom, and the bonus of getting banished from the Lost Cities didn't help at all.

She wished her life was just a mirage.

She wished it wasn't real.

She wished she could forget.

But she didn't say that.

If she said that, everyone would judge her so badly that she wouldn't be able to take it no longer.

She sighed.

"Stop speaking in Maori. You know I hate it when you speak in a Polynesian language. I find their languages hard to understand, so don't give me a life that's even harder than this," Sora muttered, her grip tightening on Soreas' hand. "So, how are we supposed to announce our… um, arrival?"

The hills and mountains of sand surrounding them seemed fairly empty, except for ripples that drifted through the air due to the intense heat of the weather. The Exillium uniform also didn't help as she looked around with bated breath. Wind swirled the sand into her eyes and her nose and her mouth, making her cough and blow her nose and choke. But besides that, the desert seemed to be completely deserted.

Sora didn't have the energy to laugh at her own pun.

When Soreas didn't answer, as the desert continued to hold its breath, Sora repeated her question, louder this time, "Hello? Anyone here? If so, we're here. Do you have any idea we're here? Or do we need to announce our arrival to you?"

All of a sudden, a hundred different sounds of laughter drifted through the air, wafting into her ears, taunting her. Sora caught her breath and looked around, yet still saw nothing. It was as if they were hiding in the sands beneath their feet, projecting their voices to seem like they weren't there.

"You don't need to," a whispery voice rasped into her ear from behind her, making her scream and back away a few steps, only to trip backward over a rock. She flailed her arms wildly, trying to regain her balance. Beside her, Sora could feel Soreas stiffen ever so slightly. "We already know."

Before Sora could whip around to see who the voice belonged to, she was stopped short by a harsh cackle.

"Welcome to your Dividing."

And she was plunged into darkness.

Avy knew she had a half-smirk plastered on her face when she got to Exillium, thinking about how the new kid was going to get out of the shadow shield. He wouldn't want to be late. Especially not for the most exciting Dividing in Exillium History, in which he himself would be a very special guest.

She saw the Ambi Coach, whom she never bothered to remember the name of, look at her, before she heard her in her mind. "You know what to do?"

Avy stretched out her shadow to the Coach in Purple and shadow-whispered in the most cheerful way she could, the way that homicidal maniac humans can, "Nope."

She was certain that the Coach sighed at her answer before looking away from her, no doubt to talk to the other coaches.

Avy smirked under her hood, happy to have done her daily job of making her beloved "teachers" annoyed.

She looked around the area. They were in a desert this time, but with an oasis nearby. She was confident that underwater breath control would be the focus of the day.

A stumbling Wayward, with both a Hydrokinetic and a Telepath pin caught her attention. She had joined Exillium roughly about half a year after Avy had and though clumsy in her landings when leaping, had strangely been able to use her skills very well, especially for someone who couldn't have gone through training in Foxfire.

Most elves didn't learn skills like levitation and night vision in the Lost Cities, deciding to solely focus on their abilities.

So it was certainly unusual to see someone come into Exillium having no trouble with any of the skills, although her Dividing certainly was interesting.

She had slight suspicions about the girl, but had never told anyone, not wanting to wrongly accuse someone of being in the most evil group in elvin history. They were worse than the Councillors and those stuffy nobles, and Avy loathed them.

They were blind scum, those birds.

"Miss Esters, the new Waywards are about to arrive. You will not mess up, unless being ejected from Exillium forever is your wish. Are we clear?" The Red Coach appeared out of nowhere, bringing Avy back from plotting the vicious, merciless murder of the Black Swan that no normal elf could think of without breaking their minds.

"Of course not, I will never dream of it." Sarcasm dripped from her voice like a faulty faucet as she crossed her arms at the Coach who was trying to force her to follow her orders with fear.

Honestly, she was the least intimidating elf ever. Even a spoilt baby would not fear her.

Avy would rather be thrown into Exile anyday than be in Exillium, where their uniforms were simply out of this world. Not in the good way, of course. The other Waywards might fear the Coaches and blindly follow whatever they dictated them to do, sure. But she had her job as a covert operator for the Neverseen, and he was the one she feared.

The Red Coach rolled her eyes at her, and without even bothering to be quiet, exclaimed, "Waywards."

Avy forced herself to bite back the cutting remark blooming at the tip of her tongue.

She did not like being given advice on her individual 'projects', much less being told what to do, especially by someone who she gave close to zero respect to.

Thinking of it, Avy's respect for the Coaches might as well be in the negative range. Avy held respect for pretty much no one, save for the Neverseen leaders, her old family, and a few exceptions.

"Like Vallena…" A little voice whispered from the back of her mind as the Red Coach walked away, the Coaches completely giving up on her.

Avy closed her eyes as emotions tried to bubble up and take down her defensive walls.

Avy remembered Vallena, even though it had been more than nine years since she last saw Vallena's warm smile.

Vallena was adopted by Avy's adoptive parents a few years before her. Avy remembered the girl who was a sister to her in everything but blood. Vallena had always been kind to her, she even stood up against the stuffy Nobles for Avy.

Vallena was a Froster, and she loved making it snow in the backyard, letting Avy play in the snow. For Avy was known for being a loner, she had only one friend before she ran away from the Lost Cities.

They used to fool around in the snow, building snowmen and having snowball fights, they even made an igloo before. Vallena would always do this when Avy was upset, fretting over her worries and problems that no 5 year old should have had.

Vallena was the best sister she could ever have…

Until the day she sacrificed herself to let Avy escape.

She remembered that day as if it were just the day before.

"You're only five, you still have a long life to live." Vallena used to say constantly, but that day, she was far more serious than usual when she said it, as if she had already foreseen something terrible happening, something that would change both their lives forever.

And the next day, it did. For the night she said that, Avy casted a total darkness all around Eternalia, where the Ombré house was located. A few days later, Vallena committed treason against the Council, for being the loving, caring sister she was, she helped Avy escape from the Lost Cities, before giving her a box filled with a wide variety of special daggers made by the ogres.

Avy remembered staring at her big sister, her role model with wide eyes. The guilt of most elves prevented them from keeping basic cooking necessities such as knives and scissors in their houses, much less a bunch of deadly weapons.

Avy looked up at the cloudless skies of the elven realm and focused on feeling the cold, metallic dagger against her ankles. If anyone ever found out the weapons she possessed, just like her bow and arrows, she would be exiled in a second. After all, it was much deadlier than a simple melder.

Avy heard footsteps stealthily sneaking up behind her. However, Avy was not the Neverseen's best covert operator for no reason. Looking at the oasis in front of her, she caught the reflection of a certain white-haired elf.

However, when she saw Axel suddenly run, surprisingly quietly, up to her and attempted to tackle her to the ground, Avy simply took a step to the side and solidified the shadows she casted around him, trapping him suspended in the air.

Avy simply shook her head at his idiocy. He was an elf, right?

She smirked at the marvelous piece of artwork she created— a floating elf surrounded by shadows in the air.

As a Neverseen member himself, new recruit or not, he should have known better than to sneak up on another Neverseen member, especially one with far more experience than him.

Avy pursed her lips as she looked at the statue in front of her. She was feeling rather impatient, waiting for the new waywards to arrive.

Sora and Soreas Heks…

Her lips curled up into a smirk at the reminder of who they were. They had caused Jin a lot of pain, and they would remember it that day.

Once again the odd sensation washed over her and wanting to climb up a tree, Avy looked around at the oasis around her, looking for a tree that would serve its function well.

Avy narrowed her eyes at the forest that lay in her line of vision. There should technically be no trees a place like the desert, but these were the Neutral Territories, cultivated by gnomes and dwarves. Estranged and impossible to explain to humans.

Picking the right tree for climbing was an annoying but necessary process. After all, she didn't want the repeat of falling off a tree like she did when she was younger.

She had been out for a few days, and had certainly got into a whole lot of trouble when she had woken up, mysteriously conjured back into the Neverseen hideout.

Her eyebrows scrunched up at that memory. Even now, more than 5 years later, Avy still did not know what was it or who it was which carried her back to the hideout, and for some reason unknown, had treated her surely broken bones.

The Neverseen rarely gave any treatment of any sort to anyone. They wore their wounds and scars with pride, showing that they survived, and usually don't care about each other, ready to leave another to die at any given time.

Avy knew it couldn't be Jin, despite her being the only elf in the Neverseen that could possibly have any emotion towards saving a young girl like Avy was. Jin was simply not strong enough to carry a girl her age at that time.

Shaking away the memory and returning back to the present, Avy found that she had been unconsciously walking towards a tree near the opening. It was near enough that trees in front of it would not block her vision, but far enough that she wouldn't be very obvious.

Casting shadows around her to hide her from any curious eyes, Avy decided to climb the tree, finding a high but stable branch where she could rest on and do her work.

Settling herself on that particular branch, Avy took a deep breath and slowly let it out a second later, letting the wind from on top of the tree gently blow her hair to one side.

The other elves always thought it was easy and came naturally for her, seeing how fast and efficiently she normally controlled her power.

What they did not know was how much strength she needed and how exhausted she's been after using a lot of her power.

Avy had to be in the perfect mindset and have complete control over what she was doing, or the shadows and darkness could turn over the tables and overpower her and control her instead, like they once did long ago.

Unfortunately, using as much strength and power as she was about to do usually drained her and left her vulnerable with her guard down.

The enemy could attack now and she'd be taken down in an instant.

Avy let the negative thoughts out of her head and instead concentrated on every shadow, every speck of darkness around her. She felt as if she were calling out to them and they seemed to respond back, stretching themselves out, ready to follow her every command.

She opened an eye to survey her surroundings below, keeping all five senses alert for any sign of the new waywards approaching.

She had no doubt that they would have a lack of stealth and would not exactly be dead silent with their lack of training, having lived the comfortable life in The Lost Cities.

She admitted to herself that she was rather envious of the luxurious life they got to lead, problems with power control or not, they had a family, and did not have to worry every second of their lives about people stabbing knives or daggers into their backs, not worrying about whether they could sleep that night.

Avy missed her family, her biological one, she longed to even catch a glance of them in real life, not in her dreams and imagination. She secretly missed the comfortable life of being the daughter of an Emissary, the smiles they could wear everyday.

But Avy knew better. The smiles made them weak and vulnerable, left them an open book. Danger could sneak up on them and they would not even be aware of it, still happily chatting or doing what not.

She couldn't afford to go back to that life. Even if she tried, she would constantly look back, keeping her eyes open and straining her ears for any signs of any potential danger. She would profile another elf before she spoke to them. And those things were certainly far from the ordinary life of a typical elf.

Avy sighed, realizing she was letting her control slip with the rants in her head. She took another deep breath to gain back her control, and not too soon, for two elves glimmered into corporeal form, undoubtedly the two new Waywards, already late on their first day.

Her famous smirk grew on her face and she had no doubt her eyes had turned a bright, glowing shade of violet.

She was surprised that none of the other Waywards had noticed the girl perched on top of the tree, hidden behind the leaves of the tree branches, but with a clear enough view for her to keep track of everything going on around her.

There were few trees in the area, not surprising considering the desert they were in. But Avy, being a lover of free climbing, was quick to weed out all the others to find the perfect one.

As the new Waywards took their first step, still talking to one another, Avy let out a soft, mean laugh, shadow-whispering to the girl "Welcome to your Dividing" in the coldest, terrifyingly chirpy voice she could muster, before smashing her hands down in the air, causing the shadows and darkness to take over the new Waywards, leaving them in complete darkness.

Avy kept a hold on to the growing darkness with one hand, pulling the new Neverseen member into the dark pit with the other. She let her powers flow, creating twists and turns and high walls, making sure to leave the three elves completely disoriented and confused, trying to drench out all that disgusting hope from them.

With a lot of strength, she managed to stretch her shadow out to the three elves, "To pass your test, you have to run. Find your way out, before the sands are all gone."

Keeping an eye on the three Waywards and the way they each ran, Avy made sure to bring up walls right on front of them, making sure they would run into the suddenly appearing walls.
Some may call her cruel, but what was a life without darkness and a little evil?

With the wind in her hair and a smirk on her face, Avy softly hummed a familiar tune as she watched the three elves running around like fools.

She cocked her head to the side thoughtfully as she watched Jin's brother stop and narrow his eyes at the darkness around him. The new Neverseen member, who was on the other side of the maze, also stopped.

However, Jin's sister was still racing along the imaginary maze in panic, her feet sinking into the sand with every step she took. Avy smirked at her helpless figure. With a flick of her wrist, thorns of shadow materialised along the walls of the maze, almost real as they gleamed in the light.

The two boys were unaffected as they had long stopped trying to rush through the maze, but Jin's sister suffered a different fate, as Avy had expected her to do. A scream pierced through the air as an especially prickly thorn seemed to punctured her lower arm.

Jin's brother visibly tensed, but the new recruit didn't flinch at all. Avy allowed herself a small smile.

The purple Coach shot her a warning look from below, and as much as Avy hated to follow orders, she knew she couldn't push her boundaries too far. So she lowered her arm and crossed her legs as she continued to watch the three of them struggle through the maze.

After a while, the girl continued moving through the maze, much slower and more careful this time. The two boys started walking as well, considerably calmer than the girl, and Avy let them off easier. Soon, they were walking out from the other end of the maze, where light finally entered their vision.

Avy's lips curled up in a smirk. I guess you can call those two Enlightened now.

Avy saw Jin's brother look around frantically, as if he was trying to find his sister. A note of panic entered his face, and as Avy looked back at the girl still finding her way out of the maze, she felt a sense of malevolence wash over her.

The thorns had been long gone, but Avy had more tricks up her sleeve.

The girl was a Terrakinetic— surely she could handle some vines.

With a flick of her wrist, long snaking vines slithered out from shadowy walls, snaring the stumbling girl by the wrist. She lurched backwards from the inertia and gasped, stumbling and almost falling to her knees. She tried to wrench the vines off her hand, but Avy held tight. Avy could almost see the thoughts whirring in the girl's head, even without being a Telepath: How can shadows have a hold on me? They're not real, they can't be real.

"They're real enough," she hissed, slamming her fist down on the branch and bringing the shadowy vines down as well, knocking the girl down into the sandy dunes, causing her to cry out, a screeching sound that pierced Avy's ears. Annoyed, Avy released her hold on the girl, shaking her head silently.

As she lay there, coughing and rubbing her eyes, trying to get the sand out of her system, Avy wondered exactly how weak the Black Swan was. If this girl was one of their members, then Avy wasn't worried at all.

Everyone— the three Coaches, the Waywards, everyone— was staring at her, the puppeteer of shadows, sitting on the branch of a tree, a masked figure clad in black, controlling the whole Dividing, thrusting painful torture on the new Wayward.

All the power in her hand. Even the girl, still trapped in the midst of the maze, seemed to spot her as well, her eyes narrowing at Avy through the slits of her mask.

Avy just raised her hand for another shadow trick to befall the girl. But the shadow never came. Suddenly, it was like a heavy weight had dropped over her head. Letting loose her powers, she was quick to try to regain them but it was futile.

It was as if the sea had risen.

The liquid kept its grasp around her head, surrounding her nose and mouth, keeping her from breathing, no doubt trying to drown her.

But as a sense of fatigue washed over her body, Avy knew that it wasn't the water that was going to kill her.

Exhausted and unable to breathe, Avy felt herself slump forward, dropping from the tree branch. As she slowly drifted into the darkness, she felt her head hit multiple tree branches, hard.

However, before her head could hit the ground in no doubt a fatal hit from the twenty foot drop and the multiple blows her head received, darkness finally claimed her and she drifted into what she wished would be eternal sleep.

Although she hated abusing her ability to gain the upper hand, Corey condonded violence even worse.

Or at least, that was her explanation to the Mentors after they caught her dumping fiftyy\ gallons worth of water on Ms Dark-and-Satanic's head.

In her defence, the other girl was really pushing it with her authority. She would've killed them she didn't stepped in. Wouldn't she?

In all honesty, Corey didn't know, and Corey wouldn't care less. It wouldn't affect her if the three of them, or even all of them were killed. It was an accident, they would say, shedding crocodile tears. She lost control over her ability. Oh the poor souls. They would whimper into their dainty lace handkerchiefs.

But the Waywards were never respected by the public anyways. They wouldn't give two fucks about them.

But as Dolja, she did. This area was directly under her protection, and if anything happened to them, it only brought her a step further from avenging her parents. The Black Swan would feel that her inexperience was enough to bring confidence in her ability as a Black Swan member down, her age being another heavy burden that came with such responsibilities. If anything happened to them, the blame was directly brought on her, the 'incompetent' one. Nothing should, and would happen to them.

Nothing serious, that is. Mistakes build character, as Ayagi used to say.

As a Wayward, one has got to be tough as nails and twice as brainy than the norm, so as to not get eaten. Life lessons.

A Coach had grabbed her by the arm now, physically dragging her over to the other side of the area. Sand was flying everywhere, carried by the harsh wind. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw both the Shade and the New Girl unconscious, each being carried by a guy in the maze. Both of them were gripping onto the girls tightly, as if they were afraid of losing them. Corey resisted the urge to roll her eyes at them. They were elves. It's not like they'll die so easily. Fucking pathetic.

In their wake, the Shade was dripping water, the boy carrying her equally drenched. She smirked to herself. She might not give a shit about their livelihood, but that didn't mean she was a murderer.

Bile risen up the back of her throat when she saw the special punishment that the Coaches dragged her too, one that was reserved for special cases, when Waywards got too caught up in their heads with their new skills.

When she saw what was in store for her, she couldn't help but remark: "For me? Aw, you're all too kind!" Inwardly, she was screaming her lungs out.

Most of them simply called it the Pit, but she preferred calling it the Pit of Poison. As if anyone could forget the millions of toxic creepy-crawlies lurking in its depths. Alright, most of them were venomous, but for alliteration's sake, she very much preferred calling it the Pit of Poison. In the Pit, one was strapped to a harness, and forced to bungee jump into the pit for a set amount of time, dependant on the severity of the situation. For her, she was considered minor, landing herself with a set time of ten minutes. Not anything life-threatening, but ain't that easy either.

Fuck.

Screwed was an understatement. Even if the harness didn't break, which would lead to her getting up-close-and-personal with the creatures, in which elvin medicine would be able to save her, being hauled up and down for ten minutes is not fun. But what could she do, what could she have done? It was a knee-jerk reflex to stop the Shade from harming others. To stop that scream. But would the Mentors empathise with her?

Yeah, she was really sure that that would go well with the Mentors. Oh, I nearly drowned the Shade so that the other girl would stop screaming, because she sounded like my murdered parents, who were the reason I fucked up my life and came to this shithole so that I can have my revenge on the criminal organization that murdered them?

It's all for the greater good, she supposed, a small injury as opposed to losing the war. She'd take the injury anyday.

She eased herself into the harness, shifting uncomfortably in the too-tight harness as the red Coach pulled and prodded at the straps so that she wouldn't accidentally slip and fall in. She couldn't help but smile wryly. For elves that were trying to torture her, they were taking her safety extremely seriously. If she didn't die of suffocation first.

Huffing a long breath, she reached out, and with shaky fingers, grasped the proffered end of the rope. It took her a few tries to get the mechnanism to clip on to her harness, leading Corey to give it a few experimental tugs. Based on how old them thing was, it would take nothing short of a miracle to ensure that it wouldn't break, landing her into the pit. The blue Coach saw her eyeing the rusty harness with suspicion, and spoke, eyebrows arched in amusement. "Best if you don't do that. Might increase your chances of that thing breaking."

The laughter evident in the Coach's tone caused Corey to shoot a dirty look towards him, before wrenching her hands towards her sides. Mockingly, she saluted towards the mentors with her left hand.

"See y'all in ten." Then mustering all her willpower to not run, she fell backwards into the pit, all the while cackling like a deranged maniac.

Snap.

Hey, Yvonne here. Hope you guys have been having a great week so far, and things seem to be getting along slightly faster now!

Now...will the girls finally meet each other in Chapter 9? What's going to happen then? Who knows...(except for the three of us, haha XD)

See you next time!