1 Hour later “How long has the test been going on and how many have been eliminated?” I asked destroying a tether ahead of us. “We’ve been in here for nearly 3 hours and 27 fireteams have been eliminated.” Jace answered marking the smoke bombs near the tether. “It’s been that long already?” I said amazed. “Yep.” “Wow.” We kept walking around for a while, checking different paths. The only interesting events were running into a few other fireteams and destroying a couple tethers in our way. “Um… There’s a lot of motion around the corner.” Holly nervously told us. “It’s probably a fireteam that somehow found their first tether of this test.” I answered, turning the corner and then all I saw was purple before everything went black. After what seemed like years passed I felt Jace revive me. Opening my eyes I saw that I was propped up on one of the maze walls. Getting up and looking around the corner again I saw Ashley and Sarah dodging a hail of bullets. Looking further I saw Hal holding a machine gun, and oddly enough, he wasn’t aiming at Sarah or Ashley. As he started firing I realized his target… me. As I slowly focused again I could hear Jace shouting in my ear. “Hey! Wake up and shoot the Warlock that annihilated you.” As Hal unloaded his machine gun I back up around the corner to hear a deafening sound behind me. Turning around I saw a fireteam disintegrate under the maelstrom of arc energy from Daniel’s Fist of Havoc. As he was getting up he fell over, dead from an incendiary grenade tossed by one of his victims. Turning back to the fight I saw Hal run around the corner. Running up to Sarah I realized she had a deep cut on the back of her left wrist. “What’s that from?” I asked, reviving Ashley. “Hal had a sword on him, he stabbed Ashley with it then slashed at me with it, I managed to block it with my arm but it went pretty deep. Before he could attack again I shot him in the leg and he ran off. Anyone know what the explosion was behind us?” “It was Daniel. He supered a fireteam then died to a Gunslinger’s incendiary grenade.” “You know which Gunslinger it was?” “No. By the time I turned around they were already consumed by the arc storm.” “Fireteam Ravenhawk eliminated.” Someone announced on the loud speaker above us. We all stopped moving, stunned by the fact that we were right next to our friends when they got eliminated. “Hey guys… not trying to break the mood but Hal is coming back and I sense a lot of void energy on him.” Jace said, facing the direction that Hal had run in to get away from Sarah earlier. Strangely, I didn’t feel afraid. Instead, I felt like there was something inside me waiting to be unleashed. It didn’t feel like an Arc energy buildup, but felt like I could move yards with a single step. “I can take him.” I said sounding a lot more confident than I felt. “You sure? He destroyed you a minute ago.” Ashley questioned, clearly worried. “Trust me.” I said turning off my coms system. “Matthew, I’m reading your vitals and I think I know what you’re going for. Are you sure about this?” Jace said through my helmet. “You know from the sensor that Hal isn’t going to use a gun.” “Well you’re on your own for this, I can’t help with what you have planned.” “If this works we’re all alive. If it fails I’m going to take my 2nd Nova Bomb in 3 minutes.” I said, running to meet Hal. As I ran toward where he would be Hal turned the corner, his right arm covered in Void energy. When he turned the corner he started flying up as the void condensed itself into an orb about the size of his fist. As he pulled his arm back I jumped, closed my eyes... and blinked. I felt myself get pulled forward, not caring about the Nova Bomb that exploded behind me, raging but consuming nothing. Past Hal who wanted us to fall, to fail this test. Knowing what to do next I channeled the energy into my blades, hearing the hum of the Arc that coursed through them, hungry for something, hungry for the Warlock behind me. My blades cut through his robes as if they weren’t there and then neatly bisected Hal at the waist. I landed a few seconds after I had blinked in the first place, sparks of Arc energy raining down around me along with the still disintegrating parts of Hal’s body. I looked up to see Jace a few feet in front of me. “Jace, what are you doing?” I asked getting up. “Just recording this for later. But you may want to turn your coms back on.” “Honestly I completely forgot I turned it off.” I said switching it back on. “Matthew are you ok?” Ashley asked “Ashley, I told you already Matthew turned his coms off. He can’t hear us and we can’t hear him.” Sarah said. “I can hear you both now.” I said, standing up. “When did you learn how to blink? You’ve never been able to do that before.” Ashley said. “Just figured out how.” “Congratulations then because I did not see that coming.” Hal said from behind me. Immediately I blinked and wound up several feet in the air and then proceeded to face plant into the ground after gravity took over. “Graceful.” Jace whispered in my helmet. Ignoring him I got up and faced Hal. “You already know why I’m here since you killed Will. I’m here to give you this.” As he finished, Hal held up a dark green hexagonal disc with the Rune of the Disciple in the center of it. “A bit of advice: try not to find Felix for several reasons.” Hal notified us, tossing the relic to me then turning around and disappearing. I gave the relic to Jace to store for later. “I think there’s a pattern to where the hunters are.” Sarah announced. “What do you mean?” I asked confused. “We just found two of the faction reps in this area, while an hour ago we found Will in a part of the maze that is most likely very far from here and most likely Fireteam Steelforge is in a part of the maze that we haven’t been to yet.” Sarah answered. “Well if what Hal said is true then we don’t want to be where we were before.” Ashley said. “I’m not going to argue with that after what Felix did to the instructor earlier.” I said, thinking about the three tethers that Will had chased me into at the start. If Felix knew how to make other types of tethers I didn’t want to know what else he could do. “Well, let’s get the final relic then find the center.” I said, walking forward. 90 Minutes later “I think we found the center.” Ashley said, awe clearly in her voice. “Yea… we definitely found it.” Sarah agreed. Looking around we appeared to be in a forest that was a square mile based on the scans that Jace had just sent me. If you had shown me this forest I would’ve never guess that it was in the center of a maze built to test new Guardians. All I could see were giant trees and lots of foliage… foliage that could be hiding anything, or anyone. “So, I’m going to say that the puzzle is in the center of the forest.” I guessed. “Most likely.” Ashley agreed. “Holly, Apex, are your scans showing just the perimeter and nothing else?” Jace asked. “Now that you mention it Jace I’m getting the same results.” Apex replied, confused. “My scans are the same.” Holly said. “Something tells me that they don’t want it to be to easy for us.” Sarah stated, taking point as we walked forward. We walked on a path that I found near where we walked in. As we got near the middle we walked into a small clearing with a small, rocky mound in the center. Upon reaching the top there were three different tables each with a number of specific relics on them. “We still need the Hunter relic.” I said knowing that no matter how much I wanted to finish this we still needed one more relic." We’ve got another fireteam coming in from the east!” Ashley shouted, snapping me back to reality. Looking to my left I saw a fireteam walking towards us. One of them, a Titan that had taken point, stopped and pointed at us. I waved back to them as something appeared in between all three. I caught a glimpse of purple and a flash of steel before a vortex of Void energy consumed them. It stopped just as fast as it started, leaving three disintegrating corpses drifting away. The only thing left standing was Felix with a huge sword.