Chapter 52: The Last Steps
The oasis was closer.
Not close or within reach. But the green of it was no longer a single smudged shape against the horizon.
"We’re making progress," he said.
Nobody had enough left to answer him.
The heat had worn everyone down. Nobody had the energy to complain anymore.
Arthur’s lips had cracked.
The sweat had stopped.
He kept smiling anyway.
Mithra still checked everyone at regular intervals, turning her head to count heads while Athena had stopped writing. Sun had tied his shirt around his waist sometime in the second hour and his monkey had migrated from his shoulder to the top of his head and was lying there.
"Buddy," Sun said, without much force behind it.
The monkey raised one thumb very slightly into the air.
Sun sighed. "Same," he said.
Vedas was hiding how tired he was but Arthur had noticed forty minutes ago.
Melo walked behind them with her tail dragging and was taking steps that were smaller than usual, each one deliberate. Athy’s wings were hanging lower than they should have been, and twice she had lost altitude mid-flight and corrected without acknowledging it, but the corrections were slower the second time.
Arthur watched morale for another five minutes and then made a decision. "Want to hear the dumbest thing I ever did?" he said.
Everyone looked at him slowly, with the energy available for slow looking.
"There are too many choices." Athena raised her brow.
Arthur grinned. "I once chased a fish into a river," he said. "Specifically because I was sure I could outmaneuver it. I was wrong. I fell in. The fish escaped."
"Did you catch anything?" Mithra said.
"Eventually I found a better spot downstream and caught three smaller ones. So I came out ahead, technically."
The clown materialized at the edge of the group, drifting alongside them in its ice bath with the expression of something that had just spotted an opportunity.
"So you were always incompetent," the clown said.
Arthur considered this. "Yes," he said. "But I got dinner, so."
The clown opened its mouth.
Arthur was already starting the next story.
...
"I used to get lost in Greenleaf," Arthur said. "This was a town I had lived in my entire life."
"How?" Athena said, with the focused attention of someone who had questions about this professionally.
"I always found something interesting." Arthur scratched his cheek. "Then I got lost."
"That wasn’t the point," Sun said. "The point is you somehow got lost in your homestone"
"I always found home, though."
"Arthur—"
"Every time," Arthur said. "Not always the fastest way. But every time."
The clown had been hovering. "So you’re admitting that your sense of direction is broken," it said.
"I’m admitting I found home every time," Arthur said with his chest puffed out.
The clown sat with this for a moment.
Arthur moved on.
...
"There was a time in the exam," Arthur said, "when Vedas ate something we found."
Vedas, from behind him, said: "You told me it was edible."
"I believed it was edible."
"That is a different statement."
"We both survived," Arthur said.
The clown brightened. "So you’re admitting you poisoned your partner."
"We both survived," Arthur said again. "We had dinner. Vedas discovered what he doesn’t like. Useful information."
The clown stared at him.
"How," the clown said, and its voice had acquired a quality it had not had when the journey started, "are you consistently winning these conversations?"
"I’m not sure what you mean," Arthur said. "I’m just telling stories."
Sun turned his head toward the clown with the slow movement of someone operating on limited resources. "You get used to it," he said.
Arthur walked for another few minutes.
"...I had another story," he said eventually.
Everyone waited.
Arthur frowned slightly.
"...I forgot it."
Silence.
Nobody laughed.
Not because it wasn’t funny.
Because for the first time since entering the desert... Arthur looked tired enough to forget something.
Vedas looked ahead. "...Then I’ll tell one."
Arthur blinked. "Really?"
Vedas nodded. "...Once..." He paused. "...Actually... Idon’t have any."
"...You two really were made for each other." Sun stared at Vedas before glancing at him. "...You can remember it later."
"...Yeah." Arthur smiled weakly. "After we win."
...
The oasis became even clearer for them. Arthur could now see individual palm trees and fruits like apples and grapes on them.
Two other teams had disappeared during the story-telling portion of the march.
One had argued its way into a member quitting, which had resolved the argument by ending everything. The other had collapsed suddenly, all four students sitting down at approximately the same time, and then one had said something quiet and the circle had appeared and taken them.
"Stay together," Arthur said, when the second team vanished.
A faster team moved past them, covering ground at a pace that was genuinely impressive given the conditions.
Sun watched them go. "We’re last," he said.
"Maybe," Arthur said. "We’re still six, though."
Sun looked at him.
Arthur looked at the oasis.
Nobody said anything else, because that was enough.
But then after four more minutes, Athy went down first.
She had been losing altitude in shorter intervals for the last twenty minutes, and then she simply landed on the sand and her wings did not bring her back up. She tried. She stood but then her legs gave out.
Athena was already kneeling. She reached for Athy and stopped when Athy shook her head, not willing to be a burden for her partner. Athy tried to stand a second time. Got partway. Came back down.
Twenty meters away, Melo had stopped walking.
She was looking at the clown.
The clown’s confident smile had returned because it knew this moment, a weak link has appeared.
Arthur saw it.
He crossed to Melo without consulting his legs, and knelt in the sand in front of her. He picked her up carefully, one arm under her and one supporting her. Then he stood and crossed to Athy and lifted her too, settling both of them against his sides.
"Just a little longer," he said. His voice came out smaller than he intended. "Please."
Melo settled against Arthur’s arm.
For a moment...
She froze.
His heartbeat was weak. Her ears slowly lowered before she looked toward Athy.
Athy had noticed too. The owl quietly pressed one wing against Arthur’s shoulder. Neither beast said anything but both suddenly understood the same thing.
They weren’t being carried by someone stronger than them. They were being carried by someone who was already closer to collapsing than either of them.
...
Arthur could hear it.
Tiny ripples.
Birds.
Palm leaves moving.
The smell.
The oasis was close, so close that it made his heart beat faster for a moment.
Arthur tried to take another step but then blinked when he found himself not moving. He told his leg to move and once again it didn’t. He went down sideways. He twisted as he went, which was not a thought so much as a reflex, and his shoulder took the sand instead of Melo or Athy.
He was on the ground while the oasis was right there. The clown was nearby, and its eyes display delight as if it was waiting for this moment.
"Well? Do you give up? Or will you continue to push your friends?"
Arthur trembled before closing his eyes, he really couldn’t feel his leg and everything was becoming blurry.
"Laying on the ground won’t help. So either you give up or force them to drag you but you know the issue."
Arthur clenched his fist before opening his mouth. "I gi—" he started.
Melo’s tail wrapped around the lower half of his face and Athy’s wing connected with the side of his head.
Smack.
Smack.
Smack.
The monkey leaped from Sun’s shoulder. It landed squarely on Arthur’s chest. Then it kept repeatedly poking his forehead.
Arthur blinked. "...Even you?"
The monkey nodded once.
Vedas stepped forward first and looked down at Arthur. "You remember..." Arthur looked up. "...When I wanted to give up?"
Silence.
"You didn’t let me." He offered grabbed Arthur should. "...So I won’t let you either."
Arthur stared at him.
Vedas smiled. "We’re partners."
Mithra crouched beside him. "You know..." She smiled. "This is incredibly unfair."
Arthur blinked. "Hm?"
"I’ve spent an entire month stopping you from doing reckless things." She gently flicked his forehead. "I’m not letting you start quitting now."
Arthur laughed weakly. "...Fair enough."
"Good." She stood. "Since you can’t get up, we will help you."
Athena adjusted her glasses. "You wouldn’t have accepted that answer from me." Arthur looked at her. "When I wanted to stop researching..." She looked directly into his eyes. "You told me to keep going. I’m returning the advice."
Arthur heard footsteps in the sand.
"You dragged us through an entire desert," Sun said, arriving at a volume that suggested he was not interested in temperature management anymore. "You told the worst stories I have ever heard about falling into rivers and poisoning your own partner! You do not get to quit three steps from the finish line. I am telling you this as someone who has been annoyed by you since the entrance exam."
Nobody asked who would carry what.
They simply did.
Mithra’s hands took his left leg. Sun had his shirt. Athena was at his shoulders. The monkey had one small hand firmly to his forehead in the universal gesture of "stay awake." Melo’s tail did not unwrap. Athy’s wing remained in contact with his head in a way that communicated she was available to slap him again.
Arthur looked at the sky above him, which was the simulated sky of a simulation he was not going to walk out of under his own power.
He laughed.
Everyone else joined him.
"...Thanks." It was barely louder than a whisper.
Everyone heard it anyway.
...
The clown watched them cover the remaining distance.
Not walking. Carrying and being carried, each person contributing what they had left, which was different amounts but was not nothing. They moved together in the inelegant way of a group that was not interested in looking competent and was focused entirely on moving forward.
The clown’s smile had stopped.
Not the slow disappearance of someone who was upset.
It had spent the entire desert being outmaneuvered by someone who turned every temptation into a reason to continue. It had watched for the moment when that person ran out of reserves and prepared its victory carefully.
And just when Arthur was about to give up. His team stepped up to help pull him over which was outside of his expectation. They should have wanted to leave the most.
Instead they carried him.
The clown sat in its pool of ice water and watched the team cross the final meters together. "I lost," the clown said quietly.
Not to someone who had resisted temptation. To someone who had taught everyone else to resist it. The clown watched Arthur’s team disappear into the light.
For the first time...
It smiled.
Not its usual playful smile but a genuine one. ""...Now I understand."
Then it dissolved with the rest of the simulation.
...
White light.
Then silence.
Then cool air arriving all at once, the specific cool of a temperature-controlled space after sustained heat, and Arthur felt it on his face before he understood where he was.
Grass.
Real grass.
Arthur blinked before realizing he was on his back. Everyone was on the ground in various arrangements.
Nobody was speaking.
Nobody was moving.
The combined sound of the team was the sound of people breathing at the bottom of something. After a long moment, Steven’s voice arrived.
"Challenge One."
A pause.
"Complete. Only forty teams remain."
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