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The Portal Games

The Space Between

The Second Arena

Whoopsie Daisies

"Do you think that everything's okay back there?" Jason asked.

"Probably not," Sarah said, shaking her head. "Much as I hate to say it, I'm just glad it's not us back there. It could have been. It really easily could have been."

"Mmmph...I feel bad."

Isabella's little voice was quite sad, quiet and almost despondent in her own way. The rest of the team were less bothered, but still showed the signs of realization. There was something akin to a reminder of mortality with the voting off of someone else. They'd spent the last three days in each other's company, and despite Black Chaos being the opposing team, they had become almost intimate with each other. Being a contestant in these games meant that they all shared something that most others wouldn't, and it was weird to see them go.

They weren't left waiting in the other stone chamber for long. The thick-ceilinged room didn't have a chance to go stale before the other team arrived...well, most of them. The eyes of the Whoopsie Daisies picked out the missing member almost immediately.

"Well...damn," Glyn muttered.

Sergino shook his head, though whether at the lack of his fellow sea captain or Glyn's statement, one couldn't tell. Sarah shook her head, and Kotone whispered something that few would have heard, though those that did would have sworn she said 'wrong choice.' It didn't matter, however. The deed was done.

Isabella hurried over to the black dragon as soon as he entered the room, grabbing him by the tail. She looked him in the eye when he glanced down.

"Mr. Draconicons, did...did she get hurt when she left?"

"No, no. She's not hurt. She's somewhere safe. Probably happy, too," he said, "though I can't promise that part."

"She's okay, though?"

"Yeah, yeah. She's fine. When someone gets voted off, they'll be taken somewhere that they can watch the games until they're done."

"So...she's seeing us? Right now?"

"...Probably."

Isabella promptly turned and waved all over the place, and after a moment, so did Jaden and Lykus. Even Sarah got in on it, the T-Rex waving to random corners of the room.

Eventually, however, they had to move on. Draconicon cleared his throat, and the Whoopsie Daisies clustered together once more.

Both Teams

The waiting chamber was not particularly comfortable, though the two teams were making it work. The Whoopsie Daisies hadn't gloated about being on the winning side, and Black Chaos hadn't thrown any big glares across the room. It was part of the game, they were both telling themselves, though they said it for different reasons.

The chamber that they waited in had six doorways, or, rather, six arches that looked like they should have had a doorway leading out of them. One of them did, leading back the way they'd come, back to the voting room, while the others were blank.

Or...were they? Glyn looked over his shoulder, cocking his head at one of them.

"Hey...is it me, or does that arch look kinda...tentacle-y to anyone else?" the timber wolf asked.

"...You know, now that you say it, I think it does," Jason said.

"It feels...familiar, don't you think?" Jaden asked, the orca cocking his head to the side.

"It should. You were just there." Draconicon chuckled. "This is the chamber of transition. Every time that you finish an arena and do your votes, you will come back here, and you'll be sent to the next arena.

"Now, the next one will be through that archway. Any guesses where you're going?" the dragon asked, gesturing to the spot immediately to the right of the tentacled arch.

Every eye turned to the designated spot, some narrowing, some widening, but nobody saying anything as they looked at the stone. There were speckles in the rock around it that seemed like they were dug in, like they might have housed gems in the past, and the archway itself seemed blockier, with straight lines running through it that diverged into the occasional diagonal.

Black Chaos focused on that, and the stingray leader tapped her chin.

"I'm not sure I like the look of this," Ailsa muttered. The stingray glanced at her opponents, then chuckled. "On the other hand..."

"I think we're on the same page, Captain," Sanmer said, smiling and tapping his fingers together.

"This could be more our speed."

On the Whoopsie Daisies, on the other hand, one team member was focused on the lines, while another looked at the rock beneath the archway. Sergino smiled.

"Now that will be far more comfortable."

"How do you figure?" Glyn asked.

"I know snow when I see it."

"Oh, lovely. You think we're going cold?"

"Would that be so horrible?"

"Considering most of us are almost naked, yeah. Kinda."

The two teams spoke in whispers, barely loud enough for them to hear each other. The bond between the two that came from knowing the discomfort and anxiety over being eliminated was fading, replaced by the reminder that they were all trying to stay in the Games as long as possible. They didn't want to hand over any information to the other team that they didn't have to.

And Sarah was making sure that Isabella kept her mouth shut with both hands wrapped around the pangolin's muzzle.

Soon enough, their time to examine the wall was up, and they stepped back. Draconicon stepped between the teams and rested his hand on the wall.

"Any guesses?" he asked them.

Neither spoke up.

"Competitive again, hmm? I can't blame you for that. Well...let's give you a taste of what lies in wait for you."

The dragon's hands glowed with a fire both too dark to be illuminated, and too bright to look at directly. The wall shimmered, then faded into the familiar black-ringed portal. Rather than the deep blue of the ocean on the other side, however, this led to a snowy room, covered in ice crystals that dangled from metal-clad walls.

As the dragon stepped through, not seeming bothered by walking barefoot in the snow, Sergino followed, and the Whoopsie Daisies trundled after. Glyn grumbled, wrapping his arms around his middle to try and fight off the cold, and he wasn't the only one. Most of the Whoopsie Daisies had been stripped to some degree, after all, and the snow and cold hit them all rather hard.

When Black Chaos followed, they looked around. What had seemed, at first, to be a simple little tent in the cold had turned out to be something much more. Half-cracked glass surrounded them at their backs, leading out to a view of a starry sky. A black-sheathed starry sky, at that. In the other direction were three corridors, one that went straight ahead, and two that went around at a diagonal.

The metal parts of the walls formed an orb of sorts around them, with the glass leading to transparent tubes going down each hallway that would then connect to other metal spheres and cubes. All of them were cold, chilled, some frozen over, and down each, one could eventually see a point where ice had completely frosted over the passageway, and where they would have to take a different route.

"Welcome to the PSS Circe, an abandoned scientific outpost on the edge of the galaxy, decaying for the last twenty years," Draconicon said with a small smile. "And probably on its last legs at the moment, which is why we're doing this now rather than at the end of the Portal Games.

"As before, there's going to be a challenge halfway through the games. As you can see, there's almost a straight shot to it going down the central corridor," he said, nodding down the middle hallway. "That said, you can get to the central chamber by going down any route as long as you eventually loop back to the middle of the space station."

"...I'm not going to complain about being back in space, but, uh, aren't these walls a little...dangerous?" Glyn asked.

"The glass? Oh, yes. There's micro-fissures throughout the station, which is why it's so cold. All the heat that the life support built up over time has been sucked right out through the cracks. And some of the passages won't do very well at supporting your weight, so I'd suggest being very careful what routes you take."

The grins on Sanmer's and Ailsa's faces were as obvious as could be. And why not? The former was a mad scientist that was used to dealing with strange tech, and the latter had been trained for dangerous situations like this. It was a flip on the whole issue of dealing with all the nature problems.

Draconicon lifted his hand, and rather than a sand map that he had used before, a hologram appeared over his palm. Isabella and Ailsa both leaned in, looking at the map as it came up.

The PSS Circe consisted of an outer ring of twelve spheres and cubes, all interconnected - meaning that one would pass through five separate mini-stations going around to the far side on the outer ring - while the interior was composed of a middle ring of eight more, with a single mini-station in the very center. The central station was where the challenge would occur, and where the reward was.

"What's the reward this time, Mr. Draconicons?" Isabella asked.

"Now that is a secret...but I can tell you that it will make it a lot easier to get from place to place without risking breaking open the weak glass and falling into space. And let me tell you, if you fall into space, that will be an elimination if you aren't retrieved in the first five seconds of falling out."

The captains nodded. More dangerous, more possible to lose more people at once. Definitely not the best sort of situation for anyone.

"Now, as you can see, you can get to the far side - which is where you want to be - easily enough by any of the routes. It's bigger than it looks, though, and most of the mini-stations have at least some dangers waiting for you. I'll leave it to you to discover them, but suffice to say, you won't be going from one side to the other in a day unless you get very lucky. As a result, I'm setting the time limit for this place for...let's say three days. You had five before, three seems fair for now."

"...Understood," Ailsa said.

"I think we can do that, Mr. Draconicons," Isabella agreed.

"Glad you have faith in yourselves. Now. I'll be nice with this. The tunnels around the outer ring are the weakest, the least structurally stable. However. They are the least patrolled, as well. If you can pass through them, you'll be safer from the station's old security forces and a few other things that I've added. However, again, they're the weakest structural part of the station, and they're old, and slow. It's up to you how much you want to balance speed against safety here.

"First person to reach the other side with as many team members as possible wins, just like before. And if you don't use your idols then, I'm taking them back and you can find them again somewhere else."

The two team captains nodded in understanding.

"I think that's all you need to know. The rest, you can figure out on your own. I hope that you like the cold, dears."

The dragon disappeared without further warning, leaving them alone. The team captains hustled back to their waiting teams, both moving a little bit faster than they had on the island, and for good measure. Two days less, and far less understanding of where they were.

And cold. Lots and lots of cold.

Draconicon

The black dragon sat down in a chair far away, looking at the transmitted view of the different competitors. They were certainly moving faster this time, whispering strategies to one another about how they were going to get through this as safely and efficiently as possible.

It was going to be interesting to see how they did this. Glyn and Jason would be good for the Whoopsie Daisies, considering that they were both used to operating on space stations and high-tech situations. Sergino, as well, would be very useful for them considering he was from an ice-based world. Sarah and Kotone, however, would be at serious risk from the cold, and considering Isabella's biology, she might have some danger walking on the weaker glass, simply built in a ground-breaking way.

On the other hand, Black Chaos had an interesting make-up as well. Sanmer was a mad scientist, and this would be his element, and while Tarin wasn't from that high-tech a setting, the deer did work with delicate situations and other kinds of machinery quite often. Ailsa was used to commanding and organizing soldiers in hostile settings, and he imagined she could hold things together in the more dangerous mini-stations. Lykus was an illusionist at heart, and might be useful for traps and tricks that were set up in different places, while Jaden...

Well, there were things that Jaden and Isabella could both do. It would just be a matter of whether they were smart enough to figure that out before it was too late.

"Game, start."