Eric didn’t know where he was when he opened his eyes. He felt the cold, hard floor beneath him as he squinted up at the buzzing lights that hung from the ceiling above. It took a few minutes for the fog of confusion in his mind to burn away and the realization of where they must be to sink in. 

He sat up too fast. Stars spotted his vision. He blinked them away and took a moment to take in the small cabin that he found himself in. Windows took up a large portion of three walls, each of them heavily fogged up. Leaves tickled the glass of one of the windows, causing beads of wet humidity to trace paths through the thick condensation. Through these narrow gaps, all he could see was green.

The room was totally empty except for two other unconscious figures arranged on the floor on either side of him. Familiar faces. 

“Hannah?” Eric’s voice was raspy, like he hadn’t used it in days. “Are you okay?”

Hannah was staring up at the ceiling, her dark eyes vacant. Her normally vibrant brown skin looked ashen and cold.

“Hey.” He put his hand on her shoulder and gently shook it. “I think we made it. This is the last test. We’re almost Embers.”

Hannah drew in a sharp breath like her lungs had been refusing air up to that moment. She sat up and her gaze danced around the room. Eric watched and waited. He knew how her brain worked. She was absorbing twice the information he could in half the time, drawing connections he never would have reached. 

“We made it,” she repeated, her shoulders relaxing. 

A smile spread over Eric’s face. “We flippin’ made it!”

“But I thought we totally failed the last trial.”

“I guess not,” Eric laughed, relief flowing through him.

“Don’t start celebrating just yet.” Eric turned around to see Willow sitting up, her fiery hair tousled and wild as ever. She grimaced as she massaged the back of her neck and stretched out her stiff muscles. “This last one is supposed to be a doozy, and I don’t think they’re going to let you get away with brute-forcing your way through it this time.”

“At least I did something. Where the hell were you?” Eric said.

She narrowed her eyes at him. “Busy cleaning up your mess. Why the hell do you think they let us through?”

“Guys?” Hannah said. “I think we’re on the clock.” She was looking down at a red wristwatch that Eric had never seen her wear before, and a moment later he realized that he had one on, too. 

The number 100 glowed in green, and around the outer edge there were a few dozen green dots set equidistant from each other. Where the top dot should have been was blank, however, and Hannah had noticed this as well. 

“There are 59,” she said. “We have an hour to get through this trial.”

“Then let’s get moving.” Willow pushed herself to her feet and moved to the door, but stopped short before opening it.

Eric helped Hannah to her feet and they joined Willow at the door. Elegant, curvy letters were carved into its dark wood, forming the short lines of a poem that Hannah read aloud:

Strength, knowledge, and cunning three,

In his last trial you will see.

Numbers tick as souls descend.

Another task: to break and mend.

An Ember’s heart will surely know,

The way to forge, to reap and sew.

Keep in mind our star’s dim light.

The finish line is just in sight.

“I’m really starting to hate these stupid riddles,” Eric sighed.

“What the hell does this even mean?” Willow said.

“We can figure it out as we go! We’re at 58 minutes now.” Hannah pushed open the door and they were suddenly met with the cacophonous noise, the endless shades of green, and the damp smells of a tropical jungle.

“Where the hell…?” Willow trailed off as she stepped out of the wooden cabin and onto the soft, wet earth.

A wave of moisture hit Eric as he followed her. He let his fingers slide over the slick top of a low-hanging frond. Birds chattered and called overhead, but the leaves were so dense he couldn’t see any of them. 

“This has to be another simulation, right?” Eric said. There was no way the Embers would fly them out to an actual jungle for this. They were eccentric, but they’d never done anything like this before for the final gauntlet. The moment the question left his lips, though, he remembered Darius’ comment from before the first trial about them pulling out all the stops this year.

“This feels way too real to be a simulation,” Hannah said. She was crouched down on the balls of her feet, examining the dirt intently.

“Let’s get a move on,” Willow said. “I don’t like the vibe this place is giving me.”

Eric and Hannah followed close behind Willow. Soon their small cabin disappeared amidst the foliage, swallowed up by a sea of green. 

“Do you know where we’re supposed to be going?” Eric said. Everything looked the same to him. It was all just trees and leaves. There was nothing to tell them that they were going the right way, or even to tell them that they weren’t just walking in circles. 

Willow glanced back at him. “No idea. I’m just following the path. What do you think, Girl Genius?”

Hannah pushed her lips together, her brain working in high gear. “Well,” she said after a moment, “the poem mentioned ‘our star.’ That could mean that we have to follow the sun and go east? Or west, I guess, depending on what time of day it is. The canopy is too thick to see the sun though, and I’ve never read anything about figuring out directions in a jungle before so I’m not sure where we’d start. Plus, now that I'm thinking about it, the sun thing could just be a clue to the time constraint.”

“The poem also said that an Ember would know which way to go,” Eric added. “Maybe we just have to let our instinct guide us.”

“Seriously? You want to gamble this all on a gut feeling?” Will said.

“Well we don’t have any better ideas, do we?” Eric said.

“Fine.” Willow stopped in her tracks and gestured for Eric to pass her with a dramatic sweep of her arm. “Let your guts lead the way, Mr. Instinct.” 

She fell in step with Hannah and Eric took the lead. He could feel the minutes tick away as he tried to lead them as confidently as he could down the same path that Willow had been following, but every time a dot disappeared from the face of the watch he could feel the anxiety in his chest grow stronger and stronger. 

He saw a flash of movement in the corner of his vision. He stopped, the hair on the back of his neck standing up. “Did you guys see that?”

“What? Willow said, following his gaze into the trees. 

“I didn’t see anything,” Hannah said.

Eric squinted in the direction that whatever-it-was had gone. He didn’t see anything now, but he could have sworn that he’d seen something. Maybe something was all he needed. Maybe this was the test.

“This way,” he said, stepping off the path and into the dense underbrush.

“You’ve got to be kidding me,” Willow huffed. “This is idiotic. We’re going to get lost immediately if we leave the trail.”

“There’s no challenge in following a stupid path, Will,” Eric said. “They’re not gonna start making it that easy for us in the final.”

“He has a point,” Hannah said.

Willow shook her head, but she stepped off the path to join Eric and Hannah anyway. It was slow going through the thick foliage, but Eric at least felt like they were making some headway now. A decision had been made, and that’s what Embers did, right? They made hard, bold decisions. 

Another five minutes ticked by before he saw it again. It was the same flash of orange through the trees, there and gone again in just a second’s time. Eric quickened his pace, not even bothering to mention it to the others this time. Twigs and branches clawed at his legs, snagging on his clothes and scratching at his ankles, but he didn’t have time to worry about that. Just over 35 minutes left.

Eric reached the spot where he’d seen the…something. Of course, there was nothing there now, but he stepped a few more feet forwards and pushed a damp, heavy frond out of the way. A clearing opened up in front of him, and in the center of it stood a towering tree, three times taller than any other in the jungle. Vines hung from its branches, swaying lazily in the breeze like kelp at the bottom of the ocean. Its roots started a few feet up from the ground, segmenting out from the twisting trunk-like veins before plunging into the earth. 

Hannah and Willow caught up to him a moment later. They squinted against the bright sunlight at the tree, beads of sweat shimmering on their faces. 

“Score one for Team Guts,” Eric said, shooting a smirk at Willow. She didn’t say anything back, but he did notice her jaw clench in annoyance. 

“If you guys could stow the banter for the next,” Hannah glanced down at her watch, “34 minutes, that would be fantastic.”

Willow suddenly tensed. She whipped her head around and looked behind them. “Did you hear that?”

Eric rolled his eyes. “Oh come on, you can’t let me gloat for three seconds befo—”

Willow grabbed his arm. “No. Shhh,” she hissed. “I’m serious.”

Eric’s veins turned to ice as he fell silent and listened. At first, he couldn’t hear anything special—just the wind through the trees and the distant bird call that had greeted them at the start—but then he heard it. A deep, rumbling growl rolled through the underbrush.

“Run!” Eric grabbed both Hannah and Willow’s arms, nearly lifting them off their feet as he pushed them towards the giant tree. Willow took Hannah’s hand and together they started sprinting towards the knotted, woven mess of roots. Eric hung back, glancing over his shoulder every few steps. In the shade of the jungle, he saw that orange streak once more. Two jade green eyes caught the sunlight before the tiger they belonged to leaped from the darkness and into the clearing. Its claws dug deep into the earth as it landed, its gaze trained on Eric as he slowed to a stop and turned to face it.