Page 6 of Soulmates

They were both soaked through with sweat, shaking from exertion, and dizzy with fatigue. The common room around them was battered from their bodies hitting various pieces of furniture.

“Maybe…we…are…casted?” Santiago said between panting breaths, resting her hands on her knees.

“Fucking…clearly,” Jake gasped back.

They remained resting for a minute, then two. Then they surged at each other in sync, Santiago knocking him into a drinking fountain, which collapsed under Jake’s weight, spraying him with water. He waited for his clothes to become waterlogged, but nothing happened, startling him enough to pause and observe the water spraying around him as if hitting a barrier instead of hitting him. He started to say something, but Santiago was on him again with a double jab to his kidney.

“Fuck,” he grunted, shoving her off him and noting the distress on her reddened face. Kidney shots were generally not how they fought when unsupervised. “Did you mean to do that?” he asked.

“Gods no, I’m fucking tired,” Santiago said between a blast of pink aimed at his center mass and a roundhouse kick that missed him. “But I can’t stop.”

“Fucking shit, we are very casted.”

“No…fucking…kidding…asshole…” She punctuated each word with a punch to the ribs, kidney, chin, and on it went.

“Wait, wait, stop. Just stop.” And Santiago did with a quick abortive motion as if she had to kick him again.

“Okay, okay, hear me out.”

“Be fucking quick, Osterman,” she gritted out.

“We have to reenact the origin, right? Spell my feet and kick the shit out of me while I try to block,” he said as quickly as he could while trying to get oxygen circulating.

“Fuck. Alright.” Still gasping for precious air, she threw a spell he failed to block, rooting his feet to the ground. While he was distracted, she managed a weakish high kick, and he gratefully fell to the floor.

Santiago went down right next to him. Jake luxuriated in the feel of the cool tile beneath his overexerted body. Gods, it was a cold night for April, cold enough to have seeped inside the dorm. Steam rose from their bodies as they calmed down from the insane, cageless cage match.

He sat up, wincing in pain from pretty much everywhere. He turned and offered a hand to help Santiago to a sitting position. They mirrored their poses, forearms on knees, heads hanging as they tried to get a grip on what the hell had just happened.

“Okay, so we got casted to continue fighting until we reenacted our first fight,” Jake said. But had the challenge runners known that much detail about their history, or did the magic that ran the challenge know? Either way, creepy.

“Right, but how the hell were we supposed to know what to do? Is this more of that brains-over-brawn bullshit? They know being a powerful fighter doesn’t make you an actual idiot, right?”

“Or to make the fight last longer? Who would guess they wanted it exact?” Santiago asked.

He thought Maddox probably had if he was in a similar situation. What would his origin story with a partner be? What if it wasn’t the same type of partner? Gods, what if it was his first crush or something? If he had to relive hearing about Maddox’s first college kiss, he might lose it.

Before his thoughts could go too far down that disastrous road, an enormous explosion rang out close to where they were.

“That sounded like it came from near the labs,” Santiago said, already standing. She reached for him at the same time he reached for her. She pulled him to his feet and they took off out the door and toward the blast.

Before they could get twenty steps, their phones chimed louder than before, as if to interrupt any illusions of rescue or investigation.

They both stopped midstride. “Fuck. This fucking night, man,” Santiago whined.

“Yeah, yeah.” He raised his phone. “Okay, ‘Your treasured ally. Your deepest bond. You have something tied to your truest self that belongs to them. Freely given or not, it is theirs and must be returned before the dawn. Peril waits for those who keep what does not belong to them.’”

Santiago’s eyebrows scrunched together like they did when she was working out her next strategy in a fight. Maybe he had been paying attention all these years. Either way, confusion and irritation played on her face. “So the person we’re closest to needs something we have that already belongs to them?”

“Or we have something they gave us?” he said. “Whether or not we want it.”

“And I don’t think this is referring to your favorite hoodie Maddox stole ages ago.”

“I’m not even going to pretend this isn’t about Maddox for me. But who for you?”

“Gotta be Diego. He’s my best friend. I think he’s my closest ally. But what does Maddox have of yours, do you think?”

Jake didn’t answer, but he already knew. Everything he was, everything he would ever be, belonged to Maddox. His life, his body, his mind. Jake’s very soul was already his.

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