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Her terminology is that of a fighter, because she instructs me effortlessly. I swing my legs in the right direction, making contact with soft underbellies and groins, and sweeping my feet out to knock giant bodies off their feet.
“Wait, Skylenna, no!” The panic in her voice is quickly answered by my body being thrown into a set of bars. My forehead bangs against metal first, then I fall to the ground like a sack of potatoes.
My coughing fit is interrupted by nails as sharp as claws biting into my arm, grating down my flesh.
“Argh!”
“Fight! You’re surrounded!”
They’ve got me. By the sound of their labored breathing and the smell of their rancid breath, there must be more than four. A pair of fists slam down on my body like a primate beating down on another animal. The air is knocked from my lungs. Another fist is thrown down across my face, hard enough to send blood spraying from my mouth.
The woman’s voice is screaming for me, but as the Blood Mammoths start to yank on my limbs in a violent attempt to pull them from my body, I know what I must do.
The void greets me like an old friend. And I find their minds, collectively, reaching my hands into their collective subconsciousness as one.
“Skylenna, don’t!”
But it’s too late. I graze their minds like I’m stepping into their world. And I know how to pull them into the prison void, but it’s not right. It’s grotesque and insidious. In a repetitive flash, I see who they are. I see what they’ve done.
Organs. Entrails. Cannibalism. Deep in the West Vexello Mountains, they’d hunt something other than animals. They’d hunt children.
I let out a scream that crosses land and water. A scream that I feel connect with one beast, one monster. He can hear me through the howling wind, through the sounds of the forest, through a bond that only we share.
And nothing on this earth can stop DaiSzek from crossing oceans to find me. I feel it in his bones—the determination, the fury, the destruction waiting to be set free.
Please, find me, my boy.
“They’ve let go! Run, Skylenna, Run!”
My brief visit into their minds threw them off of me, if only for a moment. I choke on a sob as I jump over their scrambling bodies, throwing my full weight into a race back to my cage. It’s close. My family is close.
“Skylenna!” Dessin’s voice.
“There she is!” Ruth.
“Run! You’re almost here!”
“Oh, god, what have they done to her?” Warrose.
Their gasps at my appearance are audible. Wetness drips down my neck and nude chest. I must be covered in blood. But all I can feel is relief wash over my entire body like a hot shower.
I want to call out to them. I want to scream their names. But my breath is coming from weak, thin lungs. All I can do is cry as their shouting grows louder. Their words get closer.
I’m here! I’ve come home!
“Throw your leg back. Eleven o’clock!” the voice yells, sounding as urgent and excited as I am to get back to my cage in one piece.
I oblige, stopping my run to twist, jab my leg back, make contact with a kneecap. The beast wails like a baby, yet the sound is deeper than any man’s voice I’ve heard. Two hands wrap around my ankle, tugging me backward.
“You’re facing him now. Block his blows, two o’ clock. Yes, good. Now again.” The blows nearly send me flying, but I hold my ground. “To the knee again! He’s wounded there.”
I kick as hard as I can, using every bit of energy left to make him bleed. My friends scream for me, cheer me on, tell me more are coming, more are here. I have to run, have to make it a few more steps.
I turn, slamming into a hard, sweaty chest.
Multiple hands, fists, and feet begin wailing on me. They beat into my flesh like a slab of dough to be kneaded. My body is jerked side to side until I’m knocked to the ground, the back of my head cracking on the brimstone. Everything goes fuzzy behind my blindfold.
I can’t focus on one area of pain. My nerves light up in red, flashing alarms from head to toe. I’m sobbing, hiccuping, trying to hear that voice, trying to stop screaming.
