My heartpoundedhard in my chest, so hard that I wondered if it might actually give out.Fear prickled at the back of my neck, sweat gathering in the small of my back under my armour.I twisted my arm so that I could run my fingers down the seam of my sword's sheath, feeling the quill there.
Survive.Get to Araxis.Yield.Listen to whatever he had in mind.
I blinked stinging sweat from my eyes, shifting a little so I could look around the boulder to the slope below, careful to tuck myself in the shadow as best as I could.Evasion was key, Araxis had said, so I took my time, going still and quiet and scanning the scene below.
It was so fucking hard to see anything: gray sand, gray boulders, and silver trees painted everything in monochrome and made it hard for my eye to differentiate what I was seeing.And Andiri was gray too, because ofcourseshe was.
I caught a tiny flicker of movement around the edge of one thorny bush.Just there, a branch bobbed, and I squinted.As I stared, Isawa shadow moving, low to the ground.I watched, perfectly still, willing my pulse to slow.
Andiri, maybe.Definitely someone in black armour.
I leaned back, just slightly, so that I was out of line of sight, and took in the slope ahead of me.
Whoever was below was cutting their way west.I needed to go north, but the embankment was rocky and open, except for a few boulders, and any step I took would send a shower of stones down the slope.
What did that mean?I was about a third of the way up this ridge, so it wasn't like I could quietly slip back down to the base and look for another way up.
Maybe I'd wait it out.I'd have to wait it out.Evasion, Araxis had said.That meant being patient.
I reached over my shoulder and eased one sword out, and I immediately felt better with the familiar weight of the hilt in myhand.Okay.I could do this.I could wait.I was good at waiting, I told myself, the lie feeling implausible even as I willed it to be true.
I didn't let myself slouch or sink down,insteadresting against the boulder and doing my very best to listen for any skittering stones.Somewhere in the distance, I heard a shrill scream – high and frantic – that made my stomach twist.
I licked my lips again.Fuck, my throat was dry.But it was only an hour.I could do an hour without water.
My fingers flexed around the hilt of my sword, my toes curling inside of my boots.I could wait.
How long could it have been?It felt like it had been two minutes and also two hundred.Sweat was causing my base layer to stick to my neck uncomfortably, where some dust was chafing against my skin every time the collar moved.
I had to look again.I shifted my weight and leaned out, searching the spot where I'd last seen that dark shadow of armour.I narrowed my focus on that dense area of thorn bush and hip-high rocks, and saw nothing.
Maybe she'd gone.I let out a quick exhale, giving the rest of the slope a perfunctory scan.I could leave and be back on my way.As I glanced to the bottom portion of the slope, the western side, my stare caught on something, a strange upright shape against the sand.
I squinted, my skin crawling with some animal instinct, and as I narrowed my eyes, the shape came into focus.
Two black eyes stared up at me from a sea of gray.Andiri of Creche Ena stood perfectly, eerily still at the base of the slope, as gray as the rocks around her, her dead eyes pinned on the hillside where I was hiding.Her armour was gone,only a gray base layer remaining, and in her hand she held a club of some sort.She was as gray as the arena around her, and still as a statue except for the rustling of her dark crest.She blinked, impossibly slow, the blacks of her eyes vanishing for a moment before they flared wide again.
When she opened her eyes, her stare found mine, and I saw the slow curl of a smile across her features.A jolt of panic twisted my stomach, cold terror sluicing down me.
Evasion hadn't worked.So it was time to run for my fucking life.
I turned and bolted up the hill.The ground was loose under my feet, and my left foot gave under me.My elbow cracked down and I forced myself up again, scrambling up the surface.Behind me, I heardrocksclattering andskittering down the slope, the sound of footfalls across the grit and dirt.Every nerve in my body was screaming to run, to runfaster, to climbharder, and I put everything I had into escape.
Some primal, frantic part of my brain kicked into overdrive and while my body hurtled itself as fast as it could up the slope, scrambling and flying, all discomfort forgotten in the frantic need torun, there was another chorus inside of me.She was coming.She wascoming.
The top of the slope was lined with thorn bushes, except a gap that I'd been aiming toward, which made this whole thing a funnel.Up top, I could see another flash of black armour.
Someone else was waiting.Stupid, of course they'd designed the arena like that.Why the fuck had I come this way?
I fought against the urge to turn and see how close Andiri was – I imagined I could feel her cold breath on the back of my neck; I imagined the hard blow would come any second – and instead I turned sideways and started sprinting laterally, to the east.Farther away but where else could I fucking go?
Running lengthwise across a slope was a hell of a lot easier than runningupit, and I picked up speed, legs pumping, heart thundering.I heard a crash behind me, and couldn't beat back the impulse to glance.
Andiri's body had pitched down the slope, a flash of tan scale and dark armour on top of her as both figures tumbled across the shale.They snarled and howled, and I took my chance and just kept going.I bolted away, looking frantically for another way up the ridge, but the dense thorn bushes wereeverywhere.
Fuck it, I thought furiously.I looked again: Andiri and the voltaariwerelocked in a fight, beating each other mercilessly.They were screaming and shouting, weapons flailing.Andiri had the lower ground but I watched as she cracked her club to the voltaari's knee, and I heard the audience scream as it looked like the joint gave way to a mess of bone and gristle.
I swallowed and looked up at the bushes, which seemed to run in a solid wall all the way to the east, as far as I could fucking see.
