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For a long moment, the three of us just ran in silence as I worked. Then Merrick made a low noise in his throat. “Holy shit. Nice work, Ari.”
“Do you see it?” I panted.
“Yeah. Or rather, I barely see it. And I barely see you. You keep shimmering out of sight.”
“We all do.” Lach sounded proud.
“Good.”
I pulled away from Trace, turning to look at the dark-haired man beside me. Just as Merrick had said, I could barely see the ex-rock star, although I could hear him breathing heavily beside me.
Slowing my pace a little, I glanced over my shoulder. In the distance, I could see other groups scattering from the place where we’d first arrived. The gods had been blown back far enough by the blast, and probably stunned enough too, that it had allowed our classmates to make a break for it.
Wesley was still running behind us, but as my men and I veered in a new direction, he didn’t follow. He couldn’t see us well enough to know we’d changed course.
Thank fuck.
My legs ached from the effort of sprinting on shifting sand, my lungs were burning, and my skin felt raw from the sand that had pelted my skin earlier as we fought. But we couldn’t stop. Not until we were someplace with at least a modic
um of cover. I didn’t think any gods had followed us, but it was only a matter of time before they tracked us down.
“There,” I gasped, pointing toward the foothills. They were nearer than they had been, but still so far away that my muscles ached just thinking about it.
I’d forgotten the men couldn’t see me thanks to my mirage spell, but it didn’t matter. They all recognized the foothills as our best chance of finding shelter too.
Now that we were no longer fleeing from Wesley, our pace slowed a little. We pushed ourselves hard though, jogging across rising and falling sand dunes as we approached the foothills and the mountains that towered beyond.
It started to feel a little like the mountains themselves were a mirage, like we’d never make it. But just when I thought my legs might straight-up give out, the ground began to slope upward, turning from sand to hard-packed dirt beneath our feet.
“Okay, seriously. I’m not running up a damn mountain,” Trace grunted. “You all saw how shitty my balance is. I try running up this thing, I’m just gonna end up sliding back down ass first.”
I laughed at the visual, but I was only too happy to stop running. The immediate danger had passed for now anyway.
It took another two hours of hiking before we reached a stream running down the side of the foothills.
“Oh, thank fuck.” I threw myself down beside it, slurping up water like—well, like I’d just sprinted several miles through the desert. Which I had.
Merrick, always the smartest and most organized of us, had brought a refillable canteen made out of a soft plastic. Technically, we weren’t supposed to bring anything that could help us in the challenge to the godly realm, but after witnessing Wesley cheat his ass off last semester, I didn’t give a single fuck about the rules.
We all drank our fill, and Merrick filled up the canteen before we moved on, following the path of the stream for a while.
Finally, we reached a small plateau where several large boulders clustered together, creating a naturally sheltered area between them. From inside the circle of boulders, we could peek out over the lower foothills and the landscape beyond, but our position wouldn’t be immediately obvious to anyone passing by.
“Looks like as good a place to stop as any,” Merrick murmured, glancing around.
“Good, because I’m dead on my fuckin’ feet.” Lach flopped to the ground, leaning against a boulder with his legs splayed in front of him.
We were all dusty and sweaty, covered in small cuts and bruises. But we were all still alive, and as the sun set on our first day of this new Gods’ Challenge, that felt like a pretty damn solid accomplishment.
I sank down beside him, resting my head against the rock. “A-fucking-men.”
Trace and Merrick sat too, and for a moment, we all just caught our breath. Then Trace dug into his pocket. “I brought these. I wasn’t sure the gods would even put supplies around the playing area like they used to—why would they give us any advantages if they want to kill us all? So I figured we’d have a tougher time finding food than we did last time.”
He pulled two small vials from his pocket, and when he passed one to me, I lifted an eyebrow.
“Am I supposed to eat this?”
He rolled his eyes at me, chuckling. “No. Drink it. Split it with Lach, I don’t have enough for all of us to have our own. It’s an energy potion. It’ll basically give you as much energy as a full meal would.”
