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The spreener hisses, revealing two sets of slimy fangs.
Peering into its gaping mouth, I shove my fear down its gullet.
But the spreener doesn’t react as the leckers did. It starts, it rears, and itfights. The entire dock quakes as it lunges, legs grappling with the stone, beak snapping forme. I rush for the chest of swords, hardly able to keep my balance on the shaking floor. Each chomp clacks louder than thunder and echoes against the wall as if an invisible army surrounds us.
Troff slashes at its armor with his sword, striking a joint. The spreener’s many eyes shift as it wheels around to face him. In doing so, its curling legs sweep out and strike me in the side, whipping me across the dock floor and out—
I’m falling.
Wild fear bursts through my body, cold and slick and sharp. Everything slows as terror spurs my brain to work faster.
My harness isn’t buckled.
I don’t have a rope.
The dock looms above me. The canyon below.
I scramble, limbs flying. My nails scrape across the stony side of the city as I plummet, searching for a handle, but there aren’t any. The rock skims my knee, rips up my hands—
I catch a sliver of a ledge and cling to it with all the strength in my right hand, crying out when my weight jerks on my shoulder. A shout echoes above me. I barely register it as Unach as I try to find another handhold, but there’s no space for another grip. My feet dangle. I flail,my left hand glazing over too-smooth rock. I’m holding myself up by just four fingers now.
And I’m slipping.
“Help!” My pulse thumps like a war drum. I can barely hear the commotion over it. Unach hangs thirty feet above me, sword drawn, torn between the spreener and me. Kesta hangs on the other side of the dock, wide eyed.
Fight or flee.
The spreener fights.
Gritting my teeth, digging in my nails, I glare at the spreener’s backside and push the mounting fear out of me, striking it again. As before, it spins and seeks me out, hissing, saliva raining from its beak, bits of broken stone tumbling down.
But it has neglected Kub and Troff. I hear two loudcracks, and the spreener screams, a horrible, grating sound that rattles my eardrums and pierces my brain. The spreener falls off the dock, green ooze spraying from two severed hind legs. It falls into the canyon, but its slime dribbles down the side of the city and toward me. I grit my teeth as the hot ooze splatters my cramping hand. I lose a few millimeters.
“I’m slipping!” I scream. There is no way in the gods’ dry world that I will survive this fall.
“Hang on!” Kesta shouts, working her way down, handhold by handhold.
Again I try to lift my free hand, higher, higher, but there are no dips or crags to fit even a single finger into.
“I’m falling!” I cry. Of all the ways I have pictured myself dying, it was never this.
Azmar.
The canyon looms below me.
“Troff, I’m going to jump!” Unach bellows.
A rope whizzes overhead. I look up to see Unach falling toward me.
My fingers go numb and release the rock. I scream, but Unach’s arm hooks around my waist. Her rope jerks so suddenly my neck pops, and she groans.
I don’t breathe. Then all my air rushes out.
Unach laughs. “I’ve got her!”
I grab her shoulder with my left hand. My right-hand fingers remain curled into claws, unable to release their desperate hold. “Oh stars, Unach. Thank you.” A hard ball forms in my throat. My eyes and nose run while my entire body shivers. I clutch Unach’s tricep with my good hand. “Thank you, thank you. Gods bless you.”
We jerk up a few feet at a time until Kesta grabs my upper arm and hauls us up. All three of us drop onto the dock, safe and secure once more.
