Author Games Compilation [Cycle 1]

Task 2 ♢ At The Ends of the Earth (KE)

THE HANGING TREE GAMES: REVISITED - TASK TWO

They were lined up like they were all part of a firing squad. Kassia'd seen them before, when things got out of hand every so often back in One. They went down in long lines, and though they didn't march forward, they stood shoulder-to-shoulder, creating a barrier to all that lay behind them. All that was missing were the rifles.  

Now, just how in the hell did they expect any of them to keep all the wickedness contained if they weren't permitted to rise with their rifles?

Kassia herself was rather concerned with the meaning of all this. Typically, they rose in circles, separated by a slice, however slim the degree. But nobody was at the tail of a horn; nobody stood facing the edge of metal. It was all fair - no favorable odds, no nothing. They all had an even leap from where they stood to the empty tracks before them. She envisioned herself taking off, feet grinding into the leaden gravel. Maybe she'd kick the rocks back, catch someone's shins with them. Lessen their odds, heighten her own. Pebble by pebble.

Still, it'd be a race with no room to create distance. She breathed out to ease her nerves, shook out her arms, ground her weight into her knee and bobbed there a bit. The plan was still in place, and she was to look out for her own. That was more than Brannon could say: he was in charge of taking the little'uns off, Symon and Cadigan. So they wouldn't run into the fray and get themselves caught by a knife in the throat and all that mumbo jumbo.

Struck by curiosity of, well, his remembrance of this plan, Kassia rose up on her toes and tried to see over the heads of those beside her. Now, she was tall, but not the tallest. Sure, extra strain would help her, but when she began to waver upon those toes, she figured it wasn't too much worth it and flattened herself out again.

Once she'd done this, however, the unease hadn't yet fled her stomach. There was a vibration in the air, a trembling against the tunnel walls that surrounded them. Below, the gravel quaked. For a brief moment panic struck her right up the middle - they'll crack our pedestals in half and we'll fall and then blow up. But that premonition did not, in fact, find its bearings, and instead of split earth she caught sight of a bright, growing light at the corner of her vision.

Quickly, like the others, she held a gloved hand up to block the light as she turned to the source. Whatever it was, it'd be relevant - no sense in wasting their remaining thirty seconds on investigating. Follow the lead of the rest. She stretched her arms above her head, lunged in place - all of these done while staring straight ahead, the loudness of the situation shaking her just enough to cause great annoyance. We'll start it like a long jump. Just without a running start, is all. Exhale, despite having nothing to breathe out.

By the time the train - as it evidently was a train by now - had screeched to a halt and hissed out its previous exertions, the lights inside had flicked on, and the doors pressed themselves open. The fluorescents glowed against the glass against the gravel against the walls. The latter had more silhouettes than anything, though. She learned this through a rather dumb glance back. It'll look pretty, her brain had said, and so she'd looked, for she was always one for pretty things such as herself.

It did nothing to settle her. All that did was the knowledge that there was an opening just a couple feet away, diagonally. A pack toppled over within.

"Falling would be easier than all this," it might've said.

Please. Three. I'm just... Two. ...Getting started. One.

As planned, she leaped off with a great bound towards the light. Two steps, and then her gloved hand was gripping the edge of the door, throwing her weight inside. Air expelled itself with a high "hoo!" and then she was rocking on the balls of her feet, scanning for quick grabs. There weren't many weapons, if any at all, and canteens were something foreign here, apparently. Just packs and various other bits of equipment she wasn't entirely sure had names.