Partisan - Book II

Odds and Angles

They have been walking for at least an hour. There's an occasional trap tripped, but otherwise the forest is silent, and it is a silence that doesn't sit well in Allayria's bones. It's like a poor echo of another forest, lush and dense, but that one made the silence, and the slow vines that slithered there were more than just plants grasping for sunlight.

This is the most perturbed she's seen Finn; there's a frown that plays at the edges of his mouth, shimmering in and twisting around as his wide eyes flit to vacant ground and empty branch. The farther south they travel, into the heart of the eastern section of the arena, the quieter becomes.

It gets to the point where even Lei seems to notice it, and he holds a jut of rock in hand, rolling it slowly between his fingers as he glances around.

"Do you think this is part of the game?" Allayria asks and he looks back at her.

"No."

The first scream is like a smoldering knife through water, scraping in a sizzling hiss against the silence, and their heads turn in unison, knees bending, backs hunching down. It isn't far off, by Allayria's judgement, and there's a crack of breaking wood that follows it.

The initial thought is that it's a mistake: someone who took the wrong step on a tree branch, someone who triggered a hidden trap, but then another voice rings out, their words buffeting against the drifting leaves and whispering grass:

"Get off her!"

Allayria catches the name "Simon" murmured under Lei's breath before he rushes off into the underbrush, leaving them to sprint behind. He's moving toward the voices, and she slides out a coil of vine, sliding it between her hands.

When they break into the clearing Allayria registers a tangle of people, struggling in the center of it. Toward the ground, with a huge, muscled arm pressing her neck into the grass, is Fae Urilong and her face seems to be bright red in equal parts from asphyxiation and potent rage. Two similarly attired men grapple with the hulking one holding her down—Durai, with long rivers of red flowing down from his shattered nose—as well as a short, dark-haired woman Allayria thinks might be the non-Kali Solveig woman.

The three dash forward into the fray and suddenly a glint of silver flickers up from the grass as one of Fae's shaking, slender hands buries a knife deep into the front of Durai's foot.

The howl of pain breaks everyone apart as he wheels back, clutching at the speared foot, and in that time Fae Urilong scrambles to her feet, dodging the punt of ice sent at her head by the woman and tossing another knife in the Nature-caller's direction. The movements break the strange freeze and the rest of them rush forward.

Allayria crashes into the Solveig woman and they grapple, hard hands and clumsy feet, too close in proximity to do any effective Skilling. It's a matter of who loses balance first and, by suddenly dropping sideways, twisting on one heel, Allayria loses grip of her rope but manages to catapult the woman forward. Her fingers grip into the grit, the tips of her boots digging in as she tries to haul herself up, but then she feels the tug. It's clammy earth that encloses around her ankles but it feels like hands, and there's salt in her mouth for a moment, salt and water, and the hands are cold and hard, digging in and dragging down, down deep into the dark water...

Her lungs seize, rasping for air and she twists, acting on instinct, thought little more than a white panic as her hand lashes out blindly, grasping, and her foot lurches down, kicking out as her knee cracks and throbs in pain.

She hears an 'oof,' somewhere below as the vine suddenly slams into her hands and the clay crumbles around her legs. In the pulsing pound of adrenaline and fear she has accomplished what she could not on horseback in the bright sunlight: she called an element without sight or touch.