Allayria stares at the surface; if she squints she can see the angle Lei is talking about—a slight downward tilt to the right that should be impossible for water to maintain, but sits undisturbed before her. Set against grass and crumpling banks, it's subtle enough to be overlooked but prominent enough to provoke uneasiness.
"What if," Lei continues, a thin line creasing between his brows, "the lake is the mirror? If we look into its reflection, maybe we'll see..."
He strides along the rim of it until he stops, hand outstretched.
"There!"
She glances into it too, following the point of Lei's finger. Reflected, high up in a tree and a long sprint away, is a glinting periwinkle cube dangling from a white rope. There are a couple of others near it too: a black one and a gold one.
"Let's go before someone else comes," she says. "Before anyone tries to run off with ours too."
She feels Lei's glance and hears the frown in his voice when he answers: "Maybe you should stay down here."
"Oh no," says Finn.
"What? I am not," she snaps, firing up.
"You can barely—"
"I walk just fine. You're the one walking around with a brain injury maybe you should—"
A blur of blue streaks past them; Allayria catches the glint of golden hair as Kali leaps up onto the nearest tree and climbs.
"Shit!" Allayria yells and the others start tearing toward the trees as two others sprint past—Caj, the Smith-caller, and Julia, another Halften soldier.
The pain is pulsing now as Allayria half-sprints, half hobbles to the tree line, hoisting herself up at the nearest trunk. At least with this she can predominately use her arms and left leg, and she scrambles up quickly, though not as quick as she would normally.
When she reaches the platform she turns around and hauls Finn up by the scruff of his neck as Lei climbs up on the other side.
The branches are strangely laid out here—it's obvious to anyone who has spent any time in trees, anyone who has spent years trying to find a decent fork of branches to kip in—that they are irregular. Man-made. They lattice out in design, creating an intricate web of paths, all leading toward a distant cluster where, high up, the cubes hang.
A ways-away, the other three are already leaping from branch-to-branch. Kali is shouting orders but only Julia seems to follow them; the Smith Skiller is like lightning dancing through the trees, running ahead, on his own. A crackle of wood splinters through the air every time a foot falls or something pummels out of a nearby trunk. It is the forest in miniature: a minefield of tricks and traps.
"We need to stick together," Lei decides. "I go first. Finn: behind me. Allayria: watch our backs."
He tests a path on their left, easing a foot on it and then moving quickly forward. When he reaches the trunk of the tree he gestures and they follow suit.
The first time they trigger something is two trees away, when Lei sets one foot out, then another, and then the whole branch snaps down. He's saved only by the sudden snatching of Finn's hands and Allayria's grip around the boy's waist.
When they haul him back up they try the next branch to their right. They make it halfway through this one when something cracks. Fearing another break, they sprint forward and the shards of ice hiss past them.
They're more prepared for the next one: Allayria catches the boulder in hand, shoving it back toward the offending trunk as the others scramble off. On a parallel tree branch, Caj suddenly drops, his body hitting the tree limb beneath and slinging below it, hanging on as a spurt of fire gushes past.
YOU ARE READING
Partisan - Book II
Fantasy*COMPLETE* "People don't believe in us anymore. They don't believe that in the end we will do what is right. We can't let them down. We can't let Ben win." Decisions made on top of the lonely, wind-swept cliff of Lethinor reverberate around the five...
