Partisan - Book II

Pai Luella

Fire, blood, screaming.

The campfire has blossomed into an angry, roaming thing under Caj's hands, its deep hunger birthing smoke and ash that plume around the clashing figures. It weaves, sinuously, as the players spin around it, rock and wood splitting in the shuddering firelight.

The firemaster dances around Meg, who crouches and shifts in quick furious movements, her only remaining arm moving like a whip out at him and Fae. Punts of rock and trunk split and shatter sweeps of arrows and flame, the ground crackling in furious torment as the grass upon it ignites.

Around them birds lay twitching in the smoldering grass as Iaves and Tara and Hiran clash, the animals paralyzed by the pull of the two minds that fight even as their owners' bodies move. The Nature-caller weaves around his Beast-caller counterpart, flinging ice and stone, sweat glinting on his scrunched brow.

In between this thunder of snapping trunks and crackling flames three other figures chase: Finn, a small, dark streak amidst a cloud of wasps, and Lei, a barreling blur, as they trail Ben, quick, clever Ben, who kicks up dirt and turns when they expect him to twist. That white knife is out and it slashes, the orange glint of the firelight setting its edges aflame.

She is a dark shadow, a pale whisper, and she steps inside the chaos.

The first is Iaves.

Jumping high over a sudden sprout of fire, she catches his knife, sending it spinning into a nearby trunk as a chunk of ground punches up into his stomach. Hiran follows the movement up with a swoop of his leg, knocking the feet out from underneath Iaves as Tara slams into him, pinning him down.

She sees Ben slipping past her and he is next; she knows that turn of his foot, knows the way his body will twist after it, the way his heel will kick out, spraying dirt, embers, and ash up into Lei's face as the knife drives forward, out to the exposed chest.

She jumps in front of him before he can do it, kicking his foot out so the spray catches only the side of her mask; her hand clamps down onto his wrist, twisting his arm back as she rolls away from the blow. She pulls him down and Lei follows through, burying the non-Skiller's feet in rock as his knees hit the ground.

Ben's hood is back and he's got those sharp gray eyes trained on her smoldering hood as the rock melds his hands to the ground as well. Feeling the burn, Allayria pulls the mask off.

His eyes find hers, and in Ben's face is dismay and triumph.

But the ground cracks behind her and Allayria turns to see Caj and Fae still locked in combat with Meg. Allayria walks forward and their eyes meet, Meg's golden-green ones widening in the firelight.

Are you remembering all of it? Allayria wonders in that brief pause, that breath of hesitation. Are you remembering all the times we were on the same side? All the times I saved your hide and you saved mine?

And then Meg flings the shards of granite, kicking up a spray of cracking rock. Allayria twists, but feels it slice across her temple, the blood warm and wet across her face.

It is as if they have shot her again, and the hope Allayria has never known was there before—the hope that Meg would have chosen differently, that Meg at least would have resisted Ben's choice had she the opportunity—breaks. Allayria expects fury, anguish, but all she feels is leaden, and she Skills through the attack, pulling up a stream of shifting metal from the rings around her boots, melding them into the club that cracks down across Meg's face.

She crumples, and Allayria coils, flinging away the birds that Iaves, bound but still conscious, had called at her. Her foot cracks against his head and she watches as he too falls.