by Marie Mistry
“The school maybe that way,” I muttered. “But we have to get to the arena first.” It was ironic that, just after I finally finished cleaning it all up and making it look presentable, Maddox would choose to use it in our exam. “It’s tall enough to clear the canopy. Maybe one of us should climb a tree and look?”
Rina looked at me like I was insane. “Do you know how many insects live in trees?” she demanded.
I rolled my eyes. “Rina that is called nature. It happens to live everywhere!”
She gave me a revolted look, and I sighed at her prissy sensibilities.
“I’ll climb one,” Daron suggested, eyeing the giant oak behind us. “I’m taller so it should be easier.” He glanced around. “Keep your eyes open, we don’t know what Maddox has set loose in this forest.”
I searched the tree-line. “Be careful,” I mumbled. “And be quick, I don’t like the idea of us being separated for too long.”
Daron leapt into the tree like he’d practiced it, swinging up between the huge branches till other leaves obscured him from my vision. I switched from staring at his ass to trying to keep an eye out for threats. That was when we started to hear voices.
“… Of course, Professor Maddox would never actually allow anything to happen to me.” A woman’s voice gloated loudly into the silent forest. “My family would destroy the school if he did.”
“Shit,” Rina whispered, dragging me behind the oak. “Stay hidden, its Circe Abrosiax.”
“Who?” I whispered back.
“She’s a Pride, the daughter of Senior Judge Abrosiax. She and I… Well, let’s just say before I became a Wrath, she was interested in my friendship. Then I went through my showing and she told me, ‘Wraths are only good as guard dogs’. After I was announced as Tester, I was suddenly interesting again, until she figured out I was avoiding her and spending time with you.” She groaned. “Her family is a big Pride family; they believe all the other castes are there to serve them. Her opinions of you… Well, let’s just say I wasn’t the only one spreading it around that your horns were fakes.”
“Sounds like a lovely girl,” I grumbled. “Why are we hiding?”
“Because she’s in a group with her friends, despite the fact that Maddox split up friend groups on purpose,” Rina muttered. “That should tell you exactly how much pull she has with the school. Also, taking her on when one of our group is up a tree?” She shook her head, fiery red strands flicking everywhere with the motion. “No, there are fifteen tokens, it’s best just to let her grab one and get out of the way.”
I saw the wisdom of her words, but I despised the idea of cowering behind a tree from such a person.
“Why didn’t you say you were having trouble with her before?” I muttered.
Rina glared at me. “Because you would have told my brother, and then Blaze would have done something about it, and I don’t want him to get hurt.”
The annoying, smarmy pitch of Abrosiax’s voice slowly faded away, as though she really was just taking a stroll through the forest, completely unconcerned by the exam. Daron dropped down slightly afterwards, as though he too had been waiting for her to leave.
“The stadium is in the opposite direction from the school,” he whispered. “Unfortunately, it’s also the direction that Abrosiax is headed in.”
“We’ll have to head that way anyway, we might as well get going,” Rina grumbled. “I’m already hungry, so the sooner we’re back the better.”
We silently trudged onwards, picking our way through the trees, stopping every so often when we heard voices nearby. Rina moved like an elephant, tramping ahead of us all. Her position meant that she spotted the others first, but it also meant that she was the one who triggered the tripwire.
Within the space of a heartbeat, she was soaring through the air like a rag doll. When she came to a halt, she was suspended by her ankles from a tree branch high above us. To make matters worse, a few branches over, three other girls were swearing and cursing, trying to reach their own feet whilst simultaneously pushing their skirts up to cover their modesty. One of them, a dark-haired girl with beautiful brown eyes and a slightly too-large nose spotted me and growled.
“You, freak. Get us down from here,” she ordered in the same voice that we had been following for almost an hour.
“You must be Abrosiax.” I cocked my head to one side, vaguely recognising her from the group Rina had hung around with before my showing. She had been the one who’d made Rina ‘warn’ me about Bane, I remembered. “Well, you can fuck right off.” I turned back to Rina who was staring at me in horror, not even attempting to cover her modesty like the other girls were.
“Don’t move,” she told me. “You’re standing right next to another one.”
“Where?” I asked, ignoring the screaming demands of the three other girls.
“On your left. Take a step backwards to where Daron is.”
I did as she said, then looked up between the branches, trying to see the rope holding her.
“I can get it,” Rina grumbled.
In a feat of incredible muscle control, she executed a flawless sit up, aimed a hand at the rope between her legs and let loose a small burst of pyrokinesis. Anticipating that letting her fall on her head might not be the best idea, I summoned a cushion of air beneath her, slowing her descent and allowing her to right herself to land perfectly on her feet.
“Rina!” One of Abrosiax’s friends called. “Come on, let us down!”
“They’ll get down eventually,” Rina mumbled.
“Yes, but hopefully after we’re long gone.” Daron commented, although he didn’t look entirely comfortable with the idea. “There are only fifteen tokens, and assuming everyone did what we did and climbed a tree…”
“They’ll all be ahead of us now,” I pointed out. “We’ll have to go around this.”
“Not necessarily,” Rina muttered. “We could float ourselves across.”
“No,” Daron contradicted her brusquely. “The tripwires contain metal filaments. There are some strung higher and lower, we’d never get past them all.” He paused. “Allow me.”
He raised a hand, fingers bent slightly towards his palm. There was a horrible ticking noise, the sound of dozens of fine wires snapping at almost exactly the same time, and the leaves on the ground seemed to explode upwards with the force of all of the nooses being triggered at once.
“Now the trap can’t slow any of the other groups,” he mumbled.
“Very noble of you.” Rina rolled her eyes. “Come on, white knight, we have a token to grab.”
The three of us strode past the still-swearing girls above us, the leaves still falling softly around us as we headed forwards.
“Did that seem… a bit too easy?” I uttered almost half an hour later. “Maddox was talking about deadly tasks as though they were a certainty. Getting caught in a tree is inconvenient, but I can’t imagine it would qualify as deadly.”
“Stay behind me if you’re scared.” For once, Rina didn’t sound sarcastic or demeaning, and the sincerity of her voice made me remember that for all her bravado, she was still a Knight, sworn to protect me with her life.
“Why are you a Knight?” I asked her, suddenly. “I get that your family has been Knights for generations, but it really doesn’t seem as if you like me that much.”
Rina snorted and rolled her eyes in one motion, reaching into her collar and pulling out a fine chain. On it dangled a heptagram pendant, where each corner was joined to all the other corners in an interlocking pattern that represented the Strange God.
“Believe it or not, my family is very spiritual,” she muttered. “Their faith does not come easily to me… but it’s better than believing in nothing at all.” I nodded, believing that was all she would say on the subject. But I was surprised when she continued. “Blaze is my opposite, I’m surprised you haven’t noticed… He meditates every morning as soon as he wakes up.”
I blushed, but Daron answered her implied questio
n. “Lilith has only slept with Aeron and Jin.”
I groaned. “We are not talking about when I am going to have sex with her brother.”
“Agreed,” Rina grumbled.
We lapsed into silence for a few minutes, but Rina started the conversation back where it had left off.
“So why haven’t you two done the nasty?”
I raised an eyebrow. “Can we focus on the deadly obstacles?”
“Shit, you really are the only prudish Succubus.” Rina smirked. “Daron, same question.”
He simply shook his head, then stilled. “Did either of you hear that?”
Instantly alert, I scanned the area. “I can’t hear anything.”
Rina turned away from us. “Yes. I hear it.”
Seriously, what were they both hearing that I wasn’t? I strained with my ears, but I couldn’t hear anything beyond the silence of the woodland, and there was nothing around us but gnarled old trees with patches of strange fungi, sticking out like miniature shelves from the soggy bark.
“It’s this way” Daron said, starting to walk off, back the way we’d come.
“No,” Rina argued, “It’s this way.” She turned left, going in a completely separate direction.
“Guys come back!” I called, trying to grab both of them. “Rina! Daron!” I ran after my mate. “Daron, there’s no noise. We have to get to the arena. Snap out of it!”
But they weren’t even responding anymore.
Rina was slowly disappearing from view, and I looked around desperately for something, anything, that could help me. Even a rope to tie them together… Then Daron and I walked around a tree, and I saw his unmistakable destination – a huge pit, dug into the ground and furnished with large wooden spikes.
Panicked, I did the only thing I could think of, and summoned a spherical shield of PK around each of them, trapping them inside. But all that did was keep them trapped in the same place, both of them kept walking into the edge of the shields, over and over again like hamsters in a ball. It would have been comical if it hadn’t been so damned creepy.
“Okay, okay. Whatever got them, hasn’t got me yet…” I mused, using my powers to bring their spheres together. “We should probably get out of here…” I don’t know why I posed the suggestion to them as if they would respond but, unsurprisingly, they didn’t even seem to hear me.
I started walking in the same direction we’d been headed in before, hoping that distance might lessen the effects of whatever had been trying to lure the three of us into those pits. With both of them trailing along behind me in the air like human balloons, I knew my power was going to start running dangerously low if I had to keep them like this for the entire exam. When we emerged from the damp, dark clump of trees and back into the open forest, I stopped to examine them both. They had, at least, stopped walking into the shields, but their gazes were hooded and glazed over, pupils dilated strangely.
It looked like they were on drugs.
“Daron?” I walked up to his bubble. “Please, Daron I can’t do this exam alone.”
I reached through my shield and tried lightly slapping him on the cheeks. Nothing happened.
“Come on,” I muttered. “They’re drugged, I’m not. Why?”
I pondered it in silence as I tried the same routine on Rina, even going so far as debating whether my mating bonds were giving me some protection that the others didn’t get. Of course, Daron was mated to me, so that theory fell flat quickly enough, but I was running out of ideas.
My hand went up to itch at the horns on my head, brushing against Hadrian’s barrier ring as I scratched. I stopped in shock. “Could it be that simple?” I asked the non-responsive duo.
If the tiny barrier was what had kept me from losing my wits, should I take it off and try it on the others? It had to be worth a go.
I removed the ring from myself, and slid it onto Daron’s finger. The metal grew hot for a second, and then quickly cooled. Daron slumped to the floor of the sphere.
Was his being unconscious a good thing? I stared at the ring in panic, then crouched down and started shaking him again. “Daron!”
“Leave me alone, it’s too early.” Were the best words I’d ever heard.
Encouraged, I kept shaking. “Daron, remember we’re in Maddox’s exam! Wake up please!”
He opened one eye, the white of it was almost completely bloodshot, but he was awake, and that made me smile. “Thank goodness,” I whispered. “Are you… You again?”
He frowned. “What?”
“Who am I?” I demanded.
“Lilith,” He replied, slowly. “Lilith Carazor. My mate.”
Although my heart fluttered to hear the words, I couldn’t waste time. I lowered the shield around him and moved over to Rina to repeat the process. After fifteen minutes of dealing with two very confused team mates, we finally set off again.
“Thank you for saving us,” Rina grudgingly acknowledged.
I nodded. “I have no idea what happened. One moment you were both fine, then you were muttering about strange sounds and trying to throw yourselves into pits full of spikes… It was actually really creepy.”
“The mushrooms,” Daron answered slowly. “They’re not native to the forest. Maddox was bringing in demons with all sorts of gifts, so it’s not improbable that he might have gotten someone with a gift for plants or toxins to alter them in some way.”
“However it happened, it gave me the chills,” I insisted, striding forward with the intent to put as much space between me and that place as possible. “Let’s just get to the arena already.”
I walked straight into Rina’s back.
“Ow,” I complained, staring at her. “Why have you stopped?”
Daron pointed upwards, in the direction she was looking. In front of us every visible tree branch sported a very large raven-like bird, with glowing green eyes.
“Shit.”
“Are they going to attack?” Daron wondered.
“Would it really be a deadly challenge if they didn’t?” Rina retorted, summoning balls of pyrokinesis into her hands.
As if on cue, one of the birds let out a loud squawk, displaying a beak full of ridges that looked suspiciously like… teeth.
“Like in practice, then?” Daron suggested. “Lilith and I shield and Rina attacks.”
I nodded, summoning my shield around all three of us this time, a bubble of safety that I felt Daron reinforcing. When we took our first steps towards the birds, the attack came, but not from the direction we were expecting.
The ground shook, and a root in front of us exploded out of the ground, lashing against our shield like a whip.
“Shit!” Rina cursed, aiming a ball of fire at it, only for us all to be set upon by others. As soon as one root was hit, three others seemed to explode upwards to take its place. We still made progress, pushing forwards slowly against their assault. Rina burned everything in sight, till I wondered how on earth we hadn’t started a forest fire yet.
When we were literally in sight of the arena walls, the roots doubled their assault until, no matter how fast Rina burned them, we were slowly becoming covered. Their weight started forcing my shield downwards.
“We need to collapse the shield,” Rina said as the last bits of sunlight were obliterated by roots slithering over the top of us like dirty snakes.
Claustrophobia began to set in, and I looked at her in disbelief. “You want to drop the shield?”
“She’s right,” Daron interrupted. “We’re wasting energy like this. We should collapse the shield and merge that power with Rina’s to send out one, combined wave of pyrokinesis. We might set the forest on fire, but I doubt they could survive such a huge wave.”
“And what about afterwards?” I asked, “Have you both forgotten about the giant birds with teeth?”
“What other choice do we have?” Rina snapped. “Get in the middle and help me!”
Daron had already moved over, and was holding out a hand, his blue eyes re
assuring me that it would be okay. I hated myself for the fear I was feeling, and I channelled that hate into action, forcing myself to get a grip.
I took the hand he offered, and focused on Rina’s fireball, willing my own pyrokinesis to join with it.
“Three… Two… One!” Rina yelled.
The shield dropped.
The roots constricted.
And a huge ball of fire appeared between us and them.
I closed my eyes.
Rina’s exultant yell had me opening them again.
Around us, roots lay scorched and shattered in a black stain that extended outwards from us. Even the branches above us were blackened and withered from the force of the blast. But the mutant ravens were still staring down at us with those luminescent green eyes.
