Chapter 52: The Hunt
Alexis surfaced when the emerging light from day made it impossible for her to keep her eyes shut any longer. She slowly slouched up from her log position, rubbing her eyes, and straightening her hair, making sure her front bangs covered her right eye.
"Mmm, what time is it?" she finally said.
Ash pointed to the daylight in front of them. "Definitely the morning."
She gasped as if she realized something important. "Our points. ’Tis the final day. Many teams shall struggle to secure enough to advance and—why do neither of you seem concerned?"
Ash finally revealed Swetta’s token, "A proof of our nighttime spoils."
Her eyes lit up as she got on her feet. Her cloak had come half-loose in the night, and she pulled it straight, squared her shoulders, and looked out at the trees.
"But you’re right," Alina said. "Many teams will be fighting to protect their tokens and steal from others. If that creature hit our camp, other teams are starting the day on equal footing."
Alexis didn’t argue with that. She pressed one hand flat against her stomach and waited.
"We need food," she said. "Before anything else."
Alina sighed as if she had expected this very reaction from her teammate. "We don’t have any rations but..." Her eyes locked onto Ash, then followed his gaze to whatever he was staring at.
"There are four Shade signatures moving north," he said. "Stay close but don’t engage until we get the upper hand."
The two of them nodded, crouching behind Ash, who was hiding in a bush.
"We only have one token so far," one of the teammates said. "Are you sure you know what you’re doing?"
"Davos said if we follow his orders he will make sure we pass," their leader responded.
"I’m starting to doubt Davos," the third team member said. "What benefit does he get bringing guys like us—" He stumbled over his feet, tripping the rest of his teammates with him.
"Hey! Watch where you’re stepping!" The leader yelled.
"It’s not me, it’s—"
By then, Ash’s team had finally made their presence known. Alexis yelled a war cry, "Thou shalt be slain to feed this one."
Alina and Ash didn’t bother giving her a look.
She pressed her scar-lined forearm against the sharp edge of stone and dragged it downward. The skin split. Dark blood pooled in her palm. The cold air hit the liquid, and it began to coagulate instantly, pulling inward, darkening at the edges, and compressing into a three-sided spike extending past her knuckles.
Alina closed the final forty meters at a sprint.
The lead target turned at ten meters, his hand reaching for a short sword at his hip. He never drew it. Alina drove the flat, heavy edge of the blood-iron blade directly into his elbow. The impact cracked the joint. The lead member’s arm dropped limp, the short sword clattering against the rock. He staggered backward, his guard entirely broken.
Alexis hit the ground with both palms.
The effort attacked her empty stomach like a physical blow. Her vision narrowed to a tunnel, her fingers digging into the frozen mud until her nail beds bled. She warped the spatial coordinates of the path ahead, tilting the perceived floor ten degrees to the left.
The flankers reacted to Alina’s strike. The left flanker reached for the holster at his waist. His fingers grabbed empty air. The proprioceptive field had shifted his perceived hip six degrees left of its actual location. He stared at his empty palm, his balance already failing.
The right flanker shifted her weight to brace for a counter-charge. The ground met her boot at the wrong angle. Her ankle rolled outward, sending her crashing shoulder-first into the third member positioned in the rear.
The left flanker abandoned his weapon and lunged at Alina, throwing a desperate, wide right hook. Alina stepped inside the arc. She drove her left knee into his sternum, expelling the air from his lungs in a sharp hiss, and followed with a heavy elbow strike to his temple. He collapsed into the dirt and did not rise.
The right flanker shoved her teammate off and scrambled to her feet. She drew a combat knife, planting her back foot to swing. The slope of Alexis’s field betrayed her pivot. Her boot slid out from under her, sending the knife thrust wide over Alina’s shoulder. Alina grabbed the extended wrist, twisted the joint outward until the shoulder popped, and drove the pommel of her iron blade into the flanker’s jaw. The woman’s eyes rolled back as she hit the ground.
The final member did not attempt to fight. He scrambled up the incline, boots kicking loose gravel, sprinting directly for the treeline.
Ash stepped into his path.
The runner threw a frantic, rising palm strike at Ash’s throat to clear the way. Ash caught the strike on his forearm. The bone met the runner’s palm with the density of cast iron. The runner gasped, clutching his bruised hand, and tried to pull away.
Ash’s grip clamped onto the runner’s wrist. He dropped his center of gravity, pulling the runner’s momentum forward and downward, driving the man face-first into the bedrock. Ash held the wrist pinned against the runner’s back. The struggle ended.
Four bodies lay on the ridge path.
"Check them for any tokens," Ash said.
They shuffled their bodies and clothing around.
"I got one over here," Alina said, pocketing the token.
Alexis moved to the unconscious right flanker. She dug her shaking fingers into the canvas cargo pocket and pulled out three foil-wrapped energy bars.
She turned her back to Ash and Alina. Her hands trembled as she tore the foil, the loud crinkle cutting through the quiet morning. She shoved half the dense oat bar into her mouth. She chewed aggressively, swallowing the dry mass through a tight throat, her stomach cramping around the sudden influx of calories. She ripped open the second wrapper and took another massive bite.
By the time Ash and Alina realized what she had found, Alexis had already thrown the energy bar wrappers into the wind to hide her tracks.
"Do you want to talk about it?" Ash asked.
"Not truly," Alexis said, looking away from any eye contact.
Alina tore a strip from the inside hem of the lead member’s discarded jacket and wrapped her forearm twice, knotting it against her knee one-handed. She pulled the knot flat with her teeth and let her arm drop.
"How many points do we have?" Ash said.
"Fourteen from our own. Fifty from Swetta. Eight from these." She flexed the wrapped hand once.
"That makes seventy-two."
Alexis folded the last wrapper flat between her fingers and pressed it into her pocket. "Tis enough."
"Not enough to be comfortable," Ash said.
She looked at the ridge path where the target team had gone. "No, definitely not," she agreed.
