Page 175 of Cursed Shadows 4

And yet, and yet…

I am still alive.

I…

I did what I never truly believed possible.

I did what I thought was a mere hope, a whisper of a dream in a nightmare, the silliness of a naive halfling.

I survived the Sacrament.

36

††††††

The thick air is suddenly hot, and it is rushing up at me.

Darkness whirls all around.

I tumble through it, limbs whacking against me at all angles, a boot knocking off my knee.

I am free-falling.

Snatched off the summit, torn through the portal, and dropped somewhere high above Comlar. The warmth, the darkness, the cries and shouts of the spectators, it’s a sudden explosion of changed atmosphere that rings in my ears and flurries my breath in my chest.

I don’t fall on my back, floating downwards to my death as I fell from the cliffside before Daxeel lassoed me into unconsciousness and safety.

I spin.

Spiral.

Tumbling around and around in thick, bleak blackness.

A cry is unribboning from me, hollow and gutted, and my hands are snatching out, desperate forsomethingto grab onto, anything.

My fingers slip over the leathers of falling fae all around me. Slick with blood and melted snow, raw and numb, my hands can’t find grip, not on boots, or sleeves or trousers.

Bodies are plummeting through the darkness all around me, but it is only my cries that screech in my ears, the wind rushing over me, my own strands of hair lashing at my face.

I am surrounded, yet I fall utterly alone.

I have been so consumed, so concerned with how I would survive the Sacrament, that I never gave it any more thought than that.

I never considered what came after.

The drop.

In this drop of tumbling bodies, many will have strategy, they will know how to land, and that is something Dare never fucking taught me.

In the spiral, colours whirl by me, the darkness broken up by the gleam of leathers and the sharp glare of swords—until a pair of yellow eyes flare above me, like fireflies.

Before I can focus my gaze on them, understand the rush of yellow brushing over me, something clutches me by the ankle—

Then I am thrown through thick, dark air—and right into a solid brick wall. My spine smacks into the brick, hard.

The grunt burrows deep into my gut.

Air is sucked right out of me at the impact.

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