Page 36 of Cage of Starlight
“Spread out! You want something to get through and kill one of your Fielders? You’re the only thing between them and early death, andthey’llbe the only thing between you and whatever horrors come your way. Act like it!”
Tory drops three balloons before they reach him, directing their force at the wall. He hopes it slaps some unsuspecting officer in the gut. He huffs a laugh when his lapse in concentration almost earns him a high-speed balloon to the face. As training wears on, the difficulty level increases, bringing them closer to the wall—close enough to see the lit-up stone slivers embedded in the cannons’ sides.
Close enough, finally, to make a run for the gate.
He just needs the right timing. A returning soldier. A new arrival. A supply truck.Something. It opened a couple times yesterday, a quick whip up and down. It hasn’t opened at all yet today.
Just once. He needs it to openonce.
But this close, the balloons are deadly. There’s no gentle arc to them. If they land, they won’t knock the breath from him and leave a bruise—these ones rupture internal organs and shatter bones. There are more than a few stories of unfortunate trainees who took a hit to the skull or spine and were gone before a Healer could reach them. Toryshouldn’tsplit his attention like this, but he can’t help it. As long as the gate opens—
“Arknett!”
He startles, reflexively releasing the balloon he’d started to grab. It sputters mid-air before plummeting to burst on the shield.
The group groans as a whole, which isn’t fair. They weren’tthatclose to earning a break. He gets a few sharp elbows and curses from his fellow trainees, and a cheerily chirped, “You’ve got this!” from Randall.
Menden paces and mutters from his position away from the barrage. “Pay attention!” he calls. “On a real battlefield you’d be dead by now!”
I know that, Tory wants to retort.That’s why I’m getting the fuck out of here.
Maneuvers wear on. The gate doesn’t open. Tory’s focus splinters. He loses them at least two more breaks, to the group’s mounting fury, Menden’s exasperation, and Randall’s embarrassed glee. Randall slides close enough, once, to whisper, “When I told you not to be too good, I didn’t mean you had tosuck.”
Eyes glued to the gate, willing it to open, Tory feels a little bad for not grinning and sharing in the joke. Randall protected him yesterday when he didn’t have to.
Tory should probably caution him against that. His last kindness.
“Randall?” he says, and Randall makes a thoughtfulhmm?“You’re right. I’ve got this. You need to watch out for yourself instead, all right?”
He doesn’t catch Randall’s reply, because that’s when it happens. The whip-like snap of the front gate rising atlasthits him with a rush of adrenaline.
Tory doesn’t hesitate. He breaks formation and skirts the forcefield, feet pounding muddy earth. There’s a wagon stacked with boxes approaching the gate. Tory won’t have long. The second it’s safely through, the gate will snap closed like the maw of a beast.
Menden makes a startled noise when he notices Tory running and reaches for the strange device on his chest with its blue-lit stellite. The same sort of communicator Vantaras wears.
Tory can’t let him use it.
He grabs the force from two balloons and directs it at Menden, trying to spread it out—he doesn’t want to kill the guy. Menden makes an ugly cry as he flies back, but the delicate device shatters, its clean light flickering out.
The wagon is a mere finger’s width through the gate when Tory arrives in its shadow. When the thing snaps closed, it nearly bisectshim, but he makes it through. In a stroke of luck, it cuts him off from the small clump of uniformed soldiers who thought to pursue Tory. He runs through almost backward, stealing the momentum from a few of his pursuers and using it against them before they can call for the gate to open again.
Surely it will only delay them for an instant, but it’s an instant more of free air for Tory. He’s outside those ugly, impenetrable walls and the cannons mounted atop them, and for the first time in days he breathes and it fills him to the brim. A hysterical laugh breaks from him as his legs pump, bringing him farther and farther from the cold cage of STAR-7 and Sena Vantaras with his flame-bright eyes. If Tory ever meets him again, they’ll stand on equal ground, and Tory will make sure Vantaras doesn’t walk away from the encounter alive.
He’sout. He did it. He made a mistake lingering in Hulven, but he knows better now.
He’s down the gravel path, running free.
Then he’s in the cool embrace of the forest, running and running like his legs never learned how to stop.
*
He’s probably been racing for hours through the sparse trees, long enough to forget he has bones.
His legs pump, numb and mechanical. Pain is an odd, distant thing—and thought farther still. His brain saysrun, a blazing imperative, so he runs long after no footsteps beat the ground behind him. Long enough that when he catches sight of a tower of rock through the trees, he trips over his own feet and rolls twice when he tries to stop. He ends up on the ground, pulse pounding in his aching legs.
There it is, visible between the trunks: a natural outcropping of rock looms over the treetops, its odd peak reminiscent of a snake head.
Serpentshead Rock.
