Page 14 of Fog of War
She looked between us for a tense moment, then nodded, and disappeared into the fog. Leaving the two of us alone, facing each other with our hatchets held firmly in our fists.
“Leonide?” Augora asked, delaying the inevitable. But maybe it was better to just get it over with. I squared up and committed myself to doing what was expected of me.
“Ran off.” I chucked my chin at the commotion over my shoulder.
At that, Augora’s eyes widened. For the first time in my memory, she looked disturbed.
“Gavenidus was headed there. If he’s converging, Leonide wouldn’t dare get close. Something’s wrong.”
I eased my attention off Augora, looking back at the tower where the commotion had originated. The drones were circling the battlefield like carrions over a carcass. Not a single one was searching for other potential pairs to broadcast.
“He mentioned Leopha,” I mumbled, my heart picking up speed as the connection finally hit me.
“Gabbie Rubens,” Augora breathed, exploding into action.
I sprinted after her, the gravity of the situation dropping an anvil in my stomach.
Something had happened to the human woman.
And now I knew her name.
Ancestors, take pity on my wretched soul.
08
Gabbie
Leopha noticed I was falling within a heartbeat, but it was already too late. She swiped at me with her talons, trying to catch my clothes before I plummeted to the ground and died, but all it did was slice into my arm and rip my sleeve to ribbons. She roared, but her face was a blur as I spun in the air, flailing.
I did not meet the ground gracefully.
Something as hard as stone caught me and I bounced off a chest and two grappling arms, ricocheting between the tower scaffolding and the craggy earth beneath the pressed grass. My forehead hit the champion’s plates hard, and hot pain exploded behind my eyes. I fell sideways on one leg, ankle crunching at the odd angle. My knee popped next, and it wasn’t the quick crack of a fractured bone but the blinding pull of a dislocated joint. Blood ran down my face, clinging to the lashes of one eye.
When those talons picked me up this time, I clung to them, crying out in anguish at my leg. A wave of jeers, hisses, and screams floated down from the tower.
“Gabbie!” Leopha shrieked. I was too disoriented to look up, too afraid to open the eye covered in blood, and my vision was blurry. “Fuck! Gabbie, run!”
“M’glass’s,” I slurred, in shock, not quite registering the shouts. I felt my face, smearing red and powdery paste across my brows and cheeks. The bridge of my nose was bare. I’d lost my glasses somewhere on the ground.
I needed them, no matter what. I never spent a waking moment without them unless I was in the shower. I reached my hand towards the ground, unable to voice how disturbed I was at not being able to see clearly, when a talon gripped me tighter and started moving away from where I’d fallen.
“Ah, ah,anima via,”a smug, serpentine voice scolded gently. Green eyes narrowed on my face in victory, glowing. Panic set in remembering the smarmy grin, the groin plates, the uncomfortable way in which his purr had touched my skin… Maranba Tetradi.
“Help!” I screamed, making my own ears ring. I gripped his mandible and yanked hard. He lost his balance as I jerked his face to the side.
Then a body slammed into him with the force of a truck t-boning a sedan. I fell to the ground in the shock of the collision and stayed down, the pain white-hot and jarring. My body seized, shaking hands clutching my leg. I felt sick to my stomach, fisting my linen culottes that were now dirty and blood-speckled and ripped.
But I wasn’t safe. No matter how hard it hurt, there were two massive champions just feet away. Their snarls were hair-raising, as rough as a phalanx machine gun. They grappled with their talons at full length, struggling to keep hold of their weapons, to pry plates away from skin, tomaim.
This was not at all like Gavenidus and Faeste.
I scooted back as soon as I had my bearings, fixated on the thunderous battle stirring up the fog. My head just cleared the mist, and I caught the large heart scrawled on Leonide’s chest,his one bright pink spire. Leopha’s brother had come to my rescue, and I now understood why he was a champion.
Maranba grabbed hold of his pink-powdered spire and snapped it off with a bellow of unbridled bloodlust.
I gasped, focused on surviving as I struggled to scoot backwards on my hands and butt. Every jolt was torture, but despite how introverted I was, I wasn’t timid. My instincts knew I had to get away. I clawed at the ground, shuffling inch by suffering inch as Leonide stumbled and Maranba threw his spire into the grass.
“What the fuck are you doing!” Leonide hissed. “Can’t you see that she–”
