Block.
Block.
Parry.
Thrust.
Block.
Block.
Block.
Crackle’s fast.
Reynard expends less energy with his blocking maneuver than she does with the pounding pincer attack she keeps performing. He studies her with each thrust. Flawlessly, she repeats the same singular attack. He wonders whether she knows another. Sweat forms on her forehead. Her arm wobbles with the next thrust. She grows weaker.
Reynard slides backward forcing her to expend even more energy to thrust forward. The crowd boos and hisses and spits curse in languages his translator doesn’t register. They want blood.
Around her chest a harness from the canister glows purple.
More jeers from the begging proles.
Stronger and stockier, Reynard expends less energy to block her blows. She flies across the wall of air without issue.
He deduces the purple opal in the harness tells traps to ignore the wearer. Reynard slips past the tile with the wall of spikes under it and grabs the tube. He crosses the barrier. Crackle refuses to move forward or approach him.
The crowds reach a fever-pitched murmur. All screams have halted. They know.
Crackle suspects.
Reynard waves the sword in the air before him like searching for a mine. Nothing.
Why does she wait?
How does she know what it is?
She’s defeated the arena before. Did her companion set this next obstacle? Did they plan it that way? It’s the one trap they agreed ahead of time must happen. It’s the one trap Crackle has defeated and most opponents could not.
Halfway.
A full run’s stupid. Crackle’s not attacking. Attack and drive her forward. Set off the trap, but she may move back toward the wall of air. I’ve got some distance on her and should just make for the exit. He slides his foot forward.
The crushing weight of a steering wheel slams across Reynard’s chest. Smoke billows form under the hood as the crumbled section of his pickup truck lies warped around a tree.
Wait.
The last time his body felt such intense pressure on his lungs was that accident. The top of the arena is covered in a clear durasteel shield. He finds himself pressed against it by the pillar shot up through the floor.
The next fourth of the area has become a rumble of tiles moving up and down rapidly.
Too rapidly even for Crackle. As soon as one of her toes lands on a platform it shoots into the air. Some platforms slam rocket fast upward; others creep at a snail’s pace to the roof. She leaps from one tile to the next in cat motions.
His gladius now protrudes from a platform where the ceiling has embedded it into the tile. He doubts even if he had time to reach it he could yank it free.
The platform releases. He’d be willing to bet his ribs are bruised. Falling with the platform he rolls onto the next one lowering back to ground level on slow. Once on his feet he spots Crackle at the final row of jutting tiles. They shoot up in random rapid succession. It only takes him a moment to hop using the slower tiles to be adjacent to her. She could attack him. Without a sword to defend himself and all the moving tiles he has nowhere to maneuver. His death ends the game.
Or does it? Does a single survivor still have to make it to the exit facing obstacles bet by the crowd, or does all deaths but the one conclude the trial? Reynard chooses not to find out. He dives forward over the tile before him on its way back to the floor. It juts back to the ceiling fast enough to catch his boot. The concussive force disrupts his dive, causing his shoulder-roll landing to be interrupted and leaving him in a crumpled heap.
Less than a hundred feet to the exit.
He staggers to his feet stepping on the next tile ready to spring clear of anything. Reynard catches Crackle, out of the corner of his eye, giving up her blade. She drives it into the corner of a rising tile, using the handle as a pivot point to swing over a lowering tile avoiding touching it. She lands on her toes and sprints toward the exit.
She makes three tiles further than him when darts shoot across the next row of tiles in a crisscross pattern. She halts. Crackle extends her left hand out palm flat and inches it over the darted tiles. She yanks her hand back so fast Reynard barely views the blood-soaked finger.
Micro thin wire.
Each dart was attached to micro thin wire. Appearing invisible to the naked eye, it will be nearly impassable. Reynard kneels. The darts are laid out in a pattern leaving gaps in the wires to step over or duck under. The darts tips embed in the floor too deep to pull free, so he has to ease through the invisible wire web. Now would be a good time for some betting assistance from my crew.
Crackle, even more limber, contorts herself through the maze. Blood dribbles from torn sections of her lavender jumpsuit. Reynard could follow her lead. He calculates his shoulders are too broad for most of the invisible triangles to wiggle through. He steps back and lowers himself to a tile in a meditative position.
The crowd jeers the stop in action. “What are you doing? Get up! Stupid Osirian!” along with dozen more slurs bombard the arena.
Crackle, bleeding from a half-dozen thin cuts, stomps her feet as she paces before him. The wall of razor wire between them.
“You want to kill me, you’ll have to come back through. Leng t’che isn’t on my plate for today.”
“I’ll cut you a thousand times—filthy Osirian.”
“Come back over here to do it,” Reynard taunts.
Agitated, the crowd chants for blood not words.
Crackle paces before the invisible wire.
“I’m not going to kill you,” Reynard adds.
“I’ll kill you! The door won’t open with two life signs in the arena,” she screams.
Interesting.
Reynard contemplates his preparation under the guise
