Taking a leaf out of her book, I took a running start and leaped towards the closest platform. The woman who owned it was balled up with her hands covering her head. Ignoring her, I jumped again.
An arrow sailed past me, forcing me to turn mid-air. I lost my momentum. My legs pinwheeled. I lashed out with my arm and touched heated metal that was slick with moisture. My shout could have woken the dead.
I started to fall. Sophie latched on to my arm. She dropped to her knees and then onto her stomach. Hot pain slashed at my calf. I winced, unsure if it had been an arrow or lava that had gotten me.
My weight dragged Sophie forward. Both our palms were sweaty. She latched on to the sleeve of my top instead. Screams echoed in the air. I registered an onslaught of arrows and dragged my legs up to my chest. Two of them shot past below me.
I heard a muffled cry. Sophie’s arms twitched. Something thumped on the platform above her. The sun shone directly in my eyes. I couldn’t see the face of the person who appeared on the platform behind Sophie’s shoulders. I almost shrieked when they bent down and grabbed my other arm. Relief flooded through me when Cassie appeared next to Sophie.
“Now!” Cassie screamed. They pulled me up together. My feet had just touched on the platform when a surge of golden lights burst to the right.
I jumped and shoved both of them against the pole. The point of an arrow scratched my hip as it whizzed by. Pain sliced through me. Sophie hissed at the same time.
With my sight half in and half out of the Ley dimension, I saw everything in a cloud of dense colours.
The arrows had become a swarm of bees. They buzzed and zipped around us. There were more arrows embedded onto the damned poles than I could count. I couldn’t concentrate on anything that was happening with the contestants because I was so busy anticipating the next arrow that might kill us.
They were taking their damn sweet time.
A gurgled cry tore me out of the Ley dimension. I gaped at the sight of an older man pinned to the pole on his platform by a series of arrows. Blood dripped onto the platform, decorating it in crimson blots.
“This can’t be happening,” Sophie said. I could barely hear her over the roar of the water. The tide must have been coming in because more and more of it was spilling over the lip of the whirlpool.
Steam rose from the lava pit until it felt like every breath I took was burning my lungs. Over the older man’s shoulder, I locked eyes with a thunderous face that I knew. Meryl Laurent. The soft curls in her hair had turned into frizz. The floor-length sundress she wore was torn all along the side. I watched her step forward with the ease and grace of a dancer. Arrows glided through the air where she had been standing. I gulped. She was fast enough that she could sense when an arrow was coming.
She leapt through the air and landed with a light step in the middle of the next platform. The platform’s owner, a small Fae girl, dropped to her knees to avoid an arrow to the back of the head. What she hadn’t counted on was the vindictive Nephilim who latched on to her shoulder.
Meryl smiled as she lifted the Fae to her eye line. I screamed when she tossed the Fae over the edge. Cassie lunged forward like she thought she could do something about it. I grabbed her arm and held her back.
The Fae girl thrashed in the air in a desperate attempt to unfurl her wings. Black magic laced with red crackled around her. It kept her completely immobile. Her white blouse was the first thing to catch fire. Then it was her hair. Somebody on the beach howled. The Fae’s body crashed into the lava and disintegrated.
For a millisecond all noise ceased. It was as if the whole arena held its breath. I whirled around to watch the beach. I was just fast enough to catch the last smudge of a Fae contestant as he was teleported out of the arena.
First one down.
The arrows stopped coming.
Sophie leaned in close. “Why isn’t this over?” Her voice trembled. Her hair was a thick halo around her head. It too was frizzed to the max. Sophie’s question reverberated in my mind. Why wasn’t this over? The objective of the game was to weed out the odd contestant. Surely that had been achieved. Unless this now became about speed.
Several of the contestants had managed to map out a path to the water’s edge. By some miracle, one of those was Andrei. Kai, Max, Chanelle, and Bradley were also amongst them.
There was a twenty-metre stretch of water around the whirlpool. If it had been a game of sheer bravery, a few of the contestants would have jumped in headfirst. But they weren’t the best of their Academies because they were used to running in blind. Max paced a length of the beach, his nostrils flaring. I could almost see the cogs in his brain working.
They were so used to their own ingenuity. And that was where I saw the problem. Faith.
Without warning, I ran and jumped back towards my platform. As soon as my feet touched down, the rain of arrows resumed. I turned once to the left, pivoted to the right, ducked an arrow that got dangerously close to my head and leaped again.
I landed badly on my knee, but the pain was masked by adrenaline. I was back on my own platform. The orb that had been out of reach before was now a prize at the end of a stepladder of arrows. I swiped my palms against my jeans and scrambled up to the top using the arrows
