by Megan Linski
Though my body felt like it’d been pummeled by a ton of bricks, I rolled onto my stomach and forced myself onto my feet. I was sweating all over, and through it was cool out, I felt like it was a hundred degrees. My fever had gotten worse overnight. My throat was dry, and it hurt to speak, but I knew my team needed a final pep talk. It’d probably be the last one they’d get from me.
“Okay, team. We’re tired, gross, and hungry, but we’re almost there,” I said. “Let’s finish this.”
It felt like I had concrete on my feet. But we only had a few miles left to go, maybe a little less. I forced myself forward, and my team followed.
As we walked through the forest, I noticed the team separated. The girls were up ahead, talking lowly. I’d bet money Imogen was interrogating Sophia about us. Nothing got the team moving quite like gossip.
“Hey, what’s up between you and Sophia?” Jonah asked me without so much as a good morning. “Are you two together?”
Like I said. Screw food and a shower. The latest on my sex life was enough to sustain Jonah for days. “Enough, Jonah.” I sighed.
“Did you guys do it?” Jonah whispered. “I want all the deets.”
Squeaks widened her eyes and squawked.
“No, Jonah,” I said in irritation. “Besides, there’s not exactly a convenience store around here to swing by and pick up condoms.”
“Hey, when nature calls,” Jonah offered.
“If you really think Sophia and I are gonna bone when we’re in the middle of—”
I stopped mid-way through my sentence to take several short, quick gasps. I literally couldn’t breathe. It felt like there was an elephant sitting on my chest. I tried gasping for air again, but hardly any came through. My mind whirled, and the earth started spinning. It felt like I was underwater and there was no way up. Jonah’s playful expression changed to concern.
“Liam,” Jonah said, and he stepped in front of me. He grabbed my shoulders and looked me in the eye. “You need to breathe, brother. There’s hardly any air getting through your windpipe. I can feel it.”
My gasping had gotten the attention of the girls up ahead. They turned to look at me while Jonah took one hand off my shoulder and started making back-and-forth motions with it.
He was literally pushing air through my lungs. Imogen held her breath, while Sophia squeezed Esis. Esis had little tears welling up in his eyes, but I couldn’t be sure why. Why was the little bugger so upset?
“I’m… fine,” I said as I got my breath back. My throat was open now, and I could feel air filling up my lungs. I didn’t have to struggle. Things righted themselves for a minute before I coughed, hard.
This time there was no hiding it from the team. A huge globule of blood came out of my mouth and nose, and I struggled to catch it. I stumbled forward before Jonah caught me. The girls gasped when they noticed the blood, and Jonah’s eyes narrowed.
Jonah put a hand on my forehead before I could push him away. “He’s running a fever,” Jonah said viciously. He was pissed.
“You didn’t notice how hot he was?” Imogen turned toward Sophia, surprised.
“I… I thought it was just because I’m naturally warm,” Sophia said. “I couldn’t tell.”
I coughed again, and more blood came up. I wiped it away with my sleeve, but that didn’t stop the looks my team was giving me. Even Sassy and Squeaks’ mouths were open.
“Liam…” Sophia spoke softly, like she couldn’t believe it. Like this was her worst nightmare, happening right in front of her.
“Liam, this is bullshit. Why didn’t you tell us you were this sick?” Jonah asked. His hands were bunched into fists.
I opened my mouth, unsure of what to say. How could I tell them this was it for me?
But I didn’t get a chance to answer, because right then a fireball whizzed by my head.
I jumped backward. The fireball whirled by my face and smashed against a nearby tree, singeing it.
At first I thought it was the trial, but then I noticed we weren’t alone. Haley was standing across the clearing from us, along with Anwara, her two teammates and their Familiars.
At the start of the competition, Haley had looked confident. Now she was a mess. Her outfit was stained and torn, and her hair was in tangles around her face. She and her teammates were sporting various scrapes and bruises. Anwara was missing feathers, while the stone-lion had chunks of it that were gone and the winged jaguar was carrying a hurt paw. They looked like they hadn’t rested in days.
“Haley,” Sophia started, and she put herself in front of me. “What are you doing here?”
Haley didn’t answer. Her face contorted into a snarl, and she yelled, “Attack!”
Fire, Air and Earth started coming at us from all sides. We had no choice but to react. Imogen immediately brought up a wall of dirt that we ducked behind. Sophia started tossing fireballs back at Haley, while Jonah blew a gust of air at his fellow Yapluma, trying to push her back. Imogen was in a battle with the Nivita guy. Her plants acted like whips, breaking apart the stone boulders that he tried to chuck at us.
This crazy bitch was literally trying to kill us! All for a damn trophy. Had she lost her mind?
I heard loud squeaks and snarls, and I dared to look over the wall. Squeaks was in a tussle with the stone-lion, while Esis and Sassy both were taking on the winged jaguar. The jaguar was bigger and more threatening, but Sassy and Esis were small and quick. The cat couldn’t get a firm grip on them. They bit and scratched at the jaguar, taking turns distracting it. The stone-lion was too heavy for Squeaks to move, but Squeaks wasn’t exactly tiny herself, so she used her bulk to throw the other Familiar around while her hooves chipped at the lion’s rock-hard skin.
Anwara was flying above us. She opened her mouth to breathe a jet of flame, but I summoned my element and water came splashing upward into her mouth. I used what power I had to keep the phoenix subdued, dousing her in as much water as I could summon from the ground. Anwara was soaking wet, but she continued to try and light us up, all with desperate glances back at Haley. Haley grew more furious with her Familiar every time she failed to hurt one of us.
Teams sometimes tried to sabotage each other on their way to win during the Cup, but a full-on war between two teams had never happened before. This was absolutely ridiculous. I bet the fans back home were loving this drama.
“Haley, we’re outnumbered!” the Nivita guy shouted. “We should go!”
“No! We’re not going to lose to a bunch of freaks!” Haley screamed. She increased her firepower, but she was the only one who did. The Yapluma girl was starting to back off Jonah, and the Nivita guy hesitated in throwing more boulders, unsure of what he should do.
But the Yapluma girl had made up her mind. She dropped her hands and stopped summoning her element, causing Jonah to halt his attack. Her winged jaguar batted Sassy and Esis away, returning to his Elementai’s side.
“I don’t want to do this anymore, Haley!” she screamed. The Yapluma girl backed away against a tree. “We shouldn’t be attacking our own people, even if they are our competition! It’s fucked up!”
“Shut up!” Haley screeched.
“It’s just a stupid Cup! I’m leaving!” The Yapluma girl turned her back on Haley and stomped away. Her Familiar followed her, trotting to his Elementai loyally.
Haley gritted her teeth. “Nobody turns their back on me.”
Haley screamed, and the sound that came from her mouth was so primal… it was almost evil. At her command, the trees around her Yapluma teammate lit up in flames. Branches crashed to the ground, and a large one cracked and fell downward, landing on the Yapluma girl and her Familiar. I could hear their agonized screams as they started burning to death.
“Haley! Stop!” Sophia screamed in horror, but Haley only increased the size and heat of the flames.
Haley grinned widely as her teammate cried for help, and her right eye twitched. The Yapluma girl tried to escape by pushing outward with her element, but t
he Air she provided only fueled Haley’s Fire.
“Stop it!” Sophia had enough. She ran forward and pushed Haley down. Sophia used the power of her element to suppress Haley’s and make the fire smaller. I snapped out of it and brought water coursing up from the ground.
I tried to put it out as quickly as I could, but it was no use. The Yapluma girl and her Familiar were already dead. There was nothing left but their blackened corpses.
Haley laughed. It was twisted and sick. It wasn’t even human. Sophia’s entire body was shaking as she backed away from the charred bodies.
Haley only had herself and her Nivita teammate left. She had to make sure both of them survived in order to pass the tournament.
The Nivita boy was pale. He reached out to steady himself on his stone-lion, staring at the blackened husk of the person that had been there just moments before.
Haley took off running. It was only a few seconds before the Nivita boy and his stone-lion followed. Anwara soared after, but her sharp eyes lingered on the fallen tree and the ashes that remained.
Sophia heaved for air next to me. Her face was red, eyes absolutely burning. Her expression was furious, and her whole body shook in rage.
“Haley!” Sophia screamed. She started forward and chased after her housemate. Esis tried to stop her by yanking on her pant leg, but she shook him off and continued to pursue Haley.
“Sophia, don’t!” I yelled, but it was too late. Sophia had already taken off. Imogen, Jonah and I raced after her, trying to catch up. Haley was drawing us to the one place we didn’t want to go.
The final task.
Evil! She’s pure evil!
Rage rocketed through me as I raced through the woods behind Haley. Flames begged to escape through my closed fists. My hands burned until I couldn’t take it anymore and fire shot between my fingers. I didn’t know what I was going to do to Haley when I reached her. All I knew was that somebody needed to teach her a lesson.
Haley and her teammate dodged around thick trees and jumped over fallen logs, their Familiars close on their heels. She shot a glance back over her shoulder. A satisfied smirk touched her lips when she saw how far behind I was. Her laughter echoed through the forest.
My legs burned as they moved beneath me, and my head spun. I hadn’t eaten much the last few days, and it was starting to show. The way Haley moved so quickly and agile, she’d probably shoved some energy bars in her pockets before the opening ceremony.
“Sophia!”
I heard someone’s voice behind me, but I barely registered it. All my attention was focused on Haley. She was headed straight for a sharp decline in the forest, an area that looked as if a river had once flowed through it. In a last-ditch effort, I drew my arm back and hurled a fireball at the back of her head.
She jumped before my fireball made it to her. Her body dropped out of view as she slid down the ravine.
I pushed past the heat climbing up my legs and raced faster. I reached the ravine and braced myself. My feet dug into the dirt to slow my fall down the hill, but I managed to keep my footing. My eyes darted from one side to the other, but Haley was nowhere in sight. She was gone.
Sassy jumped into the ravine behind me, Squeaks and Esis closely following. Squeaks tripped over a rock on the hillside and tumbled the rest of the way down. She landed with her wings spread out beneath her and her legs straight up in the air. She quickly righted herself and shook her head. Esis scurried up my pant leg and onto my shoulder.
Imogen almost lost her footing as she raced after me, but a loose rock jumped upward on her way down the hill. She stepped on it to steady herself before stopping beside me. Jonah and Liam made it to us a few seconds later. Liam gritted his teeth and breathed heavier than I’d ever seen him breathe before.
“Sophia, stop!” Imogen demanded.
I barely heard her. “I think she went this way.”
I took a step to my right, but Liam’s hand shot out and grabbed mine. He instantly pulled away as if my skin had burned him.
“Sophia,” he said, concern etched in his features. “We can’t waste our energy fighting against other teams.”
“She killed her teammate,” I growled, unable to control the anger coursing through me. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d felt so out of control— probably never. “She murdered someone.”
“I know,” Liam said with a sigh. “But we can worry about Haley later. We’re almost to the final trial, and—”
Jonah’s scream cut through the air. He ducked just as a fireball at least a foot across whizzed by his head. It landed in a pile of dead leaves that instantly burst into flames.
My eyes darted in the direction it came from, only to see that another dozen fireballs were headed our way, each one bigger than the last.
We all took off running in the same direction down the length of the ravine. Beside me, Liam tripped, but I caught him before he could face-plant. His body slumped against mine. He was so weak now that he could barely walk.
“Duck!” I shouted as another incoming fireball headed our way. I couldn’t even tell where they were coming from.
Above us, trees lit up in flames. Jonah and Imogen, along with their Familiars, hesitated ahead of us to make sure we were coming.
“We have to get out of here!” I cried.
Jonah climbed the steep side of the ravine. He reached out a hand and helped Imogen up in a single swift motion.
I supported Liam’s weight and helped him over to Jonah. Jonah grabbed Liam’s hand and heaved him upward. Liam tried to stand, but by now, his legs were pretty much useless. Squeaks pushed on Liam’s butt with her head to help him up. Esis tugged on my hair just in time for me to see another fireball flying in my direction. It flew so close to me that it singed the hair on my left arm and ignited the leaves on the ground only a foot away from me. Heart hammering, I reached out for Jonah and hurried to my feet beside them.
Sheer hopelessness slammed into my gut when I finally got a good view of the landscape above the ravine. Ahead of us, the entire forest was engulfed in flames as far as the eye could see. A sharp pain assaulted my nostrils as I inhaled thick smoke. It felt as if a cinder block had been dropped on my chest as heavy air settled in my lungs. The heat radiating off the nearby flames was almost unbearable.
This was bad. My team couldn’t take as much heat as I could. I had to get them out of here now.
“This way!” I shouted. I guided them through a maze of flames, following the path of fresh underbrush. Fire was closing in on the greenery quickly, narrowing our way out.
Flames completely overtook the path ahead of us. I whirled around, searching for an alternate route, but I couldn't see one… couldn't feel one. I stopped in my tracks in a small circle of untouched earth. It was barely ten feet across and shrinking by the second.
Imogen's eyes darted around the forest as if calculating our options. “It's your trial!” Imogen cried to me over the crackling sounds of burning wood. “What do we do, Sophia?”
I didn't really have time to think about it, but I also didn't know the answer. When I tried to access the fire to test its power, it was too much. Rage and prejudice hung thick in the magical flames. I could literally feel the hatred of the Elders as they pressed their Fire toward us. They wanted us to die, the misfits we were. We didn’t belong in this society, and they wanted to make sure we knew it— or they were testing me, seeing if I was the prophesied child they’d been waiting for. But prophecy or not, there was no way I could calm the Elders’ Fire on my own.
Instinct told me to do the exact opposite.
“I have to make them bigger.” I aimed my hands at the closest flames that were creeping across the forest floor toward us.
“No!” Liam wheezed. His body was half-draped over Squeaks’ back. He barely got the words out. “You have to calm the flames.”
“Agreed,” Imogen said, looking worried. “You need to clear a path.”
I hesitated. The Fire inside of me begged to escape,
as if it was trying to tell me something. But my teammates were right. Calming the flames made the most sense. They were more experienced at this Elementai stuff than I was, so I was just going to have to trust them.
It wasn't going to be easy. Putting out Doya's flames in class was hard enough. I didn't know how I was going to calm myself first, not while I was still fuming over Haley— and while my teammates were dangerously close to cooking to death.
I stared at the flames in front of me, willing them to shrink. They were almost as tall as I was, and growing.
From beside me, Jonah started humming the melody to the tune we sang in the cave. Imogen joined in. My anger and worry slowly began to wane at the comforting sound of their voices. I did my best to ignore the heat and the heavy smoke.
Slowly, the flames in front of us shrank enough that we could trample over the embers. I started forward, attacking the next flames as I went. Sweat dripped from my brow, and my knees shook. I could feel my energy draining with each passing second.
I glanced ahead of us and saw nothing but burning forest. Behind us, I could see where the fire ended at a clearing only fifty yards away. My gut twisted at the thought of turning back, but I'd rather keep my team alive than rush to the finish line.
“I don't know how long I can keep this up!” I told my team. “We should turn back.”
Nobody had a chance to agree or disagree. Just as I said it, a wall of fire surged in front of us. It was at least twenty feet tall and so unexpected that I leapt backward, nearly tripping over Sassy. Esis teetered on my shoulder but quickly righted himself.
The flames’ power surged through me. I had less than a split second to decide my next move. Against my better judgement, I acted on instinct. I took hold of that power and threw my anger back at the wall of flames.
The flames shot high into the air, touching the tree tops and burning the leaves above our heads. When they calmed a second later, they were barely higher than my knee. It was better, but not enough to walk through.
“Soph—” Liam tried to speak but started coughing uncontrollably instead. Blood shot from his mouth and sprayed on the ground below him.