by Katie Cherry
I thank the nurse, and Dallas and I head to the breakfast area. The hospital has surprisingly good food, but it’s still not as good as most food I’ve had in Zilferia. We then head to train with Thaddeus. I can’t help but think how weird it feels to have a random guy following me, as if taking Nathan’s place. Without Thaddeus at the bottom making me take the stairs, I opt for the elevator again. When we reach the top, we find Thaddeus in the same spot as the day before, gazing out over the forest. He turns as we approach.
“Ah, good,” he says. “You’re up and moving. Don’t worry, we won’t be doing any physical training today- so you also won’t have to train with Vladimir- although we will tomorrow.” Fear flashes across my face before I can hide it. The thought of doing anything in my condition honestly scares me. “Don’t worry, it won’t be very taxing at all. We will be very gentle at first- although your arms should be much improved by then anyway.” I don’t believe him. My arms can’t improve that fast. Especially seeing the shape they’re in now- they just keep throbbing with pain in time to my heartbeats.
“Now then,” Thaddeus continues, heading toward the table. “Let’s get down to business. I need to tell you about the Third Challenge.” Before he does, however, he sends Dallas over to a chair by the elevator. I suspect that it’s more so he can’t hear us than making sure no one else comes up.
Thaddeus peers at me seriously. “First off, I want to ask how Nathan is faring. Will he be able to train with us tomorrow?”
“No… but,” I add, “he will be able to participate in the Third Challenge, luckily.”
“Yes, that’s fortunate indeed, for he would be put in the arena if he’s somewhat stable regardless.”
“Wait… what?” I say, disbelieving.
“Yes,” he confirms, his voice sad. “I’m afraid it’s true. Like I said at the beginning, these Games are rigorous. They are unforgiving, and there’s no way Vlad would put them on hold for one boy with a fever. Either he plays in the Challenge, or you are both eliminated and may be kept here even longer than if you were in the Games.”
“Wow,” I mutter. “What a jerk.”
“I believe he is just having a rough go of it lately. He wasn’t like this last year… perhaps the pressure has gotten to him.”
“I… guess…”
“Now then, about the Third Challenge. It is water-themed this year, so I hope you can swim.”
“Yeah, I can swim,” I reply. “…Usually. I probably can’t really now, because of my arms.”
“How well can you swim, though? The entire thing is underwater.”
“Pretty well,” I say after a moment’s thought.
Thaddeus raises an eyebrow. “I suppose we’ll find out tomorrow.” When he sees the question written on my face, he explains. “We are going to go swimming tomorrow to see how well you can perform in the water, as well as to strengthen your muscles and lengthen your endurance. I suppose since Nathan cannot participate, he will just have to learn and adjust while in the arena. You might have to help him more than ever before during this Challenge,” he warns me. I nod.
“What’s the goal for this one?” I ask. He grimaces and doesn’t answer, refusing to look me in the eye. “What is it?” I demand. “I need to know. I don’t care how dangerous it is, we still need to do our best so we can end these Games and we can go home.”
He slowly nods, drawing in a deep breath. “You… you have to retrieve… the Mermaid King’s Trident.”
Apparently, I somehow miss the significance of this. “What? A mermaid? That’s it?”
He shakes his head at me. “You don’t understand. Mermaids aren’t gentle girls with fish tails like the people on Earth have come to believe. They are all- male and female- fierce warriors that are masters of the sea and nearly all the creatures that live in it. They are much more dangerous than sharks, moving so swiftly they’re difficult to keep track of. When they aren’t moving, they are indistinguishable from the seaweed permeating the area. They can only be seen if they want to be seen. Some eat any humans that wander into their domain. The King’s Trident has the power to control your body. They are all at least as intelligent as you and I. …Now do you have a clearer understanding of what you’re up against?”
It takes me a while to find my voice. “Yes,” I squeak out. “But… I thought that the point was not to kill us, but to help us get our Gifts! It seems to me that Vlad is seriously trying to end us all here and now! …Does he really hate me that much?” I am now genuinely terrified of Vlad now that I know just how far he can go in his punishments.
He shakes his head again and sighs. “I don’t know. All I know is that he isn’t acting like he normally would. …Did you ever notice a difference from when you first met him and the next day?” I think about it. I remember he did seem a lot less… uptight when I first met him. In fact, in any other circumstance, he could have even been… nice. Now he’s obviously trying to get me killed, no matter the cost- even at the price of other, innocent people’s lives! I suddenly remember that night he told me about the Games… he put Kiki to sleep, saying she needed sleep and didn’t want to be frightened from his story.
When I tell Thaddeus this, he nods. “Yes, that is how he normally is. However… he has changed so drastically I know something’s up. I am simply not sure what exactly it is.”
“What are you saying? That… That he’s not the real Vlad?”
“Perhaps. Either that or he is being controlled somehow.”
“What do we do about it?” I ask, concerned.
“…Nothing. We can’t do anything about it until the Games are over. I will, however, keep a close eye on Vladimir and try to protect you from him as best I can.”
After that, we grab Dallas and get lunch. Before I eat mine, however, Thaddeus dumps a powder into the soup and stirs it before handing it back to me. When I ask him what it is, he tells me that it’s just something to speed up the healing process for my arms. After we eat, the throbbing is a little better, but Thaddeus says it works mostly overnight.
Since my body can’t yet do anything physical, he sends me back to the hospital to rest and keep an eye on Nathan and make sure he’s recovering. Dallas, of course. Comes with.
Nathan doesn’t wake for about half an hour, so I talk to Dallas while I wait. First I ask him to tell me about himself, but he says that he’s just an average guy, nothing special. When I say that surely he’s unique in some way, he confides that he enjoys playing chess. Excited, I challenge him to a game sometime. He replies that he’d love to before suggesting doing so now while we wait. I agree, so he goes out and looks around for a chess board.
Soon after he leaves, Nathan wakes up and coughs, and although he still doesn’t sound great, it has improved a little. Once he catches his breath, he asks me to tell him about the Third Challenge. So I do, and when I’m finished, he’s silent but for the fear on his face.
“…Can you swim?” I ask him.
He nods. “Even better than I can run, but that’s not what I’m worried about. Those mermaids sound like real monsters. …I’m not so sure we should do this.”
“What do you mean?” I ask, confused. “What else can we do? We have to get home!”
“Yes, but that doesn’t necessarily mean we have to win, right?” When I don’t respond, he presses it further. “Right? I mean, they want their winners and everything, but who says we have to win to go home? They just said we can go home once the Games are over. As long as we’re still alive, of course.”
“Sure, but it only ends if there’s only one team left, or if someone wins three Challenges in a row. We’ve already won the first two. Besides, they won’t be letting us just quit. They dragged us here. I don’t think they’ll let us go that easily.”
“No… but we don’t have to quit to not get eaten by mermaids.”
“…I’m sorry, I don’t think I see where you’re going with this,” I finally say after he pauses to see if I will catch on and figure out his plan.
I’m about to argue, but then I stop and think about the predicament we are in and agree. I really don’t want to get killed, especially so far away from home. No one would ever know what happened to me. A nurse then comes in and tells me that I should go back to my own bed so I can rest and heal. I warily agree and say goodbye to Nathan. As I stand to go, Dallas returns with a chess set. We head to my room and play one game. He’s tougher than a lot of people I’ve faced, but I still end up victorious. He seems a little disappointed. I offer a rematch tomorrow. He agrees, then leaves. He’s replaced for the night with another guy who doesn’t talk much, which is fine since I need my sleep anyway.
The first thing I notice when I wake is that my arms don’t hurt anymore. I sit up with a start, electrified. For a moment I don’t move from shock, but then I quickly begin pulling off the bandages. A nurse comes in and tells me not to do that, but I ignore her and finish pulling them off. We’re both astounded by how much they’ve improved. Before, they looked raw and bloody- completely disgusting. Now, there are some scabs, but other than that, they look almost like they always had. I carefully touch them and can’t keep my spreading grin off of my face when I feel no pain. I’m elated. I’m healed! Well, mostly. Maybe the water will soften the scabs and they’ll just fall off… that reminds me, I need to go train with Thaddeus! After I get dressed, I start to leave and see that the other guy has been replaced by Dallas. They must trade day and night shifts. After grabbing some breakfast, we go and find Thaddeus for training.
He’s not by the building we usually meet at, but his secretary is there, who directs us to the pool. We follow her directions and find Thaddeus talking to another person. As we draw closer, I see that the man’s skin, perfectly tanned from the sun, glistens gloriously against the light green of his swimming trunks. Thaddeus introduces us. The tall, muscular man is from Quagon, the watery universe, so he is an excellent swimmer. He’s going to help me swim and point out ways to better conserve energy in the water.
Thaddeus hands me a swimming suit, and I have to choke back a sigh at the colors. I’m really getting sick of black and purple. After I change, Thaddeus tells me to do whatever I want in the pool, just warm up and get comfortable with being in the water. The water is clean and cool, and doesn’t have chlorine in it like the pools in Second Earth do. It’s refreshing, and I feel rejuvenated and better than I have in quite a while. After I swim around for a while, I just float on my back and gaze up at the clear blue sky.
The guy from Quagon then jumps in. He swims over to me and has me do a few exercises, from simple things like staying afloat to doing the breaststroke across the length of the pool four times without stopping. It’s exhausting, but luckily, I manage to do everything he asks. He has me do all of the strokes I had ever heard of as well as some that I hadn’t, so I have to quickly learn some new moves. They are surprisingly easy, though, and I can tell they were made to reduce the amount of energy spent in the water.
I even learn how to best swim underwater, since the entire Challenge will be taking place underwater. When I express my concern about being able to breathe, he laughs a little.
“I can tell you are not from Quagon,” he says with a light accent that sounds like one I heard on Earth, from a New Zealand tourist. “You may swim like one of us, but you would know about the technology we have if you were there for even a day. You see, we invented a device, small and convenient, to enable you to breathe and see clearly underwater. However, it is permanent. But while you have it, you can breathe air when you are not in the water. It only activates once your mouth and nose are in water. It does not give you gills, but we can do that for you instead if you prefer. The gills would fade almost all the way while you are not underwater. All you would be able to see is thin white lines on your neck. Which would you prefer?”
“Uh, the first one,” I choose, still boggled by the concept of breathing underwater. He nods.
“Very well. I will get one for both you and your partner during lunch.”
“Do… do you have one?” I ask him.
He laughs. “Of course! Anyone over the age of four in Quagon has one or the other. …Do you wish to see how it works?”
“…Sure,” I say. He nods and dives underwater. I peer down and see him calmly sitting at the bottom. It looks like he’s breathing normally, like the water is just air. After a few minutes, he comes back up. He’s not breathing hard, reinforcing the fact that he was just breathing underwater. “Wow,” I say. “That’s really cool! …And you can’t even see it?”
“Not easily. Do you see mine?”
“Well… no, but I don’t know where to look,” I say sheepishly. He smiles and points to the base of his throat, where it connects to his collarbone. I look closely and see a tiny black dot. “Cool,” I repeat.
After that, we swim around for a little longer until it’s time for lunch. I get out of the pool and change back into my other clothes while the guy from Quagon leaves to grab the breathing devices. I head to the Village Square to eat lunch with the rest of the contestants for the first time in a while. I get my food and sit down with Ham and Sierra. They’re both surprised to see me.
“Hey,” I casually greet them as I take a bite of my sandwich.
“…Hey,” Ham replies. “You’re already out of the hospital? I heard what happened, and they said they didn’t expect you to be out for at least another week!”
“Yeah, well. I didn’t feel like waiting that long, and neither did Thaddeus, so he gave me something to help me heal faster.”
“Well, it sure worked!” Sierra exclaims, leaning forward to peer at my arms. “You don’t even have any scabs or scars! The doctors said you would at least scar, your arms were so bad.”
“Hmm,” I grunt. “So, what have you been up to?”
“Oh, nothing much,” Sierra replies, taking a bite of her sandwich as well. “Swimming and stuff. But Ham and I don’t really care anymore. We really don’t have a chance on this one. I don’t think anyone does, not even you and Nathan. I mean, those man-eating mermaids? Really?! Is Vlad trying to kill us all or something?” She sighs. “So Ham and I are just going to sit back and let the other teams try their luck. If nobody wings, then maybe they’ll just have to cancel this Challenge. We figure it’s worth a shot, right? Because I really don’t want to get eaten or impaled on a giant fork that can control me. That’s just not my idea of a good time.”
I laugh a little. “Yeah, Nathan and I were thinking pretty much the exact same thing.” I suddenly feel a hand on my shoulder. Spinning around, I relax as I see the guy from Quagon.
He smiles and hands me a tiny bag with two black dots about twice the size of a freckle inside. “Here you are,” he says. “Put one on now, and you can try it out after you eat,” he suggests, then leaves to get his own food. I put them in my back pocket.
Ham and Sierra look at me quizzically. “What’s that?” Ham asks, clearly burning with curiosity.
“They’re supposed to make it so we can breathe underwater,” I respond.
“Really? That’s so cool!” Sierra exclaims. “…Do you think we’ll get one too?”
“Probably. Just ask Zelda for one. I don’t see how they’d expect us to do an underwater Challenge without them anyway.”
“Okay, we will!” she agrees, excited.
After lunch, it’s back to training with Vlad, my least favorite person. All we’ve really been working on lately is trying to get me to grow into one of my Gifts- I’m the only contestant left that hasn’t yet- but it hasn’t been going so well. I sigh and wait for everyone to clear out of the Square, wanting them to leave faster while at the same time hoping they’ll linger longer so I won’t have to be alone with Vlad.
Soon enough, the inevitable happens, and everyone leaves and Vlad
comes walking up with some people behind him, hauling weapons. I feel better instantly. That means I’ll only have to deal with the weapons person. When they get here, Vlad acts nonchalant and barely acknowledges me, just instructs me, in as few words as possible, to fight with the weapons guy. We choose rapiers again since they are durable and light. As soon as we start to fight, I notice that something is… different about this fight than any other time we’ve fought before. This time I can almost see what he’s going to do before he does it. Everything is… more clear and detailed. It’s like everything but me is moving in slow motion. He can’t get anywhere near me with his sword. I see surprise on his face and take advantage of it. In just a few more moves, he ends up with his sword on the ground and mine pointed at his throat. We stay like that for a few moments, panting lightly. I then lower my sword and offer my hand to him and help him up.
“Well, looks like you’ve finally grown into one of your Gifts,” he says as we put the swords back. “But you only beat me because when you first get your Gift, you have a rush of energy. Next time, we will be much more evenly matched.”
“I see,” I thoughtfully respond. “And this means that I’m never going to lose this Gift, right?” I ask, just wanting confirmation.
“Yes. But it won’t be your only one. In fact, in your case, you may get two or three more, since you are of the Dragon family. …Well, good luck in the next Challenge- you’ll need it,” he adds grimly, turning and leaving, hauling the weapons with him. I walk back to Vlad and tell him that Extraordinary Fighting Skills is one of my Gifts- just like he guessed when he first saw me. I watch him carefully for his response, to see if I can catch him stumble over something that he should know but doesn’t, but all he does is nod and tell me that I can go.
So I do, heading for the pool. I swim around for the rest of the day, although I don’t use the breathing device because it doesn’t feel fair that I can use it and Nathan can’t yet, so I wait until he can join me before I try it out. Fortunately, the doctors tell me that I only need to wait for five more days.