53. Rorax
The explosion knocked Rorax off her feet. She hit the ground hard, right on the side with her cracked rib.
Her ears were ringing, and so much sharp pain lanced up her spine, chest, and upper back the only thing she could do for a few seconds was take deep, ragged breaths and blink up at the treetops in pain.
She got up on her elbows, holding in her groan, and then sniffed the air. Smoke and the smell of burning hair and fat permeated the air so thickly, Rorax coughed before she could stop herself and the action caused her ribs to throb.
Enna came scrambling down the rocks, her eyes pinned on Rorax. Ash streaked the light brown skin on her face.
The caramel-colored horn peeked over Enna’s shoulder where it was strapped to her back, and Rorax sighed with relief.
When Enna got a good look at Rorax’s face she stumbled, eyes going wide as she took in all the blood. “Good gods above.”
“It’s not as bad as it looks,” Rorax lied as Enna reached a hand down to Rorax to help pull her up.
Rorax groaned as she got to her feet and braced herself against the nearest tree.
“Are you okay?” Enna’s panicked eyes ran over Rorax’s body, looking for more injuries.
“I’m fine,” Rorax lied again, forcing herself to stand straight.
Enna gave her a look that said she knew she was full of horse shit. “Do you think you have any internal injuries?”
Rorax paused, taking inventory of how she felt, and shook her head. “I don’t think so.” She just really hoped they wouldn’t run into any more trolls. Or Highborns.
Rorax debated whether to climb back into the troll”s cave but decided against it. Glimr was safe at her back, but her other knives would be stuck under the troll’s burning carcass.
“Gross.” Enna shivered and shot a disgusted look over her shoulder at the cave, and the troll she had just detonated. “Let’s go.”
Rorax and Enna moved slowly through the forest, choosing to head diagonally across the canyon, simultaneously moving toward the river and the end of the valley. They had to be nearing the end of the valley by now, close enough that Rorax was on the lookout for Isgra.
Rorax moved as fast as she could manage without passing out, but each breath burned in her chest.
She eventually had to stop. She paused with one hand on a tree when there was a loud scream from the other side of the river. Enna and Rorax looked over their shoulders to watch through the trees.
All five of the Highborns were sprinting through the forest towards them, glancing terrified looks over their shoulders as they ran.
Understanding barreled into Rorax. “Mother fucker.”
Enna took one look at Rorax’s body language and swore. “You’re joking.”
Almost as if in answer, a loud, ferocious roar bellowed its frustration from across the river.
It was a very familiar sound.
Gods save us.
As the Highborns started to cross the river, Rorax whipped around to face Enna.
“Run. Go straight up the river and once everyone is out of sight, blow the horn. Get Briar to come back for you as protection in case there are more of these things out there, and then you all need to run to the end. Get back to your Protectorates as soon as possible, before one of us dies and you all go through the influx together. Do you understand me?”
“What about you?” The words were barely out of Enna’s mouth as another white troll burst through the tree line on the opposite bank of the river. It sniffed the bank, using its six eyes to scan the shoreline before spotting its prey, and lunging into the river after them.
Rorax grimaced but didn’t take her eyes off the troll. “I can’t run, Enna. My best chance is to take this thing head on, but we can’t risk the horn.”
Enna didn’t move from her spot, so Rorax gave Enna a look out of the corner of her eye. “But if you don’t start running in the next thirty seconds, Enna, I swear to K??n, I will tie you up and leave you as bait.”
Enna jerked up straight. “I’ll go get Briar.”
“Enna, that’s not—”
But Enna was already gone, disappearing through the trees.
Rorax gritted her teeth, focusing back on the river in time to see Serena and Mo finally reaching the bank. Stella and Isgra didn’t have any water magick to propel them, so they hadn”t reached the shore yet and were still a few yards out. The troll was nearly halfway across the water, snarling.
Serena spied Rorax standing in the trees, and before her pride could stop her, she started to beg. “Rorax! Oh gods, Rorax help us!”
Rorax looked over Serena’s shoulder at Isgra who was pushing out of the river, her face twisted in an ugly mask of panic and fear.
Rorax resisted the urge to put her hand to her ribs. She didn’t trust Isgra not to use the injury to her advantage.
“We don’t have a chance against it unless we can sever the connection to the obsidian circlet, the little black stone sitting in the troll’s forehead. It will protect the troll from magick while it”s still intact. You just need to make a slice across its forehead that’s at least a centimeter deep.”
Rorax looked around them. They were in the thick woods next to a small rocky bluff, not a very good location for openly taking down a troll.
“Isgra, set some of this brush on fire in lines twenty yards to the sides. We can’t use magick directly on the troll, but we can use it to corral him. Let’s see if it’s scared enough of fire to stay in a box,” Rorax commanded. Serena and Mo only had close range weapons, but Stella had a full quiver of bows and arrows, and Isgra had some throwing knives.
The troll roared in fury. He was at least two thirds of the way across the river now, and she had maybe fifty seconds before it was on them.
“Isgra and Stella, climb the bluff and use your ranged weapons,” instructed Rorax. “Serena, Itzel, and Mo? Grab some sticks. Make it into a torch.”
They all did as they were told, too scared to argue.
As the troll pulled itself out of the water, Rorax noted that this troll was fractionally smaller than the other. It was covered in the same white fur and had a dark obsidian crystal on its forehead. The troll also gripped a long club in one hand.
Its six eyes carefully observed the ring of flames that Isgra had created, but in one move it side-stepped the blaze and rushed at the Contestars.
“Fuck,” Rorax hissed. It barreled straight for Rorax, who was the closest. Itzel stepped forward and threw her torch at the troll before it got close enough to swing at Rorax.
The torch sizzled uselessly against the troll’s wet fur, but the troll stopped its advance, growled in anger, and turned its attention to the Highborn.
There was a yell from the trees, and to Rorax’s chagrin Enna, Briar, Lily, and Mairi came running through the trees with their weapons raised.
The troll ignored the newcomers and hurled its club at Itzel. The club caught her body so hard she smashed against the rocks.
Itzel’s skull made a sickening crunching sound, and as her body crumpled on the rocks blood started to pool around her head.
Within a few breaths, Rorax felt the influx hit her and the anger and the adrenaline coursed through her system as she took a breath in—right before someone tackled her to the ground.
Her rib screamed in protest, and the right side of her body throbbed in agony. But the pain snapped her out of her influx, and the red mist threatening at the edges of her vision dissipated almost as soon as it had come.
Briar, a small blonde from the House of Air, rolled with Rorax, her teeth snapping at Rorax’s face and her hands grabbing for Rorax’s throat.
Rorax tried to buck her off, but she could almost feel the jagged edges of her ribs rub against her insides and she stopped. Briar successfully wrapped her hands around Rorax’s neck and squeezed, and Rorax gritted her teeth and arched her back just enough to jerk Glimr free. She threw her head to the side and used her connection to Glimr to smash its hilt against Briar’s skull. With a loud smack of bone against metal, Briar’s body went limp on top of hers.
Rorax shoved Briar away from her, but deftly started pulling out every hidden knife she could find on Briar’s small body.
Briar only had three knives left, and they were all too short to do any real damage.
Stella and Lily were swinging a sword at each other, but the other Contestars eyed each other and the troll with wariness. They were unsure who was the biggest threat or who they should attack first.
The troll took a slow step closer, and thankfully all the Contestars turned to focus on it, even Stella and Lily.
“Stella, Isgra, attack first from the front, then fall back. Mo, you step in from the back and get his attention with something showy. Then I’ll throw the knives.” Rorax barked the orders loudly, and they all moved to obey.
Isgra opened her arms in a circle, and a big ball of fire lit in the sky. It grew just a little as Mo blew into it, feeding it oxygen. The enraged troll growled, turning towards the flame. When it did, Rorax threw two knives.
One knife sunk deep into the soft flesh of the troll’s uppermost left eye, and the troll flinched at the impact. The other knife nicked the hard brow bone and bounced off into the dirt.
“Fuck!” Rorax hissed as the troll roared with pain, then hurled its club at her. She dodged, throwing her body to the side to get out of the way.
Searing, ripping pain shot down her side as she rolled and came up in a crouch.
Rorax grabbed Briar’s third knife in her hand, and the troll threw its head back and roared again.
It started to charge her—a hurtling eight-foot mass of muscles, white fur, and an excessive number of eyeballs. The earth quaked under her feet as it advanced.
Rorax sucked in a breath and looked around. There weren’t any trees or rocks to dodge behind.
In a moment of sheer, amazing stupidity—Rorax charged it back.
“Rorax!” Enna screamed in horror, but Rorax didn’t stop.
When the troll got close enough, it reached its arm out to grab her. She gripped its wrist, swung under its heavy arm, and used her momentum and the troll’s own weight to swing around its arm long enough to be able to drop it on its back. She heaved with every bit of strength she had in her, then shoved Briar’s third knife into the second eye socket and used Glimr to manually slice the chord between the beast”s obsidian circlet before hurtling herself away from the troll’s body.
But she didn’t hurl herself far enough away. The troll twisted around furiously and backhanded her across the torso. She flew ten feet before hitting the ground hard, and the troll lumbered to its feet and started towards her, its intent lethal.
She pushed up to her hands and knees, desperately gasping for air. “Magick!” she rasped out, as Mo stepped in the way of the troll before it batted her away like a fly. Enna stepped forward, too, barely brandishing her sword before meeting the same fate. Stella tried to throw a knife, but she missed.
“Magick!” she rasped. “USE YOUR MAGICK!”
The troll was only three feet away now, showing her every single massive, sharp tooth in its mouth, before it burst into flames.
Isgra must have finally heard her because her eyes were the color of bright coals as she stepped forward, holding her hands out toward the troll’s burning body. Flames curled lovingly around her hand and all around her body, licking her face like a lover as she burned the troll.
If Volla could see Isgra right now, there was little doubt in Rorax’s mind that she would have been proud.
The troll shrieked in agony, waving its arms desperately as flames burned away its white fur and sizzled its skin.
The smell made Rorax retch as she watched the troll flail around, desperately trying to put out the flames that now boiled its skin and charred it away.
When the troll finally collapsed to the dirt in a smoldering heap, she couldn’t hold back the nausea. She bent over and vomited.
It was mostly blood, and seeing it made her woozy. The troll must have cracked another rib.
Blood trickled down her nose, and she wiped it away with the back of her wrist. Gasping, she pressed her hand to her side, and it came away bloody.
No, not another broken rib, one of the troll’s claws had ripped a brutal line down her side.
“Fuck.” She was losing a lot of blood.
Isgra and Enna ran to her side. Enna looked pale, but Isgra was still glowing with flames. “You”re an idiot,” Isgra snapped. “Climbing onto the back of a troll.”
Mo and Stella ran to stand side by side with Enna and Isgra. “Shit.” Stella eyed the injury.
Rorax knew it was bad. The blood was slowing, but not fast enough.
“Help her onto my back. The horn and the end are only over that ridge,” Enna ordered the girls. Briar, Serena, and Mairi immediately knelt beside her, but Isgra, Mo, and Stella didn”t move.
“No,” Isgra shook her head, looking Rorax over with a triumphant grin. “This is a competition, and my biggest competitor is down.”
Briar scoffed from her knees at Rorax’s side. “Isgra, you’re an idiot. That injury isn’t going to kill her, and you can’t kill her, or you’ll die. We either help her down the mountain or we just piss her off.”
Rorax wasn’t so sure the injury wouldn’t kill her, but she grinned up at Mo and Stella anyway.
Briar snickered when Isgra immediately bent down to help Rorax onto Enna’s back.
“Should we bring Itzel’s body back to the castle?” Enna asked, and they all turned around to stare at the body crumpled at the base of the rocky bluff.
“No,” Rorax rasped. “We’ll have one of Lamonte’s men come back. We need to get out of these woods as fast as possible. Get Lily up though.”
Rorax jerked her chin over to where Lily lay.
Mairi bent down to help wake up Lily, and Rorax closed her eyes, desperately trying to cling to consciousness.