Chapter 4 #3
Wiping a tired arm across my forehead, I bought myself precious seconds of cleared visibility before more sweat began to drip from my eyebrows.
The next obstacle grew larger with my approach. It was a cobbled stone wall barrier, toweringly high. From that height, you would break more than your leg if you fell. You’d break all your coconuts.
As if the sheer vertical wall weren't enough of an obstacle, people who had reached it were shouting, grabbing at blood-spattered shoes. It looked like they'd planted something nasty in the sand in front of it.
My lips pressed together. Walls were my strength. I could scale this wall.
A few of the fastest runners were already reaching the top of the wall, including the woman I'd seen who had given me the arrogant look. She wore a pretty smile, reaching out a hand to a man below her to help him up. He took it.
It took several seconds for me to process what happened next.
The male contestant was falling, and his body hit the ground with a loud thud and several sickening cracks.
My eyes went wide, racing back up to the top of the wall. The woman was still smiling, already turning to start down the other side. She'd dropped him. And it hadn't been an accident.
The nearest official rushed forward, bending over to check the man for injuries. He wasn’t moving.
My heart was pounding even faster staccato. The burly man from before wasn’t nearly as dangerous as that woman.
There wasn’t any time to dwell on it further, as I was mere steps away from the base of the wall and still had no idea what had injured the feet of the other competitors.
Squinting, I searched for any clue about what the trap might be.
It didn't take long to pick out the small sharpened spikes of mangrove, barely visible, sticking up out of the sand. Both of the twins, who were running ahead of me, had plucked out mangrove spears and were carrying them as they ran.
This was so much more savage than the previous Mistruns I'd witnessed as a child. Why was this year's race so much more brutal? Maybe I had been naive, and hadn’t noticed the brutality in former years. It seemed significantly worse up close.
The wooden spikes were interspersed at far enough intervals that they could be dodged either by tiptoeing through them, or with a timed lunge to the wall.
Too much momentum propelled me forward before I could stop in time for any delicate footwork. Lunge it was.
Crouching down as I neared the edge of the spikes, I pumped with what little energy remained in my legs to reach the wall.
Too late, I realized there were no handholds in this wall to grab onto.
Rookie mistake. You know better.
Scrambling desperately as I slid down, my fingernails dug into the stone to try to find a hold. I was slipping, my boots kicking to find any small dent. The tangy sourness of fear throbbed in the back of my throat.
At the last second, I caught a groove in the rock, holding on even as my weight nearly pulled my arm out of its socket. I swung for a few seconds, side to side, trying to locate another grip.
Fortunately, I found one, nearly out of reach. Hanging on, my arms now joined in the burn that had reached every other muscle. I allowed myself two full seconds to catch my breath and let my pulse slow down.
Then I was kicking with my feet to find any indent they could use to help in my ascent, slowly climbing to the top. My grip strength was waning from repeated abuse.
The mangrove trap at the bottom was sure to slow down anyone who didn't notice it in time and injured their feet. Straddling the top of the wall and looking back, I could see at least another few dozen people running toward this obstacle.
I paid the price for looking back.
One of the twins was nearby, and he lunged toward me with his pilfered spear aimed at my leg.
Reformatory instinct took over, and I twisted out of the way at the last moment.
There was finite room to maneuver. It had been a clumsy lunge, and he was slow to recover.
Grabbing his wrist, I twisted until a snap rang out.
He screamed, dropping the spear and cradling his wrist.
I didn’t wait to see if he’d try again, making my way down the other side of the wall.
It felt like I had been running for my entire life. A throbbing cramp had formed in my side, that I was doing my best to ignore while I continued running. The sweat was so thick now that my entire body was coated in it. It was dripping off the ends of my hair.
The scorching heat hadn't let up at all. If anything, the day was getting hotter.
Just one more obstacle, I told myself. Keep running.
Focusing became an effort. I was repeating a mantra to myself, just one more step. One more. Just one more step.
If I repeated it enough times, I'd at least make it across the finish line before I passed out.
My lungs were well beyond pain at this point, they felt like I had sunburned them from the inside out, then sanded them down with bark. There wasn’t enough energy left to think about the next obstacle before it arrived.
It was an arch made of hollowed out stone, with a ceiling too low to run through and too high to jump or climb over.
It was a tunnel. Trepidation spiked. The challenge here was no longer purely physical, but also mental.
This was going to be harder than any of the other obstacles, not because of its literal difficulty, but because of how miserable it would be to get back up and run again once I reached the other side of the tunnel.
Sinking onto my knees as I reached the entrance, burning sand scalded my kneecaps and hands, hotter than earlier.
I scrambled forward, heaving for air as I crawled.
This was precious time to try to refill my lungs with air, which were no longer expanding fully when I breathed. I used every second of it.
The tunnel was also an oven. The sun had been baking it, because it was twice as hot inside as out. Dripping sweat blistered against my skin.
Thinking beyond the pain was possible again though. And the stitch in my side was less bothersome. I would be able to finish this race, and maybe, if I was lucky, be fast enough at it to qualify for Voyager service.
It was too soon to let myself hope.
The end of the tunnel was in sight, I needed to get back up.
Stumbling out the other side, I tried to rock back up with a push from my hands onto my feet. I fell backwards onto my ass.
Trying again, this time I used my knees and the wall of the tunnel as leverage to pull myself up. Canting to the right, my leg protested the movement as I tried to stand up straight.
Just one more step.
I sucked in fire for air, forcing my legs to move.
Just one more step.
I was running again, and it hurt so much.
Everything now was beyond scorching. My leg muscles were screaming, aching, and seizing up underneath me.
My arms were throbbing leaden weights pulling me down, my shoulders searing attachment points.
My body had become one solid line of pain, extending from my neck to my ankles.
Keeping this up was impossible, I was surely going to die.
Just one more step. One more breath.
I had to make it into the top one hundred. I couldn’t rest for even a second longer than I already had.
Relief hit me with crushing force when the familiar finish line appeared ahead. It was only a few minutes away now. It was too far to see how many people were already on the other side of the line.
I closed my eyes, they weren't helping me much anymore past all the sweat pouring into them. Shaking my head to try to clear some of it, I continued stumbling blindly forward.
One more step.
One. More. Step.
Opening my eyes, the finish line was close now. Falling forward would be enough to cross it.
So that’s exactly what I did. I collapsed on the other side of the line, sprawling out in the sand and wheezing for air like a drowned creature.
I had been marinated in sweat, grilled, then pounded into a thin sheet of human meat.
Nothing audible made it past the rushing beat of my frenetic heartbeat.
Someone dragged me by the underarms further past the finish line at some point.
I don't know how long I stayed like that. Eventually, I managed to breathe regularly again.
Opening watering eyes, I stared straight up at the sky.
It was over. Had I made it? I rolled onto my side, panting as I pushed myself up.
There were dozens of people around me, and some of them looked offensively fresh even after having run so far.
Including Yeshar and the dark-haired woman who had dropped a man off the taller wall.
I counted them in my head as I tested my arms to see if they could hold weight.
Henrick gave me a weak wave from where he lay resting in the sand a few yards away.
My stomach dropped. There were more than one hundred people gathered here.
Some unknown emotion filled me up with feeling, hot and tight. It was overwhelming.
“Look who's come around,” piped up a warm female voice. The same woman who had announced the start of the race stood ahead of me, eyeing me as I pushed myself into a sitting position.
“Congratulations,” she continued. “You got 92nd place. You have officially qualified for Voyager training.”