cHApTEr 18. rEADy or noT (3 of 3)

After sliding down the ridge, both women kept running along the slope. It wasn’t clear what their intentions were. The distance between them and either Mioray or Matt was roughly the same. They could have split up and gone after both of them, but after dodging yet another one of Amika’s attacks, Mioray dismissed that possibility. In the short time they had spent together, he had learned enough about Amika to know she would tear apart anyone who dared help her fight Mioray.

“Damn it, it’s really uncomfortable running in this!” Kiriya stopped for a moment, clutching the edges of her long gown. “I don’t want to miss all the fun because of it!”

“Speak for yourself!” Saria shot back, stopping beside her. “I, for one, think this infighting is completely wrong!”

“Of course you do, miss ‘look at me, I’m smart and prudent, unlike all these barbarians around me’!” Kiriya snapped, then grabbed the hem of her gown and started tearing it off around knee level.

“Was that supposed to be a jab at me?” Saria winced. “How very mature of you, Kiriya.”

Mioray didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. Neither did Matt, judging by the confused look he threw him from a distance. A question lingered in his eyes. Should he get ready to defend himself, or keep trying to persuade the souls of the dead?

Mioray nodded toward the arguing girls. They came first. Only if they said out loud they weren’t going to attack was it safe to lower their guard around them. Though he wasn’t counting on that. He focused on Amika.

She raised her voice so Kiriya and Saria would hear.

“You can do whatever you want, but let’s make one thing clear – Mioray is mine!”

Mioray had expected nothing less from her. She was going to keep hounding him until only one of them was left standing. He gave his hands a brief shake. She was not leaving him much choice.

“Matt, I’m counting on you to come out on top,” Mioray said.

Sadly, he couldn’t say the same for himself. He fired his arm at Amika. It flew straight at her face with perfect precision, but the moment it got close, her hair shredded the air in front of her. Mioray had expected that. He stopped his arm just in time, before it could fly into those coffee-blonde razor blades, then pulled it back.

His earlier assumption had been correct. Any attempt to engage Amika directly would end with her cutting off whatever body part he threw at her. The gash in his side was reminder enough of that. Mioray needed to find another way to get to her, but in a space this open he was like a snake with no grass to hide in.

And somehow, even that little test only made things worse.

“About time you accepted the inevitable!” Amika said, bending forward as if preparing to charge. “Here I come!”

She was almost beside herself with joy, her eyes blazing with excitement. What made it even more frightening was that she acted irrationally while the light of reason in her gaze remained perfectly clear. She was mad within her own logic. When the Dismantler had hunted Mioray, he had not been himself. His sanity had been twisted by emotions, all because he believed his wife was still alive.

But Amika? She was doing this out of pure enjoyment. Truly, she was worthy of the title of Impact Corpse’s wife.

A couple dozen golden spears, accompanied by ecstatic laughter, lunged at Mioray, leaving him no chance to come up with a strategy of his own. He swayed from side to side, no different from a puppy trained to rise on its toes every time its master gave the command. One after another, Amika’s hair spears rained down on him, waiting for the moment he would finally be overwhelmed by the endless assault.

Due to her endless poking, Amika’s attacks appeared random at first, but Mioray had noticed that her hair moved in a fairly predictable pattern. Just as another spike lunged to impale Mioray and, after missing, started retracting to its host, Mioray made his move. He launched his arm along the same path as the returning spear, slipping past all the others. His knuckles nearly struck Amika in the face.

She ducked before they could connect.

Mioray called his arm back at once. Amika was reckless, but she had still noticed his intent and predicted what he was about to do. But could she predict everything? The moment his arm reattached itself to his body, he jerked sideways, dodging another storm of spears. At the same time, he detached one of his legs and left it standing where he had just been. Amika landed there a heartbeat later. Steadying himself, Mioray sent the signal through the black threads to his leg and launched it upward. The toe of his shoe caught Amika square in the jaw.

His leg reattached as Amika was thrown backward by the blow. Mioray expected her to fall, but she quickly forced her hair into the ground and instead flipped backward, ending up suspended above it with her hair acting as support. Still grinning, she put a hand to her jaw and shifted it back into place with a crack.

With a few precious seconds to breathe, Mioray checked how Matt was holding up.

After tearing her gown short, Kiriya was closing in on the boy without doing anything unusual. Saria stayed close behind her. Their abilities must not have been suited for covering long distances quickly. Matt’s palms were sparkling bronze. He was about to pin his opponents in place with his slime. It was a sound idea.

If not for Saria.

Mioray didn’t have time to warn him. Matt’s sticky slime burst from his palms toward the two women. Kiriya jumped back, hiding behind Saria, who froze in place and held her breath. The slime hit her.

But it didn’t stick.

On the contrary, it gained extra force and deflected back at Matt, gluing his legs to the ground.

Saria’s deflecting ability had turned Matt’s own power against him. He would have to find another way to deal with her. But first, he needed to pull the slime back and free himself before Saria and Kiriya reached him. For some reason, he hesitated.

“Why?!” he cried. “Why can’t I call my slime back?!”

Mioray almost bit his tongue. It clicked in his mind at once. Saria’s power. Not only had she deflected Matt’s slime, but the instant it came into contact with her, control over it shifted to her. The affected slime was not Matt’s to recall. It was hers.

But Matt did not realize it that quickly. He panicked, convinced he had somehow lost his ability, and struggled desperately to pull himself free. It was useless. Kiriya stopped in front of him with a blissful smile and knelt down so they were eye to eye.

“Don’t worry,” she said, hugging him and stroking his blond hair. “It will be alright.”

And then she bit into his neck.

Matt let out a tiny squeak, but he was too shaken to do anything. A thin streak of blood began creeping down his neck from where Kiriya’s lips were pressed against it. She was… drinking his blood. She was actually drinking it. With every gulp, the greenish aura above Matt’s head grew fainter. A weak, muffled gurgle escaped him as his face turned pale.

“Matt!” Mioray dashed toward the boy.

Kiriya let go of the boy and wiped the blood from her lips. She rose to her feet, and Matt’s limp body dropped onto his back, his legs awkwardly bent at the knees, his feet still glued to the ground.

“Ah, the blood of an innocent child,” Kiriya said, smacking her lips. “Refreshing.”

“Did you really have to do that?” Saria asked, clearly displeased. “You’re only making everything more complicated.”

She touched the slime around Matt’s feet, and it started retreating back into him. Then she carefully lowered his breathless body to the ground.

“Oh, bug off!” Kiriya snapped at her. “Or you’ll be next!”

Something strange was happening. Kiriya stretched one arm out to the side, palm open, and scarlet liquid began leaking from her fingertips, gathering into a pole as tall as she was. Then a crimson crescent blade emerged from the top of it, catching the sunlight in edges that looked soaked with blood.

It was a scythe.

Before Mioray could fully process what he was seeing, he caught an angry voice behind him.

“When are you finally going to take this seriously?!”

Suddenly, he felt light. Not again. His run was cut short, and he was flung into the air, doomed to crash back down. Not again. He hit the ground and only stopped after rolling several times. Mioray lifted his head to see what had struck him. Not again. Amika was approaching, breathing hard, carried by her hair, which writhed like snakes streaked with blood. Between them lay his severed feet.

Again. She had cut off his feet again. Blood strained to spill from the fresh wounds, but Mioray focused on holding it back. He couldn’t afford to lose too much. If he lost too much blood–

“You really are a little coward after all,” Amika spat. “I’m disappointed in you. Let’s finish this.”

–he would lose consciousness, and then only Farah and Mia would be left to carry the team. Two against four. Judging by the way the score had been shifting throughout the competition, that would be as good as losing. But that wasn’t the only reason Mioray refused to go down here. There was simply too much left to do. Guide the souls of the dead. Help the survivors. Find the Soul Collective. If Amika took him out now, who knew how long it would take him to come back?

He looked at his hands. Without his legs, they were the only things that could still help him escape. He pressed them to the ground. An idea came to him, though he wasn’t sure it would work. He had done something similar once before, back at the residential complex, but not on this scale. He was going to launch his whole body into the air.

Pressing his hands into the ground, Mioray launched himself upward. His body detached from his arms at the elbows, black threads shooting out and stretching at terrifying speed. The ground fell away beneath him. Amika shrank with it as Mioray climbed higher and higher. Not in a straight vertical line, but in an arc that carried him closer to the crater’s rim.

Amika’s hair lunged after him. Whether she meant to seize his arms and drag him back down or simply slice them off as well, Mioray had no intention of finding out. He sent a signal through the threads. His arms released the ground and flew back toward him before her hair could reach them.

The instant they snapped back into place, Mioray fired his right arm at the edge of the rim. It wasn’t that far. He had to reach it. He had to catch hold of it if he wanted to stay conscious today. His farthest reach was around fifteen meters. The ridge had to be within that distance.

It was almost like aiming at the sun itself, staring down at him with its orange eye. He could see a couple of drones flying near its edge, but beyond the top of the ridge nothing else was visible yet. Still, he knew what lay on the other side. The city, with its streets and buildings. Ruined, yes, many of them shattered, but still capable of giving him cover. He could hide there and think about what to do next.

Then he felt his fingers hook into the rock. It worked! At once, he reeled in the black threads, pulling himself toward the arm that now served as a grappling hook. When he reached it, he didn’t stop. He let the momentum carry him over the rim and out toward the ruined streets beyond.

He looked back only once, while the basin of the crater was still visible and not yet hidden from view. Amika and the others stood almost exactly where he had left them. His escape had taken barely half a minute.

A moment later, his winged ascent was bound to turn into a crash. Mioray hadn’t really accounted for that, though it wasn’t as if he had the luxury to. The asphalt below waited mercilessly, ready to flatten him into a smear. He spotted a bent traffic light not far ahead and took a chance, firing his arm at it. His hand caught it, but when he flew past and the black threads pulled tight, the traffic light failed to withstand the force and snapped. The fall slowed a little, but not enough. Mioray still hit the ground hard and rolled over and over across the street before finally coming to a stop.

The arm he recalled back was badly bruised, the sleeve of his shirt scraped away at the forearm and hanging off in shredded strips.. His other arm – the left one – seemed broken, because he could no longer move it as freely as usual. Mioray let out a breath. He wasn’t sure escaping like this was much better than being taken down. Keeping his bloodflow under control, he looked around. To his right stood a ruined building with a deep alcove formed by fallen debris, its entrance framed by what remained of a window. It could work as a hiding place. He shot his right arm out, caught the frame, and pulled himself inside.

For a few minutes, he simply sat beneath the window, gathering his thoughts and trying to process what had just happened.

Matt had been taken down by Kiriya, who had apparently drained all of his blood. She hadn’t thrown up either, so Mioray assumed that was thanks to her ability, just like summoning that scarlet scythe. What did that make her? Some kind of blood manipulator? Blood Corpse? The powers on Lokiel’s team were ridiculous and, regrettably, kind of cool.

This was not the time to appreciate them. Three women were left at the crater with plenty of souls still waiting to be guided into the afterlife, and after seeing their methods with his own eyes, Mioray had no illusions about what would happen next. They were going to score big. Even if Amika left to look for him, Saria and Kiriya were more than enough to tip the scales in their favor. What was the score by now, anyway?

Mioray stuck his head out through the window to look outside. Before contacting the others, he wanted to make sure no one was nearby. And by no one, he meant Amika first and foremost. To his relief, she was nowhere in sight. He did, however, notice another suspicious figure.

This time it was a woman in overalls, with the green aura of a soul hovering above her head. She was running somewhere, just like the unknown man Mioray had bumped into earlier. He touched his earpiece while she was still nearby.

“Niles, do you see what I see?” he asked, keeping his eyes fixed on the woman’s back.

She turned a corner and disappeared. A few seconds of silence followed before Niles answered.

“Was that woman a Restored?”

“Yes! Thank you!” Mioray was relieved to have confirmation that he was not imagining things. This was the only case where the blind guy’s ability came in handy.

The woman was real, and she was undead. That meant the man Mioray had seen earlier must have been too. There were now two unfamiliar Restored crossing his path, and that could not be a coincidence.

“Does anyone know anything about this?” he asked.

No one seemed to.

“Something is very wrong,” he went on. “We have the Soul Collective on the loose, and now there are suspicious undead running around. We should stop this competition, join forces, and figure out what’s happening.”

“You’re only saying that because you know you’re losing, coward!” Amika shouted into his ear.

“It has nothing to do with that!” Mioray shot back. “Or maybe it does. Why not? Our numbers are thinning, and we may need everyone we have. There’s supposed to be another disaster coming, remember? It’ll be hard enough to prepare for that when you’re cutting off my feet and Kiriya is drinking Matt’s blood.”

“What do you mean, she drank his blood?” Farah asked in disbelief.

Kiriya answered for herself.

“Exactly what he said!” she giggled into the earpiece. “I can manipulate other people’s blood if I get access to it. So, for the time being, I’m borrowing the boy’s blood. I’ll return it to him later.”

Great. Just great! So Kiriya was effectively holding Matt hostage. Without his blood, he wouldn’t regain consciousness, and it sounded as though it would not return to his body on its own, not while it remained in Kiriya’s possession.

“Erinel, please, listen to me,” Mioray said. “This has to stop.”

He leaned against the wall beneath the window, waiting, hoping Erinel would say something. Anything, really. She only had to speak, just once, the way she always did, and everyone would fall in line.

But she said nothing. She stayed silent.

Why? Mioray slammed his right fist into the floor. This is not like her!

Erinel would never allow the Soul Collective to roam free without reason. She would be disgusted by the idea of undead she knew nothing about moving beyond her sight. So why was she doing nothing now? Was it because of that stupid competition? Was it really that important to her?

What is it that you want, Erinel, so much that everything else stops mattering?

Kevin’s sigh cut through Mioray’s thoughts.

“Now we can confirm that greanrips take their wagers very seriously,” he said. “Although I agree with you, Mioray, it seems we need to finish the competition before anything else.”

“Correct. Mioray, my friend, why the rush?” Mioray rolled his eyes the moment he heard Lokiel’s cheerfully irritating voice. “There’s only one hour left. Do you think you can handle it?”

“Screw your hour, Lokiel!” Mioray snapped in the heat of the moment. Why was Erinel still silent? Why wouldn’t she say anything? Was it because she knew this was wrong but refused to interfere? What was it she wanted? “Farah, Mia, I’m sending you my location!”

“Both teams now have thirty-seven souls, but team Lokiel’s score is rising fast!”

Mioray clicked his tongue. Of course their score was rising fast. They were the only ones in the crater. Honestly, he had no idea how his team was supposed to win this thing, though the outcome barely mattered to him anymore.

“I’m sending you my location,” he said again. “Let’s look for the Soul Collective together.”

He took out his phone and shared his position with Farah and Mia. Almost immediately, a message came back from Mia.

Hang on, Mioray! They’ll pay for what they did to Matt! she wrote, adding an angry face and flexed biceps emoji at the end. Mioray let out a bitter chuckle.

Well, if Mia said so, then maybe things would turn out fine. He wanted to believe that, but he couldn’t. He looked down at his stumps, at what was left of his feet. His wounds were not bleeding, but he knew that if he lost focus, he would bleed out in seconds. He checked his left arm, cradling it with his right. Even though there was no pain, the position of it made it clear that his shoulder was dislocated. He scowled. It was not as if he had anything better to do while waiting. His time would be better spent trying to force the shoulder back into place, though truthfully, he had no idea how to relocate it properly.

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