Trouble lay ahead, and we had to beat it to the punch. If Ta’Zan had eyes in the sky, the colosseum distraction was only a limited one, at best. Sooner or later, someone would go out in search of the small ball of light that had pierced Strava’s atmosphere, headed for the summer-winter cluster.
Hell, Perfects could be converging on our fae already!
But I wasn’t ready or willing to let them screw this up for us. Whether they liked it or not, we were going to change the fate of this planet. We were going to save our people, our worlds and theirs. Ta’Zan wasn’t going to emerge victorious from all this—I could stake my life on it.
Amane
Douma’s pained groans snapped me out of the darkness into which I’d sunk.
We’d made it out of the colosseum, with Douma and Raphael holding me, Amal, and Isda as we’d shot between the jungle trees. But the blast’s shockwave had caught up with us. It tore into us, to be specific.
I remembered Amal, Raphael, and myself smashing one of the thicker trees in our fall. Then, everything had gone black.
My eyes popped open. Fluttering wings swarmed somewhere above us. I looked up, thankful to see the foliage obscuring my view of the sky. Perfects were flying above, and they couldn’t see us down here. Not for long, though.
I tried to move, but a sharp pain in my chest made my breath hitch.
“Amane… Amane, are you okay?” I heard my sister ask me.
I turned my head to follow the sound of her voice. She was ten feet away from me, lying on the ground. Between us was the splintered tree we’d crashed into. Sharp pieces of it were still standing, and Raphael was impaled on one.
“Oh, no,” I murmured, ignoring my own pain as I managed to pull myself up into a sitting position. “Raphael!”
“Argh, I’m okay,” he croaked. “It didn’t hit the spine. I’ll be fine.”
“You would’ve been fine anyway. You’re a Perfect!” I snapped, holding my side.
Glancing around, I remembered the device in my backpack. With sluggish moves, I managed to take it off and look inside. I breathed a sigh of relief, then smiled at Amal.
“It’s fine,” I said. “Some minor parts came off, but nothing we can’t put back together. We’ve got it.”
“Thank the heavens and the stars.” She sighed, then got up.
Her knees were weak. I could tell from the way her legs were shaking. She was covered in bruises and cuts, much like me, and she’d probably cracked a bone or two, somewhere inside, but she wasn’t going to let that get between her and our mission.
Heck, that made two of us. We reached Raphael, carefully analyzing the spike on which he’d gotten himself impaled.
“I got stuck in the crash,” he said, breathing heavily. “Pretty sure I’m bleeding out.”
“Yeah, you can say that again,” Amal murmured, following a stream of crimson blood pouring out from his wound. “We need to get you off it before you die, so you can heal faster.”
I climbed over the gnarly tree base and gripped the lower half of the spike. Amal knew what to do next, though Raphael didn’t seem happy about it.
“Oh, this is going to hurt like a—” He didn’t get to finish his sentence. He roared from the agonizing pain instead, as Amal grabbed the tip of the spike and pulled as hard as she could, until it snapped off clean.
Raphael tumbled onto the ground, the upper half of the spike still piercing through him. I rushed over and dropped to my knees, tearing up from my own injuries. I covered his mouth, while Amal did the dirty part of the job and pulled the spike out through his back. We managed to stifle most of his screams.
Blood sprayed out from the gaping wound, which Amal was quick to cover with torn pieces from her tunic. I ripped my sleeves off and handed them to her, while Raphael did his best to measure his breathing. There wasn’t much we could to for him in terms of pain relief, and he knew it. He was temporarily disabled, and that pretty much sucked for us.
“Isda? Douma?” he called out, and I shushed him.
“Hold on,” I hissed. “I heard them earlier. Hold on,” I added, then looked at Amal. “Stay with him.”
She nodded, and I turned around and went back to where I’d woken up. I’d definitely heard Douma grunting here. Not far from where we were, the colosseum had crumbled. Most of it, anyway. The smoke was spreading outward through the jungle, making it harder for me to see ten feet in front of me.
The constant fluttering of wings didn’t help. Thousands of hostiles were close by, probably minutes away from discovering us. We couldn’t stay here. We had to get as far away as possible, but I didn’t want to leave Douma and Isda behind.
I moved around, checking every shrub and bush in my path, until I tripped over Isda. I hadn’t even seen her—the dark green dress she’d been wearing worked well as camouflage, especially with the thickening smoke hanging around.
“Isda. Isda!” I whispered, then gently turned her over.
Her eyes were closed, but she gave me a responsive moan.
“Isda! Are you okay?” I asked.
“Amane…” Douma’s voice came through from my left.
She, too, had crashed into a tree. She’d taken the whole thing down from the root. The trunk was practically intact and toppled, its twisting roots torn from the ground. She lay on her side, covered in blood. A branch had punctured her side, but she mostly had cuts and bruises to deal with.
I reached her in two jumps that cut the air from my lungs—I’d fractured a couple of ribs, for sure. Tearing another piece of my tunic, I quickly cleaned off some of the blood from her face, enough to spot the source: a couple of deeper cuts on her temple.
“You’ll be fine,” I said to her. “You’ll be okay.”
“Yeah… I’m just sore. I took the tree first. Couldn’t let Isda…” Her voice trailed off.
She shot to her feet like lightning, accidentally tossing me backward in the process. She looked around, then dashed toward Isda.
“Hey… Hey, Isda. Wake up,” Douma murmured, taking Isda in her arms.
