Gift of Gold (The Year of Churning Bloods) (50 page)

             
As I had predicted, the bulky trainee
almost two heads taller than me
charged onto my pillar
, practically shoving me off
with his presence alone.
“Get off scrawny!”
h
e bellowed over the din of the crowd
while
trying to elbow me away

              “Or what?” I roared, acting more confident then I felt.

              He
feinted
quickl
y
and struck me unexpectedly in
the gut, however I felt neither pain nor a crippling lack of air. Just as he was about to use his weight to push me off, I stepped to the side and held my foot out for him to trip over.
He fell screaming
and I couldn’t help but smile maliciously.

I gripped my shoulder as suddenly I, wished I could take that back. I had just seriously injured a trainee not too different from me, all because he too wanted to win. I felt quite sick, however after a few deep breaths I managed to regain control of my stomach. Noticing that my stamina was fading away dramatically, I reached under my armour and spun the head of Pride’s Grip a second time. My strength returned to me, although it was not quite as sharp as before.

The thought of Gregor
winning
caused me to focus once more at the task
at hand.
The
sandworm
seemed to be
learning
through every
tiny
movement
it made
. Recognizing that the trainee
s couldn’t see through its opaque gas, the sandworm blew large puffs in the general direction of the finalists, before sweeping its tail unexpectedly and knocking off a few more people. I looked around and was startled to see that the only people left standing were myself, Gregor and a trainee beside him who looked quite uncomfortable. Gregor opened his eyes suddenly and even from where I was situated, I could see that they had turned a violent shade of green. He clicked his fingers and pointed to the other trainee, who suddenly began to spasm and scream in horror. The sudden amount of movement seemed to catch the attention of the sandworm, as the other remaining finalist tried desperately
to swat away something that wasn't even there
.

With one quick blast of poison, the trainee simply fell to his knees before toppling forward, and almost landing on his head, many metres below.

“So what now?” I asked Umber through clenched teeth.

“We don’t do anything rash,” he said calmly. “We don’t do anything stupid and we just hope the sandworm gets to him first.”

Gregor’s shoulders bobbed slightly as if he was resisting the temptation to laugh. His eyes flashed green again and suddenly, the speed the sandworm was traveling slowed dramatically. I noticed in alarm that the eyes of the beast had softened slightly, like cheese just about to melt.

“What going on?” I asked in a frenzied voice. “Umber what is he doing?”

The spirit seemed to be at a loss for words.

“Umber please! At least tell me he’s not killing it!”

The sandworm suddenly began to circle around Gregor’s platform, however the kinetic trainee seemed hardly fazed by this. Giving a small salute to the crowd, Gregor stepped off of his platform and fell square onto the body of the sandworm.

The flatworm screeched as it suddenly seemed to regain consciousness. It desperately began trying to shake the figure clinging to the stringy blue hair on its back.

“He’s climbing up to the head,” I reported quickly. “He used his kinetic powers to bring the beast to his column, and now he’s climbing to the head to kill it.” I looked up to Umber with wide fear filled eyes.

“You have to get there first,” Umber said steadily.

I shuddered apprehensively and glanced to the ground to re-verify the height I would be jumping from. I took a step back and shut my eyes. “Whatever happened to not doing anything rash?” I whimpered through my teeth.

Umber ignored this and flew up aways. “Get ready!” he urged. “It’s coming!”

I slowly shuffled forward nervously and
saw the sandworm a
dvance with amazing speed. Just as he zoomed past however, I stumbled back in cowardice. I leaped back to the edge and
cursed myself for my
cowardice.

“I’m sorry.” I said, sniffing back a couple of tears. “I’m sorry Umber but I can’t-”

“Mortal you listen to me.” Umber interrupted, forcing my gaze straight ahead. “For everything this little fool has done, you have done and you have done it ten times better.”

“But,” I began, shuddered slightly.

“No,” Umber said simply. “I don’t want to hear about it. This is not the kind of talk that comes from a victor and that’s not the kind of blubber you want to be showing to the bane of your existence. Do you understand?”

The muscles in my forehead suddenly relaxed as Umber’s words replaced my fear with an empty determination. I started off at the sandworm in the distance and clenched my fists, then my lips. My arms tightened and my stance widened. My tongue pressed against the roof of my mouth and my eyes fixed onto my steadily approaching target. The sandworm
flew towards me
with its awful mouth open and its beady eyes filled with anger. It was going to fly right past me,
giving me more opportunity to land on it than I had ever had before.

“Wait for it
,
” Umber coached softly.
 
“Wait for it.”
Just as I could see the blood on the blue fir of the beast, Umber instructed me to jump.

With my nerves moving me on their own,
I
extended my legs and
dived
headfirst
onto the hide of the hideous creature. Time froze
as
for a moment I wondered if I would ever land
. I
felt my fingers meet the matted dry fur of the beast and I
instinctively grasped whatever I could of the sandworm. The world suddenly opened up into a surreal realm of senses as I began to swim around in a galloping funnel of wind. The tips of my fingers digging into the filthy hairs of the sandworm suddenly grew hot from friction. My eyes fell back into my head as we darted about this way and that. I gave up trying to observe the outside world and focused instead on the sandworm. Looking ahead I could see that the front of the beast was no more than five metres ahead, but much to my surprise, Gregor was nowhere in sight.

             
I looked back in alarm as I felt something tap my heel sharply, only to see Gregor slowly bringing himself forward.

He threw his arm forward a second time and managed to grab the tendon just above my sole of my foot.

Energized by primal fear, I managed to shake Gregor off, and crawl forward as quickly as I dared to move. Only when I finished my assent to the head of the creature did I recognize that something was wrong. The whirl of the wind and the chants of the crowd had faded from my perception.

A familiar green colouring began to coat the outside of my vision, and following this came the strange sensation of thousands of pins being stuck and unstuck into my skin.
I looked down at my arm
s
and to my sheer horror,
found myself being devoured by
thousands of silvery bugs
which burrowed under my body. Some part of me
knew th
ese images weren't real, but my mind did not want to ignore the nightmare submerging me.
As if
an unimportant detail in a dream, I could see that
Gregor was advancing slowly
towards me.
I tried to turn
to look at him directly, however the violent surge of the insects wiggling through my neck prevented any major movement.

My world spun as I felt Gregor flip me onto my back. He forced me to stare into his demented
eyes
as he slowly removed his prized sword Veno
m. I tried to focus
my attention on his weapon, however the movement of the metallic insects suddenly intensified. They churned through my skin as if it was no more than a bath of water. Gregor glared at me with the same uncontrollable hungry look as before and I knew then, that no elders would be there to separate him from me. No professor would be there to stop him from cutting my throat and taking my prize.

Gregor reached forward to grasp my throat and accidentally brushed against Pride’s Grip. I heard the face of the pendant click backwards by just a fraction and as it did so, I felt the the insects suddenly vanish. Just as Gregor was about to bring the sword down through my chest, I rolled to my right and flinched as I heard the sound of Venom slicing through flesh. To my amazement however, I noticed that this flesh was not my own. What should have been my chest instead became t
he head of the sandworm.
A thick blackened ooze began to spew from the location
at
which
V
enom had penetrated. The sandworm
screeched and
tore to the ground faster than any projectile
man had ever made
. The world flashed bright colors
as
the foul breath of Gregor poured down onto me.

I couldn't see the ground, for I was looking up at the bright beautiful sky while being suffocated by my enemy. Surely an end would be what I wanted after all I had been through. Or perhaps not. Perhaps I would survive today to be killed in another week
but
I didn't know.
I wondered if anybody would ever know. Just before I hit the ground however, I recognized the sensation of warmth quickly returning
to my hands. It could have almost been welcoming
.

             
In my subconscious, I distorted the ground below me so that it caught our impact exactly like a piece of suspended silk might have caught a heavy marble. The force of gravity
was suddenly magnified,
as
the two of us sank into the rubbery ground
.
I watched with sleepy eyed amazement as Gregor flew over my body before landing on the now solid earth. The cheer of the crowd suddenly stopped. They saw me panting on the corpse of the sandworm while Gregor spasmed on the dry ground next to me.

              I sat up and looked around in dull confusion. The panel of judges had begun to chatter among themselves in hushed whispers, no doubt getting ready to tell everyone that I had lost. It was Gregor that had dealt the killer blow to the creature and not I. It would be me that would simply move out of the way for the prodigy that got everything he had wanted in his life. I took a shuddering intake of breath as reality suddenly pounded down upon me with crashing waves of force. Dozens of hours could have passed before
the
group of judges slowly brought themselves to their feet
. My insides squirmed as my ears strained to listen over the chatter of the crowd.

“Ladies and gentlemen
,”
The fat judge
began grandly.
“We have a tie!”
My head stopped operating
as
the gears
working my thoughts
rusted
up w
ith a magnificent screech.

              “No
,
” I whispered aloud.

              “Yes!” The judge
boomed
as if
in answer to my response.
“Yes, this quest will be done by two champions,
both of whom will no doubt
be fit to the task and-”

              “No
,
” I repeated
,
shaking my head a
nd
laughing
slightly
. “No there must be some kind of mistake.”
My chest began to bob
as I forced a weak chuckle
. “This is a sick joke
!
Me on
this quest with... Gregor
?”
It was apparent by the way trumpets were sounding,
this quest was anything but a joke
. I f
ell
off the
pelt of the sandworm
and stumbled to gravelly ground
. I
tried to force myself to my feet however I had lost all co-ordination. I ended up propping myself against the outer wall of the Etaporium while I watched Gregor apprehensively.