Page 70 of A Mastery of Monsters

At the starting line, our professors stand together and drones hover above us.

Perez looks like his usual pretty boy self, and Chen is styled perfectly, but Bernie looks…

to be honest, like shit—haggard and worn out.

I know sometimes people with long-term health issues can have good and bad days, but Bernie seems to have only had bad ones lately.

From inside the trees, howls, croaks, and cries explode.

I don’t shake or jump. I keep my body tense and still. Then I allow myself a nice long deep breath to let my muscles loosen.

We’re arranged in a line facing the open field.

It’s not as bad as where we practiced. There are some trees; they’re just more spread out than the dense forest area farther on.

The candidates are spaced only a few feet apart.

Anyone could close that gap. I look down the line to Violet and Bryce.

Violet has a bow and quiver of arrows strapped to her back while Bryce has gone for a large sword.

We were allowed to bring only weapons, weapon holders, and water.

I run my fingers along the metal of one of the knives at my right thigh. It’s the one I threw in the park that day and Virgil stole. That first one Mom gave me.

Blades are meant to sever, but this one formed bonds.

I grip the metal hard, feeling the coolness of it.

The short whistle goes. And then, the long one.

I jerk to my left and sprint to Violet and Bryce. At the same time, several monsters burst out from the forest area into the field. Scaled tails, frothing mouths, bulging eyes and veins, and a fuck ton of sharp teeth and claws.

“Go for the ferret!” Violet says. “You two distract it, and I’m going to put up ropes in some of the trees. We can get in the air and go over. There’s no way it can jump, and we can’t go through the legs. Good?”

“Good!” Bryce and I say.

I aim for the monster Violet was talking about. It’s got a long body covered in fur and a rodentlike face, but it has far too many legs, scuttling like a centipede. And some of the legs have mini ferret faces with jaws full of teeth at the bottom instead of paws.

“I’ll go high, and you go low?” I ask Bryce, and he nods, tugging the sword from his back. It’s all silver, from the hilt to the blade. He rushes at the legs, hacking at them while I zigzag run, throwing blades at its main face.

As the monster grapples with us, Violet ties the rope to an arrow and shoots it at a tree, and then again with another, wrapping the rope around.

There’s a scream from across the field. When I whip my head toward the sound, Charity is on the ground, both her legs twisted and bloodied with Caden and Hudson looking down at her. They wield giant sledgehammers.

The girl is trembling and crying on the ground, reaching shaking fingers out to her legs.

“Focus!” Bryce says, and I throw more knives, trying to check my count and retrieving what I can while I watch for Caden.

He tries to come our way but is distracted by dealing with his own set of monsters. And it looks like he and Hudson are having some sort of disagreement. Snapping things at each other that I can’t hear. The lackey is rebelling, it seems.

“Let’s get up!” Violet says. “I’ll go first. Cover whoever is on the rope.”

She’s been able to use her arrows to rig up a system of ropes through the trees so we can navigate at a height instead of on the ground.

Me and Bryce focus on the monster while she shimmies up into the trees.

The ferret is an expert at evading us. And when my blades do hit, the thing is barely affected.

Violet gets up, and Bryce motions for me to go. I work to climb the rope as fast as possible. It’s not exactly light exercise. But I’ve had a lot of training since prelims, and I manage to make it in a decent amount of time. I join Violet in covering Bryce, and eventually, we’re all up.

Then it’s just a matter of using Violet’s ropes to get from tree to tree—hanging by our arms and legs and moving across.

Technically, it’s working. Violet was right. The monster can’t jump. But this method of travel is also draining and slow as shit.

Peter slips through the legs of a monster that Caden and Hudson are dealing with and takes off.

Shit. I was tied with him. Now he’s already ranking higher.

My eyes dart around the space. Then I look down at the monster below me. “This isn’t working,” I say aloud. All those legs… and it’s fast, too. “We have to ride the monster,” I say, trying out the words.

Bryce whips toward me with wide eyes. “You’re not serious.”

“I think I am.”

Looking back at the area, Caden and Hudson break away for a moment, but a monster pursues them, cutting the duo off again. Meanwhile, Peter is still running, and the ferret has turned in his direction.

I hand out two blades each to Violet and Bryce. It’s the most I can do in the time I have before I jump into the air, a blade in each hand. I land on the beast’s back, my knives digging in to keep me secure. The fucking thing doesn’t even notice. It’s focused on Peter.

I, however, do notice the twin thumps behind me just before the ferret takes off after the boy. It’s really, really fast. It tears across the field after Peter, and it’s all I can do to stay on.

“Get off now!” Violet says, and I don’t think, I let go of the blades and tuck. I hit the ground hard but manage to roll and spring to my feet.

Meanwhile, the monster is still concentrating on Peter, giving us time to run before it notices. We take off into the trees, stopping once we’re safe under their cover.

“You’re really something, you know that?” Violet pants, shaking her head at me. “But thank you.”

She doesn’t waste any more words, and she and Bryce disappear, splitting to the left and right of me. I go to the left too but down a different path from Bryce. I could go straight through the middle to get to the end, but it’s too simple. Too predictable.

I can’t make it easy for either Caden or a monster to find me.

I take the potentially more difficult path with the hope that it’s worth it in the end.