Page 9 of Fog of War (Over the Moon)

Gabbie

Leopha noticed I was falling within a heartbeat, but it was already too late.

She swiped at me with her talons, trying to catch my clothes before I plummeted to the ground and died, but all it did was slice into my arm and rip my sleeve to ribbons.

She roared, but her face was a blur as I spun in the air, flailing.

I did not meet the ground gracefully.

Something as hard as stone caught me and I bounced off a chest and two grappling arms, ricocheting between the tower scaffolding and the craggy earth beneath the pressed grass.

My forehead hit the champion’s plates hard, and hot pain exploded behind my eyes.

I fell sideways on one leg, ankle crunching at the odd angle.

My knee popped next, and it wasn’t the quick crack of a fractured bone but the blinding pull of a dislocated joint.

Blood ran down my face, clinging to the lashes of one eye.

When those talons picked me up this time, I clung to them, crying out in anguish at my leg. A wave of jeers, hisses, and screams floated down from the tower.

“Gabbie!” Leopha shrieked. I was too disoriented to look up, too afraid to open the eye covered in blood, and my vision was blurry. “Fuck! Gabbie, run!”

“M’glass’s,” I slurred, in shock, not quite registering the shouts. I felt my face, smearing red and powdery paste across my brows and cheeks. The bridge of my nose was bare. I’d lost my glasses somewhere on the ground.

I needed them, no matter what. I never spent a waking moment without them unless I was in the shower. I reached my hand towards the ground, unable to voice how disturbed I was at not being able to see clearly, when a talon gripped me tighter and started moving away from where I’d fallen.

“Ah, ah, anima via,” a smug, serpentine voice scolded gently. Green eyes narrowed on my face in victory, glowing. Panic set in remembering the smarmy grin, the groin plates, the uncomfortable way in which his purr had touched my skin… Maranba Tetradi.

“Help!” I screamed, making my own ears ring. I gripped his mandible and yanked hard. He lost his balance as I jerked his face to the side.

Then a body slammed into him with the force of a truck t-boning a sedan.

I fell to the ground in the shock of the collision and stayed down, the pain white-hot and jarring.

My body seized, shaking hands clutching my leg.

I felt sick to my stomach, fisting my linen culottes that were now dirty and blood-speckled and ripped.

But I wasn’t safe. No matter how hard it hurt, there were two massive champions just feet away. Their snarls were hair-raising, as rough as a phalanx machine gun. They grappled with their talons at full length, struggling to keep hold of their weapons, to pry plates away from skin, to maim.

This was not at all like Gavenidus and Faeste.

I scooted back as soon as I had my bearings, fixated on the thunderous battle stirring up the fog. My head just cleared the mist, and I caught the large heart scrawled on Leonide’s chest, his one bright pink spire. Leopha’s brother had come to my rescue, and I now understood why he was a champion.

Maranba grabbed hold of his pink-powdered spire and snapped it off with a bellow of unbridled bloodlust.

I gasped, focused on surviving as I struggled to scoot backwards on my hands and butt.

Every jolt was torture, but despite how introverted I was, I wasn’t timid.

My instincts knew I had to get away. I clawed at the ground, shuffling inch by suffering inch as Leonide stumbled and Maranba threw his spire into the grass.

“What the fuck are you doing!” Leonide hissed. “Can’t you see that she–”

“This is a battle, whelp,” Maranba spat. “And I’m taking the Muru for a vira. Are all of you so stupid you don’t see the greatest prize in our midst?” His chest stuttered, the acidic light of his stare piercing me. “And she smells so fucking good.”

Panic reduced me down to a single, horrifying reality. That Maranba was going to take me whether I wanted him to or not.

“You–” Leonide hiccuped. He clutched his chest, breath coming in shortened, halting gasps. “Can’t– Gab–Gabbie run–”

Maranba laughed, picking up one of his hatchets. “Aw, poor boy. If you’re already hrumming why don’t you find someone else to spend that on?” He aimed his hatchet.

“Gabbie, go!” Leonide managed.

I sobbed out of anger and frustration, trying to stand.

But my leg wouldn’t bear any weight at all, and my arm was weak.

It didn’t hurt, but I knew it was in bad shape.

I kept scooting, as fast as I could, trying to disappear into the fog.

But the powder. I moaned in a panic, brushing frantically at the powder glowing on my clothes and skin.

If I got rid of it, I could hide under the fog.

Maranba lifted his arm to throw his hatchet, then turned his attention back to me. He aimed it, snarling, and I lifted my arms with a shriek. He wasn’t going to hit me with it, was he? I wasn’t built like a venandi. It would kill me.

A huge body slid into the fog next to me, panting and out of breath. Maranba’s hatchet made contact with the champion, knocking him sideways with a roar of frustration. He hadn’t been aiming at me after all.

“Paladus!” Leonide hauled back on Maranba’s shoulder plates with a heave, his chest vibrating more desperately with every breath. “Go! I–can’t–”

I looked up at the champion over me and continued trying to scramble back. He yanked Maranba’s hatchet out of his chest where it cleaved my handprint in two.

“Are you okay?” Paladus breathed, crawling after me like an axe to the chest was nothing.

Hyperventilating, I shook my head in tiny, stuttering movements.

“No, I’m not okay!” I shrieked at a whisper.

I hit his chest again twice, grimacing through the full-body panic.

He wrapped one talon around my shoulders and pressed my face into his chest where it was warm and the sounds of fighting were muffled.

He groaned with a deep inhale in the crux of my neck and shuddered it out.

“Shit,” he swore to himself.

“I need an ambulance. Police! Please, Pal-Paladus…” I begged, digging my fingers into the grooves between his plates. He shook his head. “I don’t want him to touch me.”

The Ferulis champion tightened his grip. “We’ll figure it out. I’ll get you a medic. But Tetradi didn’t do anything illegal so we have to stay smart,” he rumbled.

Ice shivered through my blood, draining the color from my cheeks and the strength from my limbs. Paladus eased his arms around my shoulders and thighs, then lifted me up at the same time he took off at a dead sprint.

“Stealing is–allowed, just not done anymore,” Paladus told me to distract me from the rough agony. “It’s Satoris’s job to defend you. Tetradi is chall–challenging your clan–for their standing.”

A hatchet zinged through the air, brushing my mussed, matted hair. Paladus stopped short, sliding in the unknown terrain beneath the fog. He opened his mandibles wide and displayed his rows of fangs in challenge.

Augora jogged up with a wince. “Sorry,” she breathed, glancing between us. “I thought you were Tetradi.”

Paladus’s mandibles fluttered, bothered by the trail of loud, buzzing drones following in our wake. “You need–to take her,” he strained. “Take her before I–”

Augora declined with a snap of her mandibles.

“My clanmates are out of commission, and your sister has challenged Leonide. They’ll converge soon, as long as Maranba is distracted.

” Her eyes landed on my battered and bloodied face, and a soft thumb rubbed across my cheek.

“I can’t protect her by myself, and I can’t stay much longer. ”

I held Augora’s hand to my cheek with shaking fingers. Why couldn’t she stay?

She was blurry, but I saw her warm smile. “Everything will be okay, Gabbie. I’ll hold them off.”

A call went up into the air. Paladus’s arms tensed around me, and he handed Augora one of his hatchets. “An extra.”

“Hold them off?” I whimpered.

Feet pounded the ground nearby. Maranba’s angry shouts rose above the war drums. Augora turned away as a shadow erupted from the darkness in a shroud of cloth that covered the glowing powder.

She met the Tetradi’s hatchet blow with a counter, knocking the assailant off their feet as another entered the fray.

Paladus vaulted the crystal boulder and slid to his haunches, listening to the fight.

His chest stuttered beneath my quaking fingers, a vibration simmering in his chest. It loosened my muscles, heated my skin, just the tiniest caress and I knew now exactly what it was. Exactly why Augora couldn’t stay.

Satisfied that they were preoccupied, Paladus lowered his head with a grimace and bared his fangs.

“Maranba–is–” He held his breath for a long stint, then let the breath go, panting. “Near.”

“Do it,” I rasped. “Quick! Please...”

When Paladus’s hrum started again, he didn’t try to hold it back.

It leached into my misty, sweaty skin to massage muscles and tendons wound too tight.

The dam broke, and it intensified, drowning out the sounds of the drones, the crowds, the snarls and thwacks.

My teeth chattered, whether from the growing intensity or the shock, I couldn’t tell.

Paladus bent his hand to my chest, held me tight, and hrummed like he was a pressure cooker set to explode. The world quaked, painful pleasure radiated through my broken body, and my eyes rolled back in surrender.