In a sudden rabid effort she wrested and fought to break free but the rope held strong and only tore her skin further. She kept trying despite the pain, unable to allow herself to stop.
Stopping meant death.
I’m not dead yet.
Aldora searched for an escape or a safer hiding place. Her eyes found her catcher though, and each time she looked away, they drifted back.
The large, hunkering shadow of him filled her vision. If it wasn’t an illusion within the midnight gloom, the beast had horns jutting from the sides of its head. It was the only true feature she could make out. The rest, including the chaos behind him, were all just a bunch of blurry shapes.
But she knew him. The moment he spoke and his darkly cadent voice sounded—drowning out everything else—Aldora knew it washim. He was the reason she was here.
She shuffled to the side, deeper into the vines. Something scraped her boot. She dropped her gaze to see what it was, recalling that he had kicked something toward her.
Aldora slipped down the hedge wall.A weapon. Oh light, a blade?She turned to her side and extended her searching hands out behind her. Her fingers touched lukewarm metal. She grabbed the sword handle and tugged it further into the vines. Its weight was too much for her to wield in her current position.
Her attention shifted to the battle before her and the hissing, screeching roars of what she could not make out.I-I don’t want to know.She struggled to lift the sword upright against the wall. Shapes of horses drew her hurried gaze.
Not horses.Centaurs.
She grasped the weapon tighter, her hands wet with sweat, and managed to wedge the crossguard into the ground and expose the edge of the blade.Freedom!Furiously, she slid her bindings against it, and with each snap of a cord, her speed increased.
Aldora worked feverishly while watching the frenzy, learning whatever she could while she was still immobilized. Spinely creatures, large brutish, humanoid beings, and other things she could not fully make out flitted throughout, moving in then retreating, or perishing in their attempts. What she couldn’t see, she could smell.
And it smelled like death.
There were thick tree trunks and walls on every side of her, and Aldora realized she was in an open space. A clearing of sorts and unlike what she expected of the labyrinth, of what the stories had said. She’d thought the other side would be endless walls and trees.
She angled her head up but already knew she would never be able to climb the barrier wall to safety.
Another snap of rope loosened her joined wrists an inch. Her heart was in her throat, strangling her from the inside.
She glanced back to her horned catcher and the bodies that continuously fell at his feet. Shapes came at him from all sides, small and large to attack him at once, but each fell like her rag-dollies to the ground.
The violence of her catcher kept drawing her back, just like his voice had earlier. Large arms, thicker than humanly possible, jutted from his sides to hold a weapon in each hand, elongating his shadowy limbs in twisted and distorted ways. He swept them in arcs, spinning and swiveling, hacking and slicing straight through whatever came near.
Aldora felt his power and his violence, could almost taste its potency on her tongue. The more enemies that fell at his hand, the faster and more brutal he became. As if each kill fueled his bloodlust further.
She drew back into the foliage and tried to breathe.
He’s shielding me.
Nothing got past him. No matter how many beings tried, even those that attempted to dodge his attacks and sneak past him were stopped with blunt ferocity. The air quickened about her ears. Her matted hair rose and fluttered about. Each moment the charge coming from him grew. The shadows began to mold into one.
Aldora leaned forward, drawn to the energy. Until it was broken by a voice.
“Elscalien, Telner, on the offense, drive them back!”
She’d ceased moving her wrists and in renewed hurry, Aldora pressed the rope harder against the blade’s edge. Moments later her wrists fell away and were finally free. She shook them once but knew she couldn’t stop moving, and despite the pain, she reached back and grasped the handle of the shortsword and brandished it, rising to her feet.
I’m not a warrior but a hider.She looked around to do what she was good at before making a move. Common sense trumped ability.
Her eyes returned to him where he fought off a swarm of short, gangly creatures.I need to get around him.
He’d kept her from harm but for how long? She’d trust him to keep her safe until the end of the fight, but it was what happened after that worried her.
There was little opening but she spied several pathways where creatures gathered, pouring into the clearing. But one was quiet and Aldora focused on it. If she was going to hide—to run—it had to be now, before the monsters remembered she was there.
Beforehereturned to claim his prize.
