His face was covered with sand from his hasty dive for the ground, giving him a strange looking beard and eyebrows.
“Probably not,” Kira groaned.
Raider crawled to his feet. “I had it.”
Kira raised herself to sitting, wincing at the faint twinges in her body. “You always double tap. You know that.”
It was one of the first things they’d learned in military training. The first shot to kill. The second in case the first missed.
Raider would have done the exact same if the situation was reversed.
Kira forced herself to one knee as she took stock of the aftermath.
The wall had been reduced to rubble, a smoking crater where the cannon had once been.
Kira jogged to the wall as Devon and Joule started toward them. She climbed the pile of broken stone, pausing once she was at the top to peek over the side.
She jerked back just in time as a half dozen blasts from zuipis attempted to turn her into a pin cushion.
Kira crouched, using the remnants of the wall as cover.
Raider put a hand on her back, leaning over to get his own look before taking cover again.
“You realize this is no longer the punch through,” he said with a scowl.
“That’s why we have them.” Kira nodded at Devon and Joule.
The two stood a few feet away. Their faces tense, their gazes focused in a way Kira recognized. Both boys had trained for this but that wouldn’t keep the jitters away now that their moment had arrived.
Right now, adrenaline was flooding their veins, throwing their bodies into a state of flight or fight.
Kira bet there was a faint tremble to their limbs, and they were fighting to keep a clear mind. Despite that, neither seemed like he was going to be sick which was better than Kira could say about some of those she’d led on their first time.
Of course, Devon and Joule wouldn’t be fighting against a horde of Tsavitee who wouldn’t know how to show mercy to their victims if it bit them on the ass.
And unlike the battlefield, there was relatively little chance either of them would die if they froze up.
That thought made Kira appreciate the genius of the arena and its illusion weapons a little more, letting the future warriors of their race ease into the fury of battle with little risk to life and limb.
“Ready to show us what you’ve got?” Kira asked them.
Both boys nodded, looking seconds from charging over the wall.
“I’ll give you an opening. It’s up to you whether you can take advantage.”
If they couldn’t, it would be proof that neither were up to the challenge of the adva ka. In that event, Kira would leave them to their fate.
Taking a deep breath, Kira placed one hand against the wall. She sank into the wild tangle of ki at her center, extracting two small strands while leaving the bulk of her ki where it was.
The attempt would have been impossible a few weeks ago.
The rest of her ki would have tried to flood out along the narrow paths she’d spent considerable effort to widen without bursting them.
Control had always been her primary problem when it came to ki. The soul’s breath as unruly and untamed as its owner.
Even now the great mass at her center tried to follow the small amount she’d taken; only her training with Harlow and Wren enabling her to soothe it back into place before it destroyed everything around her.
Sometimes it wasn’t how big or powerful your ki was—it was about how you used it.
