They tear loose.
Soil explodes outward in clumps as the roots wrench themselves free from the walls with a sound like bones being ripped from a socket. They twist and writhe in midair, lengthening, knotting together, braiding themselves into limbs. Bark splits open along their length, exposing pale inner wood that glows faintly with green light.
They’re growing.
Changing.
Forming.
One mass slams into the pit floor with enough force to send up a cloud of dust. Another follows. And another. Roots knot into torsos, branches fuse into jagged shoulders, claws splinter from sharpened twigs and thorns the length of knives. Their heads are nothing but tangled crowns of vine. I catch sight of a splintered antler. Of horns.
I clutch my chest, my hand over my heart, unable to believe what I see.
Three monstrosities stand before Sorren.
One lean. One squat. One that hangs back and waits.
The earth itself has risen against him.
Sorren bares his teeth.
And smiles.
As if he’s been waiting for this.
The first root creature moves forward. The thin one. It’s faceless. Featureless. Except for the hollow split that opens where a mouth should be. As if it screams silently.
It lunges fast enough that I don’t have time to call out a warning.
Sorren drops low instead of stepping back. His weight shifts forward. Knees bending deeper than they should. His spine compresses as if something inside him has suddenly remembered a different shape.
The creature’s limb whips toward his throat, but Sorren isn’t there.
He moves in a blur. One second upright. The next he’s launched himself sideways in a straight-line burst of speed that eats the distance between them. He slams into its side shoulder-first, and they go down in a spray of dirt.
Sorren’s fingers claw into the ground and change. The nails darken. Thicken. Bite into the packed earth as the muscles in his thighs bunch hard enough that the fabric of his trousers strains.
That’s when I realize there’s magic here.
In this arena. Because this isn’t just a prison. It’s a proving ground. Sorren is being tested, and here he can shift, at least partly, without biting me first. The bond isn’t needed when he can pull magic from the air around him.
His spine shortens by a fraction. His center of gravity lowers. The line of his legs changes as something stronger and faster moves beneath his skin. Sorren’s stance drops lower. Hands hovering near the dirt as if balance has shifted from two points to four. His breath comes faster. Shorter.
Rabbits are built to flee.
Or so I thought.
But this is the opposite.
It’s an animal preparing to launch. To fight.
Sorren moves before the creature can recover. A violent twist of his hips as both his feet drive out at once. His heel connects with the creature’s chest with a crack that echoes through thepit. Not the brittle snap of a twig. Something deeper splinters. Structural.
The thing folds around the impact.
The monster collapses into a heap of unraveling vines.
I stare down in shock because that was not human strength. Not even rabbit. More like a combination of the two.
