Gods of Blood and Bone (Seeds of Chaos Book 1) (34 page)

My nose flattened, my bottom lip got caught between my teeth, and the little air I'd managed to retain after the first impact was forced from me.
 

"Oh goodness. I'm so sorry," Sam's voice came from above. "I just got transported right into the sky and fell on you. Are you okay? I’m going to move. Nucking futts, this is high." He’d obviously been picking up some of Jacky’s language.

I twitched my fingers and nodded slightly, unwilling to respond further past the pain of my face and the sick feeling of fear you get when your lungs temporarily stop working.
 

Sam inched awkwardly off me and helped me to sit up. He put a hand between my shoulder blades and started to cough, and I was suddenly able to pull in a small breath. I used that to fight for more, and finally said, "God. How many times am I going to get the air knocked out of me?" I gathered up the bloody saliva in my mouth and spit. Some of the pink liquid landed on one of the tree’s knobs, and was absorbed immediately.
 

The knob unfolded, spreading large, pale petals wide as if seeking more moisture. The petals were almost translucent, and I could see my spit running through their veins, being sucked into the branch. As my bloody saliva traveled, the branches around me stirred as if in anticipation.
 

I raised my head slowly, and took in my surroundings fully. I was straddling a tree branch, probably a thousand feet above the desert ground. In the distance, reddish rocky buttes jutted from the sand, throwing a shadow towards us from the harsh light of the setting sun. Except for the stone cliffs reaching toward the sky and the patch of trees we’d been dropped into, everything lay barren. The sand stretched out for miles around us, rolling in hills and rippling waves like a dry ocean in the midst of a storm. The heat was enormous even all the way up in the sky, and the air below shimmered unceasingly, like a second layer of ephemeral water above the sand ocean.

Someone screamed as they were dropped from the air a few yards above us. They didn’t catch on our level, and with each foot they fell, their chances of grabbing one of the ever-fewer branches decreased. They screamed all the way to the ground, though their voice grew thin and distant after a while. Finally, their body became just a bug-speck of red splatter, half buried by the sand.
 

The body lay there for only a few moments before something dark and tapered shot out from the sand, arced through the air, and swallowed the entire red-stained area, while disappearing back beneath the surface.
 

Sam shuddered. “Sand sharks. I’ve heard of them.” His face was pale, despite the beads of sweat already plastering his hair to his forehead.
 

The trees around were thin and slender, with limbs reaching horizontally out of the trunks at similar intervals. Their pale branches wove together, making individual trees into an interlocking copse, with levels at each interval. The branches grew more plentiful up higher. I looked upward, and realized I couldn't see through the branches more than a few levels above my own. "You'd be able to walk around up there," I said.
 

Blood from my just-smashed nose dripped into my mouth when I spoke, and I instinctively spat again. The petals all along the limb beneath us unfurled, faintly pink with the blood.
 

I heard a sound overhead, and jerked my gaze upward.
 

The limbs above my head had shifted themselves to create a tunnel of visibility to higher levels. I didn't get a good look before they shifted back into place, but I caught the glint of reflective eyes far above. And I definitely heard the scratchy roar that followed afterward.
 

"Crap. Something's up there, Sam," I said. “Watching us.”

"But it hasn't even started yet! Where's the Examiner? Is this another mental Trial? Where's the cube?" He looked at me accusingly, as if it was my fault.
 

I let my claws out and scanned the surrounding trees with my improved vision. I could see better through the branches than he, and noticed the cube floating on the level above us. “Cube’s right up there.” I didn’t know about the Examiner, but I hoped to god this wasn’t going to be a repeat of the last Trial. “Let’s go.”
 

I found it easy to climb higher, and my lack of shoes helped me grip the bark. I helped Sam a few times, and we quickly reached the next level of branches. It still wasn't quite stable, but the chance of falling was less. I kept an eye toward the higher levels, but our growling watcher didn't reappear.
 

Other Players appeared below, popping into mid-air one by one, the rest of my team among them. We called them upward, and sat waiting.
 

A couple Players were talking about the early start of the Trial. "Nine days? This is getting really short. It's like they're trying to see how far they can push us before we break."

"I remember when it used to be twelve," the other said.

I turned to Jacky, who had been a Player the longest of our group. "Do they do this often? Change the length of time between Trials?"
 

"Every four to six months it happens, from what I've heard and the shifts I've seen. But it hasn't been ten days for long. We should’ve had more time before it changed again."

Adam pulled out his butterfly knives and started to twirl them around in both hands with a distant frown on his face. "I wonder why they're doing that. Interesting."

"It is," I agreed.
 

After even more waiting, our Examiner, a baby elephant with the voice of a five-year-old, explained the Trial.
 

There was to be a battle between monsters, and we were to choose sides and fight in the battle. If we could stop the side we picked from being annihilated, or if our side completely defeated the other side, we won. If we didn't die, of course. "Yep, I think that's it. Good luck!" The creature said, letting out a comical toot through its trunk.
 

Out of the buttes in the distance, dark dots started to appear, jumping off the cliffs and flying in our direction.
 

I heard their distant roars. "Damn. It's started." I said aloud.
 

The branch under my feet jerked, as the tree it was connected to shuddered. Down below, the sand-sharks, as Sam had named them, were attacking the base of the trees, smashing into them and gnawing away at the wood.
 

Adam sighed. "And that's the requisite time limit. No matter what happens with the battle, as soon as they topple this structure, we're dead."
 

"So we just have to win before that, right?" Jacky said, and they all looked to me.

"Yeah. One group of monsters is a few levels above. I say we go up and see what we're dealing with." I spoke loud enough that the other Players could hear. None of them seemed to be low-leveled newbies, which I found interesting. That could be bad, if NIX thought only stronger Players would be fit for this Trial. The upside was none of them looked helpless enough to trigger my guilty need to protect them.
 

We started climbing, and some of the Players followed.
 

Each level grew increasingly thicker, until it was hard to squeeze through the dense weave of branches. A few levels up, a large slanted tunnel led up from our level to the next.
 

China and I both listened and smelled for anything or anyone on the other side of the tunnel, or traps within it, but noticed nothing, so we walked through.
 

Same thing on the next level, though there were huge piles of feathers, obviously used as beds or nests by something huge. On the next level we heard snuffling, soft growls, and the pad of feet walking around above.
 

The others looked to me expectantly, and with an internal groan at the danger, I waved them back and walked into the tunnel.
 

Light from the setting sun streamed into the opening, blinding me as I reached the end. I stopped before exiting and squinted out.
 

Something smashed into my back, and I stumbled forward. I immediately fell into a fighting stance, knees slightly bent, lips drawn back in a snarl, and claws ready to rip and tear.
 

This level was open to the sky, at the top of the little patch of trees. All around me huge, winged cats sat and stood and crouched as if ready to tear my guts from between my ribs. Each was as big as a medium-sized horse, and some were bigger.
 

One large, dark brown, heavily muscled creature lunged forward in a feint and roared straight into my face, its hair and feathers all standing on end. The force of the sound blew my hair back from my face like a wind tunnel, and almost forced me back.
 

Instead, I dug my toes into the woven floor and leaned into it.

When it was over, I wiped away the spittle that had landed on my face and tried to ignore the dizzying ring in my ears. "You sound like a kitten," I said. "Maybe if you took up smoking you could deepen that voice a bit." I knew it couldn't understand me, but if it had wanted to kill me, it would have attacked. It wanted to scare me, so I couldn't let any self-doubt show. I hoped it couldn't smell the fear, because there was nothing I could do to stop the emotion running through my veins and prickling along my skin.
 

Other cats around us leaned forward, eyes trained on me. A low rumbling growl started from one, and was picked up by the others, like the chant of an audience. They harmonized together until I felt like I was standing in a massage chair made of air and sound.
 

Behind me in the tunnel, Adam and Jacky were calling my name, and I heard thuds like they were pounding on the wood, for some reason unable to get through.
 

I was just about to attack, so that at least I could go down fighting, when a shadow blocked the sun and something plummeted out of the sky to the floor in front of me.
 

It was another of the creatures, bigger than the others, and with the more slender build that I associated with females. Its wings were spread wide and protective in front of me, and reached several yards in each direction. It roared back at the dark brown male, and stared down the others until they stopped growling and backed away.
 

She made growling sounds at them, mixed with coughs and the occasional yowl.
 

The male responded in kind, but then lowered his head and exposed his neck to her.
 

With that, she turned to me and licked my face. Her huge tongue rasped away the blood from my nose, along with the top layer of skin. Ouch.
 

She stared into my eyes for a moment, and I found the hair on the back of my neck raising as I realized the large orbs didn't have slanted pupils like a cat. They looked...human. Deep and clear and intelligent. Expressive.
 

The creature swallowed, and her eyes widened. She leaned back and roared joyfully into the sky.
 

The others looked at her, all at once, as if shocked. After a few moments of still silence, they leaned back and roared, too, screaming with all the power in their lungs.
 

I put my hands over my throbbing ears and cringed. "Ever heard of an inside voice?"
 
I muttered.
 

The huge female returned to all fours and licked my face again, which was more painful the second time, then pressed her nose to my forehead as she stared into my eyes.
 

My brain felt like it was being punched through my skull, but I couldn't pull back, and then I started to see things. Pictures and clips of movement and sound and emotion.
 

I saw the group of winged cats as they lived, as if I was one of them, isolated from all others here in the desert, hunting the other creatures of this wasteland to survive, and trying to keep their race alive. They were a close-knit group, all related to each other in some distant way or another. They knew joy in each other and the hunt and the occasional child, and sorrow in their dwindling numbers, and hunger, and the sick-deaths of their hatchlings.
 

I saw images of the other creatures flying towards us now. Huge, scaled, with lumpy bodies and sagging skin. Carrion eaters and nest robbers. I knew of feuding with them over the passing of countless seasons, at first beating them easily, and then as the numbers of my family dwindled, with more difficulty. Less than a season ago, there had been a night attack, such as the one about to begin, and they had lost almost all their eggs along with the warriors set to protect the nests.
 

The group was weakened, and would lose this time. All the eggs would be destroyed, their children killed and eaten before ever knowing a world bigger than the inside of their shell. They would fail in their only purpose. I felt a sense of despair that made tears well in my eyes unbidden and roll down my face.

But then hope bloomed from her to me.
 

I saw my own face from high above, glaring at the snarling male. Flashing images of the one-eyed wildcat from my Characteristic Trial, humans dressed in strange clothes speaking a strange language, landscapes of beauty stretching out before me as I flew, an image of mold and putrid spores devouring over a patch of purity, and the vicious exhilaration of flying into battle with my brethren, ripping and killing and obliterating my enemies.
 

Then she pulled back, my eyes rolled back in my head, and I dropped to my knees. My vision tumbled and my stomach heaved, but I stopped myself from throwing up or falling over by taking deep breaths of the thin air and digging my claws into the wood.
 

Behind me, wood cracked, and cracked again. "We're coming, Eve!" Adam called.
 

"Stay alive!" Jacky ordered.
 

I took a few more deep breaths, then croaked out, "I'm okay," then again, louder, "I'm okay. They're friendly." I didn't know if that was exactly true, but they hadn't attacked me, which was the best I could say of any monster I'd ever met in the Trials.