Protagonist Bound (26 page)

What were the only obstacles keeping us from doing so? Merely two players in charcoal-colored armor (17 and 19) coming into my line of sight with another high and low attack.

Oh, please
, I thought to myself as I readied to swing at the high player like I’d done before.

Unfortunately, I never got the chance. This defensive play turned out to be nothing like before. Without warning the low player suddenly dive-bombed beneath me in an arc. He swung the basket side of his lacrosse sword upwards, pressed the extender function on his grip, and caught Sadie’s right front hoof within its trap. The force of the move was so strong and tragically accurate it caused Sadie to flip over—tossing me off her in the process.

No! No! No!

I tumbled through the clouds with one hand clutching the staff of my lacrosse sword and the other hand flailing. I thought I was totally done for until by some miracle I saw Sadie swooping around far below. She was coming back for me.

I adjusted my body to fall at a slant—my trajectory curving as I got closer to her. Amazingly enough, it worked. In fact, it worked perfectly! When I was about a hundred feet from the net that draped across the stadium’s floor, Sadie was flying right below me. A few moments later when she was within reach, I grabbed her mane with my free hand and pulled myself onto her back.

Grasping the reins tightly once more, I leveled Sadie off just in time and the two of us zoomed back into the sky to the sound of roaring applause.

The fool that had knocked me off Sadie (17) now had the ball and I was eager to chase after him. It seemed Blue was too because seconds later she pulled up alongside me and joined in the pursuit.

As we followed him, we watched in disgust as he executed one dirty move after another on his way to our goal. He and his cohort (19) knocked so many opposing players off their steeds that it looked like the sky was raining with our fallen teammates. One by one they dropped to the arena’s safety net and were taken out of the game.

“I’ll ram him on the left!” Blue yelled. “When I knock the staff out of his hand, you catch the ball!”

I nodded and she sped up to fly ahead.

Blue circled down below before brusquely charging back up to cut off 17 from the front. He tried to evade her, but she was right in his flight path and he had no time to move out of the way. Her Pegasus’ body-slammed into his, causing both him and his staff to fall.

While he seizured like a maniac on his way down to the net like he so rightly deserved, I set my sights on the ball that had been knocked loose from his lacrosse sword. It was free-falling up ahead and it was totally mine. Or so I thought.

Just then I heard a very distinctive yell coming from behind me. It was Blue. Even masked in manly essence I could recognize my friend’s voice,
and
recognize that she was in trouble.

I glanced over my shoulder as Sadie sped forward and saw that 19 had gone after Blue in revenge for taking out his buddy. The rider had rammed Blue from behind with his lacrosse sword, knocking her off her own Pegasus as recompense.

Her armor glinted through the clouds as she toppled downwards—her steed nowhere to be seen.

I took another quick look at the increasingly close ball. It illuminated temptingly against the sky as it fell—the goal right behind it with no opponents to stop me from winning the match and sealing my glorious victory . . .

Without hesitation I yanked at Sadie’s reins, swerved her in an immediate U-turn, and we nose-dived after Blue instead.

Placing the lacrosse sword in its holster would have gotten in my way at that point so—unstable as it felt—I passed it and the reins into one hand while I extended the other. “Blue!” I yelled as Sadie and I got closer. “Take my hand!”

Even with her face hidden behind that helmet I could tell she was surprised to see me. Nevertheless, she steadied her drop as much as possible and reached forward with her free hand as I approached.

When Sadie and I were parallel with Blue, I grabbed her hand and pulled her in with a strong jerk. She settled behind me on the saddle and the three of us changed direction back toward the action.

Blue lifted her visor. “Why did you come back for me?!” she shouted as we maneuvered across the clouds. “You could have gotten the ball and scored the winning goal! Do you know what that would have done for your reputation? You could’ve taken off your helmet and finally gotten people to take you seriously as a hero like you’ve always wanted!”

Sadie swerved to avoid running into a disoriented Pegasus that had lost its rider.

“Blue!” I called back as I searched the sky for the missing ball. “You’re more important to me than my reputation. If I let you fall, you’d get examined by the nurse on the field like all the other guys who go down. You do that, and everyone will see who you are. So yeah, maybe my reputation improves. But none of the guys—let alone any of the girls—will ever let you forget that
you
of all people couldn’t hack it up here with the heroes. There’s no way I’m letting that happen!”

Blue didn’t say anything. Not that there was time for more conversation. I’d finally spotted the object I’d been after. Two riders who’d been fighting over possession of the ball had let it slip through their grasps and now it was dropping through the air straight ahead of us.

“Get ready!” I ordered.

Blue reached out her right arm, extending her lacrosse sword as far as she could. She was just about to catch our prize when a pair of familiar black hooves sailed over my head. Someone else swung down his own lacrosse sword and snatched the ball before we had the chance.

Daniel had it now. And he took off toward our team’s goal with haste—paying no mind to Blue, Sadie, and me as we pursued him. Our other team members attempted to slow his pace, but barely broke his stride. They did, however, give us a chance to catch up to him, and that was something I could work with.

As the distance between us closed, the cogs in my brain began to churn out another one of my classic, unorthodox, and debatably stupid ideas.

There was no way we could flat-out challenge Daniel with two riders on one Pegasus. It was allowed and everything. Frankly, pretty much anything was up here. (
Why do you think we’re wearing such sturdy armor?
)

But having more than one person on a Pegasus threw off speed, balance, and the effectiveness of any offensive attack. In other words, there was basically zero possibility we could take the ball from Daniel so long as Sadie was supporting two riders.

Ergo, one of us had to go.

“Fly below Daniel and catch the ball when it drops!” I instructed Blue as I twisted the reins around the saddle’s horn to hold them in position.

“Wait! What are you gonna do?”

I kicked Sadie to go faster. “Shake things up!”

I gripped onto Blue’s arm for support then carefully crescent-kicked my left leg over Sadie’s head so that I was riding sidesaddle. Clutching her mane while still holding my lacrosse sword, I egged her on despite the fact that I was barely able to keep myself steady.

“I’ll come back around and scoop you up like you did me,” Blue said as we narrowed in on Daniel.

“No, don’t,” I responded. “Take the shot. It’s your best chance. Once you clear the goal and win the game all the riders will descend to the field and won’t have to report to the med tent like the fallen do. So all I have to do is hang on until then and I’ll be fine.”

“He’s going to fight you. You could fall like I did.”

“I won’t,” I answered without a hint of doubt in my voice or my head.

I am not a damsel in distress. I can be a good hero and I’m going to prove it to everyone right here and right now.

Sadie charged behind Daniel—wings flapping at maximum power. Our ambitious team got closer and closer until we were flying about eight feet above him on his left side. He glanced at us and pressed the extender function on his staff ’s grip preemptively, but kept going strong—confident he would be able to counter any strike I threw at him in this unbalanced state.

Still, I could tell he was keeping an eye on my lacrosse sword just in case I decided to try something. My lacrosse sword and not actually me, mind you. So, although he was startled, he was able to respond in time when I hurtled the weapon at his head a second later.

Just as I’d expected, Daniel ducked to avoid the blow. Right when he did so, I released Sadie’s mane and jumped—my eyes focused solely on Daniel’s staff.

He turned his head just in time to see me coming and reacted as I’d predicted by shoving his weapon firmly into its saddle holster. But, that was
all
he’d had time for. The moments he’d wasted ducking my throw kept him from flying away, which kept him from keeping me from grabbing hold of his staff.

I clung from it now—dangling in the air momentarily before my left foot found its way into his saddle’s toehold and gave me the boost I needed to support my body weight.

I looked over my shoulder and saw that Blue had driven Sadie downwards and was flying steadily about thirty feet below—waiting for me to make my move. Of course, that task was easier said than done. Daniel was still headed toward our goal post at full speed and, while I may have been holding on to his lacrosse sword, the basket end clutching the ball was out of my reach. Add to that, Daniel was intensively maneuvering his Pegasus left and right in an attempt to toss me off.

Try as he might though, I held on tightly and refused to loosen my grip or my resolve. Instead, keeping my left foot in the toehold, I leaned out and shimmied my right hand up as far as it would go on the staff. And then, shifting my weight, I began to forcibly shake it.

“Are you crazy?!” I heard Daniel shout. “Let it go!”

“Not a chance!” I yelled back as I kept swinging my weight back and forth, lurching the lacrosse sword as hard as I could.

After a few seconds my mad method triumphed. I was able to knock the ball loose from the staff ’s basket, causing it to fall. Below, Blue swiftly caught it and took off in the opposite direction toward the other team’s goal.

Whoot! Whoot! Go get ’em, Blue!

We’d done it. We were gonna win. More importantly, Blue and I had proven we could totally hold our own amongst the heroes. I was thrilled; on top of the world (or at least pretty close to it at this altitude).

Unfortunately, this euphoria didn’t last. An instant later it was unexpectedly replaced with quite possibly the most awful feeling I would ever know.

It felt like someone had simultaneously slammed me on both sides with a pair of really robust, invisible Pegas, but worse. Worse because the pains kept coming like one strike after another with no apparent way of stopping their agony as I didn’t even know what was causing them.

My body convulsed so hard that I lost my grip on Daniel’s staff. My foot, however, was twisted within the toehold of his saddle. So, rather than falling off the Pegasus altogether, I was now dangling from it upside down.

The position made the helmet fall from my head, which allowed my hair to spill out. It blew around my face erratically as I was dragged through the clouds like a flying rag doll.

In retrospect, I conceded maybe it was a good thing that the invisible blows of pain I kept feeling were causing me to lose consciousness. Because, had I been less disoriented, I probably would have been way more freaked out by the fact that I was hanging just below the rampaging hooves of a Pegasus that was violently plummeting through the air.

Out of it as I was, I did see Daniel staring down at me. His helmet covered most of his face, but his dark eyes more than conveyed how shocked he was.

I figured he probably thought it served me right to be suspended in this precarious position. Yet, instead of letting me continue to be dangerously dragged along, he actually had the nerve to try and help me.

Daniel removed his lacrosse sword from its holster and swung the basket side down as far as it would reach. “Grab on!” he ordered.

I swallowed my dizziness and eyed the staff Daniel extended to me. But, tempting as it was to get out of this situation, I didn’t take it.

How could I?

Let him help me? Save me? Prove he was right about me this whole time? I’d much rather hang upside down like this until we landed than give him the satisfaction.

Sadly, this didn’t appear to be an option for me either. Whatever clarity I’d had left after the first round of jolting pains had come on, evaporated at the onset of the second.

They were more intense this time, and my strength correspondingly disintegrated with each convulsion. On the fifth shockwave, my foot jerked sufficiently enough to free itself from the saddle’s toehold, allowing me to be completely thrown off Daniel’s Pegasus and into the sky.

My hair rippled through the wind as I plunged toward the stadium, which was erupting in cheers as Blue scored the winning goal somewhere in the distance. My world, though, was spinning too much now to see straight, let alone see her. I was beginning to black out.

Lamentably, unconsciousness did not overtake me before I heard the discernable sound of people in the crowd murmuring and interrupting the merry tone of the applause.

“LOOK!” someone yelled.

They’d seen me—my long hair having been a dead giveaway no doubt.

Missing a shot, falling off a Pegasus, and getting eliminated from the game were all upsetting turns of fate. But the idea of losing consciousness just in time for everyone to see that it was me in that suit of armor was absolutely mortifying.

My hands flailed and I gasped for air as I tried to stay awake. Alas, my efforts made no difference. It felt like I was drowning. My vision blurred and my entire body just felt heavier and heavier as breathing became more difficult and everything grew foggy like it did at the end of one of my nightmares . . .