Total pages in book: 117
Estimated words: 109477 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 547(@200wpm)___ 438(@250wpm)___ 365(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 109477 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 547(@200wpm)___ 438(@250wpm)___ 365(@300wpm)
The slide of something against stone caught her ear. She slowed a moment after Tarian had. His grip tightened. He didn’t utter a word in her mind. Another sound. Was it a slither? No. Almost like a click.
Click…click…click.
Claws. Claws on stone.
The texture below her foot changed with the next step. Became harder, with less give.
Click-click-click.
She hesitated, and Tarian did so with her. The noise stopped as well. It could see them. It was waiting.
Does this large serpent have little lizard feet ending in claws? she asked.
No. And neither does the hideous creature currently staring right at us.
Her eyes snapped open. Weak, pale gold light filtered in from who knew where, gently coating the walls and lightly falling across the floor. It didn’t do much more than define the space, leaving the center of the roomy area thick with gooey black shadows. She spied what waited in the darkness, blocking their way.
A large creature had a single big eye with a faint yellow glow circling nothingness, probably a black pupil. Large teeth glistened from too big of a mouth, and those two items made up its whole face. It had two thick arms and hands with three fingers and a thumb, each ending in a claw of about two inches. Nothing too sinister, really. It probably moved fast because it didn’t have an extended reach. The legs looked like frog legs, and the claws on its three toes were twice the size. They’d disembowel someone fairly easily. It hunched patiently, watching Daisy and Tarian, and different-sized spikes rose from its spine. Its height was around six feet, not too tall by monster standards, and so it would definitely be fast. Its intention was obvious—you had to earn your passage through.
The cavern had opened into a kind of sphere, with rounded walls and a domed ceiling. The surface was rough but didn’t look like it had been chiseled from deep within a cave. The Celestials had made this, and it was obviously a fighting pit.
Fine. She could handle that.
Her toe was an inch away from the stone of the fighting “pit.” She looked over at Tarian. He looked at her. They didn’t need to communicate. He let go of her hand, and almost as one, they stepped onto the stone.
The creature burst into action, the clicks a chorus as it ran at them. Daisy cut in front of Tarian and took the lead, ready for the swipe of its hand. It didn’t disappoint, the claws sailing through the air toward her face at lightning speed. She fell into a slide, passing it by and angling as she did so. Its foot kicked out to catch her and almost succeeded. If she hadn’t twisted as she’d gone, it would have. Clever creature, and yes, very fast.
It nearly turned to follow her, and that was its undoing. Tarian was there in an instant, twirling his staff in a very pretty light show. He hacked at a limb as it swiped with the other. She hopped up behind it and plunged her sword into the center of its back.
I really need two weapons, she thought dismally as she was forced to rip it out again and spin away.
Why would you leave a weapon in…an…enemy? Tarian asked as he, too, cleared out of the creature’s reach.
Oh…I don’t know…
She darted in, caught its attention, and hesitated. Tarian did the same, but the creature knew he was the more dangerous of the two. Which kinda hurt her feelings.
Tarian snickered, having heard her.
Because of this. She sprinted at it and plunged the now-dagger into the creature’s lower back, at the base of the spinal cord. It howled, the first time it had done so. That would hinder its movement. She envisioned what she meant to do, then spider-monkeyed up the creature’s body, using the sword as a bracing point for her foot, wrapping one arm around the creature’s neck and reaching out with the other.
Tarian tossed his blade to her. The second it was in her palm, it reduced in size to the perfect knife for the job. She slammed it into the creature’s eye, dodged its agonized swipe, and fell away as it spun. She hit the ground hard, her hip flaring with pain, then rolled so as to present a moving target.
Tarian yanked her blade from the creature’s back, left his where it was stuck, and swung. His muscles bulged as he hacked the head from the creature’s shoulders.
She squealed, hoped he hadn’t heard, and scooted away from the oblong head spraying the stone near her as it rolled by. The knife made a satisfying clunk-clunk-clunk as it went.
“Huh,” Tarian said, looking around for something to wipe her blade on. “I see your point.”
She pushed to standing and grabbed his knife. She looked down at her filthy clothes and thought, Fuck it. She ripped off her sleeve, which had been hanging on by a thread anyway, and cleaned his blade. He walked to her and, before reaching for his blade, wiped her now-switchblade-sized knife on the part of the shirt still on her body.