2 - Survival

Well, this was unfortunate.

Anzi had expected the wyrm because there'd been one when she first ran the Gauntlet herself, but what she hadn't expected was a nearly full grown beast that had been ready to eat whatever it could manage to sink its teeth into.

Was the quartermaster insane? These kids were only twelve years old, just as she had been on her First Run, and there was no way any of them could outpace a creature of this size. And the chances of surviving the attack? Laughably low. If she hadn't sneaked down in the first place for other reasons entirely, she would never have been here to stop the beast in time. It had exploded out of the sand like a lightning strike and gone straight for the closest children hanging from the rock wall, and if she had been even a half-second slower in leaping on its head to throw off its aim, at least one of the recruits would have surely been maimed or dead.

Idiot quartermaster! She would report this to her regiment captain so that he could go and shred the desert garrison apart for their carelessness.

And worse, all the trouble she had gone to would be for nothing now. Pierro had caught up to her in the chaos, so even after she dispatched this wyrm, she would still have to deal with him afterward. And no doubt everyone else was on their way as well for their own piece of the spoils.

But for now, at least she had this: the spear in her hand was as solid as ever despite having been gnawed on by powerful jaws. Magicked wood was strong enough to withstand the bite of a serpent, it seemed, a lesson she had not expected to learn today. But against Pierro's brute strength and his steel sword, she wasn't sure how much longer it would hold up.

"Come on, Anzi. Have you lost your nerve? If you have, you can just lay down your arms and let me take the kids. I'll put in a good word for you when I'm promoted and tell them all about how you took down a wyrm alone. A juvenile one, that is."

Sometimes, she really hated Pierro. He was a good friend most of the time, reliable, steady, and amusing company, but she had never gotten used to his habit of trash talking during competitions and spars.

One of the reasons she never held herself back from thrashing him soundly.

She shifted her weight around on her bare feet after dismounting from the wyrm's neck.The snake-like creature was out cold, knocked unconscious by a perfectly aimed psionic blast from her palm straight to the base of its brain, but how long would it be out for? Hard to tell. She would need to take care of this quickly.

She chose not to humor Pierro with any theatrics: while he continued to twirl his sword in his hand, she simply brought her spear back and positioned it upside down in a diagonal stance behind her, ready to lash out and strike. She didn't like wasting her time with a preamble before the main act.

"Alright, then, come at -"

He was still in the middle of taunting her when she lunged across the three meter distance between them, body so low to the ground that she looked more like a desert fox streaking across the sand than a human. It was dim down here at the bottom of the gorge, courtesy of the shadow of the cliffs, but there was enough illumination from the dawn light to see the spark of surprise that crossed his face when she was suddenly two inches in front of him.

She couldn't parry his sword with her spear half; his blade would cleave through it from the sheer force of her strength. Magicked wood could withstand ordinary steel, but Pierro had a charmed blade that would snip through her weapon if she hit it hard enough. So that meant she had to rely on agility alone to avoid the sword while using her spear to land debilitating strikes at close range.

Easily done. She just had to put herself in his face - like this.

"Damn you -!"

He only had time for one frustrated curse before she leaped up and rammed her shoulder into his chest, dodging neatly between his sword that had still been mid-twirl and his fist. The angle of her attack lifted him off the ground, launching him off his feet half a meter. As his body moved backward through the air, she dropped back down and twisted her hips so that she could strike out with a fierce kick toward his abdomen. It connected in mid-air and sent him crashing back against the rock wall, and a shower of dust and loose scree cascaded down from the impact.

"Ugh!"

Pierro shoved himself back onto his feet and narrowly managed to avoid her second kick, a sweeping one this time that would have arced in from his left and struck him across the jaw. Close, close - she didn't stop moving and used her momentum to flip over and kick with her other leg in the same motion.

SLAP!

He tried to block it with the metal bracer that protected his forearm, but her shin found the soft, vulnerable spot right at the inner bend of his elbow. Before he could react, she hooked her ankle against the unguarded joint and dragged him off-balance. The impact had been hard enough to send him toppling over to the opposite side, and this might be enough to put him on the ground - but no such luck. He caught himself by planting the tip of his sword into the sand, then moved behind it so that he could put more distance between them.

It didn't take long for him to pull his weapon back out of the loose earth and point it at her, but he also took several hasty steps back at the same time. She advanced and followed, but made sure to hold her spear out horizontally to guard her progress. Pierro liked leaping face-first; she had sparred with him too many times to be taken by surprise with his favorite tricks.

"Relax," he panted. "Don't waste your strength. The others are almost here."

No, they weren't. If they were, he would have tried to hold out and keep her distracted so that they could ambush her. He was stalling for time.

But that didn't mean she had all day to waste on him. She needed to herd the recruits out of this area and toward the first checkpoint so that she could advance to the next leg of the course. The same recruits that were currently trying to sneak away while she and Pierro were distracted -

She didn't take her eyes off Pierro as she lashed out first at his legs in a vicious semi-circle sweep with her spear, and then followed through by hurling the weapon at the opposite wall behind her. A shout of surprise came from the foremost child who had been attempting to lead the whole troupe out of there, no doubt shocked by the deadly whizzing that had passed in front of her nose by scant inches. A young desert native girl, from what Anzi could tell out from her peripheral vision.

Was that what she had looked like back then, young and determined? The sheer nostalgia almost made her smile, if not for the fact that Pierro was now grinning stupidly at her.

"You idiot," he exclaimed. "You're going to throw away your only weapon just to try to scare them into staying still?"

She smiled back. "Lots of rocks around. Kids, don't move, unless you want to end up knocked out cold and end up failing the Gauntlet before you've even gotten past the first kilometer. And before you say that I can't catch all of you" - she pointed behind her at the black-eyed girl - "I assure you, I can."

"What about me? Are you going to handle me with some rocks, too?"

She grinned. "Don't be stupid. I don't need anything at all to do that."

She didn't even give him enough time to feel offended. As soon as the last syllable left her tongue, she lunged forward again, this time going under his extended sword and burying her shoulder into his abdomen. She felt and heard the pained breath leave his lungs, but he had taken worse hits from her before. This wouldn't be nearly enough. Before she was even done driving him back, she grit her teeth and angled her hips so that she could lift him off the ground, arms wrapping around his thighs to pull him off balance.

His elbow came down hard over her back, but she ignored the glancing pain. If she didn't knock him down, he was going to be able to adjust his sword in his grip and swing down next, and she couldn't afford to nurse sliced flesh and still hope to win the Gauntlet. And behind her, she knew that several of the children were still going to make a break for it, despite her warning words and spear.

She had to finish this quickly. Sorry, Pierro, she thought, but not really. He had been asking for this.

"Oof!"

It didn't take much to lift him off the ground with her momentum and send him to the ground. The instant she heard him wheeze out a curse, she let go of the back of one thigh, leaned forward over his supine body, and landed a vicious punch right at his exposed underarm. Unluckily for him, that was also his sword arm, and along with a howl of pain, the spasming of his muscles forced him to release his weapon, which she snatched up and used to draw edgewise against his throat.

But he was a trained soldier, so of course he wouldn't go down so easily. His other hand dove for the knife he kept sheathed against his outer thigh - and found nothing there. He grimaced, and Anzi tilted her head as she peered down at him.

"I keep telling you that those are easier to reach for me than for you," she said. "Too bad."

Before he could think of a proper retort, she lifted the sword and brought the butt of the haft down directly against his right temple. The solid thump of metal meeting bone was loud enough that it made one of the children gasp behind her, but she was already rising back up to her feet before his eyes even finished rolling back into his head.

She curled her toes into the sand, feeling the rush of adrenaline still coursing through her veins as she counted the recruits. Nine. That meant three had done the smart thing and run off, refusing to be cowed by her threat. The rest still needed to be broken in, but their time here on the desert fringes would teach them to be braver.

"I didn't look forward to this part," she assured them as she advanced. "But getting your ass handed to you is the fastest way to learn."

And she believed that wholeheartedly. She didn't feel an ounce of guilt as she blazed in like a storm, knocking out each young recruit with a debilitating blow that either knocked them out cold or otherwise had them crumpling to the ground, unable to move. A few of them were moaning a bit, but in a minute or two, Captain Sanson of the desert garrison would be sending forth his soldiers for clean up and collection. Any child that had failed to advance would be taken up and collected so that they could be treated for their injuries.

...And so that whoever "tagged" the recruits would get their points properly recorded. One point per target. Anzi stood back up after imprinting her seal on the last child's forehead. All of them had the same glowing sigil flickering over their skin like a ring of flame, a white circle with a horizontal line through the middle.

But one additional worry gnawed at her. The wyrm, it was supposed to be a youngling. Those could bruise and slash, but not injure any more seriously than that. And yet the one that she had stopped here had been far more dangerous. What in the world had been the object here? To actually kill the kids? Sure, it happened every year - not every recruit survived this part of their training. But this was unthinkable. Without magic, these children had no chance of fighting back against a nearly adult wyrm.

Anzi returned to the creature's head and prodded its scaly head with her foot. One this large should have been captured for military use, not left to roam the Gauntlet's course and used to terrorize the kids that came to train here. Would she get in trouble for killing it? Any this size were protected under Imperial Law as a vital resource, and she couldn't do as she wished to it, not even to ensure the safety of the unconscious children nearby. And she had to leave; she couldn't wait for garrison officers to arrive and take over.

Not only that, but who was to say that there weren't more wyrms around? If Captain Sanson and his quartermaster had overlooked one of this size, then that meant there could be more.

Luckily, there was one option to resolve this. It was going to be messy, but it was the only way to keep the children safe and the wyrm alive, while also deterring any others from appearing in this area.

"Sorry," she apologized into the silence, and she hefted Pierro's sword in her grasp as she stared down at the creature's serpentine head. For some reason, she felt guilty, even though she knew it was scarcely more than an unthinking beast. She'd never been as fond of serpent hunting as the others in her unit, and even now, she wished she could hesitate. But she couldn't afford to; she had places to go.

At least she wasn't killing it, she thought.

It would survive.