3 - Clash

Anzi remembered this place. Every bend, every dip, every shadow. Or so she wanted to think, but that was impossible. This was part of the desert, which changed day by day. Nothing was ever the same, especially not after almost five years.

She had been brought here when she was twelve, just like the children back there. After two years of rigorous training and advancement through the ranks upon being Selected for service, she had been one of the dozen most promising ones, and she had been put through her First Run just like everyone else.

She had completed it on the first try. Despite it being so long ago, she remembered it all too clearly, the memory of stumbling over and slapping her hands down on the tower of circular stones that marked the finish point, bleeding and heaving with two broken ribs. How she had managed to fight off the Chasers and make it to the end, none of the officers knew - until the four soldiers had come trotting out of the gorge a few minutes later with bruises and open wounds all over them.

Had they fought between themselves over tagging Anzi, their commanding officer had asked. And they had answered yes - but that Anzi had then taken them by surprise by letting loose a wave of offensive magic and blowing them away from her. She had fought back as well, fierce and dangerous, even breaking one of the soldier's arms in her violent escape. He had lifted his wounded limb with a sheepish smile to prove it, then added that she was quick, too.

Fast, strong, and desperate to make it to the end, she had become the first and only Runner to make it to the end of the Gauntlet on her first day. They still made her stay and continue to train on the course for the rest of the year, but after that, things were never the same.

With a natural predisposition to magic to go with her prodigious fighting ability, she advanced year by year, always the prime candidate for advancement no matter which group she was moved up to.

And she was not yet eighteen, but already here. Pierro and the others were a handful of years older than she was, having worked their way to this point in the usual time. But not her. And she didn't want to wait, either. This was the last set of trials before she qualified for the greatest honor in Imperial service...

Becoming a dragon rider.

Her heart throbbed in her chest so violently that she had to suck in a deep breath as she ran on, searching for the three missing children that she had yet to collect. Twelve recruits, twelve targets. She needed twenty five points to advance past this stage and go to the next. Across several tries, she would need to compete with the others over the limited points, with it becoming harder and harder each time as the children became more adept at maneuvering around them and devising strategies to avoid capture. Twenty five points, twenty five targets was all one needed to get past this phase.

Unless she tagged all twelve children herself in one run.

If that happened, she automatically advanced, regardless of needed points. Ordinarily, that wasn't possible, but that was why she had made a risky maneuver and sprinted the fifteen kilometers all the way to the starting point. Instead of fighting over all of the targets at once, she could mark the majority of them here, then chase after any that she missed.

Only she could do that, the fastest out of the four soldiers here for their Second Run by far. She was very, very good at running. And she had enough strength in her to fight, too.

That left one problem, though - the targets that managed to run past her would be running straight into the arms of the others. And as Pierro had said earlier, the others were already on their way. Even if they didn't manage to catch the runaways first, she would have to fight them all over the prize. Not one on one. Not even one on two. All three of them would have agreed to a temporary truce in order to shut her down, and then after she was taken care of, they would handle things between themselves.

Pierro was out of commission, but he was also absurdly quick on the recovery. Luckily, he was terrible at magic, which meant even though she had left him behind with the children, he could never override her seal on their foreheads and replace it with his own. He shouldn't have split from the others, but obviously he had had stupid ideas of his own and done exactly that.

Leaving the other two soldiers behind to confront her had been a mistake, and she was going to capitalize on it to the fullest extent possible. She didn't care whether that disgraced them all or not. She was here to fulfill her purpose and answer her calling, and if she shirked that commitment, she didn't deserve the dignity befitting an Imperial soldier.

She was here to be a dragon rider, and no one was going to stop her.

Anzi glanced down at her hands as she sprinted down the gorge, spotting the silver glimmer that coated her hands and arms all the way up to the elbows. She grimaced again, remembering the sensation of warm blood dripping down her fingers as she smeared it over every child with a quick swipe. The wyrm was alive, but she had needed its blood to mark the recruits and drive off other serpents that might be in the area. It had been the only way: she wasn't a mage, and therefore had no way of setting up a barrier seal to protect the unconscious children. Or Pierro for that matter.

He was an ass, but they were still friends (when he wasn't taunting her). She didn't want him eaten alive, either.

A flash of movement. Finally! She launched herself out of her thoughts as she veered down the left side of the fork that divided the gorge. That was definitely one of the children, light beige desert garb. They would learn soon: the first thing they should have done when they left the starting point was to camouflage themselves by rolling around in the dust and coating their clothes with dust and sand to better blend in with the terrain.

But it was too late for this one. She leaped and bounded off a rocky ledge, one arm outstretched to grab the running child by the back of his loose thawb. That was the other disadvantage the little recruits had, loose clothes -

THWACK!

She recoiled and twisted in mid-air, falling to the ground in a crouch with her hand over her chest. Oh, gods, that stung. She clutched at the bruise she could feel blossoming already from where the stone had struck her right under her leather shoulder guard. Lethal aim. If it weren't for her uncommonly resistant constitution, that would have been enough to make her entire right arm numb. As it was, the nerves buzzed up and down from her fingers to her shoulder, protesting with great complaint.

Damn it. Aimee and Doufan. She hadn't been expecting them to show up yet, but here she had run into them before she was ready. Not to mention that she still had to track down the other two children...

Ah. Never mind. With her hand still covering her sore chest, she lifted her eyes to find the two soldiers waiting for her fifteen meters ahead. They were too far away for her to leap at them, but close enough for Aimee to lob projectiles at her with irritatingly good aim. The tall, sharp-faced blonde was impressively magic-attuned with the useful ability to throw small objects around.

But that was the only thing about her that Anzi envied. The threat from her paled in comparison to the other soldier before her, who was already approaching with his halberd pointed squarely at her trunk.

That wasn't good. After her, he was undoubtedly the most dangerous between the four. While he lacked Pierro's brute strength, Doufan's weapon mastery was second to none. He could wield his halberd and the two short swords crossed over his back as skillfully as any master, and there was one other crucial difference between him and Pierro: he never sparred with Anzi using his full strength, so she had no idea what he was really capable of.

She knew it, and he knew that she knew it. It was a smart move, since they were competing against each other. In the end, they might both be called into the elite guard together, but the superior candidate always had the edge - which meant that it was a good idea to conceal one's hand from the other.

Meanwhile, she rarely held back in spars, which meant that Doufan had seen far more of what she could do than she had of him.

"Fair warning, Pierro won't be coming to help you two anytime soon," she called out as he approached with light, careful steps. "It's just you two against me. No one else."

"That's fine!" Aimee called back. "You just need to go down next!"

Another rock came whizzing toward her through the air at deadly speed, and Anzi ducked just in time to avoid it while keeping her eyes fixed on the approaching man. Trouble. He had closed more than half the distance now. If Aimee gave him another opening like that, he would come streaking in to impale her without hesitation.

Damn those two. Just as Anzi often paired up with Pierro, those two stuck to each other like tree sap. They were rarely apart and always chose each other first when everyone needed to partner up for training expeditions. Now that she thought about it, they probably would have double crossed Pierro after dispatching her, which was why he had left them behind in the first place. Huh. No wonder he had tried to persuade Anzi to work with him. At the time, she'd dismissed it as a terribly executed attempt at a trap, but now she realized it was just a terribly executed attempt at teaming up.

Hindsight. She might have had a use for him after all, but too bad. Now she had to deal with this alone.

But there was an upside to the situation: she could see a heap of beige clothed-bodies back there at Aimee's feet, even though Doufan was clearly trying to obstruct her view of it by advancing directly up her line of sight, even shifting to follow her when she tried to lean to the side for a better look behind him. That just solidified her suspicion that Aimee had possession of the last three targets, and she returned her attention to the halberd-wielding young man who looked about ready to skewer her.

His dark brown eyes were eagle-fierce and narrowed, head ducked and mouth set in a hard grimace. He was going to give this his all from the very start. On one hand, that was an encouraging sign. It meant that he thought he needed to, if he wanted to take her down.

On the other hand, between him and Aimee's troubling ability to harass her at a distance, she would have liked to be underestimated at least a little.

Oh, well. All or nothing. She withdrew her spear from its sheath, a loop woven into the back of her lightweight leather armor, and sent a pulse of her power through the haft. Immediately, the wood responded and expanded to its full length, two meters of magicked wood and sturdy steel at its tip. She hadn't been able to bring Pierro's sword with her. Charmed as it was, it would become heavy and blundering once she carried it too far from him.

So all she had was this spear, and it would have to do. And that was fine.

She hefted the weapon and tightened her grip on it, preparing to clash.