🏆 THE AMBY AWARDS 2023 TOP PICK - DIVERSE LIT 🏆
It's Rin and Hye-jin against the world. Or so it should have been.
Nagara Rin and Joon Hye-jin, college sweethearts and passionate gamers, have lived a fairytale marriage. Not even a decade after did...
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Heather grunted, sparks flying out of her blade as she parried an enemy's attack. "Sel! Take the left!" she yelled. "Trink, the right!"
I ducked under a swinging battle scythe, leaping out of the path of its spiked tail. The sound of chains clinking was sharp in my ears, the adventurer wielding them lunging at me once more. "Got my hands tied here for a bit!" I yelled back. "Rev?"
The creature spiria cursed audibly, tumbling backwards as a spear slammed into the spot on the ground where her feet had just been. For the most part, she was the most agile out of all of them, better than Arzo, for sure.
In speaking of him, the buff guy from the opposite party was hammering the hell out of the poor kid. Next to the wall of muscle, Arzo looked like he might be snapped like a twig. He's the one who needed help the most.
I gritted my teeth and swung my sword at the chain-scythe-spiked-ball combo. The wielder—a woman with the right side of her head shaved clean and the rest of her chin-length hair parted to one side—smirked as she threw the scythe end of her weapon. The sharp edge of the blade clanged against the chains, and while I expected it to shatter them, the scythe's pointed tip whizzed from the left. I stepped back just in time for the chain to wrap around my sword.
With a powerful yank, my weapon slid from my grip before clattering to the ground. I cursed, diving under the swing of the spiked ball, calling my sword to me. It flew with ease, responding to the traces of my magic, and brought it parallel to my shoulders just as the scythe's hook came down.
Vibrations danced on my arms and shoulder. The woman grunted, digging her weapon against my blade. Metal squeaked and scritched. I clenched my jaw, grunting with the effort to push back against the woman's force. If the scythe so much as glazed past the edge of my blade, it would pierce my chest. I needed to get out of this chokehold.
The smell of freshly-upturned dirt was heavy in my nose, my backbone grinding against the hard rockbed. All around us, various screams of aggression, agitated cheers, and bored jeers rang from the crowd gathered today. Against the bright morning sun shining through the roofless colosseum, they were nothing but dots of color and noise.
"Yield," the woman growled through her own gritted teeth. I hoped I had given her a hard time reaching this point. Still, it's not enough.
I smiled. "No."
Before she could process what I just said, I hooked my leg in the most awkward position ever, knocking against the woman's ankle. If it were just my regular boots, it wouldn't have hurt. But in my armor, my ankle guard slammed against hers, eliciting a distinct ring. That's enough to send her looking back to my legs, at what I was trying to do.
I shoved forward with my blade, catching her trying to balance herself with her disturbed ankle and keep pushing against me. She flailed, attempting to regain her balance. I withdrew my sword back into my inventory, lashed out empty-handed, and closed my fingers around the chain. With a yank, I tore it from her grip, sending her straight into my waiting fist.
