The Offering (Lesbian, Gay, Girlxgirl)

Chapter 22

Chapter 22

None of them slept through the night. Shortly after hearing the buzzing sound, total blackness shrouded them. What little light emanated from the holes high above the evergreen was gone, yanked away into abyss. It was close to shutting one's eyes, if not turning blind.

Xander did not want to jump inside the pit. It was Brielle who scuttled in the dark, found his legs, and pulled. She went after him, her stomach flipping upside down for split-seconds, before landing on a soft plow of soil. It was Ayah who got there last. She'd been the one to seal the entrance, leaving only small boreholes to breathe into.

Brielle hugged her knees, not sure who was where, or if any of them were harmed. Her teeth chattered noisily, though not as loud as the bumble of the bees.

"Are we all still alive?" It was Xander who broke the group's silence. "Brielle? Ayah? The boy?"

Ayo did not make a remark. Brielle could imagine him scared as her, his back against the walls of the pit, blinking against the dimness. "I'm alright. Just shaken," she said. "Ayah? Ayo?"

"My brother and I are safe." Ayah's voice came from Brielle's left. She must have crawled to Ayo. "It is unnatural, this darkness. I do not trust it. People from our tribe have always relied on underground pits to survive. We are used to darkness. But not this kind. It brings something else."

Brielle did not want to think much about it other than the passing of a lost swarm of bees, but even Xander agreed. "Can you smell that?" he said. "There is something foul in the air. It reminds me of rotting animal carcass after they've been left in the wild for the birds to pick." It was a gruesome example but fitting for the stench. Decay was present even when they were borough under the ground.

Brielle was about to state her own observations when her hands glowed blue. It startled her to a gasp. She shook it away thinking it was a bee. The intentional convulsions did not work. The glow remained, stubborn against her wrist. She stilled long enough to figure out that those were nothing but numbers, radiating from the smooth surface of her shackles.

"Forty-three," she murmured.

"Forty-two," Ayah said. Her brother's shackles were also exuding the same numeric glow, making their tired faces visible.

"Forty-one," Xander supplied. The numbers dictated had changed again. "Is that a countdown for an event? Do you think they are warning us against a possible explosion?"

"I don't think that's it." Brielle could hear the weariness in her voice. "How many of us are in The Offering?" The answer was known to the four of them. There were twenty-two Sectors. Forty-four contestants. "Now it's forty-one," she said. Because that could only be the explanation. The countdown started at forty-three. One had to die to activate it.

"A Sector had already lost," Xander concluded. Now that Brielle could see him better, she noticed that his large frame fitted the pit just right while he was seated. Inches of space were clean from the top of his head. He didn't have to stoop. The siblings did a stellar work in creating the hiding place. Did the other Sectors have such gifts for survival too?

"One Sector is missing his or her defender," Xander continued. "That's why the numbers are uneven. If it was the sodales who died, then it's an automatic lost for the whole Sector, isn't it? They would have subtracted the defender, alive or not, from the countdown too."

All of them agreed with a nod, but it was Brielle who had the grimmest. It could be Talin's body sprawled somewhere in the forest.

Ayah threw her a consoling glance. "Talin will be safe," she said. "If her skills match her piercing eyes, she is invincible."