The Shadow Games

Chapter Five

***Okay, thank you! Some of you must live in England or something, 

because I posted really late, and when I woke up, I had three comments 

and four votes already! Thank you! I'll hopefully update again 

tomorrow, so I hope you enjoy chapter five!

Nina woke to the cool touch of her feathers. The iridescent crystal 

felt like ice on her cheek. She quickly sat up. She had nestled 

herself into a bed of twigs sitting firmly between two large forked 

branches. The sun stung her eyes. She looked all around her. Above 

her, nothing but gray sky. Below and around, only the shrubs and 

withered trees like the one she was still in.

Then one of her shrubs began crawling. It was the fat boy. His straw 

hair had been dyed brown by some plant, and his clothes were an ugly 

green. He was wriggling towards something. He grabbed a tan object and 

stuffed it in his mouth. He looked piggish.

Mina watched as he kept crawling and stuffing his mouth. She had to 

give him some credit, he had an okay guise. He must have been a bit 

smart. But if he could live, he could win. So she had to kill him.

He kept snuffling along on the ground.

He spotted Zoe's bow. Nina supposed that she had forgotten it. The fat 

boy was studying it. And then she saw the arrow. It was moving swiftly 

towards the bow. It sat on the bow. And then the sting was pulled 

back, and the fat boy, with his eyes wide, fell over with an arrow 

sticking out of his forehead.

So Nina had been saved the bother of killing him.

Slowly, a tan-skinned girl with almost no flesh on her bones 

materialized. Her raven hair glinted in the sun. Nina got up, and 

started to fly away. Her sword hung limply in her hand.

The girl glanced up, hearing Nina's wings. She laughed. "So, you saw 

all that?" she asked. "He was my third kill. I don't know where the 

bow and arrows are from, maybe some dead competitor, but hey, a 

weapon's a weapon."

"Who are you?" Nina asked, turning around.

"May. And who are you?"

"I'm Nina."

"Oh yea. The one with the feathers. How do you like it up there, where you can see everything?" she asked. "It must be cool being able to hunt everyone down the easy way. I know I would love to have what you got, but didn't get it. Instead I got to be invisible and hide from everyone."

"So?" Nina said. "That's a great ability. No one knows you're killing them until they're dead. That's pretty sick. Me, I'm like some giant bird swooping in on them."

"How many have you killed?" May asked.

"Two." Nina lied. She wasn't even sure if Zoe was dead. It didn't matter. She knew what she needed to know from that blonde.

"Really?" May asked. "Two?"

"Yea. Hey, do you know how we can see how many days we have left?" Nina asked.

"Of course. You just rub your wrist, and the number glows in blue. Try it." May said. Nina started rubbing her thumb along her left wrist. A number started to appear. It was a blue 4.

"Four days left only?" Nina shouted. "There's only five or six of us left?"

"Yeah. You should be happy. It makes the odds of you winning way better, and it means we won't starve to death." May said.

"Yea." Nina was still struggling. Even if she won, she would have to play again. And now, if she were lucky, she would have to wait 8 days before the games began again. And this time everyone would know who died and who won.

"Hey May? Do you want to kill me now, or can you leave me for someone else?" Nina asked.

"I'll leave you for someone else. I'm not going up there to get knocked out of your stupid tree. Bye."

Nina sat down, satisfied. She was going to live at least one more day.