Filed to story: Outplayed Story (Brooklyn & Ethan) Book PDF Free
‘Picked it up while I was dawdling.’
He winced. ‘Good call. So you think we could use it to climb?’ He looked dubiously at the monolith. ‘We don’t know what it’s made of …’ He pulled out his sword and stabbed the monolith. His blade sank into the surface. ‘Oh. Cool.’ He tugged it out again.
The moment the sword came out, something screeched. Sloths poured out from the trees.
‘Go, go, go!’ Blaze shouted. ‘I’ll hold them off. You climb.’
She grabbed two of the claws and tossed him the third. Then, without waiting to see what was happening, she launched herself at the monolith and started to pull herself up. It wasn’t exactly a quick way to get up. She had to use one claw to brace herself and then extract the other and stab it in further up.
At the base of the monolith, Blaze was a dervish, fighting the creatures as they came at him. Brook glanced down. There were too many of them, surely. But now she could see that they had spotted her too. They started climbing up behind her.
‘They’re coming after me,’ she said. To her surprise, her voice was calm. She stuck both claws in to give her a decent foothold and pulled out her own sword. Unlike Blaze’s wide, cutlass-type thing, her sword was made for stabbing. So she stabbed, aiming for the eyes. The first sloth fell and took a couple of others down with it.
‘Nice one,’ Blaze grunted.
She looked down. ‘There are more coming,’ she said. ‘Climb. Where one goes, we both go, remember?’
He backed up to the wall. She stabbed another sloth. It fell just short of where Blaze was. He somehow managed to fight off the others and simultaneously grab the claws from the fading dead one and ram them into the monolith. This gave him footholds to get a bit of height. Okay. So he had a strategy.
Brook turned back to her task. It seemed to take forever to get to the top, but she eventually reached it. On the plateau at the top was the key, rotating on a blue glow. She grabbed it. ‘I’ve got it.’
‘Aargh.’
She dropped on her belly and looked over the side. Blaze was not far behind her, but there were too many sloths in the way. She wrenched one of the claws she’d been using out of the surface and threw it at the creature nearest him. She had aimed for its face, but hit it in the arm instead. The creature lost its grip in that arm and flailed around, hanging from one set of claws. At least the thing was distracted for a second. Blaze grinned and threw himself sideways. He used the claws the distracted creature was hanging from as a stepping stone to get himself higher. A few seconds later, she was hauling him up onto the flat top.
The minute he stood up, the clouds gathered into a swirl overhead, turning the world dark. Light flashed in the core of it. The wind whipped around them, so strong that she grabbed hold of Blaze before she lost her balance.
‘What now?’ Brook said.
‘I don’t know. I only have the same information as you do.’
She rolled her eyes. ‘We have to get off.’ Cautiously, she leaned forward to look over the side. The sloths were all dashing for cover. ‘Somehow, I think staying up here isn’t an option.’
Blaze turned. He grabbed her arm, fingers around her elbow. She changed her grip to match. So now they were keeping each other steady. ‘We can’t jump. It’s too far down. It’s very windy, but I don’t think it’s strong enough to carry us along.’
‘What’s in your inventory?’
They both checked what they had. One key, medical packs, swords, rope, food packs … and one tablecloth. ‘Wait,’ Brook said, extracting it. ‘Do you think that we could use this as a parachute?’
There was a crash and a bolt of lightning struck a few feet away from them.
‘I guess this is where we find out. You take those two corners. I’ll take these two. Hold on tight.’
She grabbed the corners. They stood together at the top of the edifice.
Blaze said, ‘Face away from the wind.’
She did. The wind was strong enough that her plait was blowing in front of her. ‘Ready.’
‘Three. Two. One. Jump.’
Brook squeezed her eyes shut and leapt. They plunged downwards and then, astoundingly, slowed down. The cloth billowed out at an angle above them, pulling them along. The wind blew them over the treetops, past clearings and rivers, and then suddenly dropped. They drifted down to the ground in the middle of a meadow.
The minute her feet touched the ground, the scenario ended and they were back in the training area. Their time – ‘2 hrs 46 mins’ – hovered in the air above them.
She started up at it, mesmerised. ‘That’s pretty good, right?’
Blaze shrugged. ‘We won’t know until everyone’s finished.’ He sighed. ‘Well, I guess that’s us done for a bit.’ He turned to face her and held out his hand. ‘It was nice playing with you.’
Brook blinked. So polite, yet so cold. She had listened to him for years so she knew what he was normally like. This was not the usual exuberant Blaze. He was pissed off and trying not to show it.
‘I’m so sorry. I was useless in the fighting.’
‘Well, now we know our strengths and weaknesses, we can try to work on them, right?’ He sounded stern.
‘I guess so.’
A voice cut in. ‘Blaze and Bravura, before you go, can we have a quick interview?’
Blaze glanced at her. She shrugged.
He said, ‘Sure.’
A new avatar appeared – a woman in a smart suit, holding a microphone, who looked out of place in the fantasy landscape. ‘So, Blaze and Bravura, you finished the challenge. How do you feel?’ She pointed her mic at Brook.
‘Exhilarated,’ Brook said. Other people didn’t need to know how bad she felt. ‘It’s such a privilege to be in this game. Even if we get knocked out in this round … although I hope we don’t, obviously. It’s been an honour to play alongside Blaze.’ She turned to him. ‘An honour. Honestly.’
He gave an exaggerated bow. He straightened up and smiled at the interviewer. ‘Seriously, though. It’s been a ton of fun. I always thought sloths were cute, but not any more.’
Brook forced a laugh. ‘Yeah. Now all I’m going to be able to think about are murder sloths.’
The interviewer turned back to Blaze. ‘What do you think your chances are?’
‘I don’t know. This is an untested game for us all and all the teams are very good. So your guess is as good as mine.’ His voice was even and calm. He didn’t think they’d made it. Brook could tell.