Contrary to Lance’s wish, the blast of Ophelia’s horn seemed to come even sooner than the night before. As they gathered around her for the go-ahead, Ember assessed the others: Craig, the elephant who had defended the flag against Ember, was as impassive as ever; Lance wore a drawn but determined expression, favoring his uninjured leg; Jisu’s predacious energy rolled off her in waves; and Daniel shifted from one foot to the other, looking ready to piss himself.

Only Gunther’s group gave Ember pause. As expected, all three members were haggard and careworn, but something was concealed in the hasty glances they exchanged when they thought the other students weren’t watching. Most disconcertingly, their pisces leader had a self-satisfied glint in his eye which seemed to be directed at Daniel.

Ember scowled, doing a quick jog in place to warm up her muscles. “Prepare yourselves,” Ophelia said. “Your head start begins now!”

Ember realized what Gunther was planning just as Ophelia’s arm slashed downward. Instead of scattering, Gunther’s team edged closer to Daniel, preventing him from finding a place to hide as he had on the two previous days.

Later, Ember couldn’t explain exactly why she had chosen to act—after all, they were well within Ophelia’s rules—but when the head-start ended and Gunther charged at the cowering toad, Ember changed direction and threw herself bodily at the pisces.

It was not her most elegant attempt at a take-down, and Gunther was broader than both Amir and Marcus. His armored scutes were as hard as stone, cutting the unprotected skin between her patches of scales. She failed to unbalance him completely, and as the other members of his team turned to help, Daniel temporarily forgotten, she bared her fangs and prepared to fight a losing battle.

Something smacked her on the side of the face, and without stopping Jisu tripped one of Gunther’s lackeys and kicked the other in the stomach hard enough for him to expel the half-digested scraps of the previous night’s poached dinner. “You could help me!” Ember shouted, detaching herself from Gunther’s grasp with a sharp twist of her wrist.

“You’ve got this!” the panther laughed, her tail slashing whip-like behind her as she disappeared into the woods.

Ember muttered a curse after her. Alone, she had a decent chance of beating the two lackeys, but not before their leader managed to take her down. After a quick glance to make sure that Daniel had slipped away, she took off to the north, easily outpacing her pursuers. Behind her, Gunther let out a shout of frustration, a crack splitting the air as he kicked an unsuspecting sapling.

Ember jogged a mile north, climbing a tree with a view of the wall once she was confident she wasn’t being followed. She took a couple of hours to recover, but when morning turned into afternoon, she found her canteen running low and the beginnings of hunger gnawing at her belly. The fight had made her restless, too, so she wasn’t altogether unhappy to gather her things and set off into the forest.

The vegetation grew denser the further she moved away from the wall, and scanning with her infrared made her progress frustratingly slow. She was confident that she would be able to hear Gunther’s team approach, and she suspected that Craig was taking a defensive position, but she couldn’t afford to be caught unawares by Jisu or Lance.

At last, she caught the sound of gurgling and followed it to a thin, rocky stream. Nearby, an elk was bowing its head to drink, and it looked up and regarded her with wary eyes at her approach. I suppose the animals are wilder outside of the walls, she thought, taking a few steps back so as not to startle it. Her mouth watered unsettlingly, and she had to shake her head to rid herself of the urge to hunt: it would be wasteful, and she had little knowledge of how to prepare such a large carcass.

She stooped and filled her canteen to the brim, planning to try her hand at starting a fire to boil it—or, if worse came to worst, to beg the use of Lance’s firestarter when they met at camp that night. As she rose in search of a smaller prey, shouts cut through the low sounds of the forest, startling the elk.

Ember stood with her head cocked, debating if it was worth the risk to investigate. Then, at the sound of a familiar yell, her legs were carrying her toward the fight of their own accord.

In a clearing surrounded by old oaks, Lance was fighting all-out against Gunther’s team. He was a white-haired blur, his body contorting as he struck at the pisces and his lackeys with his dulled dagger and his short claws, and Ember was struck by how much he had improved since they had met in Mr. Badger’s class. Still, it wouldn’t be long until he was beaten: he was favoring one leg, keeping him from running away, and his blows could only do superficial damage to Gunther’s natural armor.

Ember took a deep breath, hoping that Lance would see her involvement not as a rescue mission, but as capitalizing on the opportunity to take out Gunther’s team. The pisces was the strongest fighter, but Lance’s agility temporarily gave him the upper hand, so Ember focused instead on a wiry-looking mammal who was retrieving a homemade pike from a nearby thicket.

She grabbed the mammal from behind, wrapping one arm around his torso and clamping her other hand over his mouth. With a heave, she dragged him half-through, half-over the bush, completely unnoticed by the others.

He squirmed, attempting to poke her with the pike, but she caught the shaft under the toe of her boot and cracked it in half. She tugged him against her, wrapping her forearm around his neck and compressing both carotid arteries in a blood choke.

It took only fifteen seconds before he crumpled, his protests lost to the sounds of nearby fighting. Quickly, she dug into his pockets, but his flare was nowhere to be found, another violation of Ophelia’s rules. She looked back through the bush, spotting a pack abandoned in the center of the clearing: and in its front pocket, a suspiciously flare-shaped bulge.

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Realizing that the sounds of fighting had quieted, Ember whipped back toward the fighters. Gunther and his remaining lackey, a stout striped insect, had managed to cage Lance against a tree. The pisces lunged for the ermine, grabbing his bicep in a vice-like hold and shaking him like a ragdoll.

Lance went slack in his grip, forcing him to readjust, and Ember cracked a smile as she predicted what was going to happen—sure enough, the moment the pisces dropped his guard, the ermine punched him full-on in the face. To his credit, Gunther’s grip didn’t slacken, but Ember swelled with pride as his head jerked back, blood spraying from his nose and his right eye clamped shut.

Gunther recovered quickly, an incensed expression overtaking his pain as he leaned forward to scream in Lance’s face, blood and spittle splattering against the ermine’s pale skin.

Ember grimaced. He might really hurt him. I guess that’s my cue. She skirted the thicket, coming as close as she could to the scene. Even with the element of surprise, she doubted that she could take down the much heavier pisces, especially if her earlier attempt was any indication. And in the forest with no supervision, anything could happen. She took a shaky breath, her heart beating painfully fast against her ribcage, and counted to three.

She came at Gunther with a flying head-kick, one of Jisu’s moves. He stumbled away from Lance, bringing his forearm up in time to block the brunt of the strike. She landed in a crouch and sprang at him again before he had time to recover.

She quickly discovered that his armor did more damage to her fists than she could do to him, and her fang knife had no chance of penetrating with its dulled edge. Instead, she aimed rapid blows to his pressure points: his jaw, the base of his throat, and his bladder. It was highly specific, technical work, made more difficult by having to hold herself back so as to not cause permanent damage. She spared a glance at Lance, finding him holding his own against the beetle.

Gunther spread his stance and guarded himself as best he could against the barrage, but she could tell from his grunts that she was wearing him down. She raised her right leg and drove her hips forward, striking his solar plexus with the ball of her foot. He doubled over, gasping for air, and she angled herself for a finishing blow.

Then, suddenly, he straightened up faster than she would’ve thought possible, and something slammed into her side with a force like a charging bull. Skin, flesh, and bone gave way beneath it, and she flew across the clearing, her vision going black. She landed hard on her tailbone, pain blossoming from her ribs. Fuck.

“Ember!” Lance yelled, and she forced her eyes open. Gunther was stalking toward her, a short ax—his weapon of choice, she remembered belatedly—held in one hand. It was properly dulled, but he had swung it like a club to catch her unawares.

She groaned, and blood leaked between her teeth from where she’d bitten her tongue. She could breathe, so a lung wasn’t punctured, but she had definitely felt a crack where the ax had met her ribs. If not for Amir’s bone-hardening training, she would have been immobilized.

She had only a second before Gunther reached her. She could tell from his unbalanced walk that his ploy had cost him, too. Behind him, Lance was wrenching free of the insect, about to come after her. She shook her head almost imperceptibly, making a cross with her pointer finger over her Achilles tendon.

“Come finish it, then,” she snarled at Gunther, drawing all of his attention to her. At the same time, Lance evaded the insect’s grasp and lunged at the pisces from behind, drawing his dagger from his belt and ramming the blade’s long edge into the soft flesh at the back of his left ankle.

Gunther let out a shout of pain, falling to his knees. “Let’s get out of here!” Ember yelled, stumbling to her feet and shaking her head to rid herself of the stars swarming her vision. Remembering the mammal she’d defeated, she scooped up the forgotten pack and tossed it to Lance, who caught it against his chest.

Together, they took off from the clearing at a slow run, every step sending stabbing pains up Ember’s side. Behind them, Gunther attempted to stagger to his feet, only to fall back down. The beetle came reluctantly to him, making no attempt at pursuit.

When the immediate danger had passed, Ember took the bag from Lance and felt around for the flare. Sure enough, it had been stashed away in the side pocket, and she pointed it at the sky and pulled the release. “We got one… at least,” Ember panted. “But we need… to put distance between us. Jisu… will be out hunting.”

Her friend looked at her with concerned eyes. “I appreciate what you did, Ember, but are you sure you don’t need to stop now? I’ll come with you, and we’ll both pass.”

Ember shook her head. “I’m fine.”

“But you’re bleeding,” he argued, gesturing to where blood was pooling at the hem of her uniform shirt. “If you’re doing this to protect Daniel and Jisu-”

They were interrupted by the sound of footsteps, and Ember cursed herself for her second oversight of the day: forgetting to scan ahead with her infrared. The vegetation rustled, and she prepared herself for Jisu or Craig to come to finish them off.

Instead, it was only the amiable insect TA who emerged from the underbrush. “All right?” he asked, and she stood straighter, angling her torso so he wouldn’t see the bloodstain.

“Yes,” Lance said, and she nodded.

“Okay,” he said. “Who’s out?”

“The mammal that was allied with Gunther,” Ember answered, careful to keep the pain from her voice. “He’s passed out behind a bush.”

“Good work.”

Once he was out of view, Ember and Lance resumed their slow march south. Lance didn’t restart the argument, no doubt realizing that trying to convince her to drop out was futile. When they’d made it a suitable distance—doubling back once to make themselves difficult to track—they stopped and found shelter in the hollow of a redwood.

Ember pulled off her shirt while Lance gathered wood for a small fire. The damage was as bad as she had expected: where the ax had met her ribs, there was a swollen and reddening hematoma cut through with an angry gash.

Using Ember’s metal cup, Lance boiled enough water to clean her wound and drink their fill. He crouched over her, dabbing at the gash with a scowl. “Not much blood, right?” she said, attempting a smile.

He rolled his eyes, wrapping her torso tightly with the field dressings. “You know the blood is the least worrisome part.”

When he was finished, they settled back down to wait for the evening to come. “Thank you,” he said, putting his arms behind his head and leaning against the inner wall of the redwood. “I was afraid, back there. I really thought Gunther was going to kill me.”

Ember inclined her head. “You got him good with that punch. I almost gave away my position from laughing.”

They both chuckled, but he sobered after a moment. “After this, our chances against the others aren’t good.”

“Our? So what, are we allies now?”

He laughed. “I know you’ll argue if I say that I’m just sticking around to help you get first place—which you undoubtedly deserve—so how about we leave it off until tomorrow morning?”

“Sure thing,” she agreed, resting her head on his outstretched legs. “Wake me up when it’s time to walk back to camp, will you?”