Sonia launched into a run—not Faal’s pace--the pace that won her exile. The speed that had held ground with a bird in flight!

Wind at her back, she tore down the path, the wind lifting her at times and carrying her for stretches. The speed was euphoric, but Sonia fought for focus. She needed to get back. She didn't trust Faal not to try anything stupid.

The next rise was the highest yet, and Sonia steeled herself for what would no doubt be the longest drop she’d ever taken in her life, excepting her jump into the abyss. When she stared over the side of the cliff and froze. 100 feet. How had anyone ever taken this drop and survived? And then she saw it. Out of the corner of her eye, a dirt-crusted skull bone protruded from the ground. A few feet away she could just make out the corner of a pelvic bone.

A runner had died down there. And the other competitors had left the body to decompose. Her throat tightened and her stomach churned while it hit her. The Spirit Run wasn’t a fun run. At least for a few every year, it was a thinly veiled suicide rite—no more and no less. Apart from those who entered to run a cooperative event, some Barronites entered this race because they’d lost hope in their chances of survival. Those who ran and worked together might get out of this alive, but there would always be deaths. Every year. And every year Barronite citizens casually looked the other way, cheered their winners and let the others bury themselves at the bottom of impossibly high drops.

Sonia blinked, and at once she could see not one skull bone, but many, scattered around the edges of the trail. Her breath came tight in her chest. Did Faal have a death wish? She glanced back over her shoulder. Torn between running back and going forward. How would she do this drop? How could she go back to Faal empty handed?

Sonia had taken impossible leaps before. But then again, there had been the Magnus Avem. Would he come again? Would he be there for her now?

She looked for a target ground and leaped outward.

Sonia’s target ground was a bad choice. She could see it was uneven, but something was there…resistance she hadn’t planned for. When Sonia dropped, it was more like a glide, and when she hit down and rolled out, the impact was much less than it should have been. Her hand went to her back and felt the wound on her neck. Something was there. What had slowed her fall?

There wasn’t time to think. Sonia popped up to her feet and began running. She ran hard, bounding up the last and final rise. This time when she reached the top, she barely paused, but took the jump with the barest glance at the ground as she leaped into the air, and let the current carry her, far—much farther than she should ever have been able to travel. She lit on the ground with almost no impact and then she took off again. The finish couldn’t be far away. Another mile at most.

Sonia could hear the sound of the band playing its rousing national anthem. Having realized the nature of the event, this spectacle took on a grotesque aspect that made her stomach turn and she wanted to vomit. All these people crowding around watching to see what few people could complete this course alive. Would rescuers even bother to go after those who failed to finish?

If you encounter this tale on Amazon, note that it's taken without the author's consent. Report it.

The crowd erupted into a roar of applause and shouting when they saw her. Hands reached out. The band began to play. People threw confetti in great sprays of color. She stumbled forward, calling, begging for a rope. For a harness. The crowd ignored her, picking her up and setting her on their shoulders, they began parading her back to the city. Tears streaming, Sonia shouted for them to stop. She cried. She fought.

And at last she saw. There!Evra was standing apart from the crowd, one hand clapped over her mouth. Eyes dilated in horror. “Evra!!!” Sonia shouted. “Faal needs help!”

It took too long before the people let her go. Too long for her to communicate what she needed. But at last she did communicate it. A rope appeared and two harnesses, Sonia slung them over her shoulder.

“You’re going back?” Someone asked.

“I promised!” Sonia was already jogging back toward the beginning of the race.

“You can’t run it a second time.”

“I’m fine,” she said, gulping back a drought of water. The distance wasn’t that bad. It wasn’t too far.

Evra stood beside her. “Where? Where is he?”

“Half-way point.”

Her gaze darted to the far side of the abyss. Sonia could feel Evra’s heart sink. The fastest vehicles in the city were simple bicycles. Sonia would be faster.

“Evra! I can get there. I’ll be fast. He’s okay. It's just an injured ankle.”

She said this, but it wasn’t quite true. Faal didn’t have a mere bad ankle. He had something else much more complicated, and in his mind the solution was either macabre celebrity or absolute extinction.

She launched off again. The sound of the drums and brass behind her blaring Grater Barren’s anthem, and some idiot with a blow horn shouting her name for the crowd to echo back. Tears stung her eyes as she ran into the blistering wind. What if she couldn’t find him? What if he’d flung himself over the edge? Thoughts crowded into Sonia’s mind as she covered the miles. She blocked them, trading the sting of thought for the sting of the wind in her ears and against her cheeks.

She began to pass stragglers.

The first two drops came and went, but the numbers increased, and the further drops were higher, but the teams cooperated. Runners held onto each other and formed elaborate chains of arms and legs with anchors. They weren’t so much runners as tumblers—acrobats with amazing grips.

Sonia counted the miles. Faal should be just about three miles away as long as Faal had stayed put. She ran, wind tugging on her, bumping her back and forth, teasing and frustrating her speed.

She spoke to herself. Another couple of miles and she should overtake him. A little while further and she’d have caught up to him.

Then she was on top of the jump. She winced. It wasn’t Faal. Six runners had fallen and hit badly on that jump. Several of them writhed in pain at the bottom of the trail. Sonia leapt.

*

Medics hurried back and forth between tents set up at the starting line. Sonia’s eyes blinked wide, and she glanced around at the tent where drop victims legs were being set and they were being treated for shock. Several victims with lighter injuries were being toted away on the backs of bicycles. Only one person was paralyzed. Two dead. Faal reclined on a cot opposite Sonia. She remembered finding Faal, and helping him and others with the rope and harnesses. It had taken a long time, and by the time they’d finished, she’d collapsed from exhaustion.

When she blinked her eyes and finally met Faal’s gaze he swallowed and said, “You must have wings.”