Kalia shook her head. “Of course.” Slipping the bag free, she pulled out items one at a time, concentrating and adding them to her inventory. Finally, the bag disappeared, too.

  “After you, then.” I gestured down the path.

  Kalia gave a resolute nod, turned, and moved off, absently swinging her weapon by her side.

  I found myself watching her walk away, a mix of protectiveness and something else growing in my chest. Perhaps it was this forced confinement, but I was starting to enjoy being here with her, and that was all kinds of messed up.

  A familiar whistle shook me back to the present as Kalia drove her table leg into the next set of bushes, forcing it from side to side for longer than seemed necessary before we both acknowledged that these latest ones were empty.

  The next set of bushes proved equally barren, and I did my best to hold back a sigh. If the firewolves were as spread out as I now feared, we’d soon need to accept that we might still be out in the open when night fell. I really shouldn’t have expected any of this to be easy, though.

  Kalia moved on down the path, her head moving from side to side, looking for any sign of danger. I followed behind, glancing back over my shoulder almost as much as I looked ahead. It wouldn’t be great to be taken by surprise after I’d warned Kalia of that very likelihood.

  The next set of bushes shook violently before Kalia even approached, a stream of firewolves yipping and snarling as they poured toward us.

  As much as I’d readily battered the previous ones to death, a small part of me had found it almost cruel at the time. Now, though, knowing they’d be reclaimed by the prison planet’s system after death, I found it even easier to truly unleash on them.

  I spared no brutality as I clubbed, punched, and kicked the attacking horde into submission. It seemed Kalia had come to the same conclusion as she battered the few that headed her way.

  As I crashed my scorched weapon into the side of a firewolf’s head, crushing its skull, blood spurted free, and it sizzled as it splashed against my sleeve. I grimaced as pain bloomed in my arm. As small as these wolves were, I was still picking up injuries, even if they were manageable right now.

  These little bastards seemed to have no trouble recognizing that I was here, going so far as to mostly head my way, so why did the system as a whole refuse to acknowledge me? I could only assume they had some level of autonomy, their base instincts seeing all potential prey before them.

  Truth was, they were the prey.

  We were still fighting the first group when a second group of firewolves streamed down the slope, coming from a section of shrubs that were several yards off the main path.

  “Just perfect,” Kalia grumbled, moving to finish off the dwindling first group as I eased behind her, facing up to our latest assailants. I needed to take on the bigger threat.

  “Shout if you need help,” I called back as I clenched my fist around the base of the table leg again. It was looking worse than before, the wood starting to splinter now where the heated blood of the wolves had started to corrode away part of the leg.

  No matter. It would have to suffice. What other choice did I have? I was just glad my boots seemed to stand up well to the heated blood.

  Growling out in frustration, I went to work on the firewolves, keeping myself between them and Kalia as she fought the few others that remained. If I allowed any past me, she’d run the risk of being attacked from behind, and I couldn’t allow that to happen. I needed to keep the elf safe.

  The first few wolves to reach me pounced, claws extended, and each met the same fate, battered to the side, the blows brutal enough to one-shot them. Those that followed showed no extra wariness, though many stayed grounded, several even looking to flank me.

  “Back-to-back,” I called out, and I relaxed as I felt Kalia move back against me for a moment.

  The blue-skinned woman was panting heavily, and I realized I was blowing a touch, too. If this went on much longer, one or both of us could get seriously hurt. This was exactly what I got for neglecting the gym these past few weeks.

  Luckily, the worst appeared to be over for now. The stream of firewolves attacking us dwindled as, one by one, I killed the small predators, the smell of smoke as the flames were extinguished filling the area. Again, much of the grass around us burned away as the magma-like blood splashed across the ground.

  At some point, with no wolves left behind us, Kalia had moved to my side, facing the threat head-on, and together, we finished off the second group. As the final wolf succumbed to a brutal blow that crushed its skull, Kalia dropped her weapon, placed her light-blue hands on her knees, and blew out several long breaths.

  “Fuck me…”

  “Let me get my breath back first, at least,” I replied, waggling my eyebrows, and Kalia shook her head as she chuffed a laugh.

  “Good to see you’ve got your priorities straight, Noah.”

  It was my turn to laugh, holding my hands out. “Can’t knock a guy for trying.”

  Kalia smirked, straightened up, and started to collect up the latest batch of loot that was only now starting to appear around us. It seemed the bodies didn’t dissolve until the current battle was concluded. As she bent over to pick up coins, she glanced back over her shoulder, throwing in an exaggerated wink and giggling.

  I laughed again, moving to assist and trying to understand how we could be fighting for our lives one minute and then shamelessly flirting a moment later. Not that I minded. It must just be our way of dealing with the desperate situation we had found ourselves in.

  “How many?” I asked as the last of the coins disappeared from my palm a few minutes later.

  “One-two-seven,” Kalia replied, her expression blank for a moment as she viewed notifications that I frustratingly still couldn’t.

  “Any idea on what we can use the coins for?” I asked.

  “Not a clue,” Kalia replied, tightening her white-blonde hair back again, a few more strands having come loose in our latest battle.

  I looked down at myself, seeing more than a couple of spots on my clothing where the material had burned away after being splashed with wolf blood. “I’m going to be lucky to have any clothing left by the time we reach a thousand,” I grumbled.

  “I can think of worse sights,” Kalia replied, a wide grin spreading across her face.

  Ha. “I notice you have no such trouble.” I ran my gaze over her outfit.

  “Sorry to disappoint,” she replied, brushing herself down with a grin, and I realized she wasn’t far from the truth. I’d faced off against the vast majority, so I supposed it stood to reason that I’d also show the most damage.

  “It’s all good,” I said, picking up my makeshift weapon and walking on down the track and away from her, “I’ve still got earlier in the hut burned into my mind.”

  “Hey,” Kalia called after me, “you get that out!”

  “Not a chance,” I replied, making a show of closing my eyes and smiling.

  “Two can play at that game,” she warned, and I eased my eyes open, laughing as she moved to join me and playfully punched me in the shoulder.

  Having Kalia here with me somehow made this whole experience easier. I should be freaking out with everything that had happened since I woke in my bed yesterday, and yet, I could laugh and joke like this. Maybe it just hadn’t really sunk in yet.

  Shock, perhaps? Denial?

  “What are we going to do when it gets dark?” Kalia suddenly asked, looking toward a sun that had moved farther across the sky and lowered somewhat, the light noticeably losing its earlier brightness.

  “Honestly? I don’t know. I can’t imagine firewolves are going to be put off by a campfire, so it needs to be somewhere easily defensible, and one of us will need to be awake at all times.”

  “I can see why so many have stayed in their huts,” Kalia replied, looking back up toward the ridge.

  “We’ll be fine,” I reassured her, pulling her into a side hug. “I’ve got you.”

  Those in the huts likely weren’t even aware of what threats they’d have faced had they left. We certainly hadn’t been.

  Kalia grinned and briefly snuggled against me. “Still, better we get as many kills as possible before having to rest; otherwise, it’ll be two nights out here rather than one.”

  “Good point,” I realized, releasing her and moving to head off back down the track, balancing my weapon on my shoulder, only to pause. Movement on the ridge had caught my eye.

  “Who do you think they are?” I asked, pointing to a trio of cloaked figures walking the area back by the huts.

  Kalia followed my gaze, noticing the figures. “Guards?”

  They weren’t dressed in green clothes like us, and we’d not been gifted cloaks, so it stood to reason these were prison staff. As we watched on, the trio stopped, turned, and stared down at us. From this distance, shadow covered their faces, but I swore I could make out yellow eyes glowing within their hoods.

  The hairs on the back of my neck stood up, and I nudged Kalia. “Shall we get going?”

  Kalia nodded, already moving downhill. “Please.”

  The next three hours continued in the same vein, disturbing packs of firewolves and killing each and every one of them. By the time darkness closed in, we still hadn’t reached the lagoon, but we’d managed to get our kills over five hundred. With a full day tomorrow, we should have no trouble completing this first task.

  If we survived the night…

  Chapter 7

  “You sure you’re okay to take first watch, Noah?” Kalia asked, leaning back against a rocky outcropping slightly off the main path, toward the edge of the volcanic island. Untying her ponytail, she leaned forward and shook her head, her white-blonde hair cascading down past her shoulders and framing her oval face.

  I nodded. “I’m a night person. Happy to stay up now and then wake you in a few hours.”

  The heat of the day had subsided a little, but it was still thankfully warm enough to sleep without a cover of any sort. Kalia did her best to cover a yawn as she lay down near my feet, curling up a touch and closing her eyes. I wondered briefly how she was handling the relative heat when she was clearly from cooler climes, but she hadn’t complained, so I had to assume she was okay. She’d been in Florida, so she must find it manageable.

  “Thank you, Noah,” she whispered a few minutes later as she started to drift off.

  I didn’t answer, focusing on our surroundings, using the light of the three moons above to watch for any movement.

  As I looked up, expecting to see stars, a faint series of interlocking hexagons briefly flickered above me, reminding me of the net created by the Nova Corps in the first Guardians movie. It made sense for a prison planet to be shielded from outside influence, but it also had me considering how we’d manage to gain our freedom if we ever completed their challenge.

  Surely, spaceships would need to travel through the shield. How else would they get prisoners down onto the planet? Had we been on a ship? I wasn’t sure.

  I made a mental note to look into the strange shield as soon as the chance arose, if it ever did…

  Thankfully, despite expecting glowing wolven eyes to approach at any moment, the next few hours passed without attack. The only other things of note were the campfires that flickered to life across the lower part of the island soon after Kalia went to sleep.

  As I wondered again if we’d been wise to forego a fire of our own, a series of low howls broke the silence of the night, down near one of the campfires, and I decided we had. I wouldn’t be surprised to learn that the fire attracted the wolves rather than rebuffed them, and another prisoner was probably in a whole heap of trouble right about now.

  Once I was sure, as best I could work out anyway, that over half of the night had gone by, I nudged Kalia awake. She grumbled for a moment, but then she seemed to remember where she was, sitting up and rubbing the sleep from her eyes.

  “Anything to report?” she asked, her voice hoarse as she opened her palm and called forth her canteen.

  “Nothing really,” I admitted. “There was a little movement down by one of the fires, but nothing close to us. And I caught a glimpse of a hexagonal shield covering the planet.”

  Kalia nodded, flicked the canteen away, and pushed herself to her feet as if neither was new information or it was something we could discuss later. “Get your head down then, Noah. I’ll wake you when dawn arrives.”

  I didn’t need telling twice. There was a chance that my body had rested before I’d come to inside the hut, but judging by how tired my eyes felt, I doubted it had been long, if at all. All of the killing hadn’t helped either. My muscles ached, and the rest, however short, would surely do them good.

  Lying down in the space Kalia had just occupied, I closed my eyes and was asleep moments after my head hit the ground.

  ***

  “Noah.” Something nudged me in the side with urgency, and I threw out my hand to silence an alarm that wasn’t blaring, my wrist jarring on a rocky section of ground.

  “Ouch.” I sat up, shaking away my sleepy state, only to see Kalia crouched in front of me, a concerned look on the elf’s face.

  I glanced around, noticing that the sky was barely lighting, most of our surroundings still covered by darkness. “Is it dawn already?”

  “Almost,” Kalia admitted as she handed me a canteen, “but I woke you because you seemed to be having a nightmare.”

  “Was I?” I mumbled, having no recollection of dreaming at all. It felt like I’d barely closed my eyes.

  “Who’s Natalie?” Kalia asked, and I groaned.

  Great…

  “Ah, sorry. She was my last partner, and things didn’t end too well with her, to say the least.”

  Kalia nodded and placed a cool hand on mine, squeezing it gently. “That might explain some of the things you were calling her.”

  “Hey,” I replied, my mood immediately lightening, “if I got to unload on her, I’d say that’s far from a nightmare.”

  Kalia smiled. “Then I should probably apologize for waking you. She was getting both barrels.”

  I waved away her comment and took a swig from the canteen. Kalia had meant well, and the fact that she woke me showed she cared. “It’s all good. I actually feel pretty rested.”

  “That’s fantastic because we can hopefully get this first task squared away today.”

  “That’s the plan,” I agreed, searching through my bag for some dried meat to give me a little extra energy. Finding a few bits, I offered one to Kalia.

  “Thanks.” She took the offered meat and dropped down to sit at my side, her gaze never leaving our surroundings. Resting her head on my shoulder, she cleared her throat softly. “When the conglomerate arrived in their giant spaceships and absorbed my planet, I refused to stop assisting our current leaders.”

  I jerked upright and looked at Kalia, her eyes full of sorrow. “What?”

  “It must have been killing you to not know why I’ve been sent here.”

  I mean, I’d wanted to ask plenty of times, I just hadn’t found the right time yet. “I trusted you enough to know it wouldn’t have been anything bad.”

  “Bad enough to get me sent here, though.”

  Something suddenly occurred to me. “So, did you work for royalty?”

  “I did,” Kalia replied. “One of the smaller countries on my planet, so nothing big, but yeah. I was a royal mage, but I was still fairly low down, just learning the ropes, really.”

  “I’m sorry,” I told her, and I meant it. “So what happened to your family?”

  “I don’t know.” Kalia let out a long breath and wrung her hands together. “At only twenty-four, I was one of the youngest, so they told me to run before they came to take us away. Chances are, both my mother and father are dead. My brother, too. I never got the chance to return home after they portalled me to Earth to find out.”

  “Oh, God. I really am sorry. How long were you running for?”

  “In your time, I spent three years on Earth, give or take.”

  All that time, looking over her shoulder, fearing capture at any point. It might be far from the truth, but I could almost understand if she felt a level of relief now, but then was this just a frying pan into the fire situation?

  We fell into companionable silence then, leaning against each other, watching as the sky slowly grew brighter, the new day dawning. We still had plenty we hadn’t told each other, but Kalia had opened up, a major question answered, and I felt glad I’d put my trust in this woman despite where I’d ended up.

  Once the dawn had fully arrived, the island covered in growing sunlight, we packed away our refreshments and set about our task again. Neither of us knew what lay next on our journey, but progress had to be a good thing, right? One step closer to earning our release.

  It still messed with my mind a bit that Kalia had been offered the chance to earn her release. It made no sense. She’d referred to Dater Five-J as the Asema Conglomerate’s most secure prison planet, so why allow her any chance of gaining her freedom? All I could think was that this was just some sick, twisted game. Did only death await us on this journey? It wouldn’t surprise me to learn that we had no real chance to make it off this rock with our lives. They’d already confirmed no one had done so in the last thousand years. I seriously doubted anyone had in the years prior to that.

  I shook that thought away immediately. If I dwelt on it at all, I’d never find the strength I needed to help Kalia achieve her freedom. And mine.

  “Right,” I said, shifting my bag onto my shoulders and picking up my makeshift weapon, “shall we get started?”

  Kalia nodded. “It’s not like we have anything else to do.”

  She wasn’t wrong.

  “After you then. Go shake a few bushes, and see if we can’t get this all finished off without dying.”

  Kalia shook her head, and a slow smirk spread across her red lips. “Oh, wow. Inspiring, Noah.”

  I laughed. “You know what I mean.”

  Kalia grinned back at me, hefted her table leg onto her shoulder, and headed off down the path, singing something about trying not to die.

 

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