Outworld Liberators-Chapter 193: Last Stretch of the Qualifying Round

As people closed in on Sackmace, Lonequiver, and Reelfisher, fate seemed to swing their way. It sent them a beneficial disaster.

Seventeen skeleton giants turned their skulls toward the press of living bodies. The air tightened. Then the world began to fall.

Trees, rocks, and slabs of compacted soil sailed overhead, slow at first, like a storm that had not decided where to land.

Reelfisher heard the first impact before he saw it. A blood crimson puddled. A shout cut short.

They moved like mortals who had learned to live anyway. Sackmace read the arc and hopped left.

Lonequiver slid low, boots scraping stone, breath whistling between clenched teeth.

Reelfisher felt the heavy umbrella pole in his grip and judged distance the way he judged current in a river, by pressure and sound.

Above them, the light was already descending, a pale shaft like dawn pulled into a rope.

It fell slow. Too slow to be mercy. They had seen it take Almsgiver earlier, lifting him like a leaf caught in a lazy updraft.

Some swore it was a god’s hook. Others whispered it was a necromancer’s net. Either way it moved the same. It chose. It pulled.

Reelfisher tasted grit and made his choice.

"You two go first," he said.

"No," Sackmace and Lonequiver answered together, anger in their face.

"I have a plan," Reelfisher said, and forced himself to keep his hands steady.

They huddled behind a shattered boulder for cover as another chunk of soil slammed down, bursting into dust.

Reelfisher leaned in close, voice low, fast, a procedure spoken like prayer.

"Reelfisher drops weight. Everything but the eleven flags."

"I hook you, swing you, you grab the light, you unhook."

Sackmace’s jaw tightened.

"And you?"

"I swing you next. You keep the belt. If it slips, you pull yourself higher. Then Reelfisher cover me."

Sackmace’s eyes went hard.

"That leaves you last."

Reelfisher pointed at the people in a frenzy, and at the army of skeletons closing in behind them.

"Do we have a choice?"

They stared at him, anger first, then the calm that came when there was no better option.

Reelfisher heard arrows in the distance, the thin, high sound of shafts cutting air.

People were closing in, not wolves, not beasts. Men. All hungry to grab the door to cultivate.

Sackmace exhaled once.

"It would work."

"It needs to," Reelfisher said.

Lonequiver moved first. He threw off anything that slowed him, blades, pouches, even the coat stiff with dried mud.

Metal clattered against soft grass. He kept the eleven flags, cloth and wire snapping in the wind like angry tongues, along with ninety bolts.

Enough to shoot down men with greed in their hearts as they came through the light.

Reelfisher clipped the hook to Lonequiver’s belt and set his feet.

The fishing pole flexed under his hands. A fishing rod for men.

"Do it," Lonequiver said, and braced.

Reelfisher swung him.

For a heartbeat Lonequiver was a heavy weight at the end of the line, then he became a launched thing, body arcing up toward the descending light.

Lonequiver’s fingers brushed it, then the light reacted, thickening around him. It held him. It lifted him out slowly.

Lonequiver’s unbuckled the hook at once and let it fall. The hook dropped like a dead fish and Reelfisher caught it without looking.

"Next," Reelfisher said.

Sackmace stepped in. Reelfisher hooked him and swung him along with it.

He did not remove the hook from his belt when he reached the light.

Sackmace’s two hand clamped the strap as the light took him too, tugging him upward.

The moment the two of them hung in the air, the world changed its mind about who mattered.

Arrows and bolts started coming in, a black swarm aimed at the man left on the ground.

Linen screens shivered in their frames, showing the audience a point of view so realistic.

The reason was simple. The sins of men had started to feed the ghosts and wraiths operating the One Sight One Display Ghost Arts, making their dulled comprehension better.

Through the weave, Sackmace filled the cloth in bruised detail, sweat beading on skin stretched too tight, a mortal face set against falling a rain of arrows.

On another screen, silent excitement could be felt as they cheered for another star, Youngbanners.

His men found him in ones and twos, slipping out of smoke and rubble, more than half of the band reuniting by luck.

The skeleton giants stood like towers in the distance, ribs like scaffolds, skulls tilted as if listening.

They were sensitive to anything that moved, anything that lived. Youngbanners had proof enough now.

Every time a crowd bunched up, the giants aimed.

"Stone’s throw spacing," he ordered.

He picked up a rock and lobbed it to make the point.

"If you can hit a man as you throw a stone, you are too close."

His men spread out, each one alone, each one close enough to see another’s eyes.

The giants adjusted. Their attention slid off Youngbanners’s line like rain off oiled cloth.

Not gone, not safe, just less interested. A boulder whistled past and shattered on the far side of the field, aimed at a louder cluster that had not learned.

"See," Youngbanners said.

He kept his voice calm to keep their hands steady.

"They want groups."

Ahead, two pale shafts began to descend, light turned into pillars, slow as a judgment.

Beyond them, the horizon stayed empty. No other lights. Not within ten kilometers.

Youngbanners and his men reached the outskirts of the descent light.

People gathered there in small, careful intervals, watching the light.

Flags marked who could go. Some clutched their banners like holy cloth. Some held them like knives.

Youngbanners saw the hesitation, the soft hearts, the ones who had not yet done what this field demanded.

He saw opportunity too.

A man in plain wool shook his head when Youngbanners’s tried to block him, his expression ferocious.

"Let me pass."

Youngbanners nodded once. It was not anger. It was arithmetic.

"Take his flag," he said.

The man tried to back away. A blade flashed. He dropped to his knees, then his side, breath gurgling into dirt.

His banner was ripped from his hand before the body cooled.

The crowd went quiet in a new way. A woman with a pale scarf stared at Youngbanners as if trying to name him.

Another man spat and thrust his own flag forward, shoving it at Youngbanners’s footman as if offended by the whole exchange.

"Take it then," the man said.

Youngbanner accepted the banner anyway. His men formed their spaced line at the rim of the pillar.

Tabulae walked with seventeen flags hugged to her chest, all of them duds, all of them heavy as stones when men were watching.

Spears bristled along the lane, their tips catching the pale glow.

Her mind was already spinning on a plan. Do not look eager. Fight for at least one of the flags.

If she looked eager, they would spit the truth back at her.

Then she would be another body in the dust, another lesson for the next one who tried to be smart.

A spearman stepped into her path and pointed at the bundle.

"Young girl, give me your flags, then you could pass."

Tabulae let her mouth fall open. She let her eyes shine. Tears took effort.

Her heart was too quick to laugh, not to cry, but she forced breath into her throat until it shook.

"Sir," she said, voice thin. "Can I keep one of them?"

She held out sixteen flags with hands that tried to tremble in the right places. Yellow and red and plain white, all stamped with false marks.

Her fingers clung to one common yellow banner, the one with two simple arms like a regular man. A dud like the rest.

The spearman’s face hardened. The glow made his teeth look sharp.

"Ugly girl, be thankful we let you keep your life," the spearman scowled.

He lifted his spear an inch.

Tabulae flinched like she meant it. She let the yellow flag slip from her grip. The spearman picked it up.

She had already slid the true flags into her pants, wedged tight against her leg beneath cloth and wrap. Folded small.

Pressed flat along her inner calf under the wrap. It scratched her skin and drank her sweat at once.

If she bent her knees, it would shift. If it shifted, it might show.

So she did not bend. She bowed her head. She walked on with empty hands.

The lane opened toward the pillar of light, and people in scattered knots watched her pass, some with pity, some with hunger, some with the blank stare of those who had already decided what they would do to live.

Tabulae felt a man’s gaze snag her like a hook. Youngbanners stood near the rim, flags tucked under his arm, face turned her way for a heartbeat.

His eyes lingered. She kept her shoulders slumped.

Thin. Underfed. Not worth the trouble.

He shook his head, snorted, and looked away.

On the Arena, people who had bet on Youngbanners snarled like animals.

"Why’re you letting her go, Youngbanners? She nicked two of your flags!"

"Use the head on your shoulders, not the one in your breeches!"

"Too young, that one, far too young. Still won’t look at a woman unless she’s his sort."

Tabulae raised her hand and covered part of her face like she was ashamed to be seen.

It helped hide the way her lips wanted to curl.

Tabulae stepped into the light.

Hair lifted on her arms. Cloth tugged at her sleeves. The glow wrapped her ankles, then her knees.

Her face stayed pinched in public sorrow. Her eyes stayed down. She did not dare glance at the spearman again.

Inside her skull she smiled so hard it ached.

Her legs remained straight, stiff as posts. She could not crouch. She could not stumble.

If she did, the fold would shift and the flags would show.