RoA A Battle Of Wits 1.3

The agreement had been made.
The focus was not on discovery, it was on combat.
The focus was not on luck, it was on skill.
But, may luck could still dictate the outcome, should the travelling brawl come upon the teleporter, wherever it was…

This battle was rough, to put it bluntly. Without the power of nature to call on, Leah's only hope was brute force. Sure, those tree trunk legs were bulky, but bulk doesn't help against litheness. But, Leah mustered all her strength inside her, and slashed out with her claws; despite how short they were while Leah was in this form, they still packed a punch, and beat Rehn to the ground, with a nasty scratch. The claws were slightly poisonous. Only slightly, but still, Rehn had been weakened a bit. The tables were not turned, more like levelled. But being scratched like that had given Rehn new fire within her. Angered, she leapt up, and then…

SLASH…

Rehn wore wristbands with golden discs attached to them, each with a small red gem embedded in them, and engraved with patterns depicting… lizards? Leah once thought they were just decorative. She was so wrong…

The discs were attached to the wristband by string, discretely coiled up most of the time, but when Rehn leapt, the string was loosened to a great length, and the discs were free… enchanted… bladed.

They cut a gash in one of Leah's legs.

Leah wailed as she experienced unbearable pain. Like blood flows through veins, her tree trunk legs carried nutrients. As so many vessels were severed, the pain was multiplied so many times. Her leg was so hard to move with all the pain. This gash would take a long time to heal. The battle had been lost…

"Well, I'm beat… go ahead and head to the teleporter…" said Leah, dejected.

"Yes… yes!" Rehn leapt up, full of pep and excitement. She ran off to the teleporter… and immediately stumbled.

"Huh? I've… fallen… Can't… get… up…"

Rehn looked behind her to see what the predicament was… sap. Sap that had leaked out of Leah's tree trunk leg. This battle was a pyrrhic victory.

"You know what they say, Rehn. Pride comes before a fall. Man… that stuff looks sticky. I think I'll be long gone by the time you pull yourself free."

"How do you know? You'll be limping to the teleporter! I'll try all my might!"

"Yeah… you do that!" said Leah, ambling away, continuing her quest to find the teleporter.

Rehn struggled to escape the sticky hold of the sap… but to no avail. She just exhausted herself… her eyes closed as she grew faint…

…

Blurred figures flickered in front of her eyes.

Black wisps, flitting about against grey.

Not this again…

Flashbacks…

They always happened…

Sometimes in her dreams, where they were forgotten…

Sometimes in everyday life, where they were silvers, slices of the mysterious past… too vague to make sense of…

Rehn was in a past that she had no recollection of… except through these flashbacks…

Her vision blurred as these wisps moved so fast… the exhaustion made it so hard to focus… but it kept her mind in the past longer…

She came upon a larger wisp… it seemed to shift more… someone in a cloak? As her mind recovered itself, the flashback became clearer, but harder to stay into… white light was tearing away at the edges of her sight. But the cloaked figure… it was a bit clearer… but she couldn't see who was within the confines of the cloak…

The figure spoke…

"So… you are lost… but we have found you. You will be lost no more. Maybe you will… find yourself…"

"Huh?" spoke Rehn uncontrollably, in a voice that was a lot higher pitched than normal. "You know where my parents are?"

"Parents?" replied the cloaked figure, with a slight chuckle. "You may be out of your mind… surely you don't need parents. I can train you… in survival. You will not need parents with my guidance…"

"But won't they worry about me?"

The cloaked figure snapped its fingers.

And as it did, Rehn's vision snapped too. The white cracks breaking her sight… leaving black behind.

Then… her true eyes opened… her true vision came into focus. Two odd aliens, a robot, and a small space shuttle were in front of her.

"Don't tell me…" she sighed, with an air of exasperation. "She beat me."

Meanwhile…

Leah had returned to the turtle, which swept across the swamp, in search for the elusive teleporter. Perched upon her ride's head, she scouted the bog, and, despite her crippling injury, she was so happy in the knowledge that her opponent would never be able to catch up. This race was in the bag…

And, a couple of hours later, she saw it. Built into the centre of a marsh, in the centre of an island, was the teleporter. A pod just like that which she entered when the round commenced, lined with metal, and bounded by open swing doors; the way they were swung open were like inviting open arms. She entered the swamp and slogged through it triumphantly, like those sports films and replays Leah once watched, except this slow motion was not caused by the power of editing, this was forced by injury and the viscosity of the swamp, but Leah savoured every minute of this victory, before leaping into the teleporter. The doors swung behind her and sealed themselves shut, and the teleporter booted up, flashed, and beamed Leah away…