The Carnelian Fox Read online

When she’d pushed Sev back, Meesha dropped her snout and pumped water over her frozen limb. Yeah, the cold attacks had an advantage head-to-head. But putting enough water on ice made it melt…

  Soon the area around the otter was sodden and half-melted. Sev noticed and sent out a powerful, concentrated beam at the pool. He was trapping Meesha inside! Or he would if they had anywhere near the same level of power. The cub just couldn’t produce enough frost quickly enough to catch the otter before she escaped and slid out of reach on the next patch of ice. She pirouetted to face Sev and peppered him with more of her glowing projectiles.

  He twisted and bolted and even froze a couple mid-flight but come on, a cub against a mature Gem? I don’t know why I’d been this idiotic. I should have put Finn in, he was at least an adolescent.

  A flash of pure golden energy made me cover my eyes, squinting to see if Sev wanted to keep going. Oh damn. He was doing more than that…

  As the gleam dimmed, it revealed Sev.

  “Okay, guess you accidentally specialised too,” Eli said from over my shoulder.

  I hoped he wouldn’t want me to pick him up for cuddles anymore. Including his tail, Sev stretched almost as long as me now, but whippet thin with glossy, pale fur. Except at the tufts around his neck, back of the legs and tail where they crackled with red-tinged frost fire. He’d gained flame typing with his evolution. My third flame type. Like I gave a damn! He was magnificent.

  “You gorgeous hunk!” I shouted. “Time to bring it home.”

  Flames roared from Sev’s mouth, a pure force of scolding energy that flooded the ground and turned both the ice he’d laid down and Meesha’s pools into a steam that filled the room. Sauna time, nice.

  Then his beam flipped from a flickering red to bright white with a blue tint. With so much water in the surrounding air, Meesha’s frantic escape attempt slowed. Within seconds, the weight of ice dragging at her fur pulled her to the ground and Sev continued to spray the otter with his attack.

  “Stop,” Lourey’s voice cut through the squeaks of protest from his Gem. “I think you’ve proved your point, Sam.”

  He removed Meesha from combat and Sev turned to me with wide eyes. I opened my arms, and he ran over, knocking me flying. I wrapped myself around him and scuffed at his now warm fur. He didn’t have the chill in the tips anymore. I buried my face in his shoulder and stroked his nose.

  “You are such a good boy,” I whispered. “That was amazing. I’m sorry I can’t carry you anymore though. Maybe next time you evolve you’ll be able to carry me?”

  He nudged my cheek with his nose, then squirmed back onto his feet. That boy had way more dignity than me.

  “Are you prepared for the final fight?”

  “If I said yes, would you believe me?” I asked from the floor.

  “Convince me,” Lourey said, bringing out his last Gem.

  I had no options left, so I brought Finn out at the same time as his hedgehog. That thing was a spiky wrecking ball. Only an adolescent, same as my Gem, but its oak-coloured fur underneath the rose-tinted spikes showed it had the earth advantage over Finn’s flames.

  “Be careful,” I warned. “Let’s take this steady and wear it down.”

  Hedgehogs looked cute, but they had great defensive abilities and it would resist fire too. We were in this for the long haul.

  “Hopkins, defend,” Lourey directed. Damn, he was playing to his advantages already. Which meant I needed to use ours too. I mean, sure that thing was tough, but my fox had the power to strike hard and accurate. I just had to make my hits count.

  “Warm him up,” I said. I wanted Finn to start slow, not burn out too early and get tired. He responded with a gentle bath of flames in the hedgehog’s direction.

  Hopkins squeezed into a tight ball, covering every vital spot with a layer of razor-sharp stalagmites. He rolled forwards, trying to crush Finn like a bowling ball headed for a strike. Finn darted aside as the jagged boulder of a Gem rumbled past. A couple of the tips of its spikes charred, but the fire wasn’t having much effect. Hopkins veered round and span back in for another shot.

  As Finn moved, the ground crumbled beneath his feet, trapping his paws in shards of rock.

  “Lava!” I screamed.

  Pure lava dripped from his muzzle onto his toes, liquifying the stones holding him down in time for him to avoid the spiked ball attempting to crush him. I let out a shaky breath. Too close. We needed something better to bring this to a close, we couldn’t predict the hedgehog’s tactics well enough to draw this out.

  Don’t look at Eli. Don’t do it. I had to work through this. He’d just poison the crap out of anything that came against him, anyway. That was his speciality, I had mine. I was a proper flame focussed Prime now. That meant I had to be adaptive with my chosen type, even if I had chosen it by accident.

  Finn kept up his meagre assault on Hopkins, avoiding the stone shards bursting from the floor and the ground-shaking Gem’s body. I had to be better for his sake. What had we learned so far?

  “Okay Finn, trench him with your lava. Direct him away.” I hoped that made sense.

  Quick to please, as ever, Finn ripped out a gully in the ground with a beam of lava. It was only about a hand deep, but as soon as Hopkins hit it, he tilted sideways and rolled off course along the pathway. Awesome. Now how to utilise it? What if I dug out a whole pit in the bottom of the challenge hall to bury him in? It was a damn earth Gem, like he’d care about being buried. Come on, Sam.

  Finn criss-crossed the floor with trenches, destroying any hope of Hopkins maintaining a set course. Until he stopped still, and the ground knitted back together. Finn panted with the effort of creating such a high volume of lava, normal flames wouldn’t do anything to rock. Bloody earth type.

  “It’s now or never, get in there!” I yelled. At least the thing stayed still at the minute.

  Finn powered off another ball of lava, this time right at Hopkins.

  “Defence!” Lourey snapped.

  The hedgehog drew in tighter and pulled his body underneath so his spiky back took the full brunt of the attack. The spines sizzled, dripped with molten rock, a tip missing.

  “Again,” I said, “Push, Finn, come on!”

  My fox roared off another lava spit, hitting the same spot. My little eagle eyes. Hopkins shook with the strike and tilted, rolling back into a gulley he hadn’t mended.

  “There, Finn, open him up,” I pointed and waved like a frantic kid after their parent’s attention, I spotted the seam that contained his folded-up body.

  The spines gathered in a tight mass, but Finn’s struck with perfect accuracy. He smashed the lava spit into the minute gap, and the hedgehog lost his hold for a split second. It was more than enough. Finn rained down his flaming projectiles into the vulnerable gap that hid Hopkin’s delicate head and belly. The hedgehog unravelled. He arched his back and squirmed, stubby legs waving. I ached to tell Finn to stop, the poor thing writhed and twitched at the scorched patches of flesh. But Lourey hadn’t called it.

  “Okay, he’s down,” I shouted across the hall. “I win, right?”

  “He’s a defensive Gem, Sam. He can continue yet.”

  Finn doused his already-beaten opponent with one of his weaker attacks, a widespread flamethrower.

  “He’s barely moving, recall your damn Gem.” Time to get irate. He was letting Hopkins stay in pain just because he didn’t want me to pass.

  “Defensive manoeuvres,” Lourey commanded. His hedgehog twitched, slow to curl back in on itself.

  “Stop it!” I shouted. “You’re being an idiot.”

  “Are you giving up?” Lourey raised a hopeful eyebrow and smirked.

  No. No, I couldn’t. Not now, not after all my Gems had done for me today. I opened my mouth to tell Finn to finish the fight. But everything in me told me it was already done. That poor guy couldn’t even curl all the way up.

  I tapped Finn’s capsule and stormed towards the doorway. Screw this idiot and every other pretty
boy Challenge Master that thought they had the right to mess with challenges.

  My eBand vibrated. I glanced down. Ten points added to my total. The glorious fifty shone at the top of my screen. A message flashed up with congratulations for achieving my full licence.

  “A battle isn’t always about crushing your opponent, or getting all the glory,” Lourey said, his gentle voice thick with compassion. “Sometimes a Prime needs to understand when to back down.”

  He was right. This was it. I had a responsibility now. I had a full team, not a perfect one, but one strong enough to make a difference. This wasn’t the end of my journey. I suppose it was a new beginning.

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  “So, what’s next now you’re a licenced Prime?” Eli asked as we made our way back to the lodge.

  “You think I’d know by now, wouldn’t you?” A massive grin dominated my face, even with the constant grim ache because it should be Callum celebrating alongside me instead. It would have been brilliant to pass together. Or even better if I passed before him.

  “You shouldn’t rush into anything, enjoy the freedom. Strengthen your Gems for a while.”

  “I would like to bring all my cubs up to adolescent level, at least. I feel like a fraud still, like I just scraped that last challenge because my guys are epic.”

  “Hey, I’ve never even done a challenge, think how I feel,” Eli said with a raised eyebrow.

  “Yeah, poor you with your fully evolved team and a stack load of enhancements. Must make you feel like a right newbie.”

  “Plenty of people look down on us for not doing everything the typical way. Administrators tried to block me from entering contests before because I don’t have fifty points, full licence on my record or not.”

  “They’re just worried you’d ruin the contest by wiping the floor with everyone else, it’s boring for the crowd.”

  As we wandered along the cobbled streets, a huge weight shifted. I breathed easier; my shoulders floated as a lifelong burden lifted. I’d done it. Proven to everyone, including myself, that I could do this. The years of learning, working, scraping together the cash had paid off. And because of that, Zoe would have a simpler time of getting her foot in the door too.

  “I think I’ll go home. Just for a bit,” I said. “When I spoke to my sister, it made me realise how much I miss my family. She’ll adore Rolo and make a great Prime too. It’s about time my human family and my Gem family met each other.”

  “What are you doing about Lucy?” His voice dipped at her name. I wasn’t even sure how mad I still was with her.

  “Until now I intended to stay with her until she finished her challenges. I wanted us both to get there and support each other to the end. I figured I’d train my Gems up, take on a few of the challenge halls she was visiting for practice. But… I’m not sure I want to do that now. I can’t watch her do something that cruel and selfish again, you know?” My stomach fluttered, wearing away a layer of my elation. I didn’t want to give her the power to do that to me.

  “Well, that’s up to you. You aren’t obligated to her, Sam. Plenty of travel companions part ways during their journeys. Over issues like this.”

  “Did you? I mean, did you ever fall out with the people you’ve travelled with?”

  “Hmm,” he said, tapping his fingers together as he pondered. “I never spent too much time with a single person or group. Gems are better company, Lyle’s been there from the start and we’ve always got on. I’ve had a few heated debates with other Primes that I’ve met. But seeing as I had my full team, including Kira, before I came to this country, I never had to rely on other Primes to help me get around.”

  “What do you have to do back home to pass?” I didn’t put much effort into learning about the Ardite region to be honest. I was terrible at geography and other cultures.

  “It’s more like an experience than a set thing you accomplish,” he said. I looked over when he didn’t follow it with any details. He set his mouth in a grim line, forehead furrowed. It only made me want to press him more.

  “Like what?”

  “Like you go it alone and come back a full Prime or not at all. It’s strict there, Sam. There aren’t many Ardite Primes here in Vastica, but they make up around a quarter of the top fifteen percent of Primes ranking in contests. We start younger and push harder, that’s just how it is.” He jammed his hands into his pockets and chewed his lip. Damn, it must be harsh there to slam his mood within a millisecond of remembering it.

  “Is that why you came here?” I asked.

  “To have a good chance of ranking? Or because it sucks there? Well, neither. You can train hard there, there are tonnes of high-level threats around because the country has such a low population combined with horrendous terrain for travelling. We don’t have much in the way of set progression though. I couldn’t guarantee I’d get upgrades I wanted because there aren’t prize events. There are quite a few quests left over from when the original game was running to design, but in most you receive random rewards at the end.”

  “Well, I’m glad you came over. Bet all the people you’ve rescued over the years are too. Do you think you’d ever go back? What about your family?”

  “I don’t know. Not permanently, I’ve gotten used to always having a coffee shop within a fifteen-minute flight. And it’s nice being confident I can deal with pretty much anything that comes up on the SOS system…”

  “What, and you couldn’t back there?” My eyes almost popped out. If he was apprehensive about returning because of the threat level, I had a hard time understanding how anyone survived there at all.

  “It’s a place that’s grown unchecked for decades, Sam. Not pruned back constantly like you do here. Primes are out in your woodland every day. People aren’t up for scrambling through the Ardite mountains and cave systems to fight monsters that have been getting stronger for longer than they’ve been alive.” His mouth curled up at the corner, disrupting the pensive gaze he blinked away.

  “No wonder you’re such a badass.”

  “I’m mid-tier, remember? Not even part of that fifteen percent, you’ve got to get a lot tougher if you want one of those top spots,” he said, draping an arm over my shoulders and pulling me close. I hadn’t seen that coming. “And I think you can do it. You need to stop putting yourself down, your tactics were on point today. And your team has some real potential…”

  “Except Dew?” I muttered, snuggling into Eli’s delicate frame.

  “See? You know what you’re doing. I was about to hate myself for bringing that up.”

  “That makes me as bad as Lucy though. She already ditched him for his trait, it’s not like he can help it.” I despised that this wasn’t dragging me to the verge of tears, that I could talk about it like a business transaction. Was I getting hard-hearted too?

  “You have backup slots. He will still be a good choice in some situations, remember you can still grow your team. There’re no rules to restrict you to these exact Gems in every situation, some competitions vary the entry requirements. Like three of the same type, though you’ve got that down now, I suppose.”

  “You’re right. Even if I don’t run them all the time, they’re still part of the team. What about your backup?”

  “I store a couple, just in case, but I’m pleased with how these guys run. I’m focusing on maxing their potential before I split my time on anything else. But hey, how about less of the work talk and we celebrate your win? You mentioned something about chicken fingers?”

  ***

  We got back late, I swear that restaurant wanted to kick us out like an hour and a half before we left. But we were having fun, chatting and eating dessert. I didn’t want to get to my room and see Lucy. Watch her pinched face glare at me and hear her clipped tones tell me why I was the one in the wrong. I was the poorest I’d ever been since leaving home because of her.

  As we tiptoed down the corridor of the lodge, conscious of the other sleeping Primes, I dragged my feet.r />
  “She’ll be in bed by now,” Eli whispered from the doorway of his room while fishing in his pocket for his key card.

  “No, she’ll be training. She’s way more disciplined than me, I don’t get how I passed so far in front of her.”

  “Ever consider it’s because your Gems want to do well for you?”

  “Hers are amazing too, she needs to see that.”

  “Do you want to hang out here until she turns in for the night? I can’t promise I’ll be awake much longer…”

  “Yes please.” I didn’t need convincing.

  Obviously, the lodge room was exactly the same as every other one I’d ever been in. I don’t know why I expected it to reveal something of Eli inside. It wasn’t like I was seeing the room he grew up in or anything. Two single beds sat at opposite sides of the room, each with a small bedside table and a narrow set of drawers built of rickety, white-painted wood. The carpet was a drab brown, sometimes they were different shades, but that depended on how old the lodge was and how worn down the furnishings were. A desk finished the communal aesthetic, with a wonky leg every single time, along with a pair of chairs.

  Eli dropped his backpack at the foot of one bed and sprawled himself out on it, closing his eyes.

  “Do you always go for the one on the right?” I asked, perching on the edge of the opposite one. They were the most comfortable pieces of furniture in the lodge.

  “Yeah. Not sure why though.”

  “Me too, but only because Lucy needs the one on the left. It’s like I’m sitting on her bed, it’s quite terrifying.”

  “You’re going to miss her, aren’t you?” Eli looked over at me, his eyes sparkling.

  “Maybe. A little. She’s fun to tease sometimes. I thought there was something about her I was missing. You know, like a brooding, cold protagonist that has hidden layers and a heart of gold once you get past the walls. I’m not so sure now. She’s just herself. And I suppose that’s okay, there’ll always be people that only see what we do as a career. I see it like that. But I want to involve my Gems, so they’ll be as excited to progress as I am. She sees them as game pieces.” I played with the corner of the blanket, folding it into a triangle and back again, wondering whether Lucy cared if I’d passed the challenge. Or if it bothered her that I still hadn’t turned up at this time of the day. She hadn’t messaged me.