Chapter 71: On Purpose (Part 3: Finale)

Maigh slung all fifty-five kilograms of him past his shoulder. As Milo fought for a swing, his stomach lagged a step behind the rest of him, up into the air where the girl had a clear throw.

She had been waiting for it.

A brick blotted out the sky. Both fists jammed the baton in front of his teeth, and the impact mashed his own knuckles into his lip.

Blood salted his tongue as the field traded places with the clouds twice.

Finally, the ground slapped the breath out of his back.

Over him, a shadow was already falling with a knife at its front.

But what a smaller size could do with leverage, Layla had shown him this morning.

Pulling his knees to his chest, Milo took all of the boy on both soles, gravel stabbing his arches, and kicked upward.

Maigh shot up to the sky, arms wheeling, right into the path of Paul’s brick.

Clack!

It ricocheted off the butt of the knife.

With the field upside down, the boy had still deflected the brick with the handle.

Apparently, that was the difference between spending years in Field and consulting a manual the day before.

Milo rolled to his feet and tipped his head back.

At the top of the arc, Maigh was twisting to face the ground, and as he started down, the point settled on Milo’s upturned face.

Behind him, the girl had the length of his spine to aim at.

While he could slam at the descending knife with the baton, he would have to tank whatever she threw at him.

So he did the stupid thing and dived straight under the blade.

Grass scoured his cheek as he skidded on his left side, where the petunia rested, and the knife’s draft cooled his ear.

THRGH!

Simultaneously, a grunt had come along with a brick’s thud.

"Maigh! S-Sorry!"

Before the apology ended, Milo was on his feet. Green and damp, the whole left side of his jacket plastered to him.

It had to be the left.

Three steps off, Maigh knelt doubled over the spot the brick had hit. As he pressed one hand under his arm, the knife drooped from the other.

Nothing guarded that wrist anymore.

When Milo raised the baton, the boy uncoiled and launched blade-first.

The distance vanished.

Milo meant to dash left for another dive, but the tug of wet cloth on his pocket froze him.

Whatever shape the petunia was in after its first trip across the grass, he wasn’t grinding it into the ground again.

Retreat meant giving up the opening the girl’s brick had made, which left him with the chest hurtling at him and no certainty about what lived inside it.

His microscopic company could all be in the soil. If Maigh was empty, the Gauge would take its share anyway, and the boy would finish the lunge.

...Convulsion. Him. Now!

Hhk—!

An inch away from collision, Maigh’s chest locked around a breath. His thrust stuttered. Above the dipping blade, his eyes flew wide. 𝒻𝑟ℯℯ

So that was where the particles had been waiting.

Careful with the air in here, boys. It’s the Plague one.

They had been right about him. They had only been early.

Milo slammed the stone baton into Maigh’s shoulder. The boy reeled sideways, one foot pawing for the ground.

Not enough.

Again.

Hhk!

The second cough folded him in half, stranding his knife hand in the air ahead of him.

On the land where a Warden had burned his flail away and a Calamity had bowed, a boy who had once only dreamed of standing up for himself planted his shoes in the dirt and lifted a Crude baton of gray stone above his head.

The stone cracked across Maigh’s whitening knuckles... and the knife spun free.

For a moment, both boys watched its flash in the sky.

It struck point-first and quivered upright in the Turning land.

Maigh was the first to look away.

After shaking his head at the knife, he turned to the hills ahead, his emptied hand hanging open at his side.

The piece had been his own. Nearly everyone else on the field swung whatever the carts handed out, yet he had brought a blade from home into a box whose rules awarded it to anyone who beat him.

Had he thought so highly of himself that losing never crossed his mind? Or had he dug up no omens at all on Thursday and would not accept being seen with a bat?

"Are you kidding me?!"

The black-haired girl stumped over her line.

"With your scores, Maigh? Your scores. Your scores and you couldn’t take some random dirty Studies boy?!"

Okay, dirty’s too far.

A gray shape blurred in its swing as she slammed the relic down on the ground. By the look of it, it was a baton.

"You could’ve done better!" she went on yelling. "I know you could’ve, I know it!"

Milo braced for the bark, but it never came.

Without a glance for her, for the knife, or for the Ashpicker who had taken it from him, the bully who used to be the loudest of the four walked off the paint.

From the neighboring squares, an instructor jogged over and steered him aside by the shoulder, presumably toward the exit. The man had been supervising three matches at once, theirs included.

The girl stormed after Maigh. She overtook him, ejected one more shout aimed at his ear before running ahead and fading beyond the hills.

The boy followed at a walk, shrinking with every step.

Smack!

Paul’s palm slapped against Milo’s.

Only that high-five made him realize how long he’d been watching a silhouette recede.

"Good job there," Paul said, facing the same hill.

"He always just leaves like that?"

"Let him be. Are you not taking his knife?"

The blade still stood in the dirt where it had landed, clean of his blood despite having slashed him.

"Are you not taking whatever the girl had?"

"Don’t need it." Lazily, Paul crossed to the other side of the box. "But rules are rules."

"Hold on." Milo raised his voice after him. "Is this some sort of scheme against me?"

"Like Maigh’d ever lose on purpose."

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⋆˚࿔ Coming right up: "Mud and Twists" ... ⤵︎ [!]