Flames

Chapter 2 The Mires/Stranger

Five days later

Raging heat coursed through Reika's enervated body.

Vehement waves of electricity, rolled over her bare shines. Ahead was another distraction, two burnt bodies poking out beneath a mound of black ash, on a hill of once sickly yellow grass.

She took long strides, biting her tongue from the searing electricity pulsating and shocking her nerves, leaving a taste of auremic fetor in her parched mouth.

The expansive table-land of grass was draped in charcoal, like snow on a mountain. 

The Mires sky was low and twilight-like. Puzzle crevices easy to get trapped in were over every hill, with Stakes patrolling their wide-ranging territories.

Diversions, that was the keyword.
Torment and sickness oppressed Reika enough to knock her out, but with grit determination she walked through the sparks.
It was impossible to give up after setting her thoughts on progressing to the Freestyles. She would break loose from these manipulating MIRES once and for all.
Spying an odd looking nook, she swiftly dropped instinctively on all fours, grimacing at the stinging mini multicolored bolts.

Raising half her body above the furious current, she concealed her lower half in the semi warm soot and flashes of deadly colors.

Amid the pops of electricity, a Stake rose from the cranny where her eyes scanned meticulously.
Lowering into the fizzing electricity, she winced at the full contact on her skin through her grungy black clothing. Her head bobbing above, she surveyed the powerful unsolid substance of the milky cloud like Stake.

"I can do anything" Reika hissed it in her mind.
She circled against the current up the hill. The grey sky met the slit in the parched black earth where the wind formed Stake, whirred.
Just one more month, and all that the word Mires stood for would be a memory.
The M for Mirrors to throw you off track, the I for the Itch to escape it, R for those who failed to get rescued, the double for the loss, encephalon, the time to really work your brain, and S to Stake.
Reika limberly pounced on the creature from the front of its air like stature. Wind from the shadowy Stake knocked her chest, sending her rolling into the hard packed, musty opening.
She frantically grasped the edge of shelf-like earth jutting out.
She had learned firsthand what occurred if you tumbled into a Stakes lair.
Her fingernails dug into the firm ground as the tornado life form cut into her body.
Years of training kicked in as it soaked her from head to toe.
The worst part was, electricity and water don't go pleasantly. Body blazing, her face felt as if a flame was held to it.
You never got used to the suffering they mercilessly inflicted.
The creature ruthlessly shredded the tips of her black t-shirt, imitating the whistling of hurricane weather wind. The Stake sprayed the ground with needle-like water droplets which splattered every area of open skin.
Reika trembled, plummeting farther down into the opening. Catching hold of another shelf of earth she yelped as a muscle tore in her arm. She was a rag doll compared to the seven or so foot Stake.

She ripped her voice raw because of the unbearable pain, using it as a war cry to gather her inner force. She was going to win the championship, that was the only way out of the Mires.
Peeking amid the torrent at her huge black army watch, she realized the Stake had inflicted more damage to her, in four minutes, than she had done to any of the others. It was all she could do to keep awake from the pain and endure the inflamed agitation of her dry eyes and the almost disabling panic.

If she held onto the chip like dirt anymore, it was bound to give way and send her hurling into the pit with more wicked creatures.
Quaking, she fell nimbly into the center of the Stake, using the strategy of drying the monster out.