After the first readying horn blew Diago was escorted into the room where the jynx was waiting for him. He was compliant and gave no resistance. Hopefully, this would keep the guards from being…well, on guard. Once the door was shut behind him, Diago was left alone and he got to work immediately. He went to one of the barrels in the corner and opened it.

  “Oh man, I hope no one actually gets a good look at this thing…it looks nothing like me!” Diago thought to himself as he pulled out the contents of the barrel. It was a dummy made of straw. It was his height almost exactly, but Thatch had added too much around the belly. It wasn’t much, but it was enough to make it seem intentional. That jerk.

  Diago continued to bemoan the lack of similarity while he undressed and put his clothing on the dummy. At the bottom of the barrel, there was another set of clothes for Diago to put on, as well as a tan cloak to help mask himself.

  Underneath those was Diago’s kurigan. Saarsken had it retrieved after Diago’s last race and it looks like Thatch must have found it after all. Diago smiled. He felt weird without it.

  After dawning his new clothes and securing his weapon, he went over to the jynx that had already been saddled by Thatch earlier. The jynx perked up as Diago got closer. It was rearing to race.

  “I’m sorry girl, I can’t ride you today,” Diago said, stroking the animal's forehead. It made that wheezing sound and Diago could tell it was unhappy.

  “I know, I liked riding with you too. We’ll do it again someday, I hope.” He hugged the jynx. This thing saved his life twice and he felt a tangible bond with it because of that. He hated to leave it, but he had no choice.

  This is what he was telling the jynx as he strapped the dummy to her back and guided her to the tunnel. Hoping that she could understand, he told her to run the race with this thing on her back. She must have understood at least a little, because when the last readying horn blew, she shot forward, out of sight.

  Diago felt a little pang as she ran off. Then he heard the latch on the door begin to wiggle. He rushed to the stack of hay in the stall and jumped in, using the cloak to cover what the hay couldn’t. The guards walked in and did a lazy inspection of the room to make sure Diago had left. They were satisfied with a few quick glances and left.

  Diago sighed in relief and went to the door. He turned back as the final race horn blew. Two short and one long. He spared a thought for the jynx. He also hoped and prayed to the Great One that he had made Wrayden angry enough. That little menace probably wanted to target Diago already, but Diago’s part was to push him over the edge. A task Aylah thought he would be able to accomplish with flying colors. Diago rolled his eyes, remembering her many snide remarks. He turned and left the room.

  The main focus for Diago now was to not get noticed. He had no trouble there. Too many people make for easy disguises. His tan cloak was more than enough. He was picking up bits and pieces of conversations from the crowd. He was only half listening, but he was listening. While his main focus was leaving this rotten place finally, he also wanted to know if the rouse had worked. From what he could tell, it had.

  “Did you hear? The so-called ‘Shadow of Tunaan’ was skewered the second he left his tunnel”

  “Figures..and I bet on him too”

  “So did I, his last race was incredible. Shame.”

  Diago couldn’t help but smile, not only were they not even questioning if he was dead, but they were still speaking highly of him. It was a boost to his pride. He was also able to pick up some other interesting pieces of information. Wrayden was his would-be killer. No surprises there. He also was the first out of the bottleneck, with no one even close behind. Apparently, Wrayden was the man to beat in this canyon. This is another reason why Diago’s victory was such a big deal to everyone. He also learned that a fight among jynx caused the net to rip open. Some of the more vicious creatures were able to break through and out of the canyon. The guards managed to get that under control, but corraling the dangerous animals and fixing the net was going to have to wait until the race was over. Diago overheard a few guards talking about Saarsken and how he had decided to watch the race from a lookout above the bottleneck. Diago wondered about that, but he didn’t linger over it. He just needed to get out. Time was of the essence.

  His last main hurdle to exiting the canyon was the main gate. This proved to be eventless, however, as many people were leaving the arena after losing money on the Shadow of Tunaan. No one seemed bothered that he died, just that they lost the possible winnings. Diago was annoyed by that at first, especially after the praise from earlier, but that changed when those who were saying those things also became his way out.

  He passed the guards with the crowd, walked out into the open air, and breathed a sigh of relief.

  The plan worked, or at least Diago’s part seemed to. He had no idea how the other two were faring. The main goal of the plan was to provide as much of a time buffer as possible so that they could retrieve Rayna before Saarsken could become aware of it. Diago’s part was the most certain, he would be dead, so no one would be looking for him. Aylah’s was next up, faking sickness with a drought that made you throw up was enough to buy a good amount of time. The one Diago was most concerned about was Thatch’s part of the plan. He would have to find a way to leave right out from under Saarsken’s nose.

  Thatch himself didn’t seem to be confident about his chances. Plan B would be to leave without him and rescue Rayna then come back for Thatch afterwards. Thatch was against this for a lot of reasons, but the reason that both he and Aylah latched onto the most was that the fade that spoke to Thatch said that he needed to go too. Thatch and Aylah had this way of talking about the Fades with a lot of reverence. He understood, but the way they talked about them made him wonder if he was missing something. He decided he’d ask about that sometime.

  Diago made his way through the dune lake just behind the forest near the canyon, trying his best to follow the directions Thatch relayed to him. The dune he was in was his least favorite kind. These dunes were in a part of the land where the wind would randomly pick up with ferocity. It wasn’t unusual to find pieces of trees and other random debris buried in the sand. This was why Diago hated it so much, he would trip on the debris constantly. Still, he persisted and made his way. He got turned around a few times, but after climbing to the top of a particularly tall dune, he saw it.

  Below, there was a small peninsula of forest jutting into a dry flat that was past the dunes. There was a singular spire that the tip of the peninsula came up to. The spire itself was a respectable size, though it was not particularly thick at the base. What Diago was looking at was on the edge of the forest. It was a small house. It was hard to see in the distance, but it looked pretty rundown. It was out of the way of main roads, which made it a perfect hideout.

  This tale has been unlawfully lifted without the author's consent. Report any appearances on Amazon.

  Diago took in the scene, while also scanning it for his companions. The wind wafted up toward him, ripping at his cloak and causing him to brace his eyes. Then the wind shifted. He turned his head from side to side to keep the sand out. When he did he spotted two figures crouched behind a small dune below. He smiled,

  “There you are,” he thought.

  However, his smile faded when he saw a patrol of two guards approaching the pair below.

  “Uh oh.”

  Diago considered his options, but the dune he was on was quite tall and his friends were far enough away that there didn’t seem to be any time to make it to them before something happened. That’s when he spotted a piece of wood sticking out of the dune to his left. He pulled it out. It was a portion of bark that must have been stripped off a tree in a wind storm. It was as tall as Diago and half as wide and It looked to have been smoothed by the constant shifting of the sand.

  “My luck strikes again,” said Diago smiling.

  He looked down at the slope before him. He closed his eyes and stepped back a few feet. He took a deep breath. His eyes shot open quickly and he smiled. He ran toward the topmost edge of the dune as quick as the sand would allow and jumped with bark in hand. He placed the bark under his feet as he fell toward the steep slope.

  He landed with speed and that speed only multiplied as he continued his descent.

  He swerved toward the angle of his friends, feeling the sand shift below his feet. Diago refused the urge to yell out with joy, even though he was loving every second of the ride. His goal was serious, but what’s the harm in enjoying the process of accomplishing said goal?

  In the closing distance, he saw the two guards inch ever closer. The wind was blowing against Diago so he bent down, giving him a little less air resistance and a little more speed. In short order, he approached the dune his friends were ducked behind. He had accumulated a lot of speed and was not slowing as he approached, but that was part of the plan.

  “Where is he? He should be here by now” Aylah tried to say over the sound of the wind. It had been blowing hard for the last few minutes and it was difficult to hear much, even for her.

  Thatch did not respond, merely shrugging and shaking his head. He continued to look over the dune and toward the hideout they were stalking with a concentrated stare.

  Whatever else would have transpired in conversation was interrupted by the very person they were waiting for. It happened in a flash. In one moment Aylah was looking at Thatch about to ask another question. The next, for a single second, Diago passed between her and Thatch and up the shallow embankment. In that singular moment when Diago was between the two of them she could have sworn she caught a look at his face. She would have expected to see a smug look, or a gleeful one, or something childish like that. Instead, what she thought she saw was the look of grim determination.

  Diago shot off the dune like a ramp. She and Thatch both had to turn to watch where he would end up. They were both surprised to watch as, in mid-air, Diago kicked what looked to be a sliver of bark away from himself and toward one of the two armed guards who were walking in their direction. Simultaneously, Diago and the piece of bark hit the two men. The bark hit the one guard in the head, knocking him out, while Diago collided with the other guard in the torso and they both fell to the ground. They both looked dazed, as did Thatch and Aylah. Diago recovered faster than the guard. He grabbed at his kurigan which had a fist-sized steel ball connected to it, the blugeoner, and threw it hard. It collided with the guard’s helmet. The dazed man was now out cold.

  Aylah watched with continued surprise while Diago paced over to the guard he hit with the bark. How could she have missed them? She guessed that the wind and shifting sand were more obstructive to her hearing than she thought. Neither she nor Thatch were ready for an ambush. Aylah looked again at Diago as he examined the guard. How is it that she had to be protected by this brash, annoying pest? “Hey,” said Diago with his back turned to them. Both Thatch and Aylah perked up in curiosity at the sound, but Aylah soon soured when he turned to face them with a smug look on his face and said, “Looks like you guys owe me big time”

  Aylah rolled her eyes and looked away, unwilling to acknowledge the favor. Thatch smiled and said,

  “I guess we do”

  Diago sauntered over to them, “Sorry I am late. Got turned around a bunch. How did your portions of the plan go?”

  Aylah had a flash of memories pass by in her mind. The smells. The feeling of worming her way through a hole that was only just big enough for her to fit through. The climb up the Canyon side. Finding a small pond on her way here and cleaning herself off as best as she could, but still unable to forget the cacophony of scents that her mind just couldn’t release from memory.

  “I don’t want to talk about it,” she said after coming to herself again, mood freshly soured yet again.

  Diago’s eyebrow rose in curiosity, but he didn’t pursue it.

  “Okay then. How about you Thatch?” asked Diago

  Thatch removed his eyes from being fixated on the hideout and looked at Diago, “Well, after I retrieved you and Aylah’s gear and set everything up I was called to the bottleneck lookout where Saarsken had positioned himself”

  “I heard some guards talking about that. They thought it was strange” Diago interjected

  “It is. Everything about him seemed strange today, but I couldn’t tell you precisely how. Anyway, after your dummy was taken out by Wrayden I-…I-…that’s funny. I-”

  Diago and Aylah looked at one another and then back to Thatch. “Are you okay? You look pale,” asked Aylah.

  Thatch shook himself, “Yes, I am fine, I just lost my train of thought for a moment. I managed to weave a thought into one of the guards and had him explain that he needed me to interrogate a man who had been swiping money from the tents in the main hall. We walked out and then I knocked out the guard when no one was looking and hid him somewhere out of sight”

  “So it worked!” Diago exclaimed, “But didn’t you say that it was near impossible?”

  “Puppeteering is near impossible. In the essentials, what I did was make my mental voice mimic the guard’s as closely as I could and then told him what to think.”

  “That still sounds very difficult,” Aylah said eyeing Thatch closely.

  Thatch shrugged and then resumed his position of staring at the hideout, “It-..it was nothing. What we need to worry about now is getting Rayna.”

  Aylah continued to eye Thatch but repositioned herself to make ready for whatever came next. Diago crouched next to Aylah. Aylah scooted an inch further away the moment he came close.

  “There is no need to be petty,” whispered Diago. It was a low whisper that Diago knew only Aylah could hear, “Listen, something seems off with Thatch. I don’t know him that well, but he seems to be acting strange”

  Aylah nodded, thankful that it wasn’t just her who thought so.

  Diago continued, “Keep an eye on him. Yours are better than mine.”

  Aylah looked back with a surprised and self-satisfied expression. Diago rolled his eyes,

  “Don’t get a big head tantoos, that’s just a fact”

  “There!” Thatch said, interrupting the near-silent conversation. Aylah and Diago looked to where Thatch was pointing. It was another patrol, but this pair was loaded with a pack of supplies.

  “That’s what I was waiting for. They change the guards every six hours. Once the old guard leaves, that's when we will go. There should only be two of them. The three of us should manage”

  It didn’t take long. After a few minutes, a few guards left the hideout and started in the direction of the canyon. Diago was jittery and wanted to rush forward, but decided to wait for Thatch to make the call. After all, more was on the line for him. After the guards were well out of sight, Thatch finally motioned for them to move forward.

  They closed the distance to the hideout in short order. They were less than twenty feet from the door when,

  “My my, what a mess you caused getting here”

  The three stopped in their tracks. Two spearmen rushed out from the side of the house and four swordsmen ran out of the woods to the trio’s flank while Saarsken stood on the roof, looking down on them. Looking much altered. The way he stood and the way he spoke was very different in comparison to the last time they encountered him. However, Saarsken’s change was not the thing that caused the most surprise in the three rescuers. No, what did that was the changed man’s next words

  “And to think, you likely would have gotten away with your plot, if Thatch hadn’t betrayed you.”