Change of Darkness (The Change Series Book 3) by Jacinta Jade (best new books to read txt) 📕

‘Well, here we all are again. Or are we? Did anyone decide to sleep in this morning?’

Siray’s limbs went cold. She had forgotten that one of them had been thrown into the pit yesterday. She automatically strained her hearing to see if she could pick up any sounds from the direction of the pit, but there was nothing.

‘Not to worry,’ the captain continued confidently. ‘I’m sure we’ll find someone to keep your friend company before the day is out.’ He nodded briskly to one of his men, and the group of captives was ordered to march.

They followed the same procedure as yesterday, walking in single file to the door in the wall and along the corridor beyond before emerging onto the brilliant sandy floor of the arena.

This time, however, Master Herrin stood in the middle of the expansive space waiting for them, and the captives quickly but silently fell into their rows again. They didn’t have to wait long.

‘Off to your left, you’ll see a weapons rack. Each of you is to grab a wooden staff and return to your position. Move!’

His roar on the last word spurred Siray to action, and she broke into a run, dodging some slower Resistance captives in front of her. She was amongst the first few to reach the weapons, and as she stretched out a hand for one, an arm roughly pushed her aside.

In the process of stretching forwards to grab for a wooden staff, Siray was caught off-balance, and she found herself stumbling to the side and falling to one knee.

Yet Siray’s battle instincts kicked in quickly, and even as she fell, her searching hand managed to grab on to a staff. She used the momentum of her tumble to pull the staff along with her, swinging it around to where she knew her attacker was still standing. She felt the weapon connect with a body as her knee hit the sand. Then she was leaping back up onto both feet, bracing herself to continue the fight as she turned her head to eye her attacker.

It was Melora.

The curly-haired female had grabbed her own weapon and was now raising it above her head, a sneer on her face.

‘Halt!’

Siray froze where she was, fighting every instinct to do so, and by the look in Melora’s eyes, it seemed she, too, was debating the order. Siray didn’t take her eyes off her enemy, but she knew Herrin was approaching, as the other captives backed away sightly from them both, opening up a noticeable space around them.

As Master Herrin’s blocky form arrived next to them, he paused for an instant, assessing them both, before he spoke. ‘As amusing as it would be for me to watch this play out between the two of you, it’s not yet time for this type of exercise. Get yourselves back in line.’

Siray moved silently away, putting Herrin’s body between herself and Melora as they both stalked away from the weapons rack. No point in taking chances, not in this place.

She took her place in the row amongst her unit, registering Melora’s position down at the other end of the formation, and watched the remainder of the captives jog back with their weapons, Herrin quickly striding behind them with a staff of his own, a predator herding its prey.

‘I want the front line to take ten steps forwards, and the second to take five. Same for the fourth and fifth lines.’

The captives obeyed, and the space between the lines grew significantly.

Herrin barked another gruff order, and soon they were spaced out lengthwise in their rows as well, enough so that Siray would need to walk several places before she could touch anyone else. It made her feel more exposed, somehow, more vulnerable, knowing that her friends weren’t within easy reaching distance, and she could feel herself stretching out with all her senses, listening, watching, and feeling the space around her for any threats.

The main peril, as always, Herrin positioned himself before the group, his body clearly visible by all through the spaces in the lines.

‘Watch and follow exactly as I do,’ he instructed emotionlessly, ‘and you just might survive a little longer here.’

With that brief line of introduction, Herrin began moving his staff through a sequence of techniques, calling out names and numbers for each movement.

Startled, Siray moved her arms to copy, the others around her doing the same. As she raised her staff above her head and brought it down hard in a mimicked blow, her back protested, the edges of her injury burning as the recently scarred tissue stretched. She forcibly turned her mind from the sensation by putting all her focus into her movements, endeavouring to copy the training master’s techniques exactly.

After some time of repeating the stationary techniques, Herrin began incorporating foot movements while continuing to swing his staff in various attack patterns.

Concentrating hard as she followed along, Siray found that while most of Herrin’s routines were familiar to her, there were some decidedly different techniques involved. Sweating and panting as she twirled and jabbed forwards with her staff at an imaginary opponent, sixty other captives repeating the same movements, Siray perceived that the difference between what she had been taught by the Resistance and what she was being forced to learn here was aggression. The Resistance had shown her how to effectively put down an opponent—carefully demonstrated how she and the other Resistance members in her unit could disable and overwhelm an opponent and keep them out of action for a moment or longer and, if needed, how to kill if no other alternative was possible.

In contrast, Herrin’s approach was brutal, his techniques all designed to disable an opponent quickly and lethally, and to give no quarter until you had managed to do so. To the Faction, an opponent you had merely disabled was an opponent that would have another chance of killing you later.

In a way, it summed up everything Siray had learned here so far. Kill or be killed.

As she