Thirstfall - Memory of a Returnee-Chapter 94: The Game

Jacob sets his stance. Knees bent, weight low, arms wide—the posture of a linebacker reading the snap count. His eyes are locked on the nearest shark.

The cactus field is dense. Six feet between plants, nine at the widest gaps. Black spines everywhere, catching the faint tower-light like a forest of obsidian needles. Not much room to maneuver. Even less room to be wrong.

"Wouldn’t it be easier to send an archer out here?" I ask Boris. "Pick them off from range?"

"And how’s an arrow supposed to hit something swimming under the sand?"

"Make them jump out."

"That’s exactly what we’re doing." Boris tilts his head toward the field of spines surrounding us. "And we’ve already got plenty of arrows."

The pieces click.

Dodgeball. Use their own momentum against them. Bait the charge, dodge at the last second, let the cacti do the killing.

Ironic.

The first shark moves.

It locks onto Jacob and accelerates—a grey torpedo carving a furrow through the fine sand, its dorsal fin slicing the surface in a straight line that bends and curves between the cacti with surgical precision. The thing reads obstacles the way a river reads rocks. No hesitation. No wasted motion.

Jacob doesn’t move. He just whispers.

"Come on... come on..."

Twenty feet. Fifteen. Ten.

The shark breaches.

Two thousand pounds of muscle and cartilage erupting from the sand in a vertical launch, jaws spread wide, the flat head angled for a center-mass collision. Sand cascades off its body in sheets.

For a frozen instant, it hangs in the air—a grey missile with teeth.

Jacob rolls.

One fluid, lateral drop that takes his entire body out of the trajectory. His shoulder hits the sand. He tucks. His eye stops an inch from a giant black needle.

The shark screams past him close enough to shave the hair off his arm.

But the cactus behind him doesn’t move.

The shark hits it broadside. The obsidian spines punch through the grey hide in a series of wet, rapid pops—like staples being driven through leather.

The animal thrashes, ripping itself free, trailing dark blood and broken spines as it crashes back into the sand and retreats in a frantic, zigzagging burrow.

Wounded. Not dead.

"Ouch." Boris clicks his tongue. "Not an impalement. You’re getting slow, Jacob."

"Shut up and watch your own lane," Jacob fires back, already resetting his stance.

The other two sharks are moving now. Both of them locking onto Boris.

Two Rank-C predators converging on one target. Even for Boris, that’s bad math.

I rip a black spine from the nearest cactus—the edge bites into my palm, drawing a thin line of blood—and hurl it with everything my body has. The spine punches into the sand three feet in front of the left shark’s trajectory.

The vibration and blood scent redirect it. Its dead, glassy eyes swivel toward me, and the furrow in the sand bends like a compass needle finding north.

Good. Come to me.

It charges. Accelerates. The sand parts around its dorsal fin in a V-shaped wake that widens as the speed climbs.

The shark breaches—two thousand pounds of grey muscle erupting from the sand, jaws hinged wide, every needle-tooth angled inward like a bear trap made of bone.

I don’t just dodge. My hand drops to Eventide’s hilt. The blade hisses alive. I plant my feet and rotate into a lateral guard, the violet-black edge positioned to intercept—

The shark aborts.

Its body torques. The jaws snap shut. It twists away from the blade and goes back into the sand ten feet to my left, burrowing instantly.

I stand there, Eventide humming in my grip, staring at the spot where a Rank-C predator just chose not to attack.

Boris laughs from somewhere behind me. "You think it’s stupid enough to jump into a blade?"

He’s already moving—his own shark barreling toward him at full speed. Boris stands with his arms loose, axe flat against his back, his entire posture screaming, ’Unarmed, defenseless, come and eat me.’

The shark takes the bait.

It breaches. Boris drops. One clean roll—and the animal sails over him directly into a cluster of three cacti packed tight together.

The impact is absolute. Spines punch through the shark from three different angles simultaneously. The creature convulses once, twice, and goes still—pinned to the cacti like an insect on a display board.

Now I understand the mechanic.

They don’t calculate interception points. They sense hostile intent—the aggressive posture, the readiness to strike, the OXI signature of someone primed for combat. A drawn weapon tells them threat, and they won’t commit to a charge they read as a trap.

But an unarmed body standing still? That reads as prey.

Dodge, don’t fight. Let the field do the work.

I sheathe Eventide. Raise both hands to my mouth and let out a sharp, piercing whistle that cuts through the cactus field like a blade.

The shark’s furrow pivots. Locks onto me. Starts closing.

I glance right. Jacob is dodging again—his wounded shark came back for a second pass. He times the roll, and this time the cactus catches it clean through the midsection. Impalement. The animal goes rigid and doesn’t move again.

Just me left.

The shark is accelerating. The furrow in the sand is deeper now, the dorsal fin barely visible. Fast. Committed.

I spread my arms. Relax my shoulders. Empty my hands. Let the OXI signature drop to passive.

Come on. I’m just meat.

Thirty feet. Twenty. Ten.

It breaches.

This one is bigger than the others. I register that mid-dodge—the body thicker, the jaw wider, the skin darker. But I’m already committed to the roll, my shoulder hitting the sand, my body clearing the trajectory by inches.

The jaw sails past my face. I feel the wind. The scent of the spoiled meat. See the individual teeth close enough to count. 𝙛𝒓𝒆𝙚𝒘𝒆𝓫𝙣𝓸𝙫𝓮𝒍.𝒄𝒐𝓶

Clean.

Then something I didn’t account for.

The tail.

It comes around like a whip—a muscular, flat appendage that the other two sharks didn’t use because the other two sharks weren’t built like this one.

The tail catches me across the ribs while I’m still mid-roll, and the impact is a freight train compressed into three feet of dense cartilage.

My body leaves the ground.

I fly sideways, nearly hitting a cactus spine-first—feel the wind of them graze past my face, and I hit the sand, a shallow scratch stinging my cheek as I crumple in a heap of dust.

[OXI: 1,240/1,600]

The shark doesn’t impale itself. It lands clean, four feet past the cactus cluster, and pivots to face me with the unhurried confidence of an animal that just proved a point.

Its eyes are different. Not the flat, glassy dead-stare of the other two. These eyes have depth. Focus. The specific, predatory intelligence of an animal that sits at the top of its local chain.

Boris’s laughter dies.

"That one’s new," he says. "It’s an Alpha, kid."

I push myself up from the sand.

The Alpha shark circles. Slow. Patient. Reading.

I spit sand and wipe my mouth with the back of my hand.

I knew this was too easy.