Chapter 139: New Challenger
{Music Recommendation: I by Entbient}
Atia stepped forward, his eyes gleaming with violence. The river was murky with blood from past competitors, the rocks stained crimson, and the torches burned brightly against the dark jungle backdrop. From this position, the crowds were bright, revealing just how big the tribe was and how many had gathered to watch.
Children were still up, wrestling and fighting, others playing, and many still chomping down on the feast left for all. There was plentiful meat to go around still. The Apatka wouldn’t need to eat for at least two months after this.
Sahco smirked, rolling his shoulders. "So, the cub wants to play," he taunted, loud enough for the crowd to hear.
Atia didn’t answer. His jaw clenched, his gaze flicking once toward Aiyana, then snapping back to his rival. Sahco followed that look and his smirk deepened. He’d known, he’d always known Aiyana’s little side kick, her pet was after more than simple friendship, and he had enjoyed watching his eyes wage war with his conflicting emotions.
This would be a great fight. When it was over, maybe then the cub would realise why Aiyana chose him.
Yara blew through the horn, signalling the start of the fight, and they rushed towards each other. They collided in the ring with a force that rattled the stones. Sahco lunged, intending to tackle Atia to the ground. But Atia knew how crocs moved, and he’d been watching Sahco strategically the entire time.
Aiyana had just been the catalyst today to finally unleash what he’d been holding back for so long. Before they became Tahraka, he just didn’t like the guy. Since, the mark symbolled his connection to Aiyana, he had to walk away from every encounter with this unrelenting thirst to spill the Apatka warrior’s blood.
Now, he couldn’t contain it. His beast couldn’t be restrained, chained back by words. This was a feast, was it not? The Apatka loved to rip flesh from flesh, break bone, pummel into each other to prove who was strongest. Well, today they were about to learn how powerful an enraged Oncari warrior was.
Sahco might be their champion. But to Atia, he had been nothing but a thorn in his paw. It was time to get rid of it before it became infected.
Sahco crashed into the rock with a hard thud, rippling the water around it, his chin cracking the stone beneath him. Confused by his sudden lack of balance, he pushed off the rock, ignoring the gasps and laughter from the crowd. He searched around him.
The ring was empty. No that cannot be right...
He was just too quick. The jaguar shifter had moved in a single heartbeat, similar to the speed of a vampira.
A whistle from above tipped Sahco’s head back. Mid-air, Atia was falling towards him, his braids floating above him, legs bent, arms ready. Then he struck out, his foot connecting flesh. But it wasn’t his head.
Last minute, Sahco blocked Atia’s foot with his forearms then grabbed his foot and swung him around. Atia waited until he released him and used the force to propel him into a graceful backflip, landing elegantly like a cat, crouched on a rock, hands braced before him as his eyes glinted in the firelight, locked on his target.
Tension crackled in the air. Sahco humiliated, Atia playing with him like a cat with his prey. Sahco narrowed his eyes slightly. His best shot was to get Atia into the water, or beneath him. Sahco was solid, pure muscle, but he was slower than this lean cat. It was clear once he had him in his death grip or he spun him in the water, it would be all over for the Oncari warrior.
Slowly, they circled each other, side-stepping along the rocks, eyes locked on each other, watching for a change in movement. Waiting for the other to strike. Atia’s beast rumbled beneath his skin. The crowds watched in awe as a ripple effect of his splodges glimmered along his skin in a flash before returning to normal. The only remaining jaguar splodges flowed down from his neck to the top of his shoulders.
His eyes sharpened, claws slowly cutting through flesh. Sahco grinned and let his own extend, then he lunged again. This time Atia dodged, jumping to the side onto another rock, and side kicked him in the face. Sahco grunted, his head knocked to the side, but he lunged for him again.
"Is this a game or will you finally face me like a man?!" Sahco snapped so the cat would stop playing games.
Atia didn’t move this time. He would Sahco believe victory was his. The Apatka champion slammed into him and their bodies crashed into the water with a loud splash, sending up spays that caught in the firelight.
The crowd roared and Aiyana shot forward to the edge of river bank, heart thundering as the pair were still under water.
Water erupted as the two warriors burst free from the surface, muscles straining in a violent grapple. Atia match the crocodile shifter hold for hold, refusing to yield, the rage simmering in his blood, burning brighter, stronger than the opponent whose entire strength lay in the art of wrestling. He proved he could match the croc in his deadly craft, with nothing but the wild beast in his heart, fighting to burst free for the taste of his blood.
Aiyana’s scent still mingled on the croc’s skin, sweat and blood couldn’t hide it from him, and it only sent him in blind rage. He broke free and slashed a claw right across Sahco’s eye. He roared out in pain, and the Apatka, they cheered for their champion’s pain.
Nobody had ever gotten so close, and now, blood pooled in his eye, white hot pain rupturing through his eye and skull. With one eye closed, the fire in his bloodstream shot him forward. Sahco’s blows turned punishing, heavier, seeking to break bone.
Atia took them, teeth bared, before answering with strikes of his own that drove Sahco back step by step. With one eye closed, and disfigured, Sahco slipped on one of the rocks, barely catching himself before he was cornered in the water against the boulder.
The crowd howled, sensing the shift, as Atia’s fury poured into every movement.
Aiyana’s breath caught in her throat. This wasn’t the playful Atia who teased her, nor the boy who laughed from the treetops. He was untamed, wild, and terrifyingly powerful. Kairan, help her, it stirred her blood more than Sahco ever had.
The fight raged on, each man refusing to fall, until finally Atia caught Sahco with a savage hook that snapped his head sideways. Another strike to the gut, a knee to the ribs, and Sahco staggered. Atia pressed in relentlessly, unleashing everything he’d been holding back.
Blood splattered across his chest and face, his half-up hairstyle, plaited, the way he styled it for war, was getting looser. Strands of his hair flanked his face, his focus on his opponent with the need to prove this scoundrel was nothing more than a water lizard trying to claim a prize far above its station: Aiyana.
With a final roar, he drove Sahco to the rock, pinning him down. The crowd erupted in a frenzy, chanting Atia’s name, drunk on the blood spilled in their sacred ring. Sahco’s nose was broken, bloodied, his face almost unrecognisable, his only good eye rolling into the back of his head, breath laboured.
The water rushed around them, silent as Atia stood over his fallen rival, chest heaving, his beast’s fury still flashing in his eyes. Slowly, deliberately, he turned his head.
His gaze found Aiyana in the front row.
The look he gave her was cold, cutting, final. A silent declaration: Sahco was nothing. Worthless. Beneath him. Beneath her.
Aiyana’s heart pounded, breath caught between shame, awe, and something dangerously close to longing.
What did this mean for them though? Atia was always protective of her, and just proved that Sahco was a waste of time. She’d already come to the conclusion after that mess earlier. Now, her heart raced, and she knew it had nothing to do with the exhilaration of the fight, the awe at Atia’s outrage and savage fighting, and more to do with him as a whole. It was becoming clearer now as her chest warmed, and heart swelled for the man bloodied, bruised and only focused on her.
Atia stepped back, dismissing Sahco who flopped forward face first into the water. Yara called the guards over before the river swept him further downstream. They took him away quietly as the crowds chanted Atia’s name over and over again.
He didn’t do it for the victory. Atia knew his strengths and weaknesses. He was more strategic than these brawlers. As soon as he’d seen Sahco back in that ring, he had to make it known—the reptile was nothing more than solid flesh with power behind every strike.
Although he might have unintentionally helped the tribe. Atia had also made something clearer to Yara. If strength alone defined the Apatka, then Sahco was the rightful choice to succeed her. But if ti was not, if cunning, loyalty and balance carried equal weight, then the future of their tribe was far less certain.
After others lined up to fight Atia, only to be beaten fight after fight. By this point, many were too intoxicated to notice their new champion was now an Oncari warrior.
None of it mattered to him. Atia’s gaze sought Aiyana’s as he strode back to the crowd, his strides long and powerful. His beast settled under her dazzling dark-honeyed eyes.
The same question he wondered about since he turned eighteen, echoed in his mind.
This yearning, this fire that erupted in his blood, the rage that had consumed him earlier, burned too bright to be something as little as being protective for his Tahraka.
Was there something more to us? Something... in the very depths of their being? Soul-bonded?