Gorgoroth (Haladras #2)

FOURTEEN

The princess fought back a cry as a searing pain lashed her upper back.

I hate the flaming tongue.

Despite the pain, her mind was already centering on the next leap. Her muscles meticulously tuned their position, flexed and aligned, readied to spring.

139 cm, 57⁰.

She recited her mental calculations for the next jump-the longest jump.

57⁰.

Her brain dispatched the instruction to her body. In response, her right foot, her master foot, made a rapid angle adjustment. A fraction of a degree. In her mind, she saw the platform. Her eyes saw nothing but darkness.

Time for the leap.

Scarcely a second had passed since she landed on her current column.

Focusing her entire being on the takeoff, she leapt from the spot, her muscles responding in an exact coordinated movement. She felt that exactness, that absolute control over her body

Yet even as she sprung from her place of safety, she heard the hiss of a flaming tongue. It interrupted the controlled process of raw data in her brain, interferred with synaptic communications. Straining her will power, she forced the interference out.

The tongue struck at that same. It struck across her calve, hard and biting. The pain raced through her nerves, jolting her muscles. For a split second, it paralyzed her. The final thrust of her foot as it left contact with the column was lost. The full extension of her body to add momentum to the thrust, never fully reached.

She was airborne. No way to course correct, to add power to the leap. Would it be enough?

The airtime felt like an eternity.

She bent her thoughts towards the column, tried to calculate how short she would land. The leap was already just within the bounds of her capability. She required all her power to make a clean leap.

She prepared herself for a rough landing.

At the moment of impact, she knew she was in trouble. The balls of her feet came down atop the column, but her momentum was entirely depleted. There was no force to propel her center of mass over the column. Gravity was already taking full hold of her. It didn't matter that her feet were on the column, her body was not, and it would bring her crashing to the chasm below.

Without hesitation, the princess collapsed her legs, and eked out just enough momentum from the maneuver to pitch her body forward in the air. Simultaneously, she threw out her arms. Even as she did, they slammed onto the top of the column. The force of her downward fall was too great.

Her arms began sliding off the column.

Knowing that as soon as she lost hold of that column, she would fall to her death, she dug her finger nails into the course stone.

Still she slid downward.

With her feet and legs, she struggled to slow her fall by scraping them against the column's side.

She felt the lip of the column reach her palms. Only a few centimeters remained.

Then the top of her palm slipped over.

The first crease of her fingers.

Driving all her energy to her finger tips, she hooked them and held them as tight as iron claws.

Her toes, she drove like pickaxes into the rock.

She gritted her teeth and fought.

Suddenly she stopped slipping, arrested by the tips of her fingers and a single toe, jammed into a crevice.