Mercenary. Scrapper. Part 2. Damantha Makarova

the tangled roots, covered in thorns. Now her torn and bloodied clothes made much more sense. The centipede slowed down at the short tap on its chitin armour on her back and stopped right next to the place, where Serena was found hanging unconscious.

      The woman jumped off the creature, walking up closer and taking a good look around, thinking how long of a fall she experiences that day. Realising that her hover bike was somewhere on the top of the tall cliffs, Serena grabbed her hair in frustration.

      “Fuck!” she hissed, not knowing what to do.

      She lowered her arms and thought for a few more moments, before walking up to the rocks, jumping and pulling herself up to the first of many jagged boulders protruding from the cliff wall.

      “Where do you think you’re going?” Wolfin asked her.

      Serena didn’t stop for a single moment, climbing up:

      “I need to find my hover bike.”

      “Get back here, you’ve barely recovered!”

      “Oh, fuck off!” the woman hissed, already feeling her body beginning to ache, but continuing her way up.

      “Serena!”

      This time she didn’t answer, forcing through and just reaching up and pulling herself to the next rock. Ignoring the aching and the trembling in her body, she managed to get quite high up before feeling her fingers slowly starting to slip, losing grip.

      “Shit!” she growled, looking for a bit of a shelf to climb to and have some rest.

      She heard the clattering and rumble somewhere near and closed her eyes, pressing her forehead to the stone wall.

      “Scorpi!” Wolfin’s voice sounded right beside her.

      She looked to that side and saw the man grasping at the spikes on Dalilah’s spine, while the beast stood on the wall, as if it was used to climbing such steep cliffs.

      “Serena, please!” Wolfin reached his hand out to her, offering her to grab hold of it.

      The woman looked up – the edge of the cliff almost as far from her, as when she began her ascend – and felt her resolve leaving her.

      “I know you can do it!” Wolfin said, his voice ringing. “You’re strong and stubborn! You can climb anything! But right now, I am offering you to spare yourself the trouble and the time of climbing this cliff on your own. Come on, give me your hand and we’ll go and find your bike together.”

      Serena took a look down and felt her head spinning – she managed to get quite a ways away from the ground.

      “Fuck…” she looked to the hand Wolfin was offering her, and understood that he was right.

      Gritting her teeth, the woman took her left palm off the rocks and reached out, but as she shifted her weight, something under her feet cracked and she slipped down. If it weren’t for the quick reaction of Wolfin and his ride, she could have easily fallen from the cliff once again. The moment she started falling, the man caught her wrist and Dalilah clattered with her mandibles, beginning to climb once more, finding the tiniest footholds for the hundreds of legs this beast had.

      Wolfin pulled Serena up behind him, not letting go of her hand, even though she caught herself on the back of his centipede. The woman watched the rocks and roots flying by – the creature Wolfin tamed was almost as fast on the vertical surface as it was on horizontal. Very soon Dalilah screeched quietly, twisting over the top of the cliff and finally coming to a stop.