Candi raced on towards the face cliff.

Because of Helene’s interference, she had lost ten precious minutes of rock scaling.

At the very start, the bird women had soared high into the air and landed on the plateau to begin their conquest. By the time Candi reached the foot of the cliff, Jenna and Anaïse had already reached the top and were speeding away.

She inspected the cliff, looking for the best spots to begin her climb. Her idea of following behind the nubs of rock that Anaïse left was abandoned immediately.

Anaïse climbed very cleanly, leaving almost nothing on the rocks to cling onto. She had used very little artificially-created hand-holds, preferring mostly the natural rock crevices and protrusions to climb.

Candi exhaled and flexed her fingers. She was one of the best cat burglars in LA. She could handle this.

As she feared, the cliff face was uneven and crumbly in various places. At several spots, whole sections of rocks fell away under her ax and hook and it took all her skills to avoid tumbling down with the tiny avalanches of small stones.

As she moved upward steadily, she could hear the whooshing sounds of the visual-capture hover pods behind her. They were relaying every move she made, from every angle.

Candi gritted her teeth and kept climbing in a slow and steady pace. There was no need to hurry up the face cliff and make mistakes that could cost her life.

The only thing that she needed to do was to survive this fight and reach the dais to remain in the event. It didn’t matter what order she came in. She had a spot as long as she didn’t die.

Fifteen minutes later, Candi had made it to the top of the cliff face. As she crawled up, she could see the flat grassy top of the straight cut rock.

Twisting her body, she collapsed with her back onto the grass, panting and heaving.

As Candi released her tensed muscles and waited for a moment to catch her breath, the visual-gathering hover pods whooshed above her, keeping enough of a distance to avoid throwing shadows over her face and body.

The visual pods zoomed in, capturing her exquisite face in perfect detail. This was the face that had won first place in the previous Face and Grace competition and they played that angle to the fullest extent.

The sun was shining directly onto her as she laid there in the soft green grass. Sunlight burnished her hair into a bright golden halo around her head as she looked up, smiling at the bright blue sky.

Everyone saw her curious tender smile. No one knew why.

In truth, as Candi looked up, she saw Slate’s pod hovering far above. It was the thought that he was watching over her that made her smile.

With him up there, she had no fear.

A couple of minutes was all she allowed herself to rest. She was back on her feet and running for the cover of the forest.

As she ran, she activated the mask that Jared had made for her. It quickly covered her visage, rendering her faceless but still allowing her to breathe normally.

The visual-gathering pods caught the moment her face went from angelic and bright to dark and faceless.

As the visuals zoomed out, they saw her dark body suit and suddenly, it was clear.

Suddenly, she looked like a female version of the Seven Princes of Erenveil, minus the wings.

It didn’t matter though. Within the dense vegetation of the forest, wings would not have been helpful at all and in fact would have hindered her as she sprinted from one area to the next.

In contrast to the bright and warm grassy areas by the cliffside, the forest was dark and cool.

Candi looked about. If she ran around forever to find this snake, she could look for days and still would not be able to find it.

She needed to call it to her.

She continued to run, deeper and deeper into the forest. There was no way to know exactly where the snake was, but if she stood somewhere in the middle and called it out, it could come to her from wherever it was.

Candi moved on, deeper into the forest. From aerial views projected into her mask, she could see herself as a tiny pulsating green point, approaching the central region of the forest itself.

Another fifteen minutes of running, and around her, she could also see the blue, purple, orange, and red colored points of the other women in various parts of the forest as they struggled with their own beasts.

Helene’s teal point of light was still on the beach platform. Half an hour after their fight and she was still lying there waiting for medical assistance.

A few more minutes of running took her into a small clearing. From the marks on the ground, it looked as if at least one other woman had come to this same spot. There was no sign of a struggle, so perhaps they were just passing through.

Candi found a relatively isolated spot and pulled out her rock climbing ax. She looked around and found a perfect tree limb. Then she began chopping away at it.

The trunk she had chosen was not that large, only about the size of her arm so it didn’t take that long to cut through. She cleaned the excess branches off it and chopped one end into a nice thin wedge, leaving the other end flat-topped.

Then she took the wood wedge out towards the small clearing and pounded the wedge side into the soft ground.

Once the wedge of wood had sunk one-fourth of the way down, she took her ax and laid it flat side onto the top of the wood wedge.

It was time to call the snake out to play.

Candi grabbed both ends of the ax and began to rub its length onto the flat surface of the tree limb. Immediately, there arose a sound that was similar to the gentle warbling of a bullfrog croaking.

VROOOOMMM VRROOOOOMMM VRROOOOOOMM

The rubbing of the metal against the tree trunk vibrated the wood and sent the vibrations into the ground.

The dirt around her began to move with the sound waves. Within a couple of minutes, little pale pink and white worms began to surface.

Five minutes later, the earth worms were wriggling all around her. She ignored them and continued to vibrate the ground. If she was lucky, all the snakes within the vicinity would start to appear.

Sure enough, four or five snakes began to slither towards the sound of her bullfrog fiddling.

Candi’s eyes began to dart in all directions. She had to clear out the snakes before the King Cobra appeared or she would be fighting too many creatures.

So far, the King had not made an appearance.

A rattling sounded behind her. She reached out and aimed her ax at the sound.

WHOOMPH!!!

Her ax cleanly sliced through the rattlesnake behind her.

Its head flew in an arch over her as its headless body reflexively slithered away.

Candi jumped towards the ax, grabbing it as she rolled back onto a fighting stance. Three other snakes were coming at her.

They launched their bodies simultaneously.

She fell back against the ground, and rolled away as they struck each other at the space where she had been. Their bodies twisted into a mess of knotted ropes.

Raising her ax high, she chopped into the central mess of snake bodies, cutting them cleanly into various parts.

The snake heads disengaged from their slithering cut body pieces and went after her.

They joined the decapitated rattlesnake head and surrounded her, their eyes enraged and reddened.

Candi ground her teeth.

It was going to take more than a simple beheading to kill these snakes.