150 The Grind - Part 2

ELIA

Reth had been right. Within forty breaths she'd mostly stopped feeling like she might faint from lack of oxygen. But then he offered her a hand to get to her feet and when she grasped it and let him tug her up, her muscles felt like jelly.

Then he nodded to the tree about eighty feet away at the other end of the clearing—up the rise. "You'll run a circle around that tree, then this stump twenty times, then wait for more orders."

Her mouth dropped open. Run? She could barely stand! But at the look on his face, she gulped and turned, tried to job up the incline, to the tree, then back down to the stump.

She'd thought running down the incline—which wasn't steep—would be much easier, but found herself fighting on every level. On the way up, her knees wanted to give way at the pressure needed to push herself up the rise. On the way back, she stumbled every time she braced against the decline.