Pain radiated from Rayla's right side, setting her mind alight with every step she took. The angry rush she had felt when Callum had shown himself and Azymondias had subsided and given way to a rueful worry.
As the camp came back into view, she slowed her approach and dropped to the ground. She regretted it immediately as the pain became too much to bear, making her almost black out. She rolled over to rest on her back.
It seemed like hours since the last positive thought she'd had, even though in reality barely one had passed. She smirked helplessly and remembered his face when he had given his spiel about the cliffs of friendship.
The odd star twinkled through the canopy. Crawling on a broken rib was out of the question, so she got up to a low crouch – which was already painful enough – and carefully snuck through the bushes.
The huge fighter was silently sitting in the ring of firelight, tending to himself. Rayla found the tree where she'd hidden the other men. They were all still there, tied up and knocked out. The guy she had last tried to hoist upward laid face down in the underbrush. She untied the hoisting line, coiling it over her waist and sat him against the tree so he'd breathe more comfortably. Here she also found her swords. "He may be massive - but he is very careless."
Rayla circled the campground and found another bounty hunter, laying close to an alarm line. He was very much dead. "Price of failure with a demon as a leader", she thought, now utterly disgusted.
She carefully climbed into a tree that put her mark in plain view. The hunter was now busy rummaging through their belongings, leaving every single item her and Callum owned strewn haphazardly all over the ground.
She took in the scene, looking for ways to disable her opponent. There were lots of trees, a few smooth boulders that had been left here by receding glaciers and a sinkhole in the ground that she found very interesting. If she could manage to lure him there, she felt it was possible to drop one of the bigger rocks on him by using the rope and nearby trees as pivots. She shrugged mentally. "That's the best I have".
She prepared her trap carefully, moving a rock close to the edge of the hole, wrapping the hoisting rope around it and using a young tree as a pivot. She tugged and the rock moved in a direction she could work with.
"Now to get him to come investigate...", she thought, looking around. She decided to try a small rock first. It thudded loudly as it hit the rocky bottom of the sinkhole. He looked up, but didn't move right away.
"Great, he's also slow!", she thought with exasperation and threw a larger rock.
This one got his attention. He stomped in her direction, saw the hole and immediately crouched. Due to his size, this did not hide him at all. Rayla fought the urge to snicker.
He crept up to the edge of the hole and glimpsed inside. Being human, he would see next to nothing. Grumbling, he dropped over the edge and bent over to check the darkness under the overhanging earth. Rayla pulled. With a dull crack, the boulder hit his head. He grabbed at nothing, staggered, then collapsed.
Rayla immediately jumped into the hole. Landing made her wince in pain once more. She cut the hoisting rope off the rock and tied him up. If he were to struggle, the rope would tighten around his neck. Then, she checked for his vitals. He was heaving shallow breaths. "Oh, I am so good", the elf smirked. She then made her way out of the hole.