A chance that had been torn to shreds.
I had been training for those five tasks my entire life. I knew what to do.
Now, I knew nothing.
“We wish you all luck in your endeavor, and will greet the new Chosen once they have awakened from their kiss with magic running through their veins.”
Ilyan’s final words were drowned out as the screams of anger increased, the low grind of stone and steel echoing over the room as the many doors to the Gauntlet opened.
“Oh my god,” Tasha moaned, turning around to face me with wide eyes. “It’s starting and we aren’t there!”
Everyone raced toward the open door, pushing Tasha and I closer to what should have been our sure thing and compressing us in the mob that my father had warned us about. The mob that could easily destroy our one chance at success.
“Hold on to me, I think I can get us through,” Tasha grabbed my wrist as she tried to break me through the crowd, but I pulled away from her touch.
“You’re on your own, Tash. If you’re lucky, maybe I’ll see you on the other side.” I gave her a shrug and pushed my way into the crowd, leaving her screeching behind me.
She wasn’t my problem anymore.
I didn’t even look back as I vaulted over a small girl who had reduced to pathetic tears and pushed passed Miko Christiansen, the first-born son of a Chosen who worked in the King’s office. He looked as shocked and bewildered about what had happened, although with one nod it was clear he wasn’t going to let it stop him.
There were five hundred more people to fight through the Gauntlet and only two hundred people to get through.
I didn’t care what was ahead of me. I would still be the first.
5
Gemma
"Who is ready for a party!" Eddy yelled to the left of me, the mob of Undermortals that were pressing in on all sides erupting in a scream of excitement and joy. Stark contrasts to the panicked shouts from the Goldens who were still trying to bust their way into the Gauntlet like they were fighting over the first bit of rat.
“Who is ready to sparkle?” The answering yells were accented by fists plunged into the air, screams of war echoing in my ears as the wall of my people raced passed me, throwing themselves into the massive ebony entry that would hold our fate.
Or end.
I would gladly take both. I was ready to face both. Didn't matter how as long as I finished what I came here to do.
"Ready to melt some jewels off their gilded crowns?" I asked to no one in particular, taking one last look at the platform that the royals had stood on a second ago.
The dais was as empty as the massive hall. It was just us and the trash. Literally. The floor was littered with hundreds of those instructions cards, trash, and even a few pools of blood from some altercation as people had tried to get into the Gauntlet first.
Me, Ed, Adrian, Aria, and a few of the others who always tried to plaster themselves to my side would be the last through.
Perfect.
"Let's go, babe," Adrian said, attempting to nuzzle my ear, but I pulled away, leading the last charge through the door and into war.
I was screaming, ready to rip whatever waiting for me into ribbons.
Instead, I was thrust into a suffocating hell.
Air vanished, replaced by a wall of black and ebony that pressed against me until I was sure I could hear my bones crack in my ears. Or I hoped it was bones. I didn't want to think about what the other option was, and if I died from a parlor trick and a cracked skull before I had a chance to light stuff on fire I was going to be really pissed.
Attempting to scream away the pain, I willed myself through the suffocating nothing, screaming and pressing until with a loud pop I fell to the ground. My knees compressed hard against stone, my joints rattling, my lungs burning as they took in air.
Or ash.
Mouthfuls of the stuff were coating my tongue, lining my throat and sending me from heaving to choking as I looked into the flickering light. Into the exploded world that hadn't been here a second ago.
The train station was gone. The high stone walls, and painted murals. Everything and everyone was gone.
I had somehow been transported to a world that was on fire.
Colorful flames licked over buildings and painted the sky like blood dripped in oil. Sparking fire trailed over cobbled roads like snakes, bursting from the sewers and burning through the windows of the fancy homes the Chosen sneered down at us from. It was beautiful the way the opulence burned, the way the pride of our oppressors melted into screams.
It was exactly what I had been dreaming of for years, it was exactly what I had wanted.
Which is why I knew it had to be wrong.
Well, they said they were tests. I wondered what dumb thing I would have to do to prove myself worthy.
"Really?" I scoffed as ten Chosen ripped their way out of the closest burning building, men, women, and children prancing and screaming in contrived fear. "You think this is going to trip me up?"
I rolled my eyes as the poor, defenseless, chosen continued their potty dance and made my way over to them, pulling the large laminated instruction card out of the bag they had given me on check in.
There was also a knife, some rope, and a piece of flint in there. Guess I was going to have to make fire later, too.
"Help us, please!" One of the Chosen screamed in my direction the moment I was within earshot.
Cue the eye roll, I really didn't even need the instructions to know what they wanted me to do here.
Task One: This will test your compassion. Save those with less than yourself in a display of sacrifice and heart.
"Less than yourself?" I scoffed as I looked from the card to the now teary eyed chosen. "Whatever."
I shoved the card back into the bag, and took the last few steps to the Chosen.
"Come with me, scumbags," I snapped, causing all of the Chosen to both jump and cower simultaneously. They looked like a litter of pups we rescued from a testing facility last year. It almost made me forget how terrible they all were.
And then they had to go ahead and open their mouths.
"Fecking Drain," the one closest to me snarled, the girl of no more than ten recoiling against what I was sure was supposed to be her parents.
“Wow. Nice language kid, even I’m not that vulgar.” I snapped. I didn’t even flinch when the ground rattled with an explosion from a few blocks over. They went back to whimpering and cowering, however. “Come on, let’s go.”
"Why would we want your help?" The kid’s parent continued, while she spit at my feet.
Nice.
"Because otherwise that building is going to collapse on you pretty little face and turn you into a pile of human goo.” I smiled wider, while they all flinched at yet another explosion. “That and I am your only option to navigate the sewers. Which is clearly the only safe place left. Take it or take it. I'm not giving you much of a choice."
I pulled out the knife in the bag for effect, causing all of them to scream and cower more. I didn’t restrain my laugh that time. They looked freaking ridiculous.
"Come on losers, let's go," I waved the knife toward the open manhole a few feet to the left. They really made this too easy.
The Chosen, however, didn't budge. They cried, cowered, and clung to each other like they had been sewn that way. It wasn't until I brandished the knife a few times and another building off to the left exploded that I was able to herd them.
"Are we your prisoners?" another one of the kids asked, their voice shaking. Poor kid, this apocalyptic war-zone was probably the scariest things they had ever encountered. They wouldn't survive one day underground, and forget about a raid from the CCC. They all would have soiled themselves. Maybe they already did.
"Naw," I scoffed, putting the knife away when we got to the open drain. "I don't keep pets. In you go."
One by one they dropped through the open sewer, still screaming and crying as the world burned, as the
earth rattled as building after building fell to the ground.
"Who knew Chosen were so weak," I laughed to myself as the dark sewer swallowed the last kid, and I jumped after them, ready to get them to the next sanctuary, or whatever was required.
When I touched down, however, they were gone. The darkness had turned to brilliant sun, the sewer now the ruins of a building that looked like the MidCity stop, you know, if it was outside and covered in gold. The place had no roof, although tall stone arches still stretched over the expanse like ribbons. I had seen that in the tunnels before, except I had never seen a sky this blue, seen clouds so white.
It was beautiful. I stood there staring at it, letting the colored sun that streamed through the flowered windows hit against me, it painted me with a sun I didn't know existed.
It was beautiful. Even in ruin, it was beautiful.
I stood. I breathed.
Until a sound I had heard only once before, when a tiny beast had bitten the skin above my elbow, ripped through me. Once was enough, I would never forget that sound. A high-pitched screech of a Vilỳ.
My heart plunged into my gullet, my bones rattled as I shook, as I stared at the pile of rubble that was now starting to shift and heave. As the scream began to multiply.
"Shit." I snapped, grabbing the knife out of the bag. I could easily end the thing with a bit of magic, but it wasn't worth it to use the stuff before the final task. I didn't know if anyone was watching, and I still had bigger plans than picking off a Vilỳ or two.
I held the cold metal thing toward the still shifting rock, toward the bat-like wings and weathered flesh of the monster who poked his head through stone as simply as if he was bursting from hell. Maybe he was, only hell could produce a creature so ugly, with fangs as long as my pinky that dripped with poison, and eyes so red they looked like pools of blood.
"Damn demon bird," I snarled, quickly checking the card to find out how many of these bastards I had to kill and how.
Task Two: This will test your bravery. You must face the world created by the ones who would destroy it. Run from that which you want most to survive, and find the value in fear so as to rebuild the world.
"Run? Yeah, okay. No questions there." Knife in hand, I turned, scanning the ruin for some exit or hiding place. I mean, if you were supposed to run there had to be an exit.
Predictably, there was a door inset into a crumbling wall in the far corner.
"Really? A door?" Gawd, these Eternals had no imagination.
Holding the knife tight in one hand, just in case, I booked it over the piles of rubble and bits of charred wood toward the door as the screech of the Vilỳ was joined by another, and another. The rubble rattled with the sound, the fragments of glass cracking and falling to the floor in splinters of light that reflected against stone so similar to the eyes of the thing that I jumped.
Yes, I fucking jumped. Hearing the gnashing teeth and screaming monsters so close behind me was pulling back every memory of that day. Of what came after. Of the pain.
I hadn’t come here for a repeat.
I burst through the door with a yell of my own, turning to slam the thing behind me and lock the beasts away. But once again the damn Gauntlet had other plans and instead of closing the door, I fell face first into stone that smelled like soot and damp. Almost like the musty walls from the old section of the sewers that we don't use anymore because it floods too much, so now the kids go there to hold bonfires and drink stolen hooch.
I think I would have rather been taken there than to wherever this was.
All of the beautiful sunlight was gone. All of the warmth, and the fear, and the screeches of the Vilỳ had been swallowed by an ebony darkness that drowned the world. If it wasn't for the hard stone pressing awkwardly into my cheek, I would have assumed I had been pulled into some kind of underworld.
"Fucking Eternals and their games," I mumbled as I pulled myself up to my hands and knees, shaking my head to expel the low buzzing that was rattling through me.
Buzzing and scraping and mumbled noises that were everywhere. No, not noises, voices.
"Who the fuck is here?" I snapped, now pressing my fingers to my temples to banish the noise.
"Gemma?" I perked up; I would recognize that voice anywhere.
"Ed?"
"Yeah, and Adrian and a few others too," he said with a chuckle that was out of place for the current pitch black nothing we were trapped in. "We all just got here, we were trying to figure out what to do."
"How about we start by getting to the exit," I scoffed, giving the dark nothing that Eddy's voice was buzzing from a wink. Like he could see it. "Oh, this is ridiculous. Where is my bag?"
Somewhere between falling through a door in brilliant sunlight to collapsing on hard stone in utter darkness I had misplaced the bag they had given me. And the knife. And the card. And that little bit of flint that I was sure we were supposed to use to light the card and turn into some kind of a makeshift lamp right about now. As much as I felt around, I wasn’t finding much more than stone, however. Cold, damp, stone that wasn’t about to light a fire.
Everything else had been pretty obvious, so I was sure this wasn't going to be much different.
"I have a bag," another voice, Adrian, said, from the other side of me.
“Great, get that stone out,” I crawled toward where his voice was, feeling my way over the uneven stone and making sure I wasn't about to fall face first into some boulder, or slide into a hole.
“Here ya go, Gemma,” Adrian said, making it clear he was holding the stone toward me.
This was worse than when we were all huddled together in the storm cellar during CCC raids. At least then we had to be quiet and weren't hitting people in the face with stones.
Which is exactly what happened.
"Thanks," I huffed with more of a growl, grabbing the stone and striking it against the stone floor hard enough to produce a few sparks. Light blast through the dark like the blast from a bomb, burning my eyes and sparking over the bag and the card that had spilled over the stone beside me.
"Well, that was serendipitous," I laughed, grabbing the card from the ground and reading the last bit in the blinding light the burning card produced. “Task Three: This will test your determination. It will take as much to reach the end.”
This one was as dumb and mindless as the others. We just had to get through the dark to the end. This one might actually be hard if they had kept is in the dark to feel our way around like slugs. But instead they give us a light source, instructions, and I'm sure a goal.
I sat up straighter, pushing the extra stone into my pocket and the knife into the bag. I peered through the dark that was threatening to swallow Ed, Adrian, Aria, and the others. They all sat obediently around me, waiting for instructions, all of them looking the same as they had when we had been separated by the suffocating wall. Well, all except Adrian, he had some blood on his shoulder. I wouldn't be surprised if he killed a few Chosen in the first task.
Or all of them.
“So, we have to get through the dark?” Eddy asked as I continued to shift, finally finding a speck of red-tinted light in the distance.
The exit. The end of this dumb test, and where I would make my move. If I had actually been trying to win this thing I would have won in no time.
“Yep, shouldn’t be too hard, stay close and I’ll get you your magic and through this in one piece,” I said, jumping to my feet, moving slowly so as not to extinguish the card.
They all followed suit, well, all except Aria who gave a tiny gasp of surprise that was followed by a snarl, and some prissy Chosen bitch shoved her to the ground. Aria went down, bitch-girl laughed, throwing her sheet of brown hair over her shoulder before she rushed me. Her hand slammed into my chest, sending me stumbling back as she grabbed the stone, knife, and the burning card before bolted into the dark.
"Hey!" Eddy called, his face furrowing in rage before the stolen light began to fade, leaving us all in the dark again.
“Don’t worry! They’ll get you back to your sewers soon enough!” Her voice carried back to us as she turned, still bolting away, hair sparking in the last of the stolen light before the dark swallowed her.
I really wanted to laugh. The dipshit looked so proud of herself. Oh yeah, you really put us in our place!
“Let her go. We don’t need that to complete this. The exit isn’t far.” I rolled my eyes, pulling the other stone back out of my pocket.
“Maybe we will get lucky and take her out too,” Adrian said from above me without a hint of a laugh
Yep, he totally killed some Chosen in the first task. I don’t know why, but the knowledge made my stomach turn.
"I'm not taking anyone out, Adrian, I'm standing up to them." I gave him a smile he couldn't see and smacked the stone against the floor with a loud clang. My magic sparked at the same time, a few brighter sparks bursting from my fingers to reflect over the stone at the same time.
Thankfully another card was crumpled a step beyond the sparks, all the headstrong Chosen had left the valuable things behind without a thought. They really wouldn’t survive a day in our world.
In seconds I had another makeshift torch put together, and lit the other cards until we were standing in an orb of light as bright as the red orb that was looming in the dark, calling to us.
"Okay, that's our destination," I said with a nod to the red light. We need to get as close as we can, then I will send you all through before I end this."
"What are you going to do?" Aria said, the blue in her eyes glinting against the fire that was slowly consuming the instruction cards.
"Make them remember us." I gave her a smile before I turned away, leading them all through the nothing and toward what I was beginning to think was my final destination.
I wasn't ready to give them more of an answer that. Yes, I had promised fireworks, and I was going to give them that. If I said any more I was pretty Adrian would go all hulk protector on me and I would have to zap his balls to get me away from me.
The Gauntlet Page 5
