Magic Underground: The Complete Collection (Magic Underground Anthologies Book 4)

by Melinda Kucsera

  “Move,” shouted someone from the back, and more than a dozen guards with shields and spears jabbed at the prisoners to usher them onto the field.

  The glowing spheres on the arena’s walls created intense pools of light with great swaths of darkness between them. The stands were lit better but seemed only half full. Maybe night matches are more expensive, or less popular? Droless paused, scanning the crowd, and saw them: his “brother,” mother, and father in the front row, as they had been for every match since they had arrived.

  He instinctively raised his arm to wave but stopped himself and simply turned away as the announcer spoke.

  “Night match!”

  The crowd released a long “Oooh” at what prospects came with that proclamation.

  “We have a special treat for you this eve!” boomed the announcer, “the likes of which you may not see again for the rest of your lives! Behold! Darkness!”

  At the opposite end of the arena heavy brass doors opened and at first all Droless could see was the pallid green glow of eyes. Then they came forward and someone in the crowd screamed.

  Though his skin had turned blue-black, the man’s eyes glowed green, and the sound that came from his throat was nothing like any language Droless knew. But he recognized the man across the field. Or what was left of him.

  The leader of the Ebon Blade charged. It wasn’t just the leader brought back from the land beyond life. More than a dozen of the undead things ran across the field. Now the reason for the night match was clear—the sun would not permit such an abomination under her sight.

  Most of the prisoners scattered, but a few held their ground, and Droless charged. The leader of the Ebon Blade, or the thing he had become, leaped through the air, clearing ten feet or more to collide with Droless. The strike almost knocked him over, but he held on. The thing clawed and scraped at him, trying to rip him apart with its bare hands and sink its teeth into his flesh. He cast it to the ground and circled back as it rolled to its feet. He jabbed at it with his spear as he barreled down upon the thing. It was like stabbing moist clay—the spear barely bit into the flesh but the thing was knocked to the ground by the strength of Droless’s blow. Whatever foul magic animated the being protected it.

  No wonder they didn’t care what weapons the gladiators used—cutting down these things would be like chopping trees. Back, near the door that let the prisoners into the arena screams rose into the air, followed by more screams from the crowd.

  How dare they?!

  Droless raced back toward the other prisoners. Magic or not, the things weighed less than two hundred pounds. He careened through a pack of them that were savaging several of the prisoners—that gave the gladiators a moment’s respite. He jumped and came down on one of the things as it ran on all fours like a dog, their collision bringing the sound of breaking bones.

  How. Dare. They?!

  Droless grasped one by an arm and swung it like a club into another. The second crashed to the ground in a collision of crumpled bodies. He, Droless, was guilty. He was guilty of a lot. But these others, most of these others—Ken was a trespasser. Irl was hungry and stole food. Aria hid some of her taxes to buy fancy jewelry.

  “How!” shouted Droless, as rage poured through his veins.

  “Dare!” he said with a snarl.

  “They!” he roared, pulling the thing apart.

  Thunder rumbled in the distance as the clouds overhead grew thicker. Droless paid it little attention, for he barely had a moment as he rushed back to the other prisoners and managed to drive his spear almost a foot into one of the things. It struggled, clawing at him, ignoring a wound that would paralyze a living thing with pain. Droless dragged it away and hacked at another creature with his sword—it bit deep, carving flesh and exposing bone, but to such a creature that was barely more than an inconvenience.

  A prisoner had their arm torn from its socket and collapsed into a pool of blood.

  Droless threw the one on his spear and stabbed another, his blade sinking into its forearm. The creature twisted the limb, snapping the blade, and punched Droless with its opposite fist. The blow left him reeling, and it was all he could do to bring his spear up in time to drive the tip into the monster’s skull. It struggled and Droless pulled the head from the body.

  Someone cried out in anguish as another had their throat torn open and fell to the ground bleeding.

  I can’t save them.

  Droless grasped one of the creatures and pulled it from a prisoner but the prisoner’s body was little more than long ragged strips of flesh and blood.

  I want to save them.

  Droless rammed the struggling body into three others, knocking them over and giving a few prisoners a chance to flee.

  “How?” he whispered, casting his voice to the wind, “Mom—how do I save them?”

  “I don’t know that you can,” she answered, Al’s voice magically returned to his ears. “You need magic.” There was a pause. “More magic.”

  “Then give it to me,” he pleaded. “Please. Help me save them.”

  “He needs help, Urk,” she said, and Droless could hear the smile in his mother’s voice. “He wants help to protect them.”

  Thunder shook the sky and a bolt of lightning blasted the earth barely ten feet from his hooves. When the flash faded away Droless saw his father’s iron ax, still crackling with threads of electricity. He looked to the stands, where his father simply nodded. Droless picked up the ax and raced back to the melee. The ax left a thin trail of light in its wake and it passed through the neck of the first undead creature like a scythe through wheat.

  The crowd, horrified and silent to this point, cheered.

  Even like this I can’t kill them all, Droless realized as he severed the arm of another creature. He took a deep breath and cast his words to Urkjorman: “I…I can’t kill them all. I don’t know—”

  “Magic begets magic,” answered Urk. “Monsters kill monsters.”

  Droless’s eyes narrowed in thought and he drove his ax into the back of one of the things and lifted it into the air. He cast it to the ground before the surviving prisoners and tore its head off.

  “What are you—?” asked Ken in confusion.

  Droless sliced his ax through its arm. “Their magic won’t protect them from each other. Each corpse is a weapon.”

  “It’s not much,” said another, grasping one of the severed arms.

  “It’s more than nothing,” said a woman as she lifted the head.

  Droless pointed to the bodies he’d shattered in rage at the start. “You six, pull those apart—you four, come with me.”

  The things were running forward again.

  “Will this be enough?” asked Ken.

  “Will we be strong enough?” Droless asked his father as the undead things reached them.

  “You have strength enough for all of you.”

  Droless grasped one of the things by the neck as it leaped at him and carved it open with the ax. “I could never—”

  “You never cared to before. Now you must remember.”

  Droless inhaled deeply and pulled the rage deep into his chest. Pain almost broke his concentration as one of the things clawed at his face.

  “Droless?” asked one of the prisoners with mounting terror as he used a sword and a severed arm to keep one of the things from tearing him apart.

  “Hear me,” commanded Droless, weaving his anger into his words as he swung the ax like a club and knocked one of the creatures away.

  “Hear me,” Droless repeated, and his words tasted like fire. “And remember every pain you have ever felt—then give in to that rage.”

  He could feel the prisoners’ fury—it was as though they’d suddenly turned into balls of flame that only he could feel. The woman was the first, howling like a banshee as she slammed the head in her hands into the skull of one of the undead with such force that both heads shattered. Droless knew not what indignation she had suffered over her short life, but he was certa
in every ounce of it would be visited on anything that moved tonight.

  Then everyone was anger and fists, fury and clubs. Droless barely understood what he was, except that he was a conduit for a lifetime of anger, for lifetimes of rage. He buried his ax into the chest of one of the creatures, then he and Ken grasped opposite arms and tore it in two. Another gladiator was using splintered bones to stab one of the things again and again. Another three were on another undead thing, two holding its arms and head as the other used severed hands to claw into its chest.

  Blood and death were everywhere—they had become blood and death—and soon Droless realized he was laughing.

  “The Blood Toll is paid!”

  Droless almost collapsed, and some of the other prisoners did collapse. Several were dead and a few died in these moments, as though anger itself were the only thing that had kept them alive this long.

  He almost didn’t hear it, but it reached him through a fog of exhaustion and pain:

  “Dro-less! Dro-less! Dro-less!”

  Wearily he helped the others to their feet, and together they shambled back toward the brass doors.

  Chapter Ten

  The Man You Are

  Droless hadn’t known exhaustion like this before—even donning the Red Mantle for an hour to fight the zarut hadn’t drained him like this. Still Droless walked with his back straight and a smile tugging at his lips as he answered the summons. To his surprise, both his parents were present and there were four guards watching them. “I guess this is goodbye,” he said.

  Al’rashal nodded. “We can’t stay. Your siblings need us.”

  “And,” continued Urkjorman, “they believe we are the cause of that ax entering the arena.”

  Droless chuckled. Neither of his parents mentioned Eihn which meant his ‘older brother’ was staying and they didn’t want to call attention to that, so he wouldn’t either. Droless reached through the bars and his parents took his hands. They held hands like that for a time.

  “Will you stay in there?” asked Urk.

  “You going to bust me out?”

  The minotaur shrugged. “How would they stop me?”

  Droless could smell the fear washing off the guard. “No. There are people here who need me.”

  “They’re not always going to let you protect these people,” warned Al.

  “I know,” he sighed. “There’ll be fights without me, or I’ll die, or I’ll get out before they do. But right now I’m here, and right now maybe I can do something to help. If I can, shouldn’t I?”

  Urk reached a hand between the bars and rested it on Droless’s head. “There you are. I wondered where you had been.”

  “Who?” asked Droless.

  “The little boy who wanted to protect all the little people. It makes me happy to see you remember him.”

  Droless chuckled and he turned to look at Al’rashal. “Mom, give everyone my love. Tell them. Tell them I’m sorry. I know it was hard having me as a brother. Or a son.”

  “Tell them yourself,” she smiled, squeezing his hand. “When you get out. Or better yet, tell them before, and me while you’re at it. You can cast your words for a fight but not to tell your mother hello?”

  “Sorry, Mom, sorry,” he said with mock objection.

  He returned his gaze to Urk. “They took the ax.”

  Urk shrugged. “If you need it, it will find you.”

  The guards looked to each other warily at that.

  They hugged, as best they could through the bars.

  Reluctantly his parents pulled away and started for the door. Droless made to return to the shadows but stopped, watching his parents go for a time, then mustering the courage to speak. “Dad?”

  Urkjorman stopped.

  “Am I the son you wanted me to be?”

  “You are the man I knew you would become.”

  For once Droless was thankful for the coming darkness, because it would hide his tears

  About the Author

  S. Wallace is an aspiring author who's just hit the scene. Their stories range from the far future to realms of magic and monsters with yet more to come. They look forward to showing you all the great stories they’re producing and sharing the amazing ones they’re reading. See you between the pages!

  For more information about the author, please visit: www.amazon.com/-/e/B0829M14QS to keep up to date on upcoming stories. Don't forget to visit their website at http://www.swallaceworks.com.

  Ariana’s Gift

  H. M. Jones

  “Ariana’s Gift” falls into the realm of forgotten magic because Ariana knows absolutely nothing about herself, her magic or her lineage. Moreover, the gift Ariana uses has ties to a family she has never met and has only recently heard about. It is a type of magic that, since her grandparents died, has been dormant in her family. When Ariana arrives in Endowa, it awakes magical instincts and a magical ancestry that was not just forgotten but purposefully suppressed until this point.

  H.M. Jones

  In “Ariana’s Gift,” Ariana faces the prospect of meeting a family she’d never known and a history of magic that lay dormant, forgotten, inside her. Her trip to Endowa and the marauder, Captain Nimby, wakes a sleeping history, so that Ariana remembers the power of her ancestors. In my addition to Forgotten Magic, Ariana remembers what was not known to her, what her blood had forgotten.

  Ariana’s Gift

  Ariana could hardly believe she was sipping tea in a magical craft, traveling through a seemingly endless cave lake. She would have pinched herself to wake, if she thought she was sleeping. Unfortunately, it seemed strange happenings were the norm for her these days. So, she just sipped the delicious, flowery tea that reminded her very blood of home, even though she’d never been to Pieramu, land of the Pixies, before.

  The cabin was something from a dream. The way the furniture seemed to grow out of the craft itself, as if molded out of wooden clay was simply breathtaking. She ran her hands over the wood, and it felt slightly warm to the touch, as if alive. The large porthole that opened to the cave lake revealed a world of wondrous, blind creatures darting this way and that, living lives she never guessed were possible in the deep darkness of a cave. She cradled her warm teacup, her eyes wandering over the other-worldly vessel, but her attention fixed her new acquaintance, Nimby.

  She sat on the edge of her magical wooden stool, ready to listen to every word that left Nimby’s mouth. Nimby was a marauder, or captain of some sort, for the Pieramu queen, the queen who was apparently her mother. It was a lot to take in for a girl who’d never met her mother and had never known her origins until minutes ago.

  Nimby sipped his tea while Ariana scratched the Driode, her little dragon-wolf friend, behind his flap of an ear. Nimby sighed and set down his cup.

  “I do wish your father had talked to you about your connection to the pixie people. I understand he is mortal, and little qualified to tell you much, but he could have prepared you, dear girl!”

  Ariana sighed, too. Her heart sagged with the memory of her father, inept, unflinching in his dismissal of her. “I agree completely. I wish my father had said and did a lot of things he failed to do.”

  Nimby smiled over his cup of tea before speaking. “I’m sorry to say that I won’t have all the answers you may be looking for. For those things, I beg you to speak to your mother, Queen Seerana.”

  Ariana only nodded, numbly. My mother’s name is Seerana! It was a beautiful, mysterious name.

  “Very well. You, Ariana, are the only heir to your mother’s throne. She is Queen Seerana of Pieramu in the magical lands of Endowa. She inherited the throne from Queen Nettle, her mother, who inherited the throne from King Nexis, your great-grandfather. Your great-grandfather was descended from Pieramu pixies all the way back through his line. His magic was tied to weaving and was the strongest when he used that skill to conduct it.”

  Weaving magic? That was like her! She, too, felt her magic worked best when woven. It was so strange to think that s
he’d inherited such a proclivity from a grandfather she’d never meet. Nimby took a sip from his tea and Ariana followed suit. The warmth soothed her dry throat. The sweet floral aroma hung in the air. Nimby put his cup down and continued.

  “Your great-grandfather’s parents, breaking the tradition of marrying only within the Pieramu people, formed an alliance with the closest kingdom, the Fierie fairies from Fuerone. The Fierie had, and still have, a reputation for chaos and your great-grandmother, Thistle, certainly did nothing to dispel that reputation. Your great-grandfather loved her dearly, however, and was very patient with her biting wit and firm demands.”

  Nimby cleared his throat, his eyebrows knit in consternation. “One of her demands was that he change the law of Pieramu to direct all future heirs to build an alliance by intermarrying with the Fierie fairies. This would ensure, of course, that, after some time, the Pieramu line would fade out of existence. He did not write such a law, thank heavens, but did insist that his daughter marry a Fierie fairy, and wrote a law stating that peace between the realms should often be maintained by similar engagements if the peace was, at any time, strained. Following me, are you?”

  “Yes, I think so. Please continue,” Ariana answered. Her mind raced with questions, but she didn’t want to interrupt the family history. Nimby told her things she’d always longed to know. His words added pieces to her that she didn’t know where missing. Now that the pieces fell in place, she felt as if she’d always needed them.

  Pictures of her people formed in her mind’s eye, as if her magic was tied to their memory, and perhaps it was. A sinewy, lean pixie with green wings and raven hair, speckled with silver and grey, holding hands with a beautiful older woman, a fairy Ariana supposed was her great-grandmother. She had auburn-grey hair and sparkling green mischievous eyes. Nexis and Thistle. Then, she saw her grandmother, Nettle, with aquamarine eyes, black hair and a sly smile, holding hands with a shy-looking young fairy with brown hair and striking ice-blue eyes. She didn’t know his name, but she did know it was her grandfather, whose eyes she shared.