Maeve whips her blade through dry, charged air. “Subdue me and win the honor of consort!”
“There’s no winning,” says Theriss. “Die now or die later when she’s sucked you dry.”
I make the first move. I surge forward, channeling every bit of my gifts into my blade, and strike. It’s a test, meant to gauge her speed, so I don’t completely commit, not until I know what she’s capable of.
Her blade comes up, almost lazy, but lightning quick, blocking my strike. She turns her hands, uses my momentum against me, and as my blade slides off hers, I stumble.
My instincts scream a warning, and I duck just as her whip snaps past my head with enough speed that it would have decapitated me. Before I can dive away, she spins her rod and her blade comes in an eyeblink later, and I barely have time to roll over and block before it strikes mine, buckling my arms. Gods, she’s strong. Stronger than me, than Callista.
A sliver of fear pierces my brain as my arms shake with the effort of holding her back.
Maeve leans over me, and her smile is wicked. Her face is inches from mine, pillowy lips parted, and her breaths smells like roses and sex. “You won’t win me, fighting like that.”
Not trying to win you. I channel flame, past my sword, into her face. But too slow, and she somehow backflips off me, laughing as she lands with perfect grace.
Crispinus is there when she lands, and as I stand, I watch them trade a series of rapid blows. His form is perfect, but his weapon isn’t a match for her whirring, spinning staff, and she has him on the defense, backing away a step at a time. I can’t follow their movements, they’re both so fast, and the ringing of their strikes is so quick that it’s almost a continuous noise.
Torvik bellows and charges her back, and she’s so engaged with Crispinus that, for a moment, his downward strike looks like it’ll hit. At the last moment, she ducks low, spins, and her whip catches Torvik in the ankles, sending him sprawling. He cries out pain and surprise. Torvik falls like a boulder toward Crispinus. A dodge leaves him open, and Maeve’s blade whips across his helmet with a crack. Her blow lifts him from his feet, sends him flying, bouncing across the sand.
He doesn’t rise.
I don’t see Theriss, as usual. I trust her by now to strike when the time is right. I’ll give her the opening.
Torvik staggers up. I unite with Meridiana and the giant as she throws a wave of compulsion over Maeve.
Maeve inhales, bites her lip hard enough to draw blood, eyes closed for just a moment. She tenses, shoulders arching like she’s on the cusp of orgasm. Her eyes open, lock with Meridiana’s. “Ohh, I enjoyed that. I think I’ll keep you. I’ve never had one of your kind as a plaything.”
Meridiana smirks. “You won’t be scratching that one off your list in this lifetime.”
Maeve opens her mouth to retort. Theriss steals the words, her blades arced to hamstring.
Maeve senses her and hops over the strike, spins and stabs in one move. I launch forward, sure Theriss is dead.
She rolls clear, dodges the strike and vaults from the sand.
Maeve quirks a smile and attacks, a furious hail of blows from every direction.
Theriss doesn’t hit back, doesn’t even block. Each strike misses. Maeve growls as her blade finds empty air over and over.
Theriss’ face is blank with concentration, and her eyes are closed. Her body moves like liquid. She dodges each killing blow effortlessly, flows around Maeve’s strikes until she finally breaks free and melts into shadows near the steps.
Fucking incredible.
Maeve turns on us, beautiful face twisted in a mask of rage. She launches, staff spinning. I barely block her onslaught.
My blade moves by instinct, but she drives me back, and she’s so fucking strong. Each block weakens me. I need a way to end this faster.
She spins her weapon, a long turn in an eyeblink, tangles my blade with her whip. He foot kicks out, impacts my chest. The world is a blur. I spin through the air, strike the ground, and tumble artlessly.
Force cracks ribs, and for a moment I can’t breathe. My sword is gone. If Maeve comes for me now, I’m dead.
Her whip cracks across Meridiana’s back, sending her tumbling. The succubus cries out; through our bond I feel the agony of her wounds before they heal.
Meridiana wasn’t her target. Crispinus is still prone in the sand. I don’t think he’s dead; she wouldn’t stalk him if he was, spear high and set to pin him.
Torvik intercepts her as the blade comes down, throws himself in front of the killing blow. He leads with his axe. Maeve’s staff pings off it. Torvik forces her back, savage berserker rage powering his swings.
I find my feet and bolt.
Torvik’s axe comes around in long arcs as Maeve dances back, blocking, dodging, eyes narrowed.
“You...No...Kill...Friends!” he shouts in her face, each word punctuation to a swing of his blade.
She moves faster and faster, taking the giant’s measure, learning his rhythm. I can feel the moment battle changes, as her weapons come at Torvik in an almost unstoppable hail of blows. Her whip impacts him once, twice. Rage powers him through but he’s fading.
They’re too close together. I can’t throw fire, can’t interfere. A blade sails in, whirring through the air. Maeve’s glowing spearhead knocks it from the air. Theriss moves beside me, sights and throws her other knife. No better.
I run for them, must help Torvik. Crispinus is down, and Meridiana. I’m not fast enough. My feet are lead.
Maeve swings, back, forth, knocks Torvik’s axe to the sand, reverses, and with a grunt of almost sexual pleasure, stabs her blade through his heart. It erupts from him in a spray of blood, and he staggers back, mouth open, trying to speak.
It’s over, just like that.
No. Gods dammit.
Maeve stands, pushes her blade deeper, eyes lit with pleasure. Torvik matches her mad grin, takes the haft of her spear, and pulls himself down its length. More and more of it pushes through, and a river of blood washes over his tattoos. When he’s face to face with Maeve, he gurgles a laugh and spits a mouthful of blood across her beautiful features.
She turns and rips her weapon from him.
He falls to his knees, to his face.
Maeve turns to face us, spattered crimson. She licks his blood from her lips in a slow pass.
Rage heats my blood. I’m going to kill her and I’m going to kill her now. She will not kill me.
Or, maybe…
Trust the Artifacts.
My blade ignites. I launch myself at Maeve in a furious attack, powered by rage but not desperation, not this time. The violence of our bladework jars my arms, numbs them. Her eyes narrow and her breathing comes in ragged gasps. I force her back step by step toward the pyramid.
She’s impossibly strong, but I am, too. Powered by multiple couplings with Callista and Kumiko, and my new armor, I hit with the force of a runaway horse, smashing her blade again and again. But I don’t strike to kill; I probably can’t.
I make the mistake she’s been expecting. I hit too hard, and she uses my strength against me, smashing my blade from my hand, into the sand. It’s the same move she used on Torvik, with the same result.
Perfect.
Maeve’s blade cuts into my chest, punctures my lung, and erupts from my back. The pain steals all thought, all reason. I scream. Whatever magic infuses her weapon feels like it’s boiling my insides. I can’t breathe, and the effort it takes to throw out a single word from my mind almost breaks me.
Theriss…
I reach forward, like Torvik and pull myself along the shaft of her weapon. Unlike Torvik, I’m not laughing. No question who’s the stronger man.
Maeve’s face falls. Maybe she’s caught on. She tries to pull her blade away, but I clutch the haft with every bit of strength I have left, and tug.
She tries to shake me loose like detritus. “Pathetic. You can’t kill me, but you can at least try to die with dignity.”
She frowns. “What?”
Closer. I hang above her, mouth almost at her ear. “Not me you should worry about...”
Maeve’s eyes widen. Her panic comes too late. Serpents twine her throat. Two sets of thick ivory fangs bury in Maeve’s jugula. They snap, twist, tear. Theriss rips back and away, taking half of Maeve’s throat with her.
Maeve’s mouth works, jibbering. There’s not enough lifeblood for whatever she tries to say.
Her collapse reveals Theriss fully. Is she glowing? No. Maybe? I can’t believe I missed her as the artifact.
“Beautiful…” I whisper. My mind swims. I fall to my knees. Theriss doesn’t lose composure. She grabs Maeve’s staff, plants a foot against my chest and shoves without mercy. “Stupid, crazy, idiot…”
She catches me mid-collapse. Crispinus, apparently recovered, falls to his knees, stuffing cloth against my wounds.
Meridiana stands behind them, boredom write across her face. “He’s not dying. He’s just fishing for attention.”
I know better than to think she doesn’t care.
Theriss looks at her, baffled. “You came here with him, didn’t you? Do something!”
Meridiana bends and plants a kiss in the sweat of my forehead. “You’re kneeling in guts; you should get up.”
She’s impossible. If I could catch my breath, I’d tell her off.
Crispinus narrows his eyes. He uncovers my wound just as it seals.
Theriss darts away, hands raised. “Demon magic!”
“No. Alicorn,” he rumbles. “He’s a lucky mortal, not a regular demigod.”
Theriss swats Meridiana hard on the arm. “You could have told us!”
“Mm.” Meridiana raises a brow at me. I really, really like her.
You would. That’s all I have in me. I close my eyes a moment. Wounds have closed, but my insides are scrambled, violated. I’ve never asked so much of my body, not even on Freya’s trial.
The crowd is so silent I’ve forgotten them. I’m not sure they realize what’s happened. When they do…
“We should start out.”
Crispinus hauls me to my feet. I brace against him and hold my head. “I need to stop doing shit like this.”
“Yes,” Theriss and Meridiana agree in unison.
There’s movement on the stairs, shuffling. The barker stumbles forward, loping around Maeve’s body. “No! No!” He whines like a beast. “Our lady is dead! They’ve killed her! They’ve killed our–” His tirade ends on Crispinus’ blade. It takes his head in a surgical pass, but it’s too late. Panic ignites among the crowd.
A single cry of foul play from high in the seats splits the silence. It ignites through the crowd, setting off a cyclone around us. Spectators shuffle left, right, down the steps in a trickle and then a flood. Their sounds of outrage become a single moan.
“Time to go!” I say again.
“Perfect. Where’s the portal?” Meridiana asks.
Great question. I skim the arena.
Ahead the pyramid glows. The thrones hover, spin until their mass cuts the air with a zip, and splinter, tearing through the silk canopy. A beam of light reaches out like a crooked tendril. Somewhere among the surging mob is a flash. Then another, and another.
Theriss nods to the seats, eyes wide. “They’re disappearing.”
“Sent back to their worlds.” The voice startles us.
Halkor blocks the gate, sword in hand. “Though many of them have been gone for a hundred years. Or a thousand, following the games. What is left for them?”
He raises his sword and I draw mine, levelling.
“My line is surely dead, and if it isn’t...they wouldn’t know me, and I wouldn’t wish them to.” Halkor plunges his blade into sand and plank. His body wilts and he folds to misshapen knees. Dark eyes shine from the folds of his eyes. “Spare me.”
I don’t grasp his meaning at first.
“No!” Theriss raises an arm, blocking me. “He came to Maeve willingly and he served her faithfully. Gleefully, even.” She flicks a finger at the seats where men and women scream and claw over each other between flash after flash of the pyramid. “He should share their fate.”
“Why?” I want him to say he did it for his family, for some blood debt.
“I was nobody, in the army of Vazian. When I found the monument on my patrol…” He inhales like he smells something delicious. “I would tell the king. I would be seen. Then Maeve emerged and told me I could serve her. A hundred souls and she would reward me...so many rewards. It was simple; one hundred mortals brought to her – of course that changed when the bargain was made. I started with Emperor Gennis, and then his consort, then his children and–”
I swing, bury my blade in his gnarled neck and send his head tumbling, coated in blood and sand.
Even Meridiana stares at me.
“I know this story already. I know how it ends.” Blood flows from his stump onto my boots and I spit on his corpse. “I’m sorry, Theriss. I know what he deserved, but Vazian doesn’t deserve a traitor.”
She nods, still gaping. Crispinus looks me over with the scales of his eyes. Approval or contempt; I can’t decipher him.
Flashes multiply along the coliseum’s tiers. One man, tangled with two beasts and a coil of tentacles, disappears, leaving a blood-spurting stump when half the appendage goes with him. Heat magnifies; the burn of magic on my skin becomes a scald. Single sparks become groups of explosions.
“We’re in a chimney,” says Crispinus, massaging flushed skin.
Renewed sweat mingles with dampness leftover from battle. I wipe the sting from my eyes. Some of the burn becomes a tingle, the buzz of a wasp before it stings. More than heat is trapped within the coliseum. Magic, energy, a force of the heavens; it presses on my chest and ear drums, crushing like deep water. A crack splits the wailing and shouts. A chunk of column plunges from on high and impales the channel, shooting water in a tidal wave. It strains the seams of an already-decaying structure. A wall adjoining the pyramid falls in.
“We have to get out!” Theriss slithers left, right, dodging a rain of debris.
As promised, at the last second, I know what to do. “Meridiana!” I beckon her behind and run for the gate, more charged with energy than before. But not blocked; just too electrified to touch. Consume. Consume the door; devour it.
A column of flame streams from my palm, radiant and hungry. Splinters in the wood turn to ember.
Meridiana doesn’t need an explanation. She raises both hands, focuses and manipulates the fire just as she did in her trial.
One burning tail becomes a giant’s tongue, licking destruction up the massive planks. Chunks of flaming, ancient wood pop, fracture, and tumble around us in hailstorm. Sparks shower us, set fire to my clothes; I heal as fast as they fall but each strike is a flash of agony. Crispinus retracts, hurls a discarded shield and penetrates the hole we’ve made as the left wall begins to buckle and light fills the arena like a third sun.
We plunge from the gates, cross the bridge and pile onto the barge in a mad tangle. Crispinus takes one oar and I claim the other. We heave and grunt like beasts, straining to gain the current. Wind manufactured by the arena’s implosion blasts us, a boon granted by our potential killer and the barge slips into deep, quick-flowing blue water.
There’s no time to celebrate. A rumble kicks up sand for as far as I can see. The runaway cart rumble of an earthquake slams us, passes by. Cracks lash out from the coliseum’s foundation like skeletal fingers hungry to drag us to the hells. The structure sways and collapses. Stone and dust belch out, wagon-sized chunks tumbling at us like a charging army. Our barge convulses and water beneath us drains into the sand like a discarded bath. We run hard aground. Debris tumbles end over end on a clean trajectory. No time to run, hardly time to duck. I raise in my boots and scream at certain death, a battle cry that dares a hunk of rock to take my life when nothing else today could.
It smashes th
rough the bow and grinds to a stop a finger from my nose.
“Just as I thought!” I shout at the heavens, at the stone, at everything. I fall to my haunches, panting. “Just as I thought.”
Fingers till my sweat soaked hair. I expect Meridiana and turn to find Theriss. Her teeth are a white arc, smile bright against her blue skin. “You must have a god’s bollocks.”
“Well, I have a lot to prove.”
Meridiana, still on her back and winded, offers a derisive sound.
The ground shakes again. This time it’s less immediate, but more sustained. “I think we should go.” I hit my feet and haul Meridiana up.
We run the wet riverbed to avoid shifting sand and tangled scrub. A shockwave hits as we reach a flooded oxbow, throwing us into standing water where panicked fish leap.
Sound deafens us even as the shaking subsides. Maeve’s pyramid raises into the sky above the cloud of destruction, creating an eclipse. A tracery of light pours from the seams in its stones and pieces move like a puzzle. It alters to a low flat shape like a star, a low hulled ship, and rises.
Bolts of light arc from the arena’s ruin. Each strike turns a portion of the vessel to an insubstantial flicker. It darts forward; the beams wrap it like a hand. Energy drags back and the object whines with the sound of metal worlds orbiting against each other.
We hunch, claw at our ears. One point of the ship raises high, the whole thing tipped like a sinking caravel.
It slides to the debris with a death shriek both machine and animal. Light rises, envelopes the whole wreckage in a bubble that swells until the surface shimmers and we can feel the heat even at this distance.
This is probably the end. Meridiana’s hand slips into mine; I hold her tight.
The bubble tears.
Heat dissipates; whatever generated inside moves over us in a static-charged breeze. Light blazes like a solar flare burning through my eyes to the back of my brain. I should be blind for life, but as water gurgles up at my knees, sight returns. Freya’s gift? Or something more?
Water jets up in a geyser. We stumble for the bank, already fighting a swirling current.
Temple of Cocidius - Book 4 Page 8
