by Dante King
“You should have stayed in the tavern,” Lyra protested. “You’ve been stripped of your powers, Hazel. You shouldn’t be here—”
“But I am,” she said, slipping beneath the tarp with a shrug. “Are you going to help me get closer, or not?”
Lyra stared into space for a few moments, as if wondering how she’d made it to this point in her life. She looked over at me, as if giving the decision over to my wisdom.
I was more than happy to have her with us. Even without her powers, I knew Hazel to be one hell of a fierce fighter.
“Shit—come on,” I growled, kicking the dead guards into the bog. They sank beneath the surface as the three of us scrambled beneath the tarp, hiding ourselves from prying eyes.
Once she was underneath the fabric with us, scrunched up against our bodies, Hazel seemed almost cheerful. “So what are you three here for?” she asked, keeping her voice low as the cart started forward. “You got a grudge against someone in the Auction, too?”
I shook my head. “Bandits kidnapped someone—a friend, I suppose.” I leaned back to hide any lumps from the tarp. “They’re going to sell her as a slave in the Auction tonight. I promised the woman’s sister I wouldn’t let that happen.”
Hazel absorbed all this with a nod. One thing I really liked about the blonde warrior—she didn’t need to hear my justifications. For her, morality was simple. I told her we were going to rescue someone, and she accepted it without question. Even though such a thing looked more ridiculous by the moment.
“I’m sorry we haven’t spoken to you as much,” Anna said, looking guilty. “We’ve just been busy…”
“Yeah,” Hazel said with a smirk, peering through a tear in the tarp as we entered the fortress. “I’ve heard about you two and Lyra. Dual Cultivating, right? Sounds like a lot of fun…”
A bold impulse seized me. “You should try it,” I said, ignoring Anna’s gasp. “We turned Lyra into a Cultivator, Hazel. After our threesome, she can cast water magic—and transform into a weapon. I bet we could give you back your powers. Hell, we might even kick start them to a whole other level.”
Hazel’s smirk grew more lopsided. “If we make it out of this alive, I might just take you up on that,” she said with a nod. “Shit, I had no idea when I pulled you two out of the woods that I’d still be hanging out with you. There’s something different about you and Anna, Eric. Something I can’t put my finger on…”
The cart rumbled off the dirt and onto paved stones. “Eliezer’s influence,” I guessed, thinking about the old man who called himself the Peak Supreme God. What was he up to now?
Hazel giggled and shook her head. “Nah. It’s just that so many people in this Zone are assholes, it’s almost a shock when you meet someone nice for a change.”
With that, she leaned over and kissed me—hard and fast.
“I wish I’d joined you two that night in the cabin,” she admitted, her eyes dancing with mischief. “We make it out of this, I want a do-over.”
“Yes ma’am,” Anna groaned, her voice lusty with need. “Eric and I will be more than happy to give you one.”
The sound of voices grew ever closer. As I cocked my head, they resolved into the rapid-fire patter of an auctioneer, taking bids from an eager crowd. From the sound of the man’s voice, they were selling some sort of exotic beast in a cage—but I knew it wouldn’t be long until they started in on the slaves. The crowd grew more liquored up all the time, rowdier with each passing minute.
“This looks like our stop,” I said, peering through the tarp. A sinking feeling filled my gut as I realized—nothing stood between Lyra’s cart and the auction block save for a soccer field’s worth of empty space and drunk patrons. My half-formed plan of somehow sneaking through the Silent Auction and pulling Regina back to the cart began to dissolve.
Anna realized it a moment after I did. “We’re going to have to fight,” she said, gritting her teeth.
“I’ll make you a deal,” Hazel said, scooting back on her knees. “I hate slavery just as much as you two do. I’ll help you save this girl—and in exchange, you back me up when I go against Guildmaster Ji. Deal?”
I thought about it—for about two seconds. “Deal,” I said, grabbing her hand. Hazel was a good friend—hopefully soon to be more than just a friend—and I didn’t want to let her down. “Let’s get these assholes.”
As if we’d planned it ahead of time, Lyra stood up in her seat. “Excuse me!” the Mistress of the Hungry Herb Tavern roared, startling the auction crowd into silence. From further off, I heard the sounds of moans and grunts from far-off tents: what Hazel had referred to as the Silent Auction’s brothels. Guildmaster Ji would be there for sure.
Let’s hope he’s balls-deep in some whore and doesn’t realize what’s going on until too late, I thought, readying myself to strike. “Anna, could you—”
“On it,” my girlfriend said, already beginning to shimmer. Hazel watched the light show with a hint of jealousy, giving me a nod as Anna transformed into the scythe.
“I don’t think I’ve told you,” Hazel purred, savoring the moment. “Your woman—she makes a damn fine killing machine.”
“So do you,” I said with a laugh. “Here we go.”
Chapter 22
“I must ask you,” Lyra yelled, her hands around her mouth, “to cease the Auction immediately—”
Hazel and I tugged back the tarp, springing into action.
In a flash, the entire Auction lay revealed to my gaze. Within an instant, my new senses took in the whole grim scene.
The Silent Auction’s main attraction took place on a large raised platform, surrounded by cages. A few of the creatures inside of the cages were recognizably human—most, however, were not. Beasts from the Verdant Ruins and outlying Zones snarled against the bars of their prisons, rare specimens that would fetch top prices from those who collected Beast Cores. Along with a few decoys, of course, for Cultivator-on-Cultivator warfare.
Behind those lay a line of dirty, beaten-down people, kept in line by a big man with a whip. A group of men and women waited for their turn to be auctioned off as sex slaves or human sacrifices, enduring the humiliation of being less important than selling monsters and dumb beasts. I recognized one face instantly: Jalen’s wife, Regina. Her eyes were washed with a dull, glazed expression, as if Jalen had drugged her prior to handing her over to the Vipers. None of the people in line resisted: they’d been smacked down enough not to try.
That was about to change.
The auctioneer was a heavy-set man in crimson robes, with a scraggly white beard that dipped almost all the way to his knees. That beard bobbed back and forth as his jowls shook, his surprise at seeing intruders evident on his face.
“A Cultivator!” he gasped, pointing at me with a scowl. “Someone stop that man!”
Too late, I thought, readying Anna in my arms. Let’s cause some fucking chaos.
Between Lyra’s cart and the raised platform lay several rows of chairs, arranged like the seats in a theater. Not all of the attendees had turned around in their seats yet to see the newcomers—but most had. In their faces I recognized businessmen, gang leaders, human traffickers.
Did that give me a moment’s pause? I
No, I didn’t hesitate. I waded into the aisles as men drew their weapons, the scythe flashing in my hand.
Rarely had Anna ever had such a clear-cut enemy to fight. Killing monsters brought its own sense of melancholy afterwards: the feeling that you’d killed a noble creature who’d only been defending itself. With these men, we felt no such compassion. These were the lowest of the low: slavers, abusers, sex traffickers. My first swing killed three, severing the arteries in their necks like the tie on a balloon, and Anna screamed with orgasmic bliss inside my skull.
Behind me, a man with a knife leapt at Hazel. Without her ability to Cultivate, the blonde warrior moved like someone with a brain injury trying to walk again for the first time. Still, she was more man than anyone else h
ere. As the bastard advanced on her, Hazel dipped low and plucked a second knife from his belt.
His own steel killed him, buried hilt-deep in his eye. I roared at the sight, bloodlust tinting my view red.
I swung again, severing the head from a man who hadn’t even turned around—his gaze had remained fixed on the slaves, counting his future profits even as he died. Two heavies from the Hollow Frog Guild managed to make it to their feet, twin crossbows held in their trembling hands. A twang split the night air as two bolts soared, aimed at my heart. They pinged off Anna’s blade, falling to the ground.
It was as if I’d set off some secret signal. At the sight of a move that shouldn’t have been possible, the crowd finally realized what they were up against. The few men who’d risen to fight chose discretion, bolting from the Auction square with fearful looks in their eyes. They ran for their lives, and as they ran, I cut them down from behind.
So this was what Eliezer had been talking about! With Mana surging in my veins, the men before me seemed to be moving in slow motion. Their feeble attempts to bring me down with blade, axe, or arrow felt like children taking their first hesitant steps into the world compared to my sure, swift blows. I’d never used my powers on human beings before—my Cultivation had been solely reserved for monsters. As I cut men down, Anna howling with bliss after every righteous kill, I admit I felt no remorse. This was justice.
No wonder people fear Cultivators, I thought as I bisected a mercenary through the chest with Anna’s blade. Compared to regular humans, I’m the monster. They’re falling before me like fucking wheat.
The Black Core pulsed inside my chest. Was it responsible for this feeling inside of me, or did it merely amplify what had been there all along? I thought of Anna, who’d been such a safe, practical girl before Cultivation turned her into my personal bad girl and my blood-craving death scythe. How much of that had been buried inside of her, waiting to be released? How much of it had been inside me?
Good questions—for another time.
Wading deeper into the crowd, I twirled Anna around me in a whistling arc that left shredded flesh beneath my feet. I kept on advancing, step by unhurried step, toward the raised platform. The auctioneer had gone catatonic with fright, backing across the platform on his wizened ass. The beasts in their cages smelled the blood, felt the carnage, and attacked their cages even harder.
“Someone get Guildmaster Ji!” the auctioneer begged, trying and failing to raise his voice above the crowd. “Get Vargas the Cultivator! Get anyone—!”
He backed up another step. His shoulders bumped the bars of a cage—one containing a large, scaled lizard with a feathery fringe around its neck. It looked like one of the velociraptors from Jurassic Park, if it had decided to get all fancy and go to velociraptor prom.
The thing reached through the bars and bit the auctioneer’s head off, as quick as thought.
Blood poured from the stump as the man gurgled. His arms and legs flailed helplessly as the dinosaur chowed down, devouring his face and skull. His dying screams echoed against the creature’s tongue as it lapped up his blood and brains, the monster’s beady eyes flashing with triumph.
“Regina!” I roared, lifting the scythe. All we had to do was get Martha’s sister, get back on the cart, and we could be out of here. They’d be talking about this raid for weeks in every Zone near here. “Let her go, slaver, and I’ll let you live!”
The man guarding the human slaves took one look at me and bolted. The harried men and women he’d been keeping track of watched him go with looks of disbelief, then raced across the auction platform toward freedom. They were so intent on getting away, they didn’t notice how agitated the rest of the beasts in their cages had become.
“Wait!” I cried, holding up my scythe. “Don’t—”
Too late. The velociraptor grabbed a passing slave and chomped into the poor man’s neck, spraying blood across the bars. Other fleeing slaves reared backward as beasts reached through their cages, nowhere near as safe to approach as they’d appeared. To my very great relief, Regina was near the back of the pack. She stopped behind the cages, as if unsure how to proceed.
“Stay there!” I yelled, slashing through a man who’d dared raise a slender dagger against me. “I’m coming—!”
But a feminine cry from behind me caught my attention. Five men had encircled Hazel, judging the blonde warrior to be easier meat than me. She held them at arm’s length, ducking and weaving like a champion prizefighter. Even with her Cultivation ripped away, Hazel proved to be a formidable fighter.
Not formidable enough, though, I thought, turning back from the auction platform. “Hey, assholes! Why not pick on someone your own size!?”
One of the men turned away from Hazel, lifting a two-handed sword. The scythe went up and over his head, hooking into his back from behind. Like a stagehand pulling a bad performer offstage, I tugged, ripping through blood and bone. His surprised look stayed frozen on his face as he toppled, torn in two.
Then I was back-to-back with Hazel, surrounded by enemies. “I don’t need your help,” the blonde warrior said, her voice edging into a laugh. “I was doing just fine on my own!”
“Sure,” I said, slamming the butt-end of my scythe into a man’s midsection. Another thug in Hollow Frog Guild gear swung a katana at my neck, only to feel it deflected by the tip of the scythe’s curved blade. “In fact, I agree! I just didn’t want you to rack up a higher kill count than me!”
I felt Hazel’s smirk more than saw it. “You afraid to get beaten by a woman?” she asked, tossing a dagger into a Hollow Frog member’s eyes.
“Not at all,” I said. A man slipped past Hazel’s guard, insanity dancing in his eyes. He carried a dagger in his sweating fingers, only to drop it as the edge of Anna’s scythe slashed through his throat all the way to his spine. “Technically, every time I kill someone, Anna’s killing them, too. So a woman will beat me either way.”
Hazel danced around a man in black robes, then slammed her foot onto the edge of his garment. He stumbled, giving her time to get a knife beneath his chin, and that was all she wrote. “I see. You’re just trying to help your girlfriend! What a chivalrous guy!”
Both of us whirled to face each other. Around us, all of our attackers had fallen dead, or were busy dying on the ground. Hazel’s cheeks were as hot as an open oven, flushed with exertion. The lust for battle filled her eyes, warring with her obvious lust for me.
“You could be my girlfriend, too,” I said. It was the kind of declaration the old me would never have had the balls to make—but I was different now. New. “Anna and I could give you your powers back, Hazel. I swear it. A woman like you deserves to rule this world, not be stepped on by disgusting pigs like Guildmaster Ji!”
Huh? Where was this coming from? It felt almost as if my Black Core spoke for me. That strange sensation I’d had inside of Hazel’s tent sang in my veins, setting my pulse thrumming like a hummingbird’s wings. Suddenly things felt clear, sharp, almost as if I’d become a weapon myself.
We deserved to rule. If this was what passed for leadership in the Verdant Ruins Zone, then it needed a change of management. Anna, Lyra, Hazel and I—we weren’t just warriors. We could be gods. We could even challenge Eliezer.
For a moment, I knew the same thoughts danced in Hazel’s mind. She opened her mouth to say yes: to the sex, the cultivation, the ruling over the universe. All of it.
Before she could, Lyra screamed.
“Eric! Hazel! Watch out! Something’s coming!”
The older woman stood atop her cart, pointing at a bank of tents on the far side of the Silent Auction. From the lack of people screaming and running on that side of the island, I took it that news of the carnage going on at the auction block hadn’t yet spread to the more private tents.
Yet a solitary figure strode out from between them. A man with an ageless face and a long handlebar mustache, his robes fashioned from rich black-and-crimson silks. He didn’t look like much: yet a
t the sight of him, I froze in my tracks.
Mana pooled around his body—lots of Mana. Far more than I’d be capable of holding on my own.
A Cultivator, then. And a powerful one.
I didn’t recognize the man, but Hazel clearly did. She swore, twisting to the side with the answer to my question dying on her lips. “Shit,” she muttered. “That’s Vargus.”
“Who?” I watched as Hazel dropped to her knees, tugging a dagger free from a corpse.
I focused on him, and text appeared in front of me.
Cultivator Detected!
Realm 1: Level 3: Stage 3 (Late Core Foundation)
“Vargas,” Hazel replied. “He’s Guildmaster Ji’s right hand man. A Late Core Foundation.” An almost unnoticeable tremor passed through her body. “He’s strong, Eric. Very strong.”
I could have told her that. The man’s beady eyes took in the ruined square, the pile of corpses laying before Hazel and me. His gaze grew questioning for a moment as he saw the scythe in my hand, then I watched an almost imperceptible shrug lift his robes. Not a problem, he seemed to be thinking.
“Cultivator,” the man called Vargus said, giving me a quick bow. “You are not welcome here.”
I twirled the scythe in my hands. I tried my best to project a confident, cocky appearance, yet this man had rattled me. He stood at least two rungs up the ladder above me when it came to Cultivation. Peak Supreme God Eliezer might have said the man’s knowledge barely outshone my own, but I held very little doubt he could kick my ass in a straight magic fight.
“I’m here to free your slaves,” I said, jerking my thumb back at the auction block.
Vargus stood on tiptoe, sniffing at the sight of the beasts in their cages. The velociraptor continued chewing on the unlucky male slave, intent on devouring his entire body.
