by John Mangold
“Kulk, that was close,” Torrez muttered as they entered. “I think that woman had you pegged, Maluem. We are going to have to figure out a better disguise for you. Maybe some kind of hood-”
“Hoods are out this season,” a voice pronounced from their left. “I would go with a half-mask. They are all the rage with the Lords these days.”
The group turned to face a figure lurking just inside the door as though in ambush. The stranger was a wiry man, of below-average height and a sharp-featured, but handsome face with bright blue eyes alive with mischief. His hair was blond and meticulously groomed, betraying a keen interest in his appearance, which was echoed in his sharp, well-pressed attire. Imbedded in the flesh of his neck, like a necklace, was a long strand of silver devices that were clearly polished to catch the eye. Whatever their real purposes were, they appeared to be crafted to fit the role of surgically implanted jewelry. Yet, dazzling even brighter than this was an overly familiar smile as he quickly stepped forward to greet them.
“Thayne,” Torrez responded with a broad smile and a hearty handshake, which Maluem could swear Thayne nearly pulled away from. “I thought I would never see you again! You look great!”
“I feared the same after I delivered you two to the border,” Thayne agreed.
“More likely, you wished the same. How are you doing, you old snake?” Shelia responded in what Maluem was sure was not meant entirely in humor.
From Thayne’s half-smile, Maluem was certain Shelia’s light jab was not taken entirely in jest. Still, he gave Shelia a warm hug and quickly recovered his customary, overly accommodating smile. It was not until he turned to face Maluem that the venire cracked ever so slightly. Was that a look of alarm, fear, or elation? Maluem could not be entirely sure as his features flowed smoothly back to his practiced state before she could fully register what she had seen.
“And who is this lovely dove you brought with you?” Thayne inquired as he reached to take Maluem’s hand. “You always did attract the most beautiful specimens, Torrez. I wish I had your skills in such arts.”
“I am certain you are as artful as any of your peers, but I fear your talents are wasted on one such as me,” Maluem responded, quickly drawing her hands behind her back and away from his extending grasp. Maluem had to admit he was handsome and clearly quite a charmer, but all of this she forced to the back of her mind as she remembered the warnings Shelia had provided.
Thayne’s eyes held Maluem fast in their hungry gaze. It was a lurid stare which she had not seen since the last time she heard the word ‘Dove’ used in such a manner. This unpleasant memory inspired a level of disgust for Thayne that Maluem could not help feeling was well placed.
“Beautiful in mind and body,” Thayne replied, showing no annoyance at Maluem’s rejection. “Quite a treasure in these parts. I pray we will have a chance to get to know each other better.”
“I doubt that will be necessary,” Maluem replied with a tight smile. “We will not be staying long. Our task calls, and we must maintain our pursuit. I was led to believe you could assist us in continuing our journey, unhindered.”
“I certainly can, dove. There is nothing your heart desires that Thayne cannot provide. But what is your hurry? Relax, enjoy the show. The warmup fights are ending, and you would not want to miss the main attraction. I hear Cruentus will find it impossible to survive tonight’s challenges.”
“I don’t know if that is a good idea,” Torrez replied, eyeing Maluem. “We nearly got spotted coming in, and I don’t think we should push our luck by-”
“Come on, Torrez, did Nia remove your street sense with those implants?” Thayne playfully chided. “You know the Eyes don’t come in here. Besides, most in this place have a better reason to avoid the authorities than you do. If the Royal Guard showed up here, they would have to arrest everyone in the building. Besides, we would just look suspicious leaving now. Better to wait until the fight is over and depart with the crowd.”
“Well, maybe it would be better to wait a little while,” Shelia agreed. “But we need to leave a little early. Some among us do not react well to heavily populated areas.”
Shelia said this while pointedly looking towards her Master, but Maluem hardly noticed the reference. As the discussion had progressed, Maluem’s attention had slowly been overtaken by the spectacle below. To her horror, she could see a single combatant out in the middle of the arena attempting to do battle with what seemed to be a half-bred Furoxis. The demon was a sickly specimen, possibly resulting from an imprudent mating between its sire and some feral feline species. Yet, this poor breeding made the beast no less deadly, nor was its victim any less panicked.
Even from this height, Maluem could feel terror radiating from the Gladiator’s trembling form. Looking slightly to her right, Maluem found herself looking into a slender panel held a short distance from the viewing barrier. This panel magically provided a much closer image of the unfolding fight below. Maluem knew not how this was possible. She only knew that this participant’s view of the life and death struggle now held her entranced. In an instant, she felt trapped in that arena far below alongside the unwilling warrior. She knew the fight's result, it was hardly in any doubt, yet Maluem could not wrench her eyes away.
“Ah, a Furoxis,” Thayne remarked as he joined Maluem at the window. “A fitting end for a traitor! Here is a bit of trivia, dove. Did you know that the Furoxis species originates from our enemy’s lands, which is how they got their name? I once met the man who discovered them. He was a good friend of mine -”
“I find that hard to believe as it is common knowledge that the demonic species was first identified and categorized over three hundred years ago,” Maluem cut in. “I believe the naturalist’s name was Hasten Whickers. If you are going to insult me with a false tongue, kindly make your lies more plausible. Now, you say this warrior is a traitor, how so?”
“That one,” Thayne replied, only faltering slightly at Maluem’s rebuff. “I believe he was trying to plant a bomb in one of the Royals’ palaces. It might have worked if he hadn’t trusted the wrong cohorts. Turns out his fellow conspirators decided it was worth more to turn him in and collect the bounty than complete their plan.”
“I trust they were suitably rewarded for their loyalty to the crown?” Maluem asked. As she spoke, the Furoxis managed to dodge the flagging Gladiator’s increasingly feeble defenses, landing a blow that ripped the man’s head from his shoulders. The favorable response from the crowd was thunderous.
“But of course, they were last night’s entertainment,” Thayne replied with a smile. “Their payment was being spared the agony of prolonged anticipation. Let no one say the Crown is without mercy. Ah, here we go, the big event itself. If you want to place bets, you better make it fast! The odds are long on the skrite surviving the first three waves is, but the payoff would be incredible!”
Thayne consulted a small implanted screen on the back of his right hand. On it, Maluem could easily see the probability calculations against the next contestant, along with a countdown to the end of accepting bids. The gladiator's name sparkled in an array of colors along with the title “Main Event.” Whoever this ‘Cruentus’ was, her future was bleak indeed as the odds were two thousand to one against her.
Maluem started to turn away, determined not to play the spectator to another victim’s grotesque slaughter. But, as the next gladiator appeared in the arena, that small display once more caught her attention, causing her head to freeze in mid-turn. Maluem blinked several times to clear her vision. There had to be some foul trickery afoot as what that tiny, mystical portal displayed could not possibly exist, not unless everything she had been told since birth was a lie! Yet, no matter how hard she blinked, the image refused to waver. With all the confidence of an enraged lioness, the woman striding into the arena was Maluem’s mirror image, almost as if that gladiator was her twin sister.
28.
Death’s Spectacle
The woman who strode into the are
na had such a strange appearance that she might not be considered human at all. Her hair was shock white, cut crudely short as though the job had been done with a dull knife. Her eyes were of an amber hue that, even at this distance, appeared strangely mechanical in nature. Her skin, what little was visible, had the pallid shade of a cadaver, making her dark-rimmed eyes stand out all the more savagely. Her upper body was ‘protected’ by a shabbily constructed chest plate that had seen too many battles between visits to the armory. Below this, she was wrapped in a crudely cut, sleeveless tunic that would have looked at home on a fieldhand back in Camilos.
Her upper arms and shoulders looked as though they had been wholly skinned, the red, raw fibers of her muscles gleaming in the colosseum’s harsh lighting. Yet, when Maluem looked closer, she could discern master crafted struts made of steel, bonded around her shoulders and elbows, buttressing the ‘synthetic muscles’ that now made up the majority of her upper body.
Her forearms were entirely composed of metal with crafted portals here and there to display the mechanical workings comprising their inner cores. Her fists were covered with well-worn fingerless gloves, the knuckles shod with what at first appeared to be dull metals. Yet, as the picture on the viewing device became sharper, Maluem realized that the gloves' fabric had split, allowing metal knuckles to show through. The legs of the woman were most likely similarly modified. However, her function minded slave garb covered them down to her iron-shod boots.
Yet, for all the oddities of the creature’s appearance, this was not what disturbed Maluem the most. It was the woman’s face or the cheeks, forehead, and eyes which her half-mask revealed that genuinely held Maluem’s gaze. As absurd as it seemed even to her, the gladiator’s facial appearance was an exact double of her own.
How could this be? Was she some long lost relative of which Maluem had never been told, perhaps a sibling of a distant aunt or uncle? But if so, why had her father not detailed this line of their family tree? Was this a member of a disgraced branch of the Wurncaster clan, shamed by an ancestor’s sin? Knowing the practice of banishment her father Aldis favored so highly, this seemed the most probable explanation.
Maluem was dimly aware that Thayne was speaking, but his words were utterly lost on her. Whatever empathy she might have felt for the last Gladiator, it was nothing compared to this one. It was more than merely the resemblance of this being to her own. There was something wrong. Something in Maluem’s head that had never been there before, yet felt disturbingly familiar.
As the gladiator progressed, Maluem began to feel as if she was actually in that woman’s shoes. With each breath, their mental states were somehow becoming intertwined, as if their blood was coursing through a single system of veins, pounded on its way by a shared heart. This was more than human empathy. Their minds were together in a way Maluem had only felt once before when she was healing Nia. She instinctively braced for the feeling of nausea such intimate contact traditionally brought, yet the endorphins coursing through her mind would leave no room for it. There was no nausea, only the heightened awareness precipitating an upcoming fight.
The woman who she now knew to be called Cruentus, a name suddenly as familiar to her as her own, strode forward towards the awaiting Furoxis. As she approached, the beast gave a savage roar that would have deafened any natural human ears. A wave of sonic force coursed out before the creature, causing a wave effect in the loose debris on the arena floor.
Maluem grabbed the screen, silently willing Cruentus to dodge to the side, yet the gladiator stubbornly stood her ground as the wave hit. In an instant, it was gone, leaving no more ill effect on its target than a summer’s breeze. It was as if the source energies of the spell had been absorbed into Cruentus’s body. Yet, if the Furoxis detected this oddity, it showed no sign. In the next pulse, it was lunging towards the approaching woman like an avalanche of teeth and claws. Maluem’s eyes flickered to look into those of Cruentus. It was as her mind already told her. There was no fear in her eyes, no despair, no rage, only grim anticipation.
As the half-demon fell toward the ground, completing the arching pounce it had made towards its victim, the world around Maluem seemed to suddenly slow. The beast’s movements that had appeared lightning fast before now seemed sluggish and predictable. Maluem could not tell if this was a fault in her own perception, a feature which the small screen provided to make the killing stroke that much more climactic, or an effect of her connection to this odd woman. All she was aware of was her desire to make this warrior move from harm’s path.
Cruentus’ body swung to the right as the Furoxis’ mass came crashing down, missing the bulk of its impact, but catching a glancing blow to the side of her face that opened a ragged wound, heavily damaging the flange of the concealing mask. Maluem felt the burning pain of the beast’s attack as though it were her own, felt the blood run down her cheek in a warm, sticky stream. Yet along with it, she felt an emotion that was utterly out of place, deep satisfaction. These sensations were quickly lost as she became aware that the Furoxis was moving once more, swinging its hideous form round to find where its target had dodged to.
Cruentus lunged forward, rolling directly under the ferocious beast. It was a move Maluem would never have considered, and apparently, one the brute had not either. It was far more accustomed to its victims vainly trying to put distance between them and it. With Cruentus under its belly, it was momentarily confused about how to react. That was all the opening the Gladiator needed. Cruentus’s left fist swung up hard into the beast’s unprotected flank. As the female fighter’s fist hit, Maluem felt the hide against her own knuckles, then, in a split pulse, she felt something move in her forearm, something substantial, like a massive weight suddenly granted an absurd amount of momentum. As it slammed home behind her wrist, she could feel her punch’s impact multiply over a thousand times. The flesh she pounded liquefied as the wet sound of breaking rib bones greeted her ears, along with a nerve-shattering howl of pain.
Cruentus’ right arm swung up in a counter-strike, swinging her axe in a vicious arc, but the Furoxis had not been idle in its agony. The beast’s bulk sprang nearly directly up from where it stood over Cruentus, narrowly missing the full strength of its attacker’s swing. However, this merely reduced what might have been a crippling blow to a glancing strike as the blade dug a trench along the half demon’s departing side. The pain from this more recent wound threw off the Furoxis’s accuracy, causing its talons to miss Cruentus completely. Still, the leg they were attached to struck Cruentus full in the chest, sweeping her off the ground and hurtling her some ten feet backward.
Maluem’s vision blurred as tears filled her eyes. Her lungs burned with fire as her muscles struggled to fill them with air once more. Her face and sides screamed as they reported the loss of several layers of skin. It was everything she could do to keep her knees from buckling underneath her. Every nerve in her body was alive as though she had taken the kick herself. Still, her eyes never left the screen as she mentally willed Cruentus to regain her feet.
“Get up, skagit,” Maluem muttered through gritted teeth. “That half-demon won’t just bide its time while you recover! Get on your feet, woman, or you’re as good as dead!”
She couldn’t tell if it was just her imagination, but she could swear she could see Cruentus nod as she lifted herself from the ground, swinging her head up to look for her opponent. Her eyes locked with the Furoxis just in time to witness a ferocious display of hissing teeth and claws as the beast launched itself into a second charge. In one bound, it cut the distance between them in half. Cruentus wrenched herself up to her feet, her right shoulder still dipping far down towards the ground from a visible injury.
“Get your ferd butt moving!” Maluem could hear her own voice bellowing.
Just as the Furoxis looked like it was sure to drive its victim into the colosseum’s floor, Cruentus twisted her body around, swinging the axe her right hand held as hard as she could and letting it fly as the arc towards the
Furoxis was at its apex. The weapon slung through the air with startling precision, meeting the half-demon in midair and sinking deep into its neck directly behind its ear. The fiend did not even have time to scream before it hit the ground, its brutish body skidding right towards Cruentus with all of its momentum still intact.
As the mass reached her, Cruentus sidestepped slightly, grabbing the protruding axe handle and using the shock of the impact to sling her up on top of the Furoxis. As her right foot landed, sinking deep into the crook where the neck and skull met, she pried the weapon free, spinning the axe blade around as she brought it up and over her head, swinging it back down to rip into the opposite side of the half demon’s throat, severing the jugular. The spout of blood announced the monster’s demise as it coated both fur and Gladiator alike. With a savage wrench, Cruentus pulled her axe free once more, shouldering its weight as the Furoxis gurgled its death rattle. Maluem could feel herself let out a hoot of exhilaration that was immediately drowned out by the roaring objections from the crowd.
With no immediate danger in sight, Maluem was able to marvel at how the recently received injuries' pain seemed to fade very quickly. At first, she thought this might be a sign that the connection between the two had abated somewhat, yet when she looked in the screen, she could see the most apparent wounds on the woman’s face slow in their bleeding, then begin to fade away. Becoming slightly more aware of the conversation in the viewing chamber around her, Maluem could hear Thayne pontificating on something called ‘Nanites’ within the bloodstream and how quickly they repaired damage to flesh. However, given his recent display of creative reality, Maluem was not inclined to put stock in his words. Still, in this case, her shared senses did seem to back up some of his questionable information.
