A Manifold of Bindings (The Scrolls of Azbel Book 2)

by John Mangold

  To Maluem’s distress, she sensed the heartbeat of her doppelganger start to drop drastically. It was as if Cruentus’ emotions were being externally altered from a level of high alert to one closer to morose depression. If this was not alarming enough, the sound of rusted metal rubbing against rough-hewn stone announced the arrival of two new competitors on either side of the fighting area.

  Though much smaller than the Feroxis and more humanoid in form, the new adversaries were still examples of perverse medaling with demonic mating. The one to the right had a frame similar to a humanoid woman. However, hers was covered in fur, her head, and limbs replaced with those of a Lamia. The other was a colossal mass of synthetic muscle mixed with the upper body and hooves of a bull. In its clawed hands, it carried an axe very similar to that that Cruentus now held. The mutated pair took an immediate interest in the lone Gladiator, charging as soon as their fouled eyes detected her.

  “Wake up, you tic-headed ferd,” Maluem screamed, willing her fear and anger into the woman far below, striving to reinvigorate the will to fight within her. “Dive to your right, dive right!”

  The cloud of apathy cleared slightly, though whether this was from Maluem’s urgings, or from the woman herself, Maluem could not be precise. With a sudden lunge, Cruentus threw herself sideways, narrowly missing a clawed thrust from the Lamia. Her body had barely hit the ground before she swung her legs around, mule kicking the beast in the back. The results of the attack sent the she-demon stumbling into the path of the charging Minotaur. The fiend did not slow, dealing her a savage blow as it slammed her out of its way. With the Lamia’s body still in mid-flight, the thundering monstrosity reached Cruentus, swinging its axe down with both hands.

  Cruentus quickly rolled up to her knees, moving in close to the Minotaur, causing its strike to swing wide. As Cruentus moved, she cocked her arm back and drove it directly into the knee hinge of the beast’s leg. Once more, Maluem felt that same sliding sensation in her forearm as the half demon’s leg folded unnaturally from the impact, its structural integrity failing as muscle and metal exploded outwards. The screech of pain the fiend emitted was almost more ear-splitting than the roar of the Furoxis.

  As the giant fell to the ground clutching at its now useless limb, Cruentus rolled backward, claiming the discarded axe as she passed. She had just enough time to bring both weapons up in a cross to protect her chest before the Lamia was on her once more. The blow from the Minotaur had left a sizeable wound on the fiend’s left side, staining her fur black. The ravenous look in the half demon’s eyes, along with the saliva dripping from its eager fangs, left no doubt as to where the half-demon planned on regaining its strength from.

  The pressure the Lamia was putting upon Cruentus was immense, its half-demon muscles far outstripping what her slight frame implied. Despite Cruentus’s considerable strength, she was now at a disadvantage as she could not withdraw either arm to get a good strike in. She struggled to tie up the half demon’s legs in the hope of rolling the fiend off of her, but the Lamia had already achieved too well balanced a stance for her to reach them, let alone gain any leverage. All the while, those fangs grew ever closer to her neck, dripping acidic saliva in a steady stream, causing whiffs of fumes to rise where their droplets spattered her synthetic muscles.

  Just as the Lamia reared back her head for the killing strike, a blur of clawed furry smashed the half-demon aside, its departure causing Cruentus to spin over from the sudden release of pressure. As Cruentus turned her head to look back, she could see the Minotaur over her, balancing itself on one arm and its remaining uninjured leg, the other limb dragging uselessly behind it. The monster had obviously slung the Lamia aside to get a precise strike at Cruentus. As it pulled its free fist back, Cruentus lashed out with the axe in her right hand.

  In a flash, the Minotaur changed its assault, grabbing Cruentus’s arm in mid-swing. With a cruel twist, it wrenched her limb upwards, pulling her entire body from the ground. The bad news for the Gladiator was that her one arm was trapped within the monster’s massive fist, her body dangling precariously out in space. The good news was her tormentor now had no free hand to strike. Cruentus quickly proved which of the two was more vulnerable, her or the monster that held her.

  Wheeling her left arm around and using her body as a counterweight, Cruentus swung the axe in her opposite hand, driving it with all the force she could muster into the Minotaur’s forehead. It wasn’t enough force to crack through, but the axe was now lodged deep within the bone, the agony of the strike causing the beast to reflexively release his prey. Cruentus fell back to the ground in a pile. She rolled away from the screaming monstrosity, using her remaining axe to help her regain her feet.

  The Lamia was upon her before she could fully straighten. One clawed hand had Cruentus’ forehead firmly in its grip, while the other pinned her axe-wielding arm down, preventing any possible strike. The Lamia pushed Cruentus’ head back with incredible strength, exposing her jugular to the half-demon’s eager fangs. The fiend was so very close to getting what it so desperately desired. So close that it had forgotten about Cruentus’s free arm.

  Cruentus’s left fist struck the half-demon Lamia’s flank, directly in the center of the beast’s rib cage. The force of the blow caused a sickening crunch as ribs shattered inward, pushing razor-sharp bone fragments into the half demon’s lung and heart. The thing was dead before its carcass hit the floor, its eyes wide open in horrified surprise. Cruentus gave the monster’s still form only the quickest of glances as she returned her attention to the Minotaur.

  The monstrous beast was still doubled over, clutching at the source of agony it could not see. Blood had flowed readily from the wound down into its eyes, robbing the beast of any possible sight. In a drastic grab, its talons finally clutched around the axe handle in a bid to free the weapon from its wound. But, before it could complete the movement, Cruentus was over it. In an arcing motion, Cruentus swung her remaining axe around, bringing it down blunt edge first to strike the matching face on the lodged weapon. The force of the hit drove the weapon’s head deeper still, nearly splitting the skull in two. The Minotaur’s suffering was ended, along with its pitiful cries of agony, with a thunderous crack.

  Cruentus wrenched the second axe from the half demon’s skull moments before louvers built into the floor rotated open to drop the carcasses to the disposal chutes below, just as it had for the Furoxis moments before. Maluem could feel a brief wave of satisfaction well up through the prevailing sense of exhaustion. However, it was short-lived, as now a far too familiar sound greeted her ears, steel on stone. Looking up, she could see four more abominations hobble and crawl out onto the coliseum floor, each one more monstrous than the last, ending in a beast that made the Furoxis Half Breed look like a puppy. The thing was hardly identifiable, save mounds of fur sticking through thick armor plates and two savage tusks reaching out from what one could only assume was its head.

  To make matters worse, the floor below Cruentus’s feet began to pivot. In shock, Maluem realized that those lovers were not built into the floor; they were the floor. In the open position, the panels left only slender beams on which the warriors could stand. Moving meant hoping three feet from one to the next, each time risking a fall to a horrible fate below. This wasn’t a fight; this was a prolonged execution.

  What followed next was a blur to Maluem. The rush of rage and fury flowing from her doppelganger far below was more than she could handle as she desperately tried to keep track of the fight. She could not imagine how Cruentus maintained such a level of energy, as merely being a spectator was pushing Maluem to near unconsciousness. There was no feasible way the woman could keep going like this. Not against so many determined attackers, all with a single target in mind, the lone gladiator.

  Yet, strangely, this also proved to be in Cruentus’s favor. Her attackers were legion and fiercely determined, but they were uncoordinated. Their own clumsiness, along with a tendency of getting in each other’s way, quickl
y proved the demise of several half-demons, their fates meted out in the pits below. But these were quickly replaced with like fiends almost as soon as their brethren fell. They would have rapidly overwhelmed Cruentus if it had not been for her strongest ally, the one monstrous beast. Its size alone meant that it blocked half of the attackers at any given moment. With some agile dodging, Cruentus forced the Mammoth to execute a few attackers for her. Its swings were so brash and poorly guided, it was not too complicated a trick, possibly due to all that smothering hair blocking its eyes.

  Bounding from one louver’s edge to the next, Cruentus made her way across the vast expanse, dealing out strikes at passing fiends as opportunities arose. She did not need to worry about follow up strikes as quickly on her tail came the lumbering monstrosity, its flailing claws knocking low any foolish enough to pause long enough for a retaliatory attack. One of the half-demons managed to grab one of Cruentus’s axes mid-swing, but as she released the axe, the unfortunate Satire was caught off guard, staggering backward as the expected resistance evaporated. The fiend quickly found itself dangling from the axe it had claimed, its prize now wedged in a joint in the louvers, its only bid for survival.

  As Cruentus approached a barrier wall, she built up speed, her last bound more of a lunge upwards as though she was attempting to leap out of the pit of death. This was not her plan at all. Hitting the wall feet first, Cruentus sprang backward off of the sturdy surface, twisting her body as she did so. Using her body’s momentum, she swung her axe outward just in time to meet with her target that was following all too eagerly behind. The blade sank through layers of fur before it caught hold in the thick layers of flesh and blubber of the Mammoth, even as it crashed with thunderous impact into the very wall Cruentus had rebounded from.

  As her axe’s blade snagged in the craggy skin of the beast, Cruentus held on with all the strength her mechanical hands could afford. In a heart’s beat, her lodged weapon became the only thing holding her from the louvered floor far below. What made this perch far more challenging was that the Mammoth the weapon was dug into did not care too much for her presence. In pain and frustration, the beast began stomping heavily upon the louver edges under its enormous hooves, thrashing its head back and forth in a frantic effort to dislodge her.

  Pulling herself up like a mountain climber, Cruentus dug her feet deep into the beast’s fur to get the proper stance, then pulled her free fist back and drove it into the blunt face of the axe, again and again, each dead-blow strike pushing the bladed edge deeper into the monster’s flesh. She must have struck a nerve cluster because the beast suddenly went mad with rage, rearing up on its hind legs and coming down with a titanic, coliseum shattering crash. The impact freed Cruentus’ axe, sending her sprawling. As the shared sensation of falling caused her to stagger, Maluem felt a horrendous pain as Cruentus’s back slammed into the unforgiving steel surface of a louver’s top edge, then sliding and falling once more as Cruentus descended down between the immense slats of the flooring. A reflexive swing dug her axe blade into a louver’s face leaving her dangling by her axe handle over inescapable oblivion.

  With a thunderous crack, the metal mechanisms which made up the coliseum floor announced that they had been put through enough. The slats directly under the now rampaging mammoth gave way as their joints utterly shattered from the titanic strain. The monstrosity, along with most of the cross-breed participants, plummeted downward as the floor below them disintegrated into metal shards and debris.

  Since she had been fortunate enough to grab hold of one of the only louvers that had not failed, Cruentus was rewarded with a panoramic view of her attackers’ destruction in the seemingly bottomless pit. Pulling herself up, she was greeted with the hissing face of the Satire who had grabbed her other axe earlier, himself still trapped in his own precarious position. In a lightning grab, Cruentus snatched the axe free that was giving him purchase, sending him down to join his brethren.

  With not but the lone gladiator left, the remaining louvers rotated upwards to their closed positions, their mechanisms screeching out mechanical protests as they worked. Wearily regaining her feet, Cruentus dropped one of her axes to the floor at her feet. Reaching up, she grabbed hold of the ragged edge of her mask, taking advantage of the damage done by the Feroxis’s first strike. Pulling downward as hard as she could. She forced the remaining molecular bonding staples to give way one by one, taking clumps of flesh with them as they pulled free. Each snap was another dose of hideous pain, yet Cruentus continued to pull until the confining mechanism finally snapped free, exposing her full face once more to the outside air.

  The sliding of steel on stone once again announced an arrival, and Cruentus turned to greet a horde of what looked to be heavily armored guards as they took up crouching positions just outside the nearest gladiator portal. Each of them held a very strange looking rifle that seemed to have far more moving parts than it strictly needed. Before they could demonstrate their contraptions, Cruentus took a deep breath and let out a scream of her own, one that defied all possible definitions.

  It was not merely sound, but as if a soul of pure rage born of years of torment were suddenly set free and given a voice. The effect on the soldiers was catastrophic, visiting such sonic agony upon them that they could do nothing but clutch their ears in torment. Cruentus picked up her axe and charged them, her heart leaping with the glorious promise of vengeance fulfilled. She made it a full six bounds before the second wave of guards, still standing in the darkened portal, unleashed an inescapable surge of fire-born destruction. Cruentus never stood a chance.

  ***

  Maluem stood dumbfounded. In an instant, her connection with the gladiator was cut off, leaving her suddenly aware of the room of wide-eyed, gawking spectators that now stood staring at her. The chamber still echoed with the scream which she first supposed was that of Cruentus, but her hoarse throat and vacated lungs informed her that it was the remnants of her own utterance. From the expression on the group's faces, her outburst had clearly disturbed everyone in the room.

  Then nausea came, as intense and lasting as though someone had caressed her very soul in the most intimate fashion possible. She never felt anything so revolting. When she finished retching up what little she had eaten for the last two days, she turned to face the group. Trying to maintain one’s dignity after such a vulgar display was a daunting task, to say the least, but Maluem did her absolute best to reach that mark, discreetly checking her clothes for stains as she straightened and turned to face the group.

  “What the kulk was that?” Maluem demanded after clearing her throat.

  “You just took the words right out of my mouth,” Thayne replied, shock still evident in his eyes.

  “What just happened to her?” Maluem pressed.

  “Who?” Torrez and Shelia replied in unison.

  “The woman in the ring, Cruentus,” Maluem said. “What just happened to her? Is she dead?”

  “We should be so lucky,” Thayne responded glumly. “I would have won a fortune if that skrite had just agreed to stop breathing! No, she isn’t dead, not yet. The guards simply subdued her until they could get her properly restrained.”

  “Maluem, I’m surprised,” Shelia began. “I never thought you would be the type to get so wrapped up in this type of-”

  “What do you mean, not yet,” Maluem pressed Thayne, ignoring Shelia altogether. “What is her sentence? Is she meant to simply continue fighting until she dies? Is there no chance for her to win her freedom?”

  “Of course not,” Thayne replied, looking at Maluem in shocked amazement. “Don’t you know who that is? Don’t you know what she did to get here? She is Cruentus, one of the most vicious assassins of Furaxis!”

  As he uttered the name of their sworn enemy Torrez and Thayne spit on the floor reflexively while Shelia showed an obvious discomfort at hearing the word spoken aloud.

  “And that explains such treatment?” Maluem demanded. “Have you no more humane ways to deal wit
h captured troops? Have her people even tried to win her release?”

  “Well, as you know-” Thayne began again, his oily charm returning slightly.

  “No, I do not know,” Maluem cut in. “If I did, I would not be wasting my time listening to your meandering explanations. Kindly speak plainly and keep the fiction to a minimum, if you please.”

  “She is a traitor, Maluem,” Thayne continued, a bit put out. “All assassins are. She was once a Santilis citizen known as Mara Cephas, but she was captured when her Royal Family’s House was targeted for an enemy assault. They tortured her, brainwashed her, and maybe bribed her, who knows. All that is certain is she returned some years later as an agent for our sworn enemy.”

  “She was brainwashed,” Maluem repeated. “I am unfamiliar with this term. Is that akin to being spellbound? If so, that would explain her change of allegiance. Has anyone tried to break the spells put on her?”

  “Maluem, that alone could not excuse her actions,” Thayne replied. “Claiming you acted under the commands of some Bocor hoodoo is no excuse for acts as horrible as what she did.”

  “How do you mean? If she were under another’s control, she could not possibly be held accountable-”

  “She slaughtered her own family, Maluem,” Thayne stated.

  “She murdered-” Maluem began, shocked at his words.

  “I didn’t say murdered. I said, slaughtered,” Thayne cut in. “Butchered might be a better word for it. Mother, father, siblings, anyone she could come to grips with. They say the Inspector General himself resigned after witnessing the carnage. No Bocor trickery could make someone do that to their own family. No voodoo magic could excuse that away.”