by Dante King
There was a deal of cheering, but it sounded a little perfunctory, a little token, to me. Subjects cheering their ruler but really hoping that he’ll just button his lip and let them enjoy the entertainment.
“I am as eager as you all to see how our guest here, a guest from distant lands no less, fares against my champion. There has been no man or woman of any race under this sun of ours that has been able to best him.”
More cheers. Real pride lacing these.
“Yes, there has been no fighter better,” Shaykh Antizah continued, and now those clever eyes of his slid down to take me in. “Neither mortal nor mancer.”
I think that last little bit, coupled with the direct eye-contact, was meant to set me to quaking in my boots.
I yawned widely.
“Shall we get started then, your Shaykhness?” I said, flicking a bit of imaginary dust off the front of my shirt.
Shaykh Antizah’s eyes narrowed.
“As you wish!” he cried in a loud ringing voice. “Let the fight begin!”
The champion, whatever breed of hellspawn it was, did not go at me like one of C. Montgomery Burns’ hounds straight away. It took another fizzling firecracker spell to the back of the head by the catmancer before it made a move. When it did, though, it was quite a move.
With a fluid, terrifyingly fast spring, the nightmarish armored champion leapt upward and landed with an epic thud in the middle of the arena, sending the sand fountaining up around it. It was no mean jump. Must have been all of fifty yards, but the creature made it look like it had only moved an inch. I felt the impact of it landing through my boots. It sent shards and chips of stone and loose grit in all directions, rattling off the walls that fenced the two of us in.
The crowd were going wild; cheering and screaming and waving their many-colored limbs. Screaming for blood and death and victory, but for who I couldn’t tell.
The champion opened its disgusting, toothy gob and roared out a challenge of unbridled, insane bloodlust, its bulbous eyes swelling to the point of bursting. Its warm, moist breath washed over me, even though I was still a good twenty feet away.
Apart from wrinkling my nose, I didn’t move a muscle.
“Goddamn, your breath is so bad I bet people around here look forward to your farts!” I gasped.
The armor-clad beast roared at me again.
I waved a hand in front of my face theatrically. “Yep, still not sure whether to offer you some gum or some toilet paper.”
I heard a ripple of laughter spread out from those fans closest behind me.
“Winning the crowd is going to help,” I muttered. “Like Oliver Stone said, ‘Win the crowd and you’ll win your freedom.’”
My hideous opponent hissed at me.
“Come on then, you bastard!” I bellowed, pointing a finger at my foe.
The champion charged.
Without moving, I conjured my Onyx Armor into being along with the Lightning Speed helmet, which was part and parcel of being bonded with Pan. One second, I was dressed only in breeches and a shirt, the next I was wearing something that would have suited Batman had he run out of money and had to take up a job at Medieval Times. The Lightning Speed helmet crackled with tiny dancing bolts of electricity, so that it appeared my head was wreathed in the midst of a storm. The helmet would allow me to use a short burst of extreme speed, though each burst used a significant amount of mana.
The crowd oooooohed and aaaaahed appreciatively at this sudden, but oh so casual, display of magic.
As Shaykh Antizah’s champion closed on me, I summoned my Chaos Spear, spun it around my head, drew it back, and launched it.
The spear flew across the space between me and the monster, crackling white and silver energy trailing behind it like the tail of a meteor. It hit Shaykh Antizah’s monstrous champion square in its armored chest. The force of the spear sent the creature spinning, but the missile itself ricocheted off its breastplate. That was somewhat of a surprise. I supposed that a combination of the monster’s own latent magic and the skill of the Shaykh’s armorers were to thank for that. The spear made Shaykh Antizah’s champion cut off its roar as it tumbled sideways, but the weapon deflected off its breastplate and punched into the sidewall of the arena, blowing a small crater out of it. Stone fell like hail.
The champion looked irked, but not supremely concerned with my attack. It quickly bounded forward once more and swung a long arm at me in retaliation. I heard the crowd draw in an accumulative breath, thinking that they were about to see one dragonmancer become two half dragonmancers, but I vaulted nimbly over the scything fingers. They raked the ground where my feet had been, sending sprays of sand and dust into the air.
It was about then, with that dodge, that I realized that I could take Shaykh Antizah’s champion. The thing wasn’t out to kill me because it wanted to. It was out to kill me because it had probably been tortured and trained to. Looking into the bulging eyes of the monster, it was evident that it only had one oar in the water mentally. The poor bastard had no personal drive to see me dead—it was just being incentivized by the whips in its head.
That realization sent a bubbling anger coursing through me, scalding my veins and making me taste acid rage in the back of my throat.
I’d have to kill this thing—out of necessity and out of mercy.
I snorted forcefully through my nose, and my eyes narrowed. I didn’t usually hold with showboating, but this time, I was going to really show the Akritites, the Shaykh’s delegates and, most importantly of all, Shaykh Antizah, what a Mystocean dragonmancer could do. There was one surefire way to get to a man like Shaykh Antizah, and that was to make him look like a prizewinning dickhead.
I fired a couple of little Shadow Spheres at the monster, but before my sizzling spells could hit my adversary, it sprang away nimbly and landed some yards distant, thumping into the sand like some gross emaciated yellow frog.
Then it came at me once more.
I ran, dashing around the sidewall, using my dragon-enhanced speed to stay just ahead of the Shaykh’s fighter. I even dropped my pace a touch so that the monster was tempted to take another swing at me with its lethal claw-like fingers.
This time, I narrowly avoided the blow by running up the sidewall so that the beast’s claws raked along the solid stone, leaving deep gashes in it.
Then, I ran on, using my speed and strength to do some Matrix maneuvers and run horizontally along a stretch of wall before catapulting myself off sideways in a textbook cartwheel. As I flipped sideways, I conjured Garth’s Repeating Hand Crossbow into my hand, and let loose with a barrage of bolts that sparked and deflected off the armor of the Shaykh’s champion.
When I reached the zenith of my flipping arc, I traded the crossbow for the stunning harpoon and sent it hurtling into the backplate of the creature’s armor. I sent through a half-dose of stunning charge, enough for the champion to feel it, and then ripped the monster off its feet as I landed. I put so much strength into the pull that the enormous beast was thrown over my head and tumbled across the sand.
The crowd went absolutely crazy at that; shrieking, shaking their fists and yelling curses and admiration in equal measure.
Shaykh Antizah’s champion rolled nimbly to its feet and squatted for a moment, regarding me. I thought that it had probably never had a piece of prey put up such a fight as I was. It looked a little nonplussed. Doubtless, it was thinking that it should have been feasting on me right about then, picking my bones out of those hideous teeth it had.
I let it have a few more magical crossbow bolts, just to give the crowd something to cheer about and keep things spicy.
The champion narrowed its huge eyes at the storm of projectiles heading its way and then let loose with a spine-chilling scream that did not seem like it should have been to come from that slobbering mouth.
It was a shriek that could only just be discerned by the human ear, but with my dragon-enhanced senses, it set my teeth on edge. It hit the oncoming crossbow bolt
s like a wave and flung them right back at me at double the speed they’d left me.
I could have thrown myself to the side, but in all honesty, I might not have made it. Instead, I used Wayne’s Smog Form power to transform into a shape that was little more than smoke.
The projectiles ate up the area of sand that I had just been standing on like machine gun fire, blowing little geysers of grit and dust into the air and causing the crowd to gasp in wonderment.
I appeared again, feeling a little lightheaded, what with the transformation, but smiling disdainfully at the champion nonetheless.
“Hey buddy, I’m still here,” I said, waving.
The champion rose up, its clenched fists still on the ground, and leered at me in challenge.
Using Pan’s Lightning Speed helmet, I took off from the spot like a bullet from a gun. Using the insane acceleration, I threw myself under the monster’s hideous, lumpy yellow body, conjuring my Stormhammer to hand as I went. I slid through its arms and legs and, as I shot by, I hit the unarmored groin of the fiend with a doozy of a strike from the Stormhammer.
The blow was so hard that the champion flipped over, rotated in the air, and crashed down onto its back.
I was half tempted to use the Entropic Mine there and then, but for ultimate effect, I was going to need to be standing over a body at the end of this.
While the Shaykh’s champion writhed on its back, I accessed my Wing Slot, and a pair of beautiful, fast-looking wings materialized between my shoulder blades. They were not as fast as flying by dragon, but they were nimbler.
And they were the very definition of theater.
There were more gasps from the crowd, which turned into a full-blown chorus of silence as fifty-thousand spectators held their breath and watched me whizz up to the heavens.
And I cut the wing spell, performed a slow backflip, and dropped.
The Shaykh’s champion fighter opened its cavernous mouth. If I fell in there, I’d have about as much chance as a pig’s liver being deposited into a sausage-making machine. The creature’s mouth was so full of razor-sharp higgledy-piggledy teeth that it wouldn’t even have to bite down to kill me—it’d just have to grin and I’d be sliced and diced into the sort of mass of unidentifiable chunks usually found in a dog’s breakfast.
As I fell, I conjured the Chaos Spear to my hand, my arm already raised and ready to throw behind me. The weapon appeared, and I launched it at my foe, using my own impetus to get some extra juice behind it.
The Chaos Spear punched into the champ’s throat, just above its misshapen yellow breastbone and an inch above the top of its breastplate. Then, just before I landed on top of the stricken creature, I brought forth Pan’s Stormhammer and used it to drive the Chaos Spear right through its thick neck and into its spinal cord.
A jet of blood burst up as I flipped sideways, like a crimson Old Faithful. The monstrous champion convulsed a few times as the blood fired up and out of it, propelled by a dying heart.
Then, just to make sure of things, like they never do in the movies, I stepped up to the poor creature’s head and brought the Stormhammer down with all my might.
The head of the Shaykh’s champion exploded like an egg under a car tire with a noise like thunder. Lightning crackled across the enormous skull before it burst apart, coating me in gore.
And the crowd, on seeing such a horrific display, burst into mad applause.
After the dust and sand had settled, and the monstrous champion’s body had stopped twitching, I looked up at Shaykh Antizah’s royal box.
Hana, Tamsin, and Renji were on their feet applauding and smiling down at me. The Shaykh himself looked stunned. Around him, the delegates from his principalities were leaning over the rail of the VIP area. They were brandishing purses and pointing down at me, gesticulating wildly.
I could not hear what they were saying over the noise of the cheering crowd, but I didn’t have long to wonder at what they were jabbering about. Shaykh Antizah had risen to his feet and had his clever, long-fingered and perfectly manicured hands upraised. His oiled beard glistened in the dappled sunlight that snuck over the looming walls of the colosseum.
“What a… display,” he said.
The crowd, as one, bellowed and stamped its approval.
“I’m sure that we have all been dazzled by the prowess shown by this champion of the Mystocean Empire,” Shaykh Antizah continued, raising his voice slightly so that it echoed around the arena and the assembled audience quieted respectfully. “My delegates have even been trying to bargain a purchase price for our dragonmancer here.”
A chorus of boos rose from the stands like marsh gas out of a bog.
Purchase price? I thought as an icy notion crept into my head.
Shaykh Antizah laughed softly, as if such an idea, that a person could be bought and sold, was a real hoot.
“I have told them that our ancient and venerable customs are not the customs of the Mystocean Empire. Akrit is a land unto itself; unique and wonderful. Our class system; of masters and those who have to obey them, is not to the tastes of other lesser regions.”
There was some proud cheering at these words, but I barely registered it.
Purchase price? Class system? Master and those who have to obey them?
I looked over Shaykh Antizah’s shoulder and saw that Zala, the catmancer warrior, was looking hard at me.
She had been right. The fight had not been fair, only not in the way that she had expected it to be. There was also something else about Akrit that wasn’t fair…
“To celebrate our new hero,” Shaykh Antizah said, speaking the word ‘hero’ in the same tone he might say the word ‘diarrhea’, “the rest of the day and night will be devoted to pleasure! Drink, eat, fornicate, and use those below you as they were meant to be used!”
The crowd cheered. I scarcely heard them.
Something in Akrit stank. I had come here to make arrangements for our entry into the Subterranean Realm, but it looked like I was going to have more business to take care of than just that.
“Hey, Shaykh,” I called up to the royal box with as little respect as I could muster, wiping blood from my eyes, “how about a bath for the hero?”
Chapter 10
I was sure part of Shaykh Antizah would have very much liked to have me clapped in irons, bound in chains, or otherwise similarly detained. I mean, I had just wasted his champion in no uncertain manner. Whatever that poor tortured creature had been, I doubt it was the variety of creature that grew on trees.
In any case, there was little the Shaykh could do with fifty-thousand of his ecstatic subjects looking on. The crowd was frothing over with bloodlust-driven excitement at what they had just seen. From what I could gather from the gabbling confusion of voices, this champion had been undefeated for as long as anyone cared to remember. What the fans had just witnessed was tantamount to a grassroots MMA fighter knocking out Kamaru Usman.
I may have a had a gut feeling that Shaykh Antizah was basically a snake with a beard, but the man was not stupid. I didn’t think that you could rise to be Shaykh of a kingdom like Akrit without at least half a brain, which ruled out about ninety percent of the politicians back on Earth from applying for the job.
With a syrupy smile that might have fooled the crowd but did not fool me, Shaykh Antizah inclined his head in a most regal manner and had the doors to the arena opened. With a final wave to my newly adoring public, I tried to wipe a bit more blood out of my face and strode out of the colosseum.
An hour or so later, after having traversed my way through the market once more with Hana, Renji, and Tamsin at my side, I was reclining in a fantastically large black marble bathtub.
“Whenever I settle down and have a place of my own,” I spoke up to the mosaic-covered ceiling, “I have got to get myself one of these.”
The bath was so deep that I could only just touch the bottom standing at my full height. Steam rolled across the rose oil-scented water like some B-grade special-effec
ts in a horror movie. On the edge of the sunken tub, not far from where I lay submerged except for my face, was a jug of wine and a goblet.
I sighed contentedly through my nose, closed my eyes, and listened to the steady rhythm of my heart thudding in my submerged ears.
Peace.
“Someone approaches, Father,” Pan said quietly in my head.
I didn’t so much as flutter an eyelid.
“An assassin?” I asked calmly.
There was a pause and then Brenna said, “Gods, Pan, be a little more vague, why don’t you?”
She might have only been a few weeks old, but already Brenna was showing that she wasn’t going to be the sort of individual to take any prisoners as far as half-brothers went. The other male dragons were already learning that she didn’t suffer fools.
“So, no assassin, then?” I said, with just a touch of peevishness coloring my voice. “Only, that kind of thing is handy to know before they stab you.”
“It’s Renji, Dad,” Cyan said promptly, backing up her half-sister. “Honestly, Pan, what if Dad had blasted first and asked questions later?”
I heard Pan grumbling to himself in the back of my mind.
“She is trying to sneak up on you, though,” the Tempest Dragon said.
“Trying to see if I ever let my guard down, I guess,” I said, trying to crowbar my way into the middle of the bickering. It was one thing if all your kids got into a slanging match and you could leave the room and shut the door on them, but another thing entirely if said slanging match was taking place in your own head.
“She’ll have to get up a bit earlier and tread a bit quieter than that to catch us off guard, Dad,” Garth told me.
Now that I was fully cognizant and had my senses questing out around me, I could actually feel the subtle shifting of the scented steams that touched my face, as Renji prowled carefully around the lip of the bath.
