by Sunny
“That’s why I’m sure he will. Do you remember what he called you? My dragon Queen beauty. Lucinda, there may be a real chance for you to get away. None of these demons has ever seen a dragon or fought a warrior with dragon blood. Derek may underestimate us. I’ll do my best to keep you safe until you are given your chance. But you, in turn, must do your part. As soon as you are able to, you must shift into your dragon form and fly away.”
“But—”
“You cannot save us both, just yourself. If there was a way, selfish bastard that I am, I would gladly take it, but there isn’t. I will fight with every last ounce of strength in me to give you a chance—to aid your escape. But I will inevitably fall. Do not try to help me. Do not come back for me. Do as you once told me I should have done.”
“What?”
“Escape. Get help and come back for me. I fully expect you to return with a battalion of warriors, you know. I’m not that self-sacrificing.”
“Don’t,” Lucinda said roughly. “Don’t put yourself down like that. Not when you’re trying to be noble.”
“It’s not nobility. Just damn necessity. And I’m selfish enough to ask that you don’t waste my intended sacrifice. If you have a chance to escape, you must seize it and not look back. You have to survive, do you understand? That is the only important thing to me. I’m a tough bastard. I fully expect you to try to salvage me when you return. But if I perish, it will have been worth it to me, but only if you survive.”
The inner gate groaned open, spilling in dim light. And suddenly the time for words was over.
FIFTEEN
WE DIDN’T VOLUNTARILY walk out into the pit of the arena—no, we weren’t as eager as that for our trials to begin. We didn’t budge until the gate we had entered through creaked open and we saw large beasts being herded into the passageway. What they were, I couldn’t tell in the dim light, but the angry grunts coming our way were alarming enough to flush Hari and me out into the empty center. The arena floor was overrun with weeds and bushes and scraggly grass.
I had a brief glimpse of scattered demons above and around us. Of walls tall, old, and crumbling at various parts, which would have been good had not guards with large battle axes been posted at all these weak points. The axes were a bit of an overkill. The demons guarding those areas were weapons enough with their full strength and access to demon claw and fang—which, by the way, we did not have. No fangs or claws for Hari and I, not as long as the oil of Fibara still muted our abilities. Our only weapons of sorts were our sharp demon nails; a poor tool without full demon strength and speed to back it.
Compared to the heavy beasts trundling after us into the arena, our modest half-inch-long nails were as nothing compared to their sharp foot-long tusks—and those were the smaller ones. Some were curved longer than my arm. The animals themselves were taller than us, and weighed at least a thousand pounds each.
Five geant boars. Hell’s enlarged version of wild boars. Only instead of a thick, hairy hide—no, that would have been too easy—they had an almost impenetrable outer shell much like a rhino’s thick, leathery armor. Their short curly tails looked like a cute, comical afterthought pinned onto the thick hind quarters.
The beady, marble-dark eyes of the geant boars turned in our direction. Some were already flaring red, not because they saw us—no, their eyesight was rather poor—but their sense of smell was sharp and acute.
“They smell my blood. Don’t talk, don’t move, and they won’t know you’re here,” Hari said quietly as he began to circle slowly around to the right, away from me.
Wet snouts snuffled the air loudly and five pairs of yellow ivory tusks tracked Hari’s movement. They began trotting toward him. Normally they were too slow to be of any threat to demons. Small herds of domesticated boars were sometimes even kept by demon households for their ready blood and abundant meat. But these geant boars weren’t acting the least bit domesticated. Their beady, vicious eyes had turned crimson in excitement. Nor did finding themselves inside the stadium with an injured demon seem at all strange to them as they closed in eagerly around Hari. Not likely this was the first time they had surrounded and taken down a weakened demon here. And we had nothing to fight them with!
I glared up at those who watched us from above, over seventy demons scattered loosely around the large, tiered rows of the amphitheater. Beyond them, four demon archers stood at the ready with longbows and quills, scattered among the axe-wielding guards. Below them, sitting on an elaborate stone throne, was Derek. He was the only demon among them not crippled, maimed, or injured in any way.
The other bandits watched Hari and the boars, but Derek’s eyes were fixed upon me with shining intensity. And it wasn’t because of my half-undressed state. There was nothing as simple or common as sexual desire in that avid stare. More like he wanted to inhale my essence, my very soul. His fixed, focused attention upon me, and the posted archers and guards above us made Hari’s words seem suddenly far more believable. Derek was going to toy with us—have sport with us until the effect of the oil wore off. Until then, we had to survive.
The ground shook as the boars suddenly rushed Hari. I watched, helpless, a scream caught in my throat as Hari dove to the ground, rolling so dangerously close to their trampling feet. The edge of a sharp tusk from the boar nearest him caught and ripped through the skin of Hari’s back. The wound was thankfully shallow, but it demonstrated that without our demon quickness, we moved as slow as the boars. Or more accurately, they moved as fast as us now.
Hari leaped back, dodging another sharp, vicious tusk, and ran to the opposite end of the arena, leading them away from me.
It was not a fair fight to begin with. The geant boars had a far heavier mass than us, and were thereby more powerful by simple virtue of this weight disparity. They also outnumbered us. It should have been five to two. But no, Hari wanted to make it even more unfair—five to one. Screw that.
I moved as Hari had moved, slow, smooth, and unhurried, closing in on one of the great boars. What I would do once I reached the creature, I didn’t know yet. All I knew was that I had to be closer to the action, so I could draw some of that lethal attention away from Hari.
“Lucinda, don’t. Go back,” Hari said, his voice low and intense as watched the five boars circle around him almost lazily.
I didn’t answer him; didn’t want to give myself away yet to the large, ugly beasties. I shook my head instead of replying.
Bad mistake. That one abrupt movement was enough to snag the attention of the boar nearest me. He snorted and turned his dim eyes and sharp nose in my direction.
Hari muttered a harsh curse and leaped at the creature before he could charge at me.
No, I thought. That wasn’t what I wanted, what I had intended.
Hari slammed into the geant boar and tried to shove him onto his side. It didn’t work. The big creature didn’t even budge. Hari did, however, bouncing back from the creature to land on his butt.
“As big and as stupid as troll dung!” Hari snarled. “Here, this way! To me!” Picking himself up, he waved his arms. As a distraction, it worked wonderfully. The animal rushed him, as the other boars closed in around him, leaving Hari little room to maneuver or escape.
Hari had already proven that the creatures were too big and heavy to knock over. What else to do?
The little curly tail on the geant boar trotting away from me twitched back and forth, catching my attention. As good a part of the animal as any to latch on to it, I guess.
I ran up behind the big beast as fast as I could, which was not terribly fast. Hampered by the effects of the oil, we were reduced down to almost human strength, the lowest on the totem pole. But humans, weak as they were and even at their most primitive, still had managed to kill animals much larger than themselves by using their greater intellect.
I grabbed that little curling pig tail and used it to swing my full weight around the back of the blocky creature. The boar squealed, a loud, high-pitched sound that grate
d even my dull ears. It should be even more jarring to the bandits’ fully functioning senses.
The big boar swung around, literally chasing its poorly abused tail. The swing of the animal’s movements kept me suspended off my feet. I was actually congratulating myself on the brilliance of my smart maneuver when the boar suddenly reversed its direction. Uh-oh. A hind foot kicked out and caught me square in the stomach. A foot higher and I would have had broken ribs. As it was, I bounced and skidded across the rough dirt floor. It was, ironically, the sharp-bladed leaves of the weed plants and not the fall itself that scraped my hands and caused them to bleed.
I lay on the ground, stunned for a moment as the fresh scent of blood wafted into the air, pinpointing my location. Two boars started galloping toward me. The one leading the charge was the creature whose tail I had stretched. His eyes burned an angry, dark red as he charged, tusks lowered. I rolled as he thundered by, the swipe of those sharp tusks so close I felt their airy kiss over my skin. I rose to my knees and then had to throw myself to the ground in reverse direction to dodge the second boar’s charge.
I saw Hari twist away from swiping tusks, his eyes on me. “Get up,” he yelled as the two boars wheeled around and charged me again. But I was still dazed and hurt. It wasn’t just the kick to the stomach, though the pain of that blow hurt like the dickens. It was more the blood on my hands, smeared on the bristly plants, so crimson bright. So alive came the odd thought, and I wasn’t sure if it was the blood or the purple-green weed plants the thought was addressing. Another odd thought came to me—from me but not really from me—that I was more. Not just demon dead but more. What more?
As I answered the odd, seeking question in my mind, it was like a dawning revelation of myself to myself. Through my binding with the others, I was part living Monère and part Floradëur, not just demon.
As the revelation came to me, I tried something I hadn’t thought to do before. I tried to draw from those other parts of me. The oil of Fibara muted a demon’s strength; it had no effect on a Monère or Floradëur.
I felt something in me, something around me, stir as two of the half-ton creatures bore down upon me, their sharp ivory tusks gleaming.
I leaped away—and when I say leaped, I mean it in the truest sense. Not a little hop but a big one, covering several meters at a speed that was Monère fast. Not quite the quickness with which the demon dead could move, but much faster now than the geant boars. And with that knowledge, that sudden increased speed, I wondered: What about my strength? Is that greater now, too?
Only one way to find out.
I leaped again, not away this time but toward the two boars that had wheeled around to face me. I crossed the distance, and instead of latching on to a little tail, I grabbed a yellow ivory tusk. A violent pull, a powerful twist of my body, and it broke. It broke! I landed on my feet with the sharp tusk gripped like a long ivory stiletto in my hand. A weapon. I had a weapon now.
The animal screamed in rage, in pain, with an intensity of emotion that was almost human as it rushed me. I just stood there and let it come, feeling the ground tremble and shake. Waited until it was almost on me before twisting to the side and thrusting that long, sharp tusk through its eye, ramming it into its brain. It dropped, twitching and shuddering to the ground like a giant boulder, its painful squeals filling the air.
The other boar turned and tried to run away from me. Too late.
I launched myself at the retreating boar, snapped off one of its tusks with a sharp, twisting wrench, and drove it like a stake up into its eye. The great beast dropped to the ground. Snapping off the remaining tusks from the two downed boars, I charged toward the others with a wild battle cry. Two of the boars turned away from Hari to face me; the third one ran away. I slapped a tusk into Hari’s hand, and went after one, while he went after another. A light spring just past my chosen target, a quick spin around, and another high-pitched squeal as I speared it through the eye.
I turned around to discover that Hari had dispatched his boar as well. He might not be as fast as I, but he was deadly accurate. A long tusk stuck out from a bleeding eye cavity as his boar squealed and grunted and writhed where it had fallen.
The last boar took only four leaps to reach and was a relatively quick and easy dispatch. I looked back in time to see Hari carve open the soft underbelly of his boar with a tusk, and rip out the heart. Didn’t need full demon strength to do that; weaker human strength was more than enough for that task.
The crowd of demons watched in silence as Hari gobbled down the blood filled organ.
Ew!
I knew now that it gave you some of your prey’s strength, but no thanks—just plain old blood was more than enough for me. Plain old demon nails to cut open the soft neck and drink from it. A couple of mouthfuls and I felt even more strength return to me.
Derek’s eyes bored down into me from above, and I knew that he wondered the same thing I wondered, too. If the oil’s effect had worn off yet. Whether I could shift now into my dragon form.
Soon. But not yet.
They did not allow us any more time than that before the next round started. The inner gate swung open and a demon walked out of it. He was a bandit I had not yet seen, because I would not have forgotten him if I had. He was a warrior, obviously trained, wielding an old, chipped sword. But this was only noted distantly. He was whole of body, all his limb and digits intact, but not whole of face. His maiming was only one part of him—his nose. It had been cut entirely off, leaving a gruesome naked hole in his face. What most people don’t realize is that the nose is mostly cartilage, not bone. The walking anatomy lesson coming toward me reminded me sharply and vividly of the fact that when you cut the nose away, you peer directly into the dark hollows of the nasal cavities. That one defect—no nose— took away all the wholeness of his face and turned it into a garish horror.
The softening up phase was apparently over. The bigger guns were being sent out now.
The demon bandit, moving too fast for me to see, was suddenly there in front of me with that nose-missing face. “Boo!” he whispered, and I fell back away from him with a girlish scream, a sound I hated hearing coming from my throat.
That one move by him, and my reaction, answered their question. No, I had not regained full demon speed yet.
Another quick blur of movement and he reappeared standing behind Hari, the point of his sword sliding through the front of Hari’s chest. The sword blade pulled back out and Hari collapsed to the ground.
I screamed, with anger, with rage, with something close to madness. “No! Fight me, you ugly noseless freak. Or are you afraid?”
His angry demon eyes focused on me, and he started to walk to me, bloody sword in hand. Just plain old walking, one foot placed in front of the other, as if he wanted me to know and see him coming for me.
On the ground, Hari twisted and latched on to the demon’s right ankle. The demon turned and casually kicked him in the head with his other foot, full strength but unhurried, so I could see the blow, watch the way Hari’s head snapped back, his body grow limp.
The demon continued his march toward me.
I yanked out a blood-coated ivory tusk from the weakly moving geant boar at my feet and stood holding it like a long knife in my hand.
The bandit just smiled. The gesture shifted his naked nasal plates, making him look even more garishly grotesque. “I’m not allowed to end you. But anything else up to that point, I am allowed to do. Tell me, Princess.” His words came out with an odd hollowness, without a nose to finish out the sound. “Have you ever been raped before? I hope I’m your first. Sadly, I don’t think you will find it at all to your liking, but perhaps I’m wrong. You’re already half undressed for me like a little bitch in heat.”
I turned and ran from him, not just because he frightened me, badly, but so I could put more distance between him and Hari.
He tackled me, far faster than me, and much stronger, too. He dropped his sword and used both hands to restrain
me, grab the tusk from my hand, and send it flying away.
I struggled fiercely. But I could not throw him off me or free myself, no matter how hard I tried. He lay on top of me with the hard bulge of his arousal grinding against me, that horror of a face only inches away from my own, so that I had a real up close and personal view of the cavernous hollow of his wet, glistening nasal cavities. My stomach twisted and churned in a sickening roil, and faintness threatened me. As a thing to frighten and subdue, that gaping fright-sight hole was pretty damn effective.
The demon growled and transferred my wrists into a one-handed hold. It was impossible, even then, to free my hands, and my body was pinned. That left only my head free. I swung my forehead up at him, aiming for the sharp, central nasal plate. To drive it up into his brain. Not deadly to a demon, but it should hurt plenty enough to get him off me. But he anticipated my move, avoiding my strike, and backhanding me for my efforts, a blow that sent my head twisting to the left with enough stunning force to make pinpricks of white dance in my vision.
“So you want to play rough, do you? I’ll be more than happy to accommodate you,” he snarled. Grabbing my breast, he squeezed hard. It wasn’t just the brutal force itself that hurt, but the sinking of his sharp demon nails into me, slicing down into my tender mound like hot dagger points.
I screamed.
“A bit too much pain for you? My apologies, Princess. Let’s try to increase it,” he sneered and flexed his hand, sinking the sharp points even deeper down, twisting and cutting my flesh.
I screamed again, joined this time by Hari’s deep rumbling war cry and the sound of shredding clothes.
The demon was flung off of me and I looked up to see Hari, changed into his demon beast form. A much bigger, badder, stronger version of his usual lean and mean self. His hands were fully clawed, his fangs bared as he snarled, “Get out of here!” and sprang after the other demon.
The muting effects of the oil of Fibara had obviously worn off for him. But not for me. I concentrated and tried, but still couldn’t manage the transition into another form.
