by Jill Archer
I exited the rotunda’s rear doors and walked out onto a large patio where Yannu was waiting for me.
“Welcome to Rockthorn Gorge’s sparring ring,” he said, motioning beyond the patio’s edge to the remains of an old amphitheater, which had been carved into the mountainside behind the rotunda.
My gaze followed Yannu’s gesture, and I craned my neck. At the top of the crumbling steps and stone benches, hundreds of feet above where I stood, was Cliodna’s sanctuary. Compared to the ruins on the slope, it looked lofty, elegant, and beautiful. Built into the rocky outcroppings on either side of it were much newer observation platforms. They appeared to be the only level, stable areas between the rotunda’s patio and the sanctuary’s terrace.
Great, I thought. Fighting on the remnants of the amphitheater’s stands would be like fighting on a sharply tilted, oil-slicked marble floor.
Another difference? Yannu told me that he conducted his training via melee, not matches. That got my attention. I knew Rockthorn Gorge’s regulares hovered right at the edge of rule-breaking, but demon melees were a far cry from my strict St. Luck’s training.
“Fara, me, and our beasts are a team then,” I said, thinking that I wanted to fight alongside people I knew for the first melee. I heard a few snickers, which highlighted the third difference – the audience was bigger.
At St. Luck’s, readiness drills took place in the dungeon, because the faculty couldn’t chance having its mostly Hyrke student body get hurt. But, according to Yannu, Lord Aristos didn’t “coddle his humans,” so Rockthorn Gorge’s Hyrkes were allowed to decide on their own whether they wanted to watch or not. And, from the looks of the crowded observation decks, at least a few dozen of them did. They’d come armed with shields and were standing close to low walls, but how much cover could those provide? Their presence made me almost as nervous as the demons I’d be fighting.
The fourth difference was that I’d be fighting against other female waning magic users. They were demons, not humans, but in my entire academic career I’d never spared with another “girl,” although I imagined that any of the demonesses in the ranks facing me would gladly have killed anyone who called them that.
Finally, we got to something about training that sounded familiar when Yannu said, “Angels aren’t allowed to aggressively cast against regulare demons.”
I nodded my understanding, and Yannu laughed.
“I’m going to put you up against Malphia, Pestis, Kalchoek, and me,” Yannu said. “See how you do. Wanna pick different teammates?” He paused and looked over at the rotunda. “The patron said he’d fight with you, if you wanted.”
Yannu’s last words hung in the air as I tried to suss out their underlying meaning. Was Ari’s offer an honor, or an unintentional insult born of his old habit of always trying to protect me? Yannu’s comment that Ari didn’t coddle his humans probably wasn’t Ari’s choice of words, but I knew he respected self-sufficiency and independent thinking – at least in others. He’d only ever been conflicted about those traits in me.
I could never decide whether to help you stand on your own two feet or sweep you off them. I realize now, it was never my choice to make.
Well, he was giving me a choice now.
I shook my head. “No change to my team.”
Yannu shrugged. “Suit yourself.”
There’d been some tittering and a bit of hubbub when I’d first walked out. At first I’d thought it might be my old handicap – the fact that I was a human female with waning magic. But after I saw the nearly equal number of demons and demonesses in the ranks, I realized that wasn’t it. It was the damned armor, I thought, and the blasted scarlet drakon. Fara hadn’t had to cast Center of Attention. All eyes were already on me. I was the patron’s new consig. Everyone wanted to see how I’d fare in a fight. And dressed like this, I’d better show them I knew what the hell I was doing.
Did I though? Luck and all his legions, I was just about to WILLINGLY pick a fight with four demons. With only my Guardian and beasts to back me up.
I briefly conferred with Fara and she cast up Virtus, Nova, and me with various boost, buff, and bump spells, as well as our old standby Impenetrable.
Yannu motioned that my team should take the “high” starting position in the stands while his team took the “low” position on the rotunda’s patio – the amphitheater’s stage. When I moved into place and faced the demons we’d be fighting, I was glad I hadn’t argued. Yannu was as big as a water buffalo, his skin was thicker than my armor, and his signature felt as immovable as a cartload of wet clay.
Pestis completely creeped me out. She reminded me too much of other demons I’d dealt with who’d had both neurotic and necrotic tendencies. Her eyes were lidless and teary and her skin gleamed with what I hoped was sweat, but the worst was her gaping mouth – because every time she opened it, flies swarmed out.
Malphia, on the other hand, was quite pretty. With shiny, bluish-black hair, cobalt eyes, and strong features, she looked almost human. The only monster-like thing about her was her signature. It felt horrible, like a sticky, toxic, cobwebby shadow she couldn’t wait to smother me with.
And then there was Kalchoek – the demon we’d first met at the destroyed Memento Mori dam site. He was the demon who’d traded barbs with Fara – the one she’d called a sleazy, mangy rag. He seemed to have grown five times his size despite being downhill from me. He pointed at me, made a slicing motion across his throat, and then clicked his teeth together as if he were nibbling on something. Kalchoek was nothing if not categorically disgusting.
My signature pooled with expectancy, but I did nothing to disperse it. I was anxious and, truth be told, not a little afraid, although I was better at hiding it now.
“Melees are often painful, always dangerous, but only occasionally lethal,” Yannu said.
Were his words supposed to make me feel safe?
It didn’t matter. I was long past the point when I could ask for Ari’s – or anyone else’s – help.
“Your fire must cauterize your opponent’s injury,” Yannu clarified. “And no deadly blows. The first team to be surrounded loses. Got it?”
I nodded and then…
It began.
Per our plan, Fara scrambled up and over. She took cover behind a large boulder that was some distance away from the observation decks on that side of the amphitheater. Nova edged toward Pestis, her normally sloppy gait replaced with a few tense, deliberate tracks, while Virtus wasted no time attacking Kalchoek (I think he was still pissed I’d burned his deer carcass). He launched at the beady-eyed, sharp-toothed demon looking determined to prove that his bite was definitely bigger. They disappeared to my left in a ball of stony dust. It was just as well, because I had my hands full defending myself against both Yannu and Malphia.
I’d like to say I was good enough to have shaped two swords and fought them both simultaneously while standing still, but I’m not. My magic is strong, and my body is a lot stronger than it used to be, but let’s get real. A bunyip. For crying out loud. Fighting Yannu was like fighting a devil hippo. And fighting both Yannu and Malphia… Oh, vae!
Instinctively I fired up a knife and shield and managed to raise it in time to deflect a ringing blow from the bunyip just as Nova lunged at Pestis. But the Lady of the Flies blinked spasmodically, disappeared, and then reappeared a few feet from where she’d been. Nova sailed through the air and landed a dozen steps lower in a shower of scree. She sneezed, and I had only a second to register that it wasn’t dust up her nose. It was horseflies. I hoped Fara knew a spell that could help her. Pestis looked like a demon who would need to be controlled with something a bit more proactive than Fly Paper.
A moment’s distraction was all it took for Yannu and Malphia to move uphill and flank me. Too late for me to stop them. In St. Luck’s dungeon it had never mattered where we stood. North, south, east, west. Right, left, whatever. There was no up or down. There was no sun. The MITs I’d sparred with back home had endl
essly circled before attacking. Not here.
Yannu came crashing down on me and it was all I could do not to turn tail and run. I felt a spell slip over me, likely Aegis, and somehow, amazingly, I survived a direct hit from Yannu’s flaming broadsword. We parried, feinted, cut, slashed, and burned our way across, up, and then down the amphitheater ruins. They had nearly driven me back down to the patio before I decided to swallow my pride and duck beneath the next blow instead of meeting it. I fled uphill a few feet, back to my starting point, and turned on them.
“I thought you said no deadly blows.” Sounding petulant was preferable to sounding petrified.
“If you’re more than just a moll, you’ll survive. If not…” Yannu shrugged. Rage pulsed through my blood and my magic turned white hot. Calling me a moll was way worse than calling me a girl. Moll meant camp follower or whore.
Don’t lose control, I counseled myself. Channel your emotions into your magic.
But incandescent fury was not enough.
Because Yannu stepped back and Malphia stepped up.
Fighting Malphia womano a womano was like fighting a daymare. Her insidious magic crept along the edges of my signature, poking it, scratching it, and then slicing it and slipping inside. Small dark wisps of darkness whispered lies that sounded like cruel truths and it became difficult for me to tell the difference.
I was a heartless murderer.
My brother was a ghoulish necromancer.
My father was another demon in disguise.
My mother didn’t love me.
Ari didn’t love me.
Rafe… had never loved me.
The sky above me darkened and the people disappeared. And there was just me, standing amongst the rocky outcroppings of a mountain that had stood long before Armageddon and Lucifer and his Northern Warlord and the town he’d founded ever existed, and which would be standing long after we were all gone. There was just me and the mountain and those lies or half-truths or whole-truths. The feeling of desolation and isolation I experienced was so complete, my fire flickered. How hard I’d once wished to get rid of it. How hard I’d worked lately to master it.
The mountain disappeared.
Remember that old riddle, if a tree falls and no one hears it, does it make a sound?
What if an entire world fell and no one was left?
Would there be sound?
Light?
Fire?
It seemed not, because mine was getting snuffed out by the silence. My fiery knife and shield became one tiny flame and all I could see was the four-inch circle of light it created. My breathing slowed, my heartbeat slowed… Three inches… two inches…
I felt another spell slip over me then, one I’d never felt before. It was as fierce as my mother’s hug when I first came home after declaring my magic at St. Luck’s… as intense as the fiery blast that had followed my marking Ari with my signare… and as ardent as the look in Rafe’s eyes when he’d saved me from dying over and over and over again.
It had to be Love, there wasn’t a single other spell that could have affected me that way. And Fara had just cast it over me, saving me from a dark, lonely end.
The silence was suddenly broken by snarling, growling, and grunting. I heard the scuffling of boots on stone. I felt the wind on my face. And I squinted at the sun. Small rocks and pebbles dug into my knees and I realized I had fallen in front of Malphia—although, if it weren’t for her signature, I might not have even recognized her. Pretty Malphia had vanished. Thick, black spider veins now crisscrossed her face, and fetid, toothless gums filled her mouth. She raised her sword as if she were about to lop off my head. Ari emerged from the rotunda and charged toward us. His magic felt deadly, but its rage wasn’t directed at me. It was directed at Malphia.
Looking back on it, I’m still not sure what she would have done. Would she have swung her sword regardless of the consequences? Or would she have lowered it, respecting Yannu’s edict about no deadly blows? All I know is, I wasn’t going to wait to find out. I didn’t want to die and I sure as hell didn’t want Ari killing her for me.
I hurled a giant fireball at her, knocking her off her feet and into the air. She sailed downward and crashed onto the patio’s stone pavers. I whistled to Nova and Virtus, their signal to bring their prey to me. My hope was that they could shepherd Pestis and Kalchoek onto the patio and then somehow I’d shove Yannu down there and we’d call it a day.
Ha. Hmm… Yeah, it didn’t really happen like that and I have only myself to blame. But, honestly, until Yannu, I’d never fought a bunyip before. Lord Potomus, Rockthorn Gorge’s former patron, had been a bunyip. And, according to my dossier, the ranks were full of them. Which led me to wonder why the hardy, pragmatic residents of the gorge had picked Ari, a young, unknown drakon, to be their patron.
Why not Yannu?
Nova and Virtus came when I whistled, of course, but that only helped the bunyip round us up. By the time the four of us assembled on the patio, Malphia was up. I glanced at Ari. His gaze bore into mine but he made no move to join the fray, thank Luck. I knew now I wasn’t going to die. Not with Ari here. But I also didn’t want to lose in front of him. Losing is almost all he’d ever seen me do. It galled me now to think that, after a year and all I’d been through, from his perspective, it would look like nothing had changed.
So I formed a fiery four-barrel pepperbox and pointed it at Yannu.
“Call your dog off,” I told him, waving the gun toward Kalchoek, who was now trying to chew on Nova. I could tell she didn’t appreciate it and I was getting fed up. To his credit, Yannu didn’t seem to blink over my weapon choice, although everyone else did. Even Malphia stepped back.
“Call your dog off,” he said.
“She’s not a dog.”
“Neither is Kalchoek.”
I shrugged. “Then call your demons off.”
If Yannu backed down now, it would be a draw. Neither of us would win, but neither of us would lose. No one had been surrounded. I’d just formed a fairly sophisticated weapon that, when fired, might blow up the old amphitheater’s stage, stands, and everyone standing on them. Past Maegesters who’d tried this had only ever succeeded in detonating themselves and their immediate area. But who knew? I could be the one who shaped a pistol that finally worked. After all, I was the only MIT I knew who could shape sentient creatures out of my magic. Why not working firearms? And this one had four bullets. How convenient.
“I think I’ll call your bluff instead,” Yannu said.
“Suit yourself,” I said, smirking. I raised the gun toward Kalchoek and – POW!
The world went black.
But I didn’t shoot Kalchoek. Or blow us up. Nor was it Malphia’s dark magic at work again. It was Fara’s awesomeness. This was our last desperate bid to win. The spell was called Bitter Black and it stank like gunpowder.
The temporary blackout allowed Nova, Virtus, and me to escape from the midst of Yannu’s team before they surrounded us. When the smoke cleared, the vague outline of my coup de grace took shape. Virtus went after Pestis and Nova attacked Malphia. I don’t know if it was because she was sick of getting flies up her nose or if it was because Malphia was the one who’d come the closest to killing me. Regardless, Fara then cast our final planned spell – Cryptid – over them. Nova grew two more heads, lion claws, and a scorpion’s tail and Virtus morphed into a werecat. My plan wasn’t perfect. Cryptid didn’t make Nova impervious to Malphia’s mind-magic, nor did it make Virtus immune to flies, but I was counting on the element of surprise. We only needed a few seconds to turn the tables…
Where was Kalchoek?
I’d lost sight of him when Fara had cast Bitter Black, and now I realized he wasn’t here. A hard knot of icy fear gripped me. I swung my head from side to side. I couldn’t see him. All I saw were myriad demons, endless broken stairs, countless boulders…
I couldn’t sense him either. But I was suddenly very afraid I knew where he was. I met Yannu’s stare. His expres
sion was as hard and merciless as the rocks and stone ruins surrounding us.
Fara.
I scrambled up to the boulder she’d hidden behind and rounded it. She was lying prone beneath Kalchoek, stiff as a board, her glamour gone, her potentia drained. He sat on her back with one clawed hand in her hair and the other on her chin, holding her in place while he sniffed, snuffled, and drooled words in her ear. Whatever he was saying was scaring her. And I didn’t need to feel her signature to be able to tell its effect was worse than if he’d bitten her or blasted her with magic. I remembered all too well that, initially, Fara had been more frightened of demons than me. During our trip to the Shallows she’d obsessively carried and quoted the Book of Joshua. But unlike me, she’d never complained or tried to shirk her duties or responsibility. In time, I’d come to realize that beneath her superficial gloss, Fara was a deeply devoted person. She was more selfless and brave than I could ever be, which was why the sight of her lying numb with fear beneath Kalchoek didn’t just make me see red, it made me want him dead.
I threw a burst of magic at him that was incalculably more powerful than the one I’d just thrown at Malphia. I didn’t care if it was lethal or not. I didn’t want to eviscerate Kalchoek, I wanted to incinerate him and then obliterate his ashes. Luckily for him (and perhaps for me too), he leaped away just in time. I rushed over to Fara and knelt beside her, but she turned on her side and wouldn’t look at me. She wasn’t crying. She was just… silent and still. Alive, but wounded in ways I couldn’t see, even though she wasn’t glamoured.
