by Dante King
The blonde chuckled. “Good nicknames,” she growled, extending her claws. “I’m more than ready, Xora. Let’s do this!”
I felt less excited about the whole thing than Christina did, to be sure. Honestly, I couldn’t help but feel like the two of us had walked into some kind of trap—a clever hazing ritual for new students. The chances of two brand new competitors facing down trained demons seemed unbelievable. It was far more likely this was intended to humiliate us, and maybe teach us a bit about the Arena’s healing abilities.
I didn’t like the idea of bleeding out. And I damn sure did not want to see Christina’s beautiful body get pulverized, even if both of us would be back up and healthy in a couple of minutes. Christina wanted this so badly. Her demonic body tensed in anticipation, crackling with an energy that was almost sexual.
Let’s give them a show, I thought, not wanting to disappoint her. And if this is a trap, let’s flip it right back on them…
A pistol appeared in Xora’s hand, forming out of the very air itself. She pulled the trigger, and a spray of confetti filled the arena. “Begin!”
“You got this, Luke!” Mareth roared, leaping up and down at the front of the crowd. “Christina, fucking kill ‘em…!”
Both demons attacked. It was as if they’d come to some silent agreement while our groups sized each other up—while Christina and I were unsure which demon to fight first, they’d already made up their minds. The big, bug-bodied demon dove past me, leaping into combat with Christina. She dove to the side, flexing her wings as she tested the larger demon’s strength and speed.
Then Bryan was dead ahead of me, and I had to focus on that. I just had to hope Christina could hold her own.
The Rake quickly revealed itself to be more than meets the eye. As he ran across the stone, his already long limbs elongated further, rubbing up against the ground. With an inhuman shriek it went from a two-legged gait to a four-legged one, charging like a lion across the plateau. I had just enough time to twist away before it barrelled into me, sliding to the demon’s side like a bullfighter.
Bryan twisted on a heel, snapping upright in an instant. As I watched, horrified, his hands contracted into fists and melted. Now he had two shorter arms with huge balls of meat on the ends, like a hammer. Before I could even come to grips with the fact that he didn’t need a weapon, that he was the weapon, razor-sharp spikes emerged from what used to be his hands.
I had no weapon to fight back with. Which meant I needed magic.
“Okay, Luke,” I growled, backing across the arena before the rake’s blows. His arms hit like trucks, but shifting so much weight around had left him slower—like he needed to put all of his strength into each punch. “Xora said you’ve got lots of aptitudes. Let’s see if we can put them into practice!”
As I ducked beneath the rake’s next swing, I held both hands in front of me and snapped my fingers. Flames roared across my palms, enough to warm them but definitely not anything like a flamethrower. The rake jumped backward, surprised by this development, suddenly wary at the appearance of magic. It didn’t realize yet that I had no idea how to use it.
During the pause in the fighting, Christina soared over my head. She’d taken to the air like she’d been born in the clouds, attacking the much larger Aztomund from above. Like me, she’d brought no weapon into the arena, but her talons functioned just as well as any blade or mace the demons might have provided her with.
I watched as she slashed downward with both claws, screaming with bloodlust as she left a gash in Aztomund’s armor. She’d generated a lot of sound and fury fighting him, but hadn’t done much damage. Those overlapping scale plates were too tough for a simple clawing to break, and Christina was beginning to realize it.
Aztomund swung with one blade, then another, feinting to either side like a dancer. It was amazing how fast such a big guy could move. One blade missed entirely, Christina’s back arching beneath it like a limbo dancer, but the other nicked her side. Black blood trickled down her leg, droplets staining the scales on her long, slender thighs.
“Damn it!” she roared, taking back to the air where it was safer. “That’s the last hit you get on me, you piece of—”
It was as far as she got. The back plates on Aztomund’s armor peeled back, like the hood retracting on a convertible. Underneath were gossamer-thin wings, flashing in the air like a dragonfly’s. It seemed impossible that such tiny, weak-looking wings could propel a big guy like the scarab demon into the air—yet when he leapt into the sky and stayed there, coming slowly but steadily after Christina, the crowd went fucking nuts.
Christina’s face fell as the scarab demon rose toward her. Any moment now, he’d tear those ugly blades across her skin, or snatch her out of the air like a bug and send her plummeting to the ground. I could already see her mangled body in my mind’s eye, the look of disbelief in her face as the lights went out…
My vision went red.
I had the tendrils out before I even knew I’d summoned them. The twin flames in my hands expanded, turning into fireballs so big you could have called me Super fucking Mario. A roar of pure, primal fury erupted from my throat, startling the crowd of demons into stunned silence.
Bryan shied away from that roar. I think he knew in his heart the moment he heard it that he was toast. Giving me a look of grim fury, he slammed both of his spiked hands together, turning the whole thing into a living halberd. The Rake charged forward with a trilling scream, trying to take me down before I could jump into the fight and help Christina.
Bryan pushed more and more mass into his weapon as he ran, turning the thing into a fucking battering ram covered in spikes. If it had hit me, it would’ve been a one-hit KO for sure. But I had no intention of letting it get that far.
Tendrils shot along the ground, forming a thick carpet a few feet in front of me. The rake charged heedlessly through, trusting he had enough momentum to reach my body. He was wrong. The thick veins of darkness wrapped around his ankles, then his knees, pinning him to the ground.
He swung anyway, trying to dislodge himself. The tendrils flexed, stressed almost to the breaking point by the counterweight of the demon’s weapon. Grinning, I lifted both hands—flames dancing on my fingers now—and reached for the masses of darkness at my shoulder.
“Burn,” I commanded the tendrils. They did. The thick coils wrapped around the rake ignited like they’d been soaked in gasoline. Bryan twisted and writhed, struggling feebly to escape their grip. I heard demons gasping, shocked at the cruelty of what I was doing. A clean kill in the arena was one thing, but this? I’d wrapped this man in a cocoon and set it ablaze. A horrible way for man or demon to die.
Finally, the rake crumpled, sinking to the stone and curling up like a bug. Most of the demons were too shocked to cheer, except for Mareth. The succubus screamed like she was on a rollercoaster, thrilled and scared all at once.
Now both Christina and Aztomund were in the air. The fight had just shifted from an even bout to two on one, yet I found myself unable to press the advantage. The scarab demon refused to touch the ground, knowing it would be outnumbered on solid footing. And while Christina was ferocious in a fight, it only took a few moments to see Aztomund clearly had more experience with airborne combat than she did.
“Get down here, you coward!” I roared, trying to taunt the demon. I launched a fireball, sending it high into the air, but accuracy wasn’t my strong suit. It had been easy enough to use my pyromancy to light an object I was touching into flames, but hitting a moving target proved far more difficult than I’d anticipated. When my third shot missed the mark entirely and nearly hit Christina, I knew I had to find some other way to contribute.
Christina twisted in mid-air, flapping frantically beneath the assault of those twin blades. Sensing victory was at hand, the scarab demon put all of his weight into a strike and flung his body forward, trying to knock the blonde right out of the air. His blade missed, but he slammed into her with a great whoop, sending Chri
stina toppling. I gasped as she plummeted, her wings unfurling and catching her fall only inches above the ground.
Smelling blood on the wind, the crowd roared. One voice cut through the pack—Xora’s.
“He’s going to tear her apart,” the rusalka murmured. Her words should have been too soft for me to hear over the screaming crowd, yet it was as if her lips perched right next to my ear. “You’re going to have to watch her die, Luke. Unless you get up there and do something about it!’
I roared with frustration. A sensation like thousands of hot, tiny needles stabbing skin sizzled between my shoulder blades, adding pain to my despair. I couldn’t reach Christina or Aztomund—which meant I was helpless. A weak, pitiful human, unable to save the people I cared about.
There was nothing I could do.
Until, suddenly, there was.
The flesh between my shoulder blades erupted in a gout of blood and gore. Chunks of my back rained over the crowd, spraying the front row with red liquid as two massive wings unfurled from just beneath my neck. They were longer than Christina’s, and heavier than Aztomund’s — more like a bat’s wings than a bird or an insect’s. The kind of thing you’d expect to see on Dracula, or Lucifer himself.
The crowd went utterly silent. Jaws dropped at the sight of my transformation—even Xora looked surprised by what she’d provoked inside of me.
I looked to the left, then the right, taking in my new wings. “Cool,” I said, smirking up at the sky. Christina and Aztomund were locked in combat, with the scarab demon rapidly taking the upper hand. “Let’s see what these babies can do.”
I flew.
Like just about every kid who grew up watching Superman and Goku on TV, I’d wondered what it would feel like to be able to fly. To jump into the air and never come down, to ride the wind like a bird or soar through the wide blue yonder like a jumbo jet. The real thing made all my fantasies feel like just that. Fantasies.
My heart exploded in my chest as wind blew past my face. I ascended rapidly, almost too fast to control, soaring toward the spot where Christina and Aztomund fought. Just hold on a little longer, I thought at Christina, coming up from below. A few more seconds…
I soared into the space between them, tendrils unfurling all around me. Aztomund’s sword came down on a mass of them, cutting through a half-dozen as more wrapped around his scimitar’s hilt. Aztomund’s face filled with disbelief as he fought with my tendrils, more of them seizing his second blade and tossing it back to the blood-soaked earth below. A quick wrench and the other flew free of his hand, missing the plateau entirely and tumbling into the black.
“Nice wings,” Christina purred. A glance over my shoulder confirmed that she was in an even more demonic form than usual. Glistening fangs protruded from her pouty lips, her gorgeous eyes as dark as a moonless sea. “Wanna fuck?”
I snickered. “Later. Let’s take this guy down first.”
“Keep him busy,” Christina giggled, doing something with her hands. “I’ve got a couple tricks up my sleeve I want to try…”
I could do that. With a grin, I flapped my new wings at Aztomund as hard as I could. The two of us grappled, each weaponless but doing our level best to knock the other guy out of the air. It should have been an easy win for Aztomund—he was so much bigger, after all—but his morale was broken. I had all the power, I’d transformed in front of everyone, and the name on the lips of all the demons watching below was not his, but mine.
“Luke!” Christina’s voice reached my ears, more savage than ever. “Duck!”
I dropped like a stone, cocking my head upward to enjoy the show. A spike of pure darkness pierced Aztomund, sinking into his armor like a hot knife through butter. The scarab demon howled, his wings faltering, only for another half-dozen of the sharp, glittering shards to force their way through his flesh.
It took a moment to figure out what they were. Christina’s claws. She’d removed them and lengthened them, turning them into sharp spears. They extended like Wolverine’s claws, dropping smoothly from her fingers once they reached around a six-inch length. They left new, shiny black nails behind, pointed in that way I liked to have raking down my back, so that she could either continue on with her day or reload with a whole new set of spikes. Fucking cool, I thought.
The last spike was extra long, the size of a javelin. Christina aimed this directly between the scarab demon’s eyes—it didn’t miss. Aztomund’s face collapsed, the inside of his skull caving in, and the big man crashed to the plateau beneath like a meteor.
The crowd was silent for a moment as he landed. Then they erupted in cheers.
Christina fluttered over to me, wafting on the breeze now that the combat was done. A faint sheen of sweat stood out on her body, her shoulders rising and falling rapidly. The extra-demonic features I’d seen on her in combat had already begun to fade, and she looked a little more like the Christina I knew. Utterly sexy, and totally dangerous.
“Where’d you learn to throw like that?” I asked as we landed back on the plateau.
“Track team,” she said with a grin. “I used to throw shot and the javelin, back in college. Had a hell of a long jump, too.”
“I bet,” I said, looking her up and down. “You’re just full of surprises, aren’t you?”
As my feet touched the ground, the power I’d felt erupt inside of me began to ebb. My wings retracted, folding inward and disappearing into my back. I felt between my shoulder blades, finding only smooth, unbroken skin where they’d emerged. Curious. The appearance of the wings had torn my clothing, but with a simple thought, the special threads Lucifer had given me repaired, good as new.
“Wings, shadespawns, pyromancy, flight,” Xora said, ticking the list off on her fingers. I had no doubt she’d committed every one of my powers to memory, and she’d be reporting it to someone later. “Most impressive, Luke.” The rusalka turned to the demon who’d started taking bets when the fight began. “You owe Mareth and I quite a bit of money, imp!”
The imp looked extremely unhappy that we’d won. “You cheated,” he hissed at the rusalka. “You knew he was one of the contenders for Archlord, and didn’t tell anyone! We wouldn’t have bet against him if we’d known…”
I stepped in between them. “You saw us both,” I said, laughing and shaking my head. “You made the call. Never place down money you’re not willing to lose. I thought demons would know that a little better than humans?”
Just then, two figures on the far side of the plateau sat up. True to what Xora had said, Bryan and Aztomund came back to life a few moments after they’d been killed, their bodies healed up like they’d never been wounded.
“Holy hell, new guy!” Bryan clapped me on the shoulder, shaking his head in disbelief. “You’ve got Lucifer’s own fury, or I’m not a thrice-damned hellion! Did that guy say you’re a candidate for Archlord, too?”
“Yeah,” I admitted, feeling a little awkward about the whole thing.
“I can believe it,” Aztomund agreed. “I’m looking forward to seeing him take some of those noble assholes over in Pride down a peg.” His gaze turned to Christina. “You, my lady, are quite fierce—but your aerial repertoire could use some practice. If you choose to make Wrath your home, we’ll definitely have to perfect your moves.”
Christina sounded thrilled at the prospect. “I’m definitely new at it,” she said, putting a hand around my waist. “But I’m willing to learn.”
Both of us were. And it seemed we’d learned quite a lot from Wrath.
“Perhaps we should continue with the tour?” Xora asked, gesturing toward an island smaller than the rest in the distance. A long, thin chain bridge connected it to the plateau —apparently, it was the exit to the next School.
Chapter 14
We stepped through and found ourselves surrounded by smoke.
“Uh, Xora?” I asked, looking all around. “What’s going on in here? It looks like someone should pull the fire alarm…”
My companions had
disappeared—I reached out in all directions, trying to grab onto Christina or Mareth, but they’d dissolved the moment we stepped through the door. I was all alone.
Holding my hands in front of myself, I took a hesitant step forward. The ground remained solid beneath my feet, so I took another—then another.
“Hello?” I asked, cupping my hands around my mouth. “Fuck, where did everybody go? Is this some kind of prank?”
A few steps further through the smoke, a figure appeared in the gloom. Finally! I sprinted forward, reaching for them, only to slam into something hard and cold. The figure did the same—reaching at me, only to slump over and slide to their knees. Had they been just as caught off-guard as I’d been?
A moment later, I realized my mistake. I was still alone—staring at myself in a mirror. The whole hall was covered in mirrors, every available surface enclosed in shiny, reflective glass. Tiny reflected Luke faces stared back at me, blinking as I blinked at them.
Laughter echoed down the hall. I cocked my head, trying to discern its direction. It seemed to be happening both in front of and behind me, from both places at once.
“Gluttony,” I growled, picking a direction and heading that way. “Then Wrath. Only Smoke and Mirrors isn’t a deadly sin, is it? So what the fuck is this…?”
The laughter grew louder the further I walked into the smoke. With a start, I realized I’d lost track of which direction I’d come from: I couldn’t have found my way back to the Wrath School if my life depended on it. Which, I now knew, it just might.
Surely, they wouldn’t leave me in here, would they? I couldn’t be trapped forever in this strange realm?
As I passed the next set of mirrors, I saw a familiar face: Christina’s. She stood to the side, her face pressed against a nearby pane of glass. No, wait—she was inside the glass, staring at me.
Only now did I realize she was in human form, not demonic. This wasn’t Christina, was it?
