by Joseph Lallo
In the balcony, her tormentors looked on.
“I'm genuinely concerned about the selections you've made,” Demont warned.
“I don't know. The spiked wolf has always been a favorite of mine,” Epidime remarked.
“They are meant to be beasts of burden. The spines are defensive,” Demont countered.
“It is not my intention to kill the girl quickly. We need to wring her out first,” Bagu assured him. “When I feel she's given all that she is worth, then we shall end it.”
“I don't see why we don't just kill her. Revision IV alone will satisfy our needs in just a few weeks more. We could kill this one, and the rest, and still be assured victory,” Demont objected. “But instead, you would prefer to waste several of my best creations.”
Bagu turned to Demont. His scarred face bore a disquietingly collected expression, though the gleam in his eye screamed in rage.
“You've got a thing or two to learn about leadership. Disobedience must be dealt with quickly, harshly, and visibly,” he said. “This world will shortly be ours. I intend to show its people what becomes of traitors.”
The ground rumbled faintly. A line of churned up earth traced its way slowly over the arena's floor. Easily a dozen more followed. Myranda knew the sight well. The worms that had protected Demont's fort. She held perfectly still. Last time they only attacked when something shook the earth, even something as light as a footstep. As the beasts wove intricate patterns along the ground, the riotous crowd quickly drew their attention. The creatures scattered, colliding with the stone wall, that it would seem continued well beneath the arena floor, and surfacing. They were as grotesque as she had remembered them. Horrid overlapping plates of gray leathery hide with a blossom of snapping jaws at one end and a rapier tail on the other. They writhed briefly against the wall before plunging themselves into the earth as easily as if it were a pool of water.
Myranda held perfectly still, scouring at her mind for some semblance of a plan. They traced quick, ambling paths, crisscrossing the courtyard. The scraps of information were gathered together in her mind. Her spells would work, but only briefly, and at great expense. She would never be able to hold a spell of levitation long enough to clear the wall. Her eyes turned to the wall. It looked ancient, mortar and stone weathered to a smooth finish. Nothing even hinting at a finger hold. There would be no climbing it. What else was there?
As the random twisting paths drew ever nearer, her eyes darted urgently, dancing from wall to roaring crowd to churning earth to shattered spikes of fallen stone wolves . . . the spikes. A desperate, foolish, incomplete plan came together in her mind. She held out a hand and conjured a quick tremor on the far side of the arena. Instantly the tunneling worms carved arrow-straight lines toward it. The ravenous crystals wasted no time drawing away the spell. The beasts reached their target and whipped themselves into a frenzy, churning the earth below the tremor into a rolling boil. The young wizard had taken barely a dozen ginger steps toward the remains of the wolves when the last of the spell was wicked away and the first of the worms turned to her.
With just a few more steps and no chance of another tremor to distract them, Myranda had no choice but to run. Some of the worms burst spindly legs from their sides, others dove below the surface and surged forward, but all rushed toward the girl amid a deafening roar of approval from the crowd. Myranda scooped up a pair of the spikes and threw herself at the wall. The stony tips bit into the mortar of the wall and held tenuously. With terror-fueled strength Myranda hoisted her feet from the ground. The worms burst from the ground beneath her. They snapped with jaws strong enough to cleave stone and jabbed with sharp tongues. The ground below her was a cauldron of razor edges and needle points.
Myranda took a shaky hand from one spike to change her grip. As she did, the other twisted and drooped threateningly. She pulled herself higher, pushing down on the one well planted spike and scrambling with her feet. Just above her was the point of impact that had cost the first wolf its life. A few spines had been driven deep into the stone of the wall. She whipped her hand up, yanking along the jangling chain that still hung from it, and closed her fingers around the nearest one. The cries for blood grew louder as she pulled herself further out of the reach of the creatures. Above her, soldiers left their seats to peer down at the object of their hatred that infuriatingly refused to die. Humans spat at her, screaming incoherent profanities. Nearmen gazed with unthinking eyes hidden behind crude helmets, handcrafted instincts drifting to the surface of their minds.
The hero caught hold of another spike and held the shackled hand low, eying the downward pointing barbs that lined the top of the wall. With measured precision, she swung the full length of the shackle’s chain up. A handful of links tangled themselves in a barb, but the probing hands of the spectators struggled to dislodge it. The cocktail of custom tailored thoughts that served as a mind for the one nearman finally coaxed it into action. The mindless creation climbed on the barbed wall and drew a sword as those around it cheered in approval.
The weapon came down, chipping away the barb that held Myranda's chain. He then looked down upon his target. The chunk of stone he broke free fell to the ground, driving the worms to new heights of frenzy. Their chaotic writhing shook the very wall. Myranda's grip barely held. The nearman's footing did not. As the helpless creation plummeted to the eager jaws of his fellow monstrosities, flinging his sword from his hands as he did, Myranda swung herself to the next spike. It was not nearly so firmly seated and pulled free from the wall, sending her tumbling to the ground again to land just a few paces away from the swarming worms.
The beasts were busy tearing apart the nearman, but not so busy that they did not take notice of this intriguing new set of vibrations. A pair peeled off from the rest and skittered with spidery speed toward her. Myranda ran, conjuring a short-lived flame before them that the beasts swept through without notice. Her eyes locked on the nearman's sword. It had speared itself into the ground just past the tangle of worms. The girl whirled the chain hanging from her wrist and lashed it at the ground to her left as she skidded to as stop. The worms shifted their path to the site of the impact and Myranda dove. She landed behind them and rolled to her feet, not missing a step. The beasts scratched to a stop and turned to follow, now digging into the earth.
A creak of metal and a flash of light signaled the nearman's end, rendering it nothing more than a pile of twisted armor and pale dust. No longer occupied, the remainder of the worms turned with great interest to the footfalls of the girl as she snatched up the sword on her sweep past. Myranda flexed her mind. If she wanted this spell to be effective, it would have to be fast, and it would have to be strong. She pulled together most of what remained of her swiftly fading strength and formed it into a tight ball of enchantment. The timing had to be perfect. She reached the opposite wall and turned. All of the creatures were beneath the earth. She let the spell loose.
With the force of a week of blizzard focused into a single moment, a blast of cold splashed against the ground. The already icy ground frosted over and solidified. It spread quickly, covering a growing blotch of the arena floor with white crystals of ice. The creatures fought to pull themselves from the ground. Some succeeded. Most did not, at best thrusting their heads out of the earth and letting loose an unnatural squeal before falling silent and still. As a spell that should have had the force to freeze the whole of the arena three times over crept to a stop under the influence of the crystals, only three worms remained. Myranda tried to ignore the telltale dizziness warning her that she'd reached her limit and grasped the sword tightly.
The crystals may have stopped the spell, but they could not drink away its effects, as the icy ground remained frozen. Myranda raised the weapon high and brought it down on the first of the creatures, splitting its hide. She raised it again just in time to force it into the gaping maw of a second worm. A heartbeat later and it would have been her arm clamped in the beast's mandibles. As the mindless worm sho
ok madly at the prize trapped in its jaws, the final beast threw itself upon her. Myranda raised her shackled wrist. The monster clamped down on it, buckling the metal and digging a deep gash into her forearm. She cried out and tore the arm free, the ruined shackle still in the worm’s mouth.
The sight of blood drove the crowd into a frenzy that made that of the worms a moment ago seem tame in comparison. Myranda managed a sharp pull that slid the slicing edge of her sword along the mouth of the beast that had clutched her blade. As it sliced one of the creature's many tongues, a white hot streak of pain drove into its primitive brain. Its jaws opened. Myranda pulled the weapon back and ended the beast with a thrust. The final creature, curled around the shackle and tearing at the chain, met a similar end.
The blood fell in fat drops as Myranda stalked back toward the center of the arena, the crust of frozen earth crunching beneath her feet. She clutched at the wound. It was serious, but not fatal. It could wait. She continued toward the remains of the stone wolves and the nearman. The armor was ruined. No piece of it could be salvaged. She held in her hand the only weapon the soldier had carried. As the heavy wooden doors creaked open again, Myranda gathered up as many of the remaining spikes as she could find. There were only a few that were whole enough to be considered useful.
Now as armed as she could manage, Myranda turned to the doors. Emerging were three dragoyles. Their sizes varied greatly, each bearing scars from previous battles. Their wings had been clipped. In all likelihood each had taken a dozen lives in arena battles over the years. They shifted their gaze to her. If Myranda had thought them capable of it, she would have sworn that the abominations looked eager.
Another time, fear would have clutched her mind. More than any other beast of Demont's creations, these creatures had been the face of her fear. They appeared like grim punctuation each time the D'karon flexed their might. Now, the girl looked coldly upon them. She was numb. There was no room for horror in her mind. There was simply no fear left. Memories rose through the increasingly dense fog of her mind. The beasts had a weakness . . . a very pronounced one. A single blow to the back of the throat would end them. It was the trick used to defeat Ether. It was the only hope she had to defeat them now.
The beasts charged her as one. She hurled both spikes she held at once. The projectiles, released with little force and no accuracy from an injured hand, soon redirected themselves and launched at her foes under the influence of her mind. One dragoyle chose that moment to snap its jaws open and attempt a gale of black mist. The spike ensured that it was the last mistake that the creature would make. The second spike drifted off course and drove itself into the ground as the crystals did their work. A shame, because this beast too had chosen the moment for a blast of miasma of its own. With nothing to prevent it, the beast billowed out a thick cloud of the corrosive stuff. A flail of Myranda's mind brought a whiff of wind that pushed the poison aside, just barely enough to miss her. As it sizzled and hissed at the ground, the pair of beasts finally reached her.
Myranda dove aside. One monster thundered past. Something that large moving that fast simply could not turn quickly enough to catch her, but that wasn't enough to stop it from trying. The result was an out of control tumble through the very puddle of venom it had sprayed down just heartbeats before. Alas, the second creature was nearly on target. It caught her with a swipe of its claw that hurled girl and sword through the air to collide painfully with the wall.
She coughed up a glob of blood and turned her blurred vision to the ground to search for her lost weapon as red and white sparks flared behind her eyes. The pounding approach of the creature that struck her rung in her aching head as her fingers closed around the grip of the sword once more. Her ailing eyes brought her a doubled view of the beast when she finally turned back to it. The rising cries of the crowd were a distant hum, like something underwater. Everything around her was moving in long, drawn out streaks, stretching and twisting as the flow of time slowed to a trickle. Instinct, luck, and fate tumbled into the place of the mind that had been jarred loose by the clash with the wall. The tip of the blade was raised. The beast's mouth was not open . . . but likewise the beast did not slow.
When the creature finally reached her, it could not slow itself. She thrust out the sword and released it, rolling to the side with the same motion. The tip just barely breached the creature's thick hide as the beast continued on momentum alone toward the wall. The pommel of the sword struck the wall, and a moment later, the tip burst from the back of the beast's neck, driven through like a nail. The collision with the wall shook the whole of the arena. A moment later the monster sprang backward. In its uncontrolled death knells sent it in lurching spasms toward its partner. The other abomination, still sizzling from its roll in the miasma and unsteadily on its feet, was rocked by the clash.
Myranda's senses crept back into her as she struggled to her feet. The impaled beast twitched once more and was still. The only remaining dragoyle climbed weakly from the ground. Sizzling clumps of acid-soaked earth clung to its skin. A splash or whiff of the black breath had no effect on the dragoyles. The same could not be said for prolonged exposure, it seemed. It took a few halting steps as Myranda limped cautiously away from the wall. Finally, it collapsed.
The hero took stock of herself as she trudged to the center of the arena. Her eyes stubbornly refused to focus. A steady and constant ring was all her ears offered her. From the feel of it, her shoulder and perhaps one of her ribs had been broken. Thoughts flickered in her tattered mind, and if she had strength enough for another spell, it would certainly be her last one. She turned her head slowly, the brilliant glow of the well fed crystals making it to her mind as bright blue blotches in a blur of gray. A breath dragged a fair amount of blood along with it as it swirled into her lungs and rushed quickly out again as an agonized cough. She was out of strength, out of time and, no doubt, out of luck as well.
Bagu smiled as he watched Myranda stand unsteadily. The time had come. He motioned to a nearby guard. Somewhere far below the stands there was the rumble of a sliding gate. Out of the corner of her eye, Myranda saw motion near the other door. Until now, her tormentors had been unleashed upon her from the gates below the privileged seats of the Generals. She shuffled until she was facing the massive wooden door. It crept open inch by inch. Low, tooth rattling rumbles came from behind the door. They were sounds that seemed to reverberate off of the very sky and shake the air in her lungs. Sounds that spoke volumes of size, of ferocity.
In a dizzying blur of motion, the doors were thrown wide as something massive burst through them, its patience at an end. Myranda's vision chose that moment to begin to clear. Whatever it was, it was massive. Larger than the three dragoyles combined. Its shape was the same. The image grew gradually less fuzzy. A massive neck craned high into the air. Wings like the sails of a ship unfurled. One was whole, the other hung in shreds. Finally, the last of the haze drifted from her vision. This was not mockery, nor imitation. What towered before her was a dragon of nature's design. Onyx-black scales armored its belly, smooth and with a faint gold sheen. The scales of its back were black mottled with streaks of the darkest crimson.
Myranda dropped to her knees. There was no use fighting now. Let it end, but let it end quickly. All she could do was hold onto the last glimmer of magic she had. That, at least, the D'karon would not have. The monstrous beast thundered toward her, the very world seeming to quake with every step. She closed her eyes. A few more titanic footsteps came, then a sound like a dozen plows being dragged through the unwilling ground at once. Myranda tensed. A rush of air knocked her backward. She hit the ground.
There was nothing. Complete stillness. Even the roar of the crowd faded to utter silence. Oblivion. Deep in the back of her mind, Myranda questioned why. Why, if her end had come, if she'd been thrust into the void, did the pain of her mortal form persist? Why even in death did she feel the warm trickle of blood down her arm? Then a hot wind rushed over her. A very real wind. She opene
d her eyes. The head of the creature, the terrifying face every bit as large as Myranda’s whole body, hung over her, staring down. Another breath heaved from its nostrils and washed over her.
As she waited for the horrible mouth to snap open and bring the end she thought had already come, her mind recoiled in anger. Those eyes . . . The torturous life she'd been forced to endure was bad enough, but what demented agent of fate would mock her in her final moment with them? How could the monster that killed her have such beautiful eyes? Delicate slits in deep gold irises. Eyes that seemed so emotional. Eyes that seemed so insistent. Eyes that seemed so familiar. Those eyes . . . She felt her mouth begin to move, a foolish hope fighting its way to her lips. Myranda tried to pull it back. It was too late.
“Myn?” she whispered.
The eyes were suddenly alight with ecstasy. The mighty creature threw back its massive head and released a roar that was overflowing with the joy of reunion. Both minds were flooded with powerful emotions and endless questions, but for this moment, joy washed them all aside. Myn dropped her massive head down for Myranda to scratch. The injured girl tried to reach the spot atop her old friend's head but couldn't. The golden eyes turned to her again expectantly, now seeming for the first time to see the state her friend was in. Myn drew in a breath that carried with it the acrid scent of Myranda's blood. The eyes changed. Fury surged up from within. She turned her gaze to the generals. They shot each other looks of anger and accusation. Finally, Bagu's voice raised.
“All of you! Attack! Kill them both!” he ordered.
