by Bob Dattolo
“Cutthroat,” Riley answered. “I thought the same thing. Or close enough. Now? I don’t know what to do? I’m fucking terrified. I’ve worked my ass off my entire life to get through this nightmare, and now that I’m here? I’m barely holding on. I’m terrified that someone is going to turn on me, which makes me want to turn on them first. Strike first. I don’t want to die. I don’t want to have to kill someone. But I want to live a fucking boatload more than I want to not kill someone.”
“Look, I get it. You guys aren’t allies. The people that were my allies don’t trust me even though I never planned to kill any of you. Not in either group. From my perspective, you guys turned on me first and I still don’t plan on attacking you.”
“That’s just it. We can’t really trust that.” Paige shook her head, “We all heard what you planned.”
“I planned nothing.”
She raised her hand, stopping my diatribe, “We all heard what you supposedly had planned. How you were trying to pretend to be friendly with all of us to get in good. How you planned to ask the weakest to band together with you. Then you’d kill them one by one once they trusted you. We all heard it from multiple people. Then you actually asked them to do just that in the caf. How do you think we’d react to that?”
Fucking hell. “I just don’t know. The dragons here know that I was honest. I don’t want to die in this nightmare. I’d prefer not to kill anyone in here if I can help it. Even fucking Levi. Unless he attacks me, I don’t plan on going after him. Even him. I’d rather both of us graduate and get the fuck out of here than have to kill him.”
Angelica sniffed, “She’s telling the truth.”
“This is so fucked up.” Kynal kicked at the stone, “How the fuck do we get through this challenge when it has to be done one by one and we don’t really trust everyone?”
Kaylee pulled at my arm, “I hear people coming!”
Mother. Fucker. “What if you guys go through one at a time and I’ll stay here until last?”
“That’ll put you here with one of us,” Gage points out.
“What if Kaylee stays with me? Then she passes through? That would have both of your groups there. If one goes for her, the others may attack.”
Kaylee tugged me towards the challenge, “We gotta go! Right now! I hear them!”
“Who do you hear?”
“I hear Levi!” Terror filled my nose as I jerked back towards the hallway. She reeks of it.
“Fuck. Go, go right now. I don’t give a shit who goes through but get the fuck through!”
Their little debate ended when Riley stepped up and did the same trick I did with the sand. It took her close to a minute to get it to balance, then she stepped through once it registered.
Gage was next, adding ice to the scale until it balanced.
Angelica added metal, then she passed through.
Samantha added the same.
Kynal was next, and he looked lost, “Umm, I’m a fire mage. What the fuck do I put onto a scale to make it balance?”
Paige stopped next to him, “Same for me.”
Dammit. “I’m not sure? What can you guys do with pressure? It doesn’t have to be your affinity. Can you guys increase pressure?”
They exchanged looks, “Do you know how to do that?”
“Not really? You?”
“No clue.
Oh for fuck’s sake! I sent out more magic and created a shaft of pressure that pushed the plate down. I let it go before it went too far, then stopped next to them and held their shoulders, “One at a time, I don’t give a shit who does it, but one at a time. Get your magic out there. You want to create a shaft of pressure. Of weight. It has to be on the plate. It has to be variable at your command and stay until you let it go. Start fucking creating it before Levi and his assholes get here!”
Neither understood what I meant and couldn’t follow what I did when I did it again.
Parece jumped the line and hit it with metal, then stepped through.
“C’mon, guys! You saw me do it, now I’m begging you, please do it.”
“But we don’t know any spells like that!”
I so don’t want people to know this. No one that I saw in our class actually uses ingredients. It’s too iffy. Too dangerous. That means it’s all mental. Yet they don’t know how to do it.
My magic flowed out and the floor screamed as my power etched it, writing a spell that I made up on the fly.
Would it work?
No idea.
I just need the idea to get into their heads.
“Follow. The. Fucking. Spell. Now. Do it now.”
They started reading. Angelica, on the other side of the barrier, spoke up, “Is that really a spell for pressure?”
“It is.”
“How’d you learn that? That’s not in our books?”
“I bought a grimoire in town. Whoever started destroying my stuff tore it to tiny pieces. It’s gone now.”
“Damn. That’s too cool.”
Shockingly enough, Paige got it with only three attempts. She stepped through and smiled back at Kynal, “It’s easier than I thought. Just focus on the exact steps she has there. I was overthinking it.”
He grimaced and then tried again. And again. And again.
Then it worked, and he was through.
Attempt after attempt failed for Kaylee. She tried to add air to it and push down and kept failing. Her power would build, but then it would fade as she tried to cast the spell. Then she shifted to trying the spell on the floor. Again and again, same thing.
Until a voice reached me from the hallway behind.
“Well well well, boys, look what we just found? I told you I smelled a diseased twat.”
Levi smiled wide as he came around the corner. His sword is doused in blood. As is he. Wes’s sword has less blood on it, but still some. Shane’s machete is dripping it, and his chest is soaked in it. Ryan, for his part, has a decapitated head in his hand and a bloody axe in the other. His smile is as wide as Levi’s is.
“Oh, hey, Levi. Fancy meeting you here? The meeting for the tiny pecker association is one hall over? I think they saved seats for you guys.”
Kaylee began crying next to me, flaring her power.
Angelica backed away from the barrier, “Fuck this. We gotta go.”
Samantha nodded and stepped back, “I’m sorry, but we gotta…”
“Don’t worry. Go. Be safe.”
All seven of them gave me a strange look, then turned and raced from the barrier.
“Aww, would you look at that? They know when the ship’s sinking, that’s for sure.” He fondled his blood-stained cock, getting it hard. “I hope you’re ready for me. You killed my parents. I think it’s time for you to die.”
“You really want your dad’s sloppy seconds? That’s kinda gross, you know?”
He laughed, “Oh no, you’re not getting me that way. We’ve each drained someone on the way here. We’re brimming with power. Now we got you and little Kaylee.” He finger waved to her as she screamed louder and kept working her magic, “I see you there, Kaylee. I see you. You had a good run; didn’t you have a good run? To think, you only lived because you were too pathetic to kill.” He laughed at the sound she made, “You didn’t know that? That’s too funny. No one expected you to really walk in here. We thought you’d be blind and homeless right now. You were too pathetic to challenge and kill. So you slipped through. Just like the other vermin. Well, you’re not vermin. You’re prey. There are four of us, one of us is gonna drain you. All four of us may bust a nut in you. That’s a possibility. It depends on how hard it is for me to kill Maddie there.”
“Don’t do this, Levi.” What the fuck do I do?
“Yeah, yeah…you don’t have any authority over me. What happens in trial stays in trial and all of that. And you killed my parents. I hope you go insane from the pain. I’m gonna haul you with us for a bit. Get ready, baby girl, because here comes the pain.”
“Get throu
gh the fucking barrier, Kaylee.” It was work to keep my voice low.
“Please don’t let them get me!”
“Get through the barrier!”
“I’m trying!” She screamed, getting more laughs from the guys.
At which point they broke into a run at us.
Wes reached me first and came in from the side with a massive sword swing. He had planted his feet to do it, so I jumped backwards, trying to watch where Kaylee is in this. Ryan raced past the swinging sword, coming down with an axe chop meant to slice me in half.
Kaylee dove through the barrier, leaving me behind.
She didn’t stop running.
The axe barely missed me, sending chips of cement at my legs that I knew would be bleeding in a moment.
Then Levi and Shane arrived, racing in like fucking pro football players. Levi’s eyes are alight with insanity as magic courses around him. I can’t tell what he’s working, but it’s powerful as fuck.
Watching him fucks me as Shane’s machete hits me from the side, biting through my stomach and out my back in a spray of blood. Then Levi’s shoulder hits me, sending me across the ground. Ryan’s axe managed to clip me in my tumble, and I knew my shoulder was fucking broken to hell and I was bleeding like a pig.
I still got up, standing taller than they expected as I shifted. My injuries mostly healed in the shift and were accelerating, which is good, but the main benefit is that Levi’s spell was set to crush me up with power, but it fizzled against my scales as I flexed my wings and propelled myself backwards another 30 feet from them.
All four of them are together, glaring at me. None of them catch my power going out and filling in the stone of the floor and erasing the spell.
Levi flexes his sword arm, “Good. More of you to hurt. Too bad I can’t shift. Yet. You’d be so tight you’d nearly explode.” He sounds like he’s done that before, which is absolutely repulsive.
“You don’t need to do this, Levi!”
“I don’t need to? I don’t think you get it. It’s a very much want to do this. You die. I get my revenge. I get another drain of power into me. Or, if I’m unlucky, one of my allies does. But you still die. I’m kinda okay with that if that happens as long as you die.”
“What the fuck, you guys really hang with crazy asshole there?”
Ryan doesn’t react, but I can tell from his body posture that he doesn’t really want to be there right now. Good, he knows he’s low man when things go to hell in their little group. If two of them make it through, I’ll be shocked to shit.
Shane laughs and swings his machete, “Come on back, Maddie. You talked a big game in school. Open challenges and all of that? Come on over here. We have four challengers waiting for you. Four against one.”
Wes and Levi bump forearms, “You think we can make her airtight?”
Levi laughs louder, “I think she’ll beg for it to stop some of the pain. We’ll have to do it before the real fun begins, because she might be too far gone for you guys to want to fuck her.”
Wes rubbed his crotch, “Then we get the ball started rolling then?”
“You know it, man. Clocks a’ticking!” More magic pools from all four of them as they start forward again, this time in a more controlled jog.
Fantastic, coordinated murderous assholes.
Flapping back rams me into the wall that I didn’t realize was so close. Dammit to hell, I forgot this space was so fucking small in comparison to some of them. Can I break through to another hallway? They said we can’t bypass a challenge, so I’m thinking no. I can’t overly damage the place. More no.
Fuck.
Wait, he said I can’t block someone else’s passage to the challenge? Can I work with that?
The four guys are spread wide enough in the hallway that I don’t have much room to maneuver around them with at least one of them being able to hit me with their fucking weapons.
Wait! I can manipulate metal!
When I don’t move, their jog becomes a run as they start yelling. An ice spike tries to drive into me, only to shatter on my scales. That makes me feel good until the other three spells go off. Metal balls tear through my wings, while a spike of metal stabs through the back of my left calf from behind, sending me to my right knee, impaled on the left side. That movement saved me from another blade appearing out of nowhere that would have torn through my neck.
Cheers from the guys, then confusion as my magic triggers, and every bit of metal in the space dissipates, fading under the pressure of my magic.
Including the one in my calf holding me down.
Then I’m into them, way too close for them to stop their charge.
Wes goes down with a blow from my wing. Something broke in him, I’m just not sure what.
Shane slides at the last moment and comes in below my reach, then he stands and proceeds to start raining punches into my stomach.
The fuck? You’re punching a dragon?
Ryan catches my other wing across the side and tumbles away.
Levi? Levi gets my right hand on a downward swipe that nearly tears out his eyes. Huge gashes run from his forehead down, and he’s driven into the ground.
Then more magic goes off, and the cement starts shifting and moving. Shane doesn’t catch that happening because I grab him with my huge hands and drive my claws into his shoulders and lift him up. His arms are fucking useless now as he screams.
Then starts to shift.
Levi and Wes are hidden from me now, although I know where they are. The moving stone drops me closer to the challenge, leaving me, Shane, and Ryan the only ones out in the open.
Ryan’s watching me in horror from the side, “He’s fucking shifting!”
“I know that!”
Neither of them were prepared for me to tear out Shane’s throat with my teeth.
And swallow it.
His shift flutters as I toss him to the ground near Shane, “Drain him. He’s yours.”
“What the fuck? What’re you doing?”
I nodded back at the new warren of narrow tubes that the guys are semi-trapped in. “They’re back there. They gotta crawl out. They’re gonna shift at some point. Drain that asshole before he dies. Then either help them get out or get the fuck away from them. If either one shifts, they aren’t gonna spare you.”
“But…why wouldn’t you drain him?”
“I never wanted this shit, Ryan. Never. Now do it or don’t. I don’t care. I’m getting the fuck out of here.”
I felt his magic go off just as I reached the challenge, magic already working to level the scales. Shane was dead and drained before I cleared the room on the other side. I didn’t stay to see what Ryan decided.
Chapter 41
My run was pretty fucking fast, but I was trying not to have it be uncontrolled. Panicked. I’m already panicking, so running around like crazy would just make things worse. The hallway on the other side is straight for a bit, then starts the same turning crap. Including some steps up and down.
They all smell like they’re together, which is both good and bad. Good because there’s safety in number, but bad because it means that they’re all vulnerable. Although maybe less so? If they can’t kill someone without making themselves vulnerable, maybe that’s the best thing to hope for?
The hallway opens up to two others, and there’s a milling of other kids here that I can’t pick through as I continue to follow Kaylee’s scent. A ton of people moved in this direction.
Dammit!
Around the next corner is a challenge. No one’s there. No blood on the floor. No bodies. That’s good.
Taking it in, it looks pretty simple. Moving things with magic. Pick up the crate on the left and move it to the right. The huge log on the right and move it to the left.
Simple, yet hard.
Dammit, I know the kids worked on things like this, but they were seriously struggling with light in some cases.
Unless they were all hiding everything too? Damn, I know some had to be
, but all of them?
No, I’m not sure that’s the case. They really struggled with the pressure one. I could smell their honesty.
Still, though, Kaylee got through this one? Good for her.
My magic went out, and the objects moved accordingly, and I was through, leaving it behind. I’m so tempted to create something to make passing through slower, but I’m not sure that won’t be considered fucking with a challenge.
I’m holding that until I get desperate.
Four more turns, then another physical challenge. Hanging ropes with rings on the bottom. Looks like 20 of them. Hmm, and a huge wide spot that looks like dragons can fly across.
Okay, testing both? That’s good to know.
There’s a body on the ground to the side. Looks like someone stabbed the shit out of him. I’m not bothering to figure out who it is. It’s not important as I jump up and grab the rings. Is there a magical part of this that I can’t see yet?
Halfway across, I realize there is as the magic triggers and a small diagram appears.
Two more light spells. Both about four inches across. One to the left on top of a small pole. One to the right in the middle of a ring.
Umm. Fuck. There’s indication that if you move beyond this point, you freaking die.
Dammit, is that why there’s blood down there that I’m now just seeing? The floor drops away, but not so far that I can’t see it. No bodies, but plenty of splashed blood.
Immaterial.
My magic works, and two orbs appear in the right spots, so I move on, hoping and praying that I don’t get stabbed to shit or killed because I missed something.
Nothing, and I’m gone, still following the scent trails.
If you’ve never run down a hallway filled with the scent of terrified classmates, then good for you. This is a fucking nightmare to me. The scent of terror, sweat, agitation, fear, anger, sorrow, and nearly every other negative emotion that you can think of is so daunting. Not to mention the trails of piss, blood, and shit in various places.
Six more turns, another hallway connecting, and I’m at another massive room challenge.
