The Gauntlet

by Rebecca Ethington

  It was all common knowledge. We hadn’t even researched her; everyone knew her story. Who knew how true it was or how much she had betrayed us? She was like us, but she had forgotten us.

  “Sorry? Don’t be sorry. It gave me the power to care for my people. To end this monarchy and defeat you all.” I said, giving her a twisted smile. “But I have a feeling you already know all of that.”

  The threat was clear, yet the King’s dumb brother Ryland chuckled. Mira gave him a look as she walked around the group, giving herself a better line of sight to my hands, the queen, and the door. She might have had the most sense of them all.

  “A bit. We’ve been watching you for months, Gemma.” I really hated the way she said my name. “Grocery stores. Banks. Clothing stores. I’m impressed. Most of the Chosen can do little more than make pencils explode in their first month--”

  “Flattery is not going to work on me, lady. Of course, I can do more than your damn Chosen. I wasn’t bit last month, I worked for almost nine years to get this strong. All with one goal.” I was looking right at her now, my magic rampaging through my veins.

  “Yes, so you've said,” King Ilyan barked, stepping behind the Queen like some kind of gigantic reverse bodyguard.

  Mira stood behind me, and the king behind Joclyn, it was getting harder and harder to make my shot count.

  “We are aware of the class discrepancy, and are already taking steps to change it---”

  “Class discrepancy?” I cut him off, laughing like a loon. “You bring your Chosen armies into our homes. You kill our people, you force us into slavery, and you call it a class discrepancy?”

  Silence bathed the room, the four powerful giants glancing between themselves with looks that ranged from horror, to confusion.

  “Don’t stand there pretending you haven’t done this. I’ve watched hundreds dragged off by that Tarn army of yours. Watched the CCC shackle children and put them to work in the glimmering homes of your Chosen, in the radioactive mines.” I snarled, twisting my hands against the ropes as Mira finally stepped around to face me, all of them staring down at me in what was clearly shock.

  “Oh my god. You didn't know,” I gasped, leaning forward as I put some counter pressure against the ropes. “Some leaders you are. My people are being slaughtered and you had no clue. You deserve what's coming to you.”

  I would have attacked there, I was ready, my hand was almost free and their dumb faces would have given them the most perfect end. But then that damn queen had to open her mouth and sweeten the deal.

  “I wonder if you might give us a few minutes.” It was like fucking Christmas. But with actual presents and not just an extra rat on the spit.

  I didn’t hide my glee as I smiled at her, her eyes narrowing as everyone else left without so much as an argument.

  It was her and me now.

  My hand slipped out of the rope, quickly followed by the other. I barely caught the heavy coils before they fell to the ground, the thick cords twisted around my fingers as I held my hands behind my back. Free. Ready.

  “I sure hope you don’t regret this.” She would. She really, really would.

  “I don’t regret much,” Joclyn said again, straightening her ridiculous skirt, the former beige covered with the reds and browns of destruction. “But I do regret what has happened to your people.”

  God, I could have shit a brick. This woman sure had an ego on her if she thought all of this was going to be that easy.

  “You think a dumb apology is going to fix this? You are way past that. Stop pacifying me lady,” I snarled, letting my magic flare, the sparks dripping onto the rope and singeing it. Everything was in working order.

  “I am not trying to pacify you.” Stubborn and ego. No wonder this whole place was gone to shit if this was who was leading us.

  “Lying won’t work either.” The air was starting to smell now, my magic building into full strength as I infected the rope with my magic, turning it into a bomb.

  “Did you know I started the school specifically to stop this kind of thing from happening?” She took a step closer to me, the same weight I had felt before pressing against my chest, like her magic was trying to hold me down all on its own.

  “Didn’t do a very good job then, did you?”

  “No, I didn’t.”

  “Excuse me?” My heart stuttered as I dropped the rope to the floor, knowing that it could explode any second. Suddenly I didn’t want it to.

  “I failed you all. Of course, with everything that has been happening being done in secret--”

  “So much for your super ‘I can see the future’ party trick,” I snapped as the rope exploded.

  Screaming, I jumped up, sending every bit of magic I had right toward her.

  Sparks of red and purple filled the room, my chair slamming to the floor before the rope exploded again, sending the twisted metal and a good amount of rock into the air.

  I watched her, ready to see her fall to the ground, to see fear in her face. I was ready for it, ready for the door to slam open and the King to kill me. For everything to be over. To have won.

  But the Queen just smiled, blinking once as everything froze, rubble and smoke held in place, bits of rock dangling in the air before the magic I had sent her way reversed. My attack hit against me, slamming into my chest and sending me soaring through the tiny room and into the hard-stone wall behind me.

  The door never opened. It was still her and I in an empty room, me plastered against a crumbling wall as everything around me started to move in reverse, smoke swirling into nonexistence, rope un-burning, the chair putting itself back together.

  “You are strong, Gemma, I will give you that,” Joclyn said, walking calmly toward me, her magic holding me against the wall, feet dangling a good foot above the ground that had begun putting itself back together.

  One swipe of her hand and the room looked exactly as it had seconds before. Well, all except the sacrificial lamb that was pinned to the wall.

  What the hell?

  The Queen was standing inches from me. She wasn’t flinching. Her hand wasn’t moving. There wasn’t a whisper of her magic in the room save the pressure on my chest, and yet everything I had done was gone. We had assumed her weak, we had assumed her easy to defeat.

  We were so fucking wrong.

  I wanted to piss my pants and run away, instead I tightened my jaw and glared down at her. Down because she was still holding me against the wall.

  “You have more strength than most of the Chosen I have seen. I’m impressed.”

  “Don’t be impressed. Don’t be anything but dead. I want nothing from you. I’m nothing like you!” Fighting against her was doing next to nothing, but I still gave it my all, wiggling as I roared.

  “That’s where you are wrong. Whether you like to admit it or not, we agree on one very important point.”

  “And what is that?” I tried to snarl, but between the pressure of her magic against my chest and wasting the last of my energy on a useless attack, all I managed was little more than a gasp.

  “That this is more than a class discrepancy. We didn’t know it, but if what you said is true, and I assume it is, then you are right. You are both right. This is approaching a dangerous war that could end the lives of thousands, and it needs to end.”

  I stopped fighting against her, the last of my strength swallowed in the shock of what she said.

  “We didn’t invite all of the mortals to the Gauntlet to laugh at them, Gemma. We want this to change. Magic should not just be for the few. It appears my attempt to make it equal has only ended in disaster,” Joclyn continued, her magic releasing and letting me slide to the floor.

  Too bad I didn’t have the strength to hold myself up. My legs crumpled, sending me to the ground in some weird pretzel shape.

  “And you didn’t see this coming?” I scoffed at her, pushing myself against the wall in an attempt to stay upright, to face her head on and not like some worm I was sure she saw me as. Quee
n or not I wasn’t interested in groveling underneath her.

  “Sight is an interesting thing. It is powerful and varied but not exact. It can show everything, or it can show nothing. It can also be blocked by things more powerful than you give them credit for.”

  “Ha! After what you just did? What in the world could be more powerful than you?” I tried to laugh, but I was truly terrified of that possibility. She had put a room back together with a blink, stopped my attack, and a hair wasn’t out of place. It was frightening to think something could be more powerful than that.

  “I think I will leave that mystery for you to unravel.” She smiled and pulled the repaired chair toward us, but she didn’t sit, she just held out her hand to me.

  “You really have a death wish, don’t you?”

  “No. You’re too weak to do anything and I know how uncomfortable floors can be.”

  Weak? Maybe, but that didn’t mean I was going to give into her Royal Highness.

  “I’m fine thanks.” My snarl didn’t quite translate.

  What the hell was up with this lady? I mean, she was right. Even if I had the strength, I wasn’t about to try to attack her again. But wasn’t I supposed to be her prisoner or something?

  “I want to make you a proposition, Gemma,” she said, taking the seat that she had pulled around for me. “We need people like you in this world, people with strength and courage and a moral compass that doesn’t point toward utter destruction.”

  “You did notice that I exploded your Gauntlet, right?”

  She smiled, “And I am not one to believe that all actions are rooted in a nefarious cause.”

  “You sound like my mom.” Even after so long, thinking of her still hurt. It was an ache of weakness, however, and I pushed it away.

  No room for that nonsense.

  “Well, I do have a son about your age, so let’s say I am practiced in giving talks like this.” She smiled like she was telling a joke.

  I stared at her. “What is this proposition?”

  “I would like you to attend Imdalind Academy along with one of your friends from the Gauntlet. Many other mortals won the Gauntlet and will be joining you, but you and one other will both be granted special enrollment. In addition, the friend you choose will be given a bite from one of the Vilỳ from my home.”

  “You want to take me, and a friend, into your school and you don’t think I will just blow up the joint?”

  “Well, your magic will be restrained until you can prove an increase in skill and compassion.”

  Compassion? I was not the one who needed to learn compassion. I had been keeping the people that were dying right under her nose alive.

  “I would like you both to be trained,” she continued when I blinked at her, “and to help us in our hope of bringing our community back together.”

  God, this lady was smoking something nice.

  “That’s a pretty story, but you are delusional if you think that any of that will work that easy. I’d rather fight.”

  “Force rarely works the way you hope. I speak from experience.”

  “This time will be different.”

  “Shall we find out?” The queen smiled, holding her hand out to me, her palm glittering as water boiled through her flesh as though it had been hidden there. Rivers of clear blue water streamed over her hand, dripping to the floor in glistening drops that reflected a million colors I had never seen before. Even the water looked like magic, magic that was lifting from her skin and building into a pillar.

  A pillar of water.

  “What the hell are you doing?” I had seen magic. Hell, I had magic. But I wasn’t sure what this was, or even if it qualified as magic. Didn’t help that Queeny over here was smiling like a lark.

  “Go ahead, touch it,” she nodded toward the water, the dark sheen that was smothering her eyes making it clear I didn’t have a choice.

  My fingertip had barely tapped the swirling sides of the pillar when fire moved over my skin, seeping into my bones as flesh and veins boiled.

  “Fuck!” I shrieked, holding the bubbling flesh of my finger against my chest. That water hadn’t just burned me, it had boiled my skin.

  I pressed myself to the wall, needing to get as far away from her and the water that was now shifting and bubbling like it was boiling. Like it was alive. Swirls of color moved over the surface of the pillar, shapes and colors forming until it was looking back at me.

  No, I was looking back at me.

  The little pillar of water had my fucking face on it. Smiling. Laughing. Battling against some guy with shaggy black hair, magic streaming from my fingers that looked nothing like it did now.

  All of it while wearing the ugly as sin uniform from Imdalind Academy. The future. She was showing me the freaking future.

  “Is this going to happen?” I asked, unable to tear my eyes away from the still shifting images.

  “Your past defines your future, if you will allow it room in your soul.” Her voice had changed, deepened into something hollow and terrifying. Just like her.

  Her eyes were pure black. No silver, no white, just frightening demonic black as the water shifted to more images of a school, of that same shaggy black-haired boy, and a girl with a face covered with blood.

  Her I recognized. The girl from the Gauntlet. She had tried to kill my friends, so in return I had placed my blast perfectly around her. Teach her a lesson.

  “Enemies will abound in a world of skills and allies that appear where you least expect it…”

  Scary dark voice or not, I already knew she was wrong. There was no way I was buddying up with that bitch, even if she had survived. Thankfully the image shifted to something that looked like a bloodied hand and a horrified face before it was gone and the last of the water splashed to the floor.

  I shrieked and dodged away. No way in hell I was touching that stuff again.

  “What the fuck are you, lady?” I shrieked, trying my best to move through the wall and away from her. Thank god her eyes had gone back to silver.

  “I’m a Drak.”

  “Drak’s are apparently much more frightening than the stories give you credit for.”

  She smiled at me, “Perhaps that’s why I don’t let stories get out.”

  Was that a threat? It didn’t seem like it with how she was smiling at me, but I certainly wasn’t going to start spreading rumors about the crazy queen any time soon.

  Not with how she was looking at me.

  “What do you say, Gemma? Will you join us at Imdalind Academy? Will you help us build our world into something better?”

  I had a feeling our ideas of ‘better’ were vastly different.

  “What’s in it for me? What’s in it for my people?”

  “A better world.” She was dead serious, and I laughed in her face.

  “That’s just delusions speak when people are starving and sleeping on rags. You can do better.”

  “We can. And we will. Give us a chance, Gemma. Join us.”

  I really didn’t want to trust her. I had come here to end her. Instead, I was cowering on the floor, my back against a wall.

  “I suppose I can’t really say no, can I?”

  “You can, but I have a feeling you want to see what that future holds as much as I do. That and if you say no, I’ll lock your magic.”

  “Lock my magic?”

  “Yes. Permanently restrain it with an unbreakable bind.”

  Damn. So, I could either have her restrict my magic and go to school. Or have her remove it completely.

  There was only one option.

  Which was fine with me. She may have backed me into a corner, but there was a door in that corner, I would still figure out how to blow the place up.

  I gave her a nod, staring at the drops of water that were slowly absorbing into the stone.

  Nothing had changed. I wanted to end this monarchy, to end the tyranny against my people. I wanted to turn this world on its head. But she was right, I also really wanted
to see what the future was.

  Because I was pretty sure that that last image was my bloodied hand, wrapped around Prince Ryland’s neck.

  8

  Rowan

  Angie was perched on the edge of her seat, staring through the wide glass window. Her little jaw was clamped tightly as she leaned closer, eyes wide at the beds that were covered with moaning, writhing people. Smears of blood and dirt covered everything so thick the entire room looked like one big crimson stain.

  Through it all zipped the Skȓíteks, our family, and anyone with enough power to heal the wounded. Thank god the girl’s misaligned attack had happened someplace full of magic strong enough to stitch skin and bones back together with ease. That, and that she had been unskilled enough to do much more than explode stone. I would have hated to see what she could do with more training.

  “We really should head back to Imdalind, Ang,” I said for probably the third time, not that I wanted to leave. I’d rather be down there, helping. Searching.

  My mother was insistent I remained up there, however. So, I was stuck before the painted macabre with a sister as stubborn as I was.

  I didn’t see much of what was going on, I was still staring at the door they had pulled the girl through a few minutes before. She had been unconscious, a few of the Undermortals I had seen in my dream escorted in right behind her. They had gone in hours ago, and no one had come out.

  Tension was wrapped around my spine like panic ready to strike. I shouldn’t be worrying for her; she could clearly take care of herself after all. But after watching her in my dreams for so long, after failing to stop her from doing the unthinkable, I couldn’t help but feel that I knew her. That I wanted to protect her.

  Silly, really. But the thought didn’t leave...

  Another scream made me jump in my chair, pulling me away from the door and back to the twisted, bloody, carnival. This was no place for a child.

  “Let’s go, Ang.” She shook her head, eyes still focused through the glass at all the writhing, screaming bodies.

  It was possibly the only thing that was the same about this scene.