Afterworld

by Lynnette Lounsbury

  She continued, ‘He risks his eternal freedom and will grace our collection if he fails.’ She directed a wide and beautiful smile around the crowd and they watched her in awe. Her long blonde hair curled down her curved form and her dress was wrapped around her like a sheath. Even with all of his knowledge of her, and the confusion about whether or not she was truly trying to help him, Dominic remained attracted to her. Deora was simply the most beautiful woman he had ever seen. But he turned to see Eva standing beside him, her sword drawn and her face set, and he realised that hers was a more appealing beauty. Eva was a real human girl, her skin darkened by the sun of South America, and her face held the tension of a real life lived. She looked back at him and her face softened a fraction and his heart warmed, even in this moment of fear, as he realised that she loved him enough to risk everything and fight with him.

  Deora raised her elegant hands. ‘Let the Trials begin.’

  Dom turned to Eva and smiled. ‘Thank you. Thank you. You know you don’t need to do this. It is not your job. I made this choice.’

  ‘Shut up.’ She gave him a rueful headshake. ‘I’m here. I want to be here. Go and get the damn medallion.’

  Dom stared across the stadium at the medallion hanging high on the far wall. He looked back at Eva and said, ‘Well, I’m just going to walk over there and get it. Okay?’

  She laughed. ‘Okay.’

  He advanced a few paces. And then a few more and soon he was more than halfway to the end. The crowd was so tense that he could hear their feet, jittery on the wooden floor, their hands tapping the benches they sat on, waiting to see what the Nephilim had planned. They did not have to wait any longer.

  The floor of the Arena opened and in their resplendent white and scarlet a dozen Nephilim rose upwards, silent and still. Dom’s heart leapt quietly in his chest and he tried to keep his new confidence in check. He was to fight the Nephilim. He could do this. He would have been much more afraid of fire or water, but this he had trained for. He wondered what they had been thinking. They knew he could fight them, they had seen it. They knew he was trained by Eduardo. Were they just trying to prove a point? Or entertain? Or was he missing something? The audience was thrilled. These creatures generally kept themselves so aloof and separate from the humans – but here they were, centre stage in the Trials.

  Dom had little time to think before the huge figures had surrounded him, their feet gliding across the sand, their bright, intelligent eyes watching him with both wariness and disdain. He sheathed his sword, knowing it was not his most useful weapon and the crowd cheered. He knew his best strategy was to wait for them to attack. Finally, when he was completely surrounded, one of the Nephilim, a huge, ebony-skinned giant, leapt forward from a crouch, arms raised, intent on crushing Dominic’s skull. His instincts did not fail him. He fell to the ground, rolling quickly to the side and raising his leg to kick the inside of the giant’s thigh. It would have hurt an ordinary man, but Dom knew the anatomy of these creatures intimately, their energy flowed much closer to the surface and much more powerfully than humans, who relied more on their blood and flesh than their mind’s connection through their bodies. He struck a point on the Nephilim that collapsed him instantly to the ground, unable to move his leg. He landed heavily and Dom finished him with well-aimed hits up his spine. The giant was silent and still on the ground, but the stadium was in uproar, the people had not expected this and they were ecstatic. They had been excited by the prospect of seeing the Nephilim fight, but the chance that they might lose was even more intoxicating.

  The Nephilim did not wait for Dominic to regain his feet; instantly they were on the attack, all of them, and he counted at least ten with his first glance. Eva backed up to him with her sword drawn and he murmured quietly to her.

  ‘Did Eduardo train you for this?’

  ‘Yes,’ she said in a low voice. ‘But I am not as strong as you, I need to use my sword for the hits.’

  She had barely finished speaking when they were under attack, the entire group swinging, kicking, grabbing. Dominic had time for one quick breath and he let his body take over, using instincts that were not even his to fight in a blur of hands and feet, reaching and striking, rolling and leaping around and under the fighters, blocking their energy and leaving them on the ground. Somewhere in his peripheral vision he saw Eva doing the same using the flat of her sword to strike hard into the lower back, the thigh, the neck, wherever they left themselves open.

  Dominic took his share of hits, but he was fast and had practised exactly this type of fighting. He knew how to heal very quickly. So did the Nephilim, although the injuries to their nervous systems took a lot longer to heal than their bodies. Eva had opened up the thigh of a large black-skinned warrior and it had healed before a drop of blood had been shed. Slowly those who had first been taken out were getting up and beginning to fight again. Dom and Eva backed towards each other and the Nephilim circled them, crouched low to keep their long limbs and backs protected from Dominic’s hits. Dom watched them. He was confident, but could feel fatigue seeping into his limbs. It was going to be a long fight, and he tried to find a way to decisively win.

  He closed his eyes briefly to focus. He had seconds to figure it out and he tried to sift through the memories Eduardo had given him. They weren’t stored the same way his own were, there was no real way for him to take what he wanted from them. They were a dark patch in his thoughts that interacted with him on an unconscious level, guiding his actions and giving him a type of instinctual knowledge.

  There was a whisper of movement and the Nephilim attacked again, several at a time. Eva was dragged away from him and he saw her thrown to the ground at an odd angle. He started towards her and stopped; he had to remember she would heal, this was not life and he did not need to rescue her, the Nephilim would destroy him if he lost focus. He could see her beginning to stir and returned to his task, dodging as many blows as he could, accepting the pain he did feel, and healing as fast as he could. He was slowing, but they were too, a little. He continued to try and access the whole of the dark fuzz of memories in his mind, pushing at it with his consciousness, trying to unlock it. A few flashes of light crossed his vision, perhaps a memory. He saw an ocean. Shaking his head to clear it, he missed the shoulder of the Nephilim in front of him and took a heavy blow to the side of the temple. Dom fell to his knees. He could hear the audience and tried to ward off incoming blows while still pushing at Eduardo’s thoughts. The ocean – brighter than any memory he had of his own life. A dark blue ocean. A cliff top. He could feel the wind. Another blow hit the other side of his body and he struggled to stay upright. There was a woman in the memory – the one he had glimpsed before. A tall and very beautiful woman and she was smiling at him in a way that stopped his heart for a moment. Maya. Her name was Maya. Raw love. She was gone. Another blow to his chest took his breath and the darkness that closed in on him was the final push he needed.

  He could see Eduardo fighting, through his own eyes. A taller, stronger Nephilim than any of these and Eduardo was fighting with only his hands. The struggle was difficult to watch as a memory, it was clouded with rage and hatred and Dom couldn’t catch every moment, but he saw Eduardo end the fight. And the Angel had not waited for the Nephilim to attack. This was something Eduardo had chosen not to teach him. It was all he needed.

  There was no hesitation this time. Dominic threw himself to his feet, off-balance but upright, and then he leapt backwards into the figure behind him. He lifted his palms up, around the head of the Nephilim who was in front of him, his open palms hitting the sides of his neck, just below his ears. Dom threw himself upwards to hit with the greatest force possible.

  The Nephilim crumpled instantly to the ground and Dom had no doubt that if it had been life, the Nephilim would have been dead. As it was, he didn’t move and the other Nephilim briefly paused in their onslaught on Dominic. He stood ready for the next fighter, his hands raised. It was clear that they knew this tactic, and were wary, n
ot one was attacking. A shout behind him made them all turn and he saw Eva use the same palm-up attack on another Nephilim, dropping him to the ground. The group backed away and watched as the two who had been hit lay still, unhealed and silent.

  Dom could hear his own breath. He stood ready, his hands in front of him, legs crouched and poised to leap, but the Nephilim just watched. He counted eight more in front of him and he could feel Eva close in on his back. The audience around the stadium was silent and for a brief moment the swish and sigh of the huge trees was also audible, the breath of the ancient trees syncopating his own. He glanced up at Deora and even from a distance he knew that she was unsure what to do. Perhaps she had taken over the Trials to help him or perhaps her motives were more sinister, but he imagined she wished she hadn’t. Almost a minute passed and still the Nephilim on the ground did not move. She would have to do something soon. The Nephilim in the stadium were looking to their peers for some sort of signal.

  Deora finally gave it, her arms sweeping over the stadium in a gentle waving motion. There was a rush of warm wind around him and the ground erupted in flame. She was careful not to hit the Nephilim though and managed to surround Eva and Dom in a small ring of flames that, despite its circumference, raged above their heads. It was almost blue in its intensity.

  ‘We can’t stay here. She will incinerate us,’ Eva whispered to him and he could feel her pressed against him. The heat was burning his skin. ‘We’ll have to jump. Then we must be quick, they will be ready and she will help them.’

  Dom nodded and took a deep breath. ‘Now.’

  What happened next was a blur. Dom experienced the most sharp and severe pain of his life. The smell of burning skin and hair filled his nostrils and the acrid scent burned them. He swung his hair wildly to flick out the flames and saw his skin had blistered as he reached the other side of the fire. He had no time to think about the pain as the Nephilim had already begun a savage attack, kicking at him with their graceful arcing kicks, keeping their heads as far from him as possible. Dom moved instinctively, flipping onto his hands and using his thick-booted feet to hit one on the side of his head, dropping him instantly. He tried it again and it worked once more before the group stepped back out of his reach. His skin healed quickly and he turned to see that Eva had also healed quickly although much of her long braid had burned and unravelled to her shoulders. She too had taken one more of their attackers to the ground. He glanced around him to get his bearings. They were close to the wall that held the medallion, but he was still not close enough to make a run for it. It was probably thirty metres away, too far to outrun so many Nephilim. He did a quick count. They were still outnumbered more than three to one.

  A rushing burst of flame came towards them again and he rolled behind the Nephilim to avoid it. One of the group was not quick enough and there was a scream and he crumpled in a blackened heap on the ground.

  Dom returned to his earlier tactics of simply striking the nerve points of their attackers and sending them to the ground. He was quick, perhaps even slightly quicker than they were, and within moments there were two on the ground. He felt Eva’s hand touch his arm from behind and he knew instinctively what she was trying to do. He tried to open his mind. It felt like a very tightly closed portal, but he forced it open enough to see a picture of what she was trying to tell him. He tried to send his assent. They circled back to where the three most recent victims lay healing. One was struggling to get up as his legs regained their strength. Eva stood on one side of him and Dominic on the other and with a swift kick from each of their legs they hit the sides of his head and knocked him completely unconscious. It worked so effectively they repeated the action on the others and turned to face an ever-shrinking group of Nephilim. These four were much more wary, they backed away from Dominic and Eva, giving them such a wide berth that there was no action beside the simmering and shrinking ring of fire that fizzed and popped a few inches above the sand and then finally disappeared.

  Dominic looked sideways at the wall. They were closer now, maybe twenty-five metres. He could sprint it. Grab the medallion. The Nephilim podium was on the other side of the Arena. Eva saw the glance and nodded. But their opponents saw it too and moved closer.

  ‘Go!’ she hissed.

  He sprang, his legs pumping as they had when Eduardo had chased him through the City. The Nephilim were faster, but they were cautious and he was able to knock one into another and in the confused moment, hit one in the head with his feet and the other with his hands. They fell. He was almost there, maybe ten more metres. He heard fire hiss around him, but Deora’s aim was off. He wondered again if she actually was on his side. The fire hissed around and behind him cutting off the last two Nephilim. Eva was behind them, her sword swinging in an arc that hit one, then the other, hard in the back, turning them away from him. It was in front of him now, the shiny silver medallion, and he leapt towards it, his hand outstretched.

  Dominic didn’t know what had happened at first, he simply found himself flat on the ground, his head aching and his eyes blurred. His first thought was that the medallion was somehow rigged with a trap. Then a flood of blood dripped through his vision. He shook his head to clear it and swiped at his face. There was no further attack so he breathed and stumbled to his feet, his head healing quickly. The Nephilim were on the ground and not even the first of his victims had yet stirred. Dom looked at Eva. She was gazing upwards at the crowd. They were on their feet, silent, watching him. His eyes were still smarting with blood, but he saw some with hands raised. He blinked and saw clearly, his heart sinking. Rocks. They were carrying rocks, some as large as softballs, to throw at him. He had almost made it and still the people were going to stone him.

  The first emotion that filled Dom was doom, he had come this far and now he would have to fight the entire crowd. The thought exhausted him. But it was washed away by the anger that flooded in, the darkest anger he had ever felt.

  He stepped back and looked up at them all, watching him. Staring. With his deepest voice he yelled up at them, ‘What are you waiting for?’

  There was total silence.

  ‘What? Throw them. Hit me. You’ve spent thousands of years waiting, don’t waste any more of your minutes on me.’

  There were hands poised to throw and some people shuffled and looked at each other wondering what to do, waiting for the first move. Dom sensed that if one person was to throw, they all would.

  ‘Throw them and then go. Go train, go earn your minutes and then get out of this place. Don’t sit here watching this . . . disgusting show. People being burned and tortured. You are better than this. Better than them!’ He gestured to the Nephilim, most of whom had stood and were moving closer to the edge of their pavilion, ready to stop him. Satarial sat, silent and still, watching him.

  ‘You let them do it. You have been their slaves again! And they’ve poisoned you into thinking it’s entertainment. There are people in cages here. People like you. This was supposed to be the place we came to learn. To get ready for the next step in our journey. I didn’t want to be dead either. I am fifteen! There were a million things I wanted to do. But I’m dead. Every moment we do nothing, this place changes into a place of endless waiting. Do something. Get out of here. Go through the Maze. There must be so much more than this out there. So much better than this.’

  He looked around at the silent faces in front of him and threw out his arms.

  ‘Or just throw your stones.’

  There was silence for a long time and then finally the soft whistle and thud of a rock sailing through the air and hitting the sand with a puff. Dom’s heart sank. Another rock whistled through the air and then another. He closed his eyes and put his head down, prepared for the impact. But there was none.

  He opened his eyes to see what was happening. The audience were throwing their rocks, their sticks and any other heavy objects that they had with them. And they were throwing them at the two standing Nephilim as well as those lying prone on the sa
nd, and those that could move curled up using their arms to try and shield themselves from the blows. Dom nearly wept with relief and his face lit with a smile that he couldn’t contain. They had heard him. He turned to Eva.

  She was shouting to him, but through the hail of missiles and the jeers of the crowd he could barely hear her. He finally caught the word medallion and turned to claim his prize. He leapt up the wall arms outstretched, his hand brushing the silver causing it to swing back and forth. Out of reach.

  From his place on the podium Satarial leapt from his chair. With a wave of his hand a wind knocked the last rocks from the air and sent them tumbling harmlessly against the far wall of the Arena. He dropped over the edge and in several swift movements had crossed the Arena and was between Dominic and the medallion, cutting him off and standing so close they were almost body to body. Dominic’s gleamed with sweat and grit and Satarial’s in the purest white linen.

  ‘Not yet.’ He smiled. It was the same creature in front of him that he had met on his first night in the Necropolis, but it was not the same smile. Satarial’s face was twisted. Dom could see he hadn’t lost any passion for this game.

  Satarial pulled off his tunic shirt, and stood bare-chested in the Arena, his skin pale and rippled with muscle. Dominic, if he drew himself up to his full height, came close to his shoulder.

  ‘You can have it when you get past me.’

  There were no cheers from the audience. Just silence.

  Dominic sighed. His muscles ached with exhaustion and no amount of healing could fix that. He was thirsty and his breath roared in his throat. He would fight, but he did not know how long he could fight well. Satarial swung his leg in a graceful arcing kick. Dom blocked it and kept out of the way of the offensive, but he couldn’t get close enough to make any hits of his own. Satarial was a far superior fighter to the others, faster, more powerful, more focused. Completely unafraid. Several punches hit Dominic in the chest and head and he fell backwards. He rolled and twisted and managed to get to a standing position again, but Satarial was in front of him, his arms up, protected and yet still attacking. Another hit to the ribs caved his ribcage into his lungs and Dom spat blood as he fell forward. He felt a kick to the side of his head and his eyes dimmed. Another to the back of his head and he lost his vision altogether. The pain was blinding and the darkness disorienting. Whichever way he tried to turn he was hit again and before he could heal he was ravaged further. He tried to stand. This was it, he thought. There was no way for him to beat Satarial. The Nephilim wasn’t even using his other skills, there was no fire, no water, no rocks. He found himself against a wall and he used it to stand. A few faint flickers of light appeared before his eyes.