by Isla Frost
Dunraven waited for the gasps and whispers to subside before speaking again. “Inside the arena, any wound sustained by your teammates will be made real in your own flesh. So work together. Communicate. And protect each other as if your life depends on it.”
Here, Cricklewood, who was leaning on his staff beside Dunraven, cracked a toothy smile. “Because it does.”
The old professor pointed at three nearby kids. Two walkers, one human. “Let me demonstrate.”
The three unlucky students stepped forward, and Cricklewood snapped some sort of bracelet around each of their wrists. The bands resized themselves to fit. Or to prevent their wearers from taking them off.
While the last kid was still staring at their new piece of jewelry, Cricklewood withdrew a stiletto (one I recognized from that night with the flum) from his sleeve and sliced the boy’s cheek.
It was only a small cut. Half an inch long and just deep enough to bleed. But that damn gash was mirrored exactly on the other two students’ cheeks.
Murmurs rippled through the crowd. Even the hollows reacted this time, while the sudden draining of the lake had elicited no response from them.
Cricklewood thumped his staff on the ground. “What are you all just standing there for? Everyone get your bigoted, grudge-grasping goat brains up here so we can divide you into trios.”
Well, it was nice Cricklewood spoke the same way to the walker kids as he did the humans.
I stepped forward with everyone else but somehow wound up at the front. Cricklewood gave me an odd look and snapped a copper-colored band on my wrist. “Your group can go first.”
He nudged me toward the gaping pit where the lake had been. Or the arena as Dunraven had called it. I wasn’t sure how I was supposed to get down until I drew close enough to clear the rim and saw the narrow staircase hugging the rounded wall.
All right then.
I trotted down the steps, drawing Gus as I went. Two walkers, both tall, bright, and handsome and wearing identical bands to my own followed.
When my boots touched the sandy floor—sand that was perfectly dry, I noted—I stopped and looked around. The circular space was about sixty yards in diameter with the ivory walls stretching four or five times my height above me. On a section of the wall that had been hidden from my prior vantage point, there was a rack of giant weapons too large for a human or walker to wield. Huh.
A thud sounded from above and echoed around the cavernous space. I craned my neck upward to see Cricklewood peering down at us.
“Ready?”
There was no opportunity to ask for what? Because a noise like the grinding of giant rocks set my teeth on edge, and then the earth began to shake.
But the walls of our little sinkhole were not collapsing.
Instead, a dozen hulking creatures of mud and stone and various organic materials erupted from the sandy floor. They were vaguely humanoid in shape, with shadowed depressions for eye sockets and lumpy protrusions for noses. One was made up of mostly tree roots with a sharp beak of a mouth and long arms that ended in oversized clawlike hands. Another was all stone with a craggy brutish face and giant boulders for fists. A third had a moss-covered skull for a head, two vicious horns, and an extra set of arms.
A quick check with my second sight confirmed my suspicion. They were not alive. Held together and animated by magic alone. But the weapons they collected from the walls looked real enough. And I was willing to bet their ability to harm was plenty real too.
If I hadn’t just decapitated a three-headed wolf monster, I would’ve been worried.
“Good news, Gus,” I murmured conversationally. “These guys aren’t alive, and they don’t even have any blood you’ll need to taste.”
I’d jump for joy, but unfortunately I don’t have any legs, he informed me, his humor as dry as his blade was sharp.
In perfect sync, the golem creatures turned their misshapen heads toward us, their eye sockets fixing with unerring accuracy on me and my teammates.
The two walkers stepped in front of me. Tall, bright, and handsome number one pushed me backward while number two faced the golems.
“What the heck did you do that for?” I growled.
Number one pushed me again so that my back hit the ivory wall. “You can thank us later.”
I would have liked to shove his head up his ass, but the band on my wrist put a real dampener on that idea.
Tall, bright, and handsome number two turned to glower. “Just stay back where it’s safe and try not to get in our way or get yourself killed.”
Arrogant jerks. Screw that for a plan.
The magical constructs charged. The sound of shifting earth and grinding stone and creaking wood accompanied their movement. Despite their size and ponderous appearance, they did not lack for speed.
I didn’t hesitate. I kicked off the wall, executed a perfect somersault over my condescending comrades’ heads, and ran to meet the oncoming assault with a feral grin.
My sword caught the leading golem’s giant mace, diverting the stroke that might’ve smashed my skull like an overripe watermelon, and in one fluid motion, I raced up his body like a monkey up a tree. His knee provided a launch pad, his craggy side plenty of handholds, his elbow a useful swing, and in no time at all I was standing on his immense shoulders.
Then I swung my sword at his rocky neck.
I expected resistance. Gus was a blade I’d never seen an equal to, but stone was stone after all.
The golem’s neck gave way like butter.
A glance at my “comrades” showed they had yet to move from their starting positions.
I leaped from my first conquest’s falling form to the next golem before I could lose too much height and repeated my new favorite sword stroke.
It felt amazing. Like a choreographed dance my body knew all the moves for without my brain even having to engage. And the movement, the performance, soothed the buzzing wasps under my skin. They loved it, reveled in it. So I did too.
It took mere seconds before every golem lay in formless piles upon the arena floor.
My companions were gaping at me.
I was spattered in mud and clay and their blades weren’t even dirtied.
They were probably offended that I’d aided them without their permission. Walkers hated accepting help or being rescued. Theus had explained it to me as a culture thing where honor was everything and weakness was despised.
Served these two right.
I smirked at them both and left them to lick their wounded egos as I made my way out of the arena.
But my smug satisfaction drained as rapidly as the water when I crested the rim and saw the rest of the academy. Hollows. Humans. Teachers. Many of whom were scared of my new power and wanted me dead rather than to remain in possession of it.
They now stared at me in stunned silence. Like I might be more monstrous than the animated beings I had felled.
And then the whispers started.
My eyes were involuntarily drawn to Ellbereth’s.
Her gaze was full of promise.
Without taking her eyes off me, she murmured something to her companions. As one, six heads nodded.
Crap.
Lirielle chose that moment to stand—oblivious as usual to the reactions of everyone else and the thick tension that had stolen over the assembly.
“That,” she declared loudly, “was awesome.”
Chapter Eighteen
There was a cost to my new magic. A steep one.
A lesson I learned with a vengeance a few hours later.
And that was not even counting the inevitable reckoning when Ellbereth and her followers made their next move.
For every ability and sense I’d had enhanced by the influx of life force, the withdrawal was tenfold worse. I’m pretty sure I wasn’t actually blind, but it hurt so much to open my eyes I might as well have been. And I couldn’t keep anything in my stomach, not even water.
Over those long, crawling minutes, I would h
ave done almost anything to make the pain go away. But I drew the line at killing Ameline’s pygmy griffin, and I was in no shape to drag myself out to the forest to find other prey.
I gained a sudden empathy for anyone who’d ever battled with an addiction. Grandmother had told me there were all types of addiction in the Before, and I’d seen firsthand they hadn’t gone away. Only the substances had changed.
But mine was the first I’d heard of that required sucking the life force from someone.
Well, unless you counted vampires anyway, and as far as I knew, they were still fictitious.
I groaned. Then stopped because even that hurt.
That was the first hour.
The second hour was better. Like being thrown into a pit of fire ants is better than being eaten from the inside out by subcutaneous beetles.
I wondered if the Malus experienced the same withdrawal symptoms. If that was the reason behind its insatiable appetite for life energy. Could all that destruction—the devouring of entire worlds if the walkers were to be believed—really be caused by something so basic?
If the withdrawal became worse the more life force you took or the longer you avoided enduring it, could the Malus die of shock if we starved it?
Could I?
But no, the walkers had already tried that.
Sometime around the sixth hour, my brain was functioning well enough that I came to a few realizations.
That night after Cricklewood’s visit in my makeshift prison cell, I’d thought I’d felt sick over what I’d done to the flum, but at least some of my nausea must have been because its modest energy had quickly worn off and my body had gone into withdrawal. It had been far, far more mild than this. So the severity of the withdrawal must depend on the amount of life force I’d pulled into myself.
Except what about Kyrrha, the walker woman who’d performed my ritual? The woman my professors blamed me for killing. She was vastly more powerful than the flum, which meant the blood exchange must have made it work differently, her blood in my veins offsetting the withdrawal somehow.
Or—for all I knew—I’d never taken her energy.
Or I had, but it had mostly worn off before I woke. Bryn told me my ritual had lasted the longest of all the students, and I’d been locked in that chamber for three days. Maybe that was why I’d woken feeling good but without the potency of the wolf monster’s energy.
I shrugged away the uncomfortable subject of Kyrrha’s death. I was feeling plenty uncomfortable enough as it was. And if there was one thing anyone who lived in our post-invasion world knew, it was that you couldn’t change the past.
So there was no point dwelling on it.
Of course, my future wasn’t looking a whole lot better right now. Just what was the point of my new magic anyway?
With the high long gone, so too was my excitement.
It was all very well to gain amazing fighting abilities, but that wasn’t what our world needed. The walkers were already incredible warriors. If that had been all that was required to defeat the Malus, the war wouldn’t have spanned a hundred and fifty years.
We needed to be competent enough to defend ourselves, yes. But that was it. Physical prowess alone would never overcome the Devourer.
So what would? Was I supposed to cut the Malus, make it bleed, and then try to suck all that life force it had gathered over a hundred and fifty years?
Did it even have blood?
I remembered the resistance of the three-headed wolf monster’s energy and didn’t think it would be that simple. If it came to a magical wrestle over life force, the Malus would win.
And if for some reason I won, I suspected the withdrawal from that much power would kill me.
I groaned and turned over in my sweat-sodden sheets.
Whether I wanted to or not, I would find out eventually.
So long as my provisional pardon wasn’t revoked and Ellbereth and her cronies didn’t kill me first.
Chapter Nineteen
I was weak but upright by morning. I managed to eat some fresh berries and drink fennel ginger tea. Even more worth celebrating, I managed not to throw them up afterward.
I felt much less excited about weapons practice.
Poor faithful Ameline wasn’t looking a whole lot better than me. She’d stayed up most of the night, listening to me moan, pressing cool washcloths against my forehead and changing out buckets I’d vomited into.
Gus on the other hand, bathed in his favorite milk-and-honey concoction and with no ill effects from yesterday’s feats, was far too chipper.
I’ve had wielders who fought unceasing battle for seven days and seven nights and they pulled up with less drama than you did.
I wasn’t sure I could deal with his attitude this early in the morning.
“Yeah well, I’ve had blades that I kept far longer than seven days and seven nights without wanting to throw them in the river. What’s your point? Besides, how did that work if you didn’t let them kill anyone?”
That was before I’d embraced my religion.
I rolled my eyes so hard it hurt. Or maybe everything just hurt.
We were walking to weapons practice, Bryn and Ameline once again flanking me. And I couldn’t help but compare Ameline’s bundle of fluffy and feathery cuteness to my own self-important companion.
“What do you talk about with Pig?” I asked.
He was sitting on her shoulder, cat claws digging into her uniform for grip and his scraggly wings lifting occasionally for either balance or imagined flight.
“I’m not calling him Pig,” Ameline reiterated for what must have been the dozenth time.
In truth, after seeing him guzzle down smoked fish at breakfast, I thought the name kind of suited him. But my loyalty lay with Ameline.
“Ah, sorry. Do you have any ideas for what you might name him?”
“Um…”
“How about Featherhead?” Bryn suggested. “Or Meow?”
Ameline huffed and scratched the tiny griffin’s neck. “Just ignore her. You deserve a dignified name.”
The hawkish eyes slitted with pleasure while the catlike tail swished.
After dubbing my sword “Gus,” I wasn’t sure I was any better at names than Bryn was, but Ameline seemed stuck on ideas, so I asked, “What about Griff? That’s a real name at least.”
Ameline chewed her lip. “I don’t know. Griff the pygmy griffin?”
“Better than Pig the pygmy griffin,” I pointed out.
Bryn shot us a mock glare. “Hey, that’s a matter of opinion, and I’ll thank you not to insult my personal preferences.”
Ameline sighed. “All right. Let’s go with Griff before Pig gets any more entrenched.”
The griffin ruffled his feathers in apparent agreement.
Bryn shrugged and trailed her fingers lovingly over her battle-axe. “At least I got to name my own weapon.”
“Oh?” I asked. “What have you called it?”
“Choppy.”
We were all smiling when we reached the lawn and spotted Cricklewood.
But mine faded as Klay’s angry gaze locked on me. My unwise display of my power yesterday had likely poured gasoline on his newfound hatred. And he was doubtless feeling fresh and perky. Could I protect myself from him when my legs were still wobbly?
A bunch of the other kids were stealing glances at me too. And I realized that even for those who thought my magic was enviable rather than evil, I’d painted myself as the student to beat. For the boasting rights of defeating the golem slayer if nothing else. Which meant they would all be extra eager to grapple with me and win. Just when I felt least capable of dealing with it.
I resolved to fight Klay first, before what little strength and stamina I had gave out.
Cricklewood had us reapply the edge-blunting goop to our weapons, and I kept an eye on Klay to make sure he did his properly. I was pretty sure he only wanted to hurt rather than kill me. After all, he hadn’t used his magic to gain the upper hand or tri
ed for a thrust that would’ve been lethal even with the goop. But I wasn’t going to chance it.
When Cricklewood ordered us to pair up, I made straight for Klay and hoped I wasn’t making a grave mistake. There was a gleam of anticipation in his angry stare.
My plan was to go in hard and fast and win the fight before it really had a chance to start. I just didn’t know how I was going to pull that off.
I know a good trick to help, Gus volunteered.
I weighed my sword’s offer as Klay lifted his own sword in readiness. Should I be suspicious or grateful? I had cleaned him before my withdrawal began, so that was a point in my favor. On the other hand, he’d been no more impressed with the taste of mud and stone golems as he’d been with the taste of wolf-scorpion-monster blood, so he might be cranky. And I had sort of threatened to toss him in a river a few minutes ago…
Gus sniffed. You’re making me cranky by doubting my noble intentions.
Since I had no way of knowing when Gus was monitoring my thoughts or preoccupied with his own, I felt the need to respond aloud.
“All right. Let’s do this.”
With luck, Klay would think I was talking to him and Gus would understand otherwise.
Follow my lead.
Gus grew abruptly heavier, a lot heavier, and with the balance completely off.
What the?
Cricklewood ordered us to fight, and Klay came at me. Under the guidance of my brilliant, millennia-old, gods-forged sword, I stumbled forward, lost control of my blade, and plunged it point-first into the grass.
“Good trick,” I muttered dryly. “You can stop helping at any time.”
But as I wrenched the blade free of the soil to meet Klay’s strike, a clod of dirt hit him square in the face.
It was a dirty tactic but an effective one. I rushed to take advantage, dodging Klay’s now-blind swing, tripping him on his own forward momentum with the flat of my blade, and following his descent to the earth to press Gus’s point against his throat.
Well, we’d never been told to stick to “proper” swordsmanship. There was no such thing in battle.