by Tristan Vick
“The Bakktu are a rare warrior-like species that love to hunt inferior beings. Or, at least, what they consider inferior beings. They’re big, powerful, and most of all dangerous.” Danica shot Ishtar a sideways glance. “Anything weaker than them is on the menu. Nobody knows where they come from. Some say a distant galaxy. Others say they are nomads that just hunt whatever prey they come across. Regardless, the last time I went up against one it nearly took my life.”
“Bakktu Danav means Terrible Demon in the ancient tongue,” said Danica, making the statement as more of an aside to bide the time before the announcer gave the go ahead for the gladiatorial bout to begin.
The televid drones swooped down and buzzed both women and then moved over to get a closer look at the new monster. One of the drones flew too close though, and the Bakktu reached out its massive clawed fingers, caught it in mid-air, palmed it like a child’s ball, and then crushed it. Sparks flew everywhere as the drone crumpled in his clenched fist and smoke rose up from the spaces between his fingers.
The crowd cheered and the alien beast threw the smoldering husk of the drone onto the ground and then threw out its arms, flared its mandibles, and roared up at the audience.
“I have a bad feeling about this,” Danica said as the weapons racks rose up from the ground. Arming themselves, Danica noticed Ishtar do something she’d never done since their time in the gladiatorial arena. She reached over and grabbed a shield from the weapons rack.
“Make sure you get a couple of those smoke bombs,” Ishtar said, nodding at the clay smoke bombs. The round clay ball had an igniter tab that, much like a more complex grenade, would spark a small flame to set off the smoke bomb.
Danica didn’t question Ishtar’s advice. She grabbed three of the clay balls which were roughly the size of Dagonian oranges. Dropping them into a small satchel she had fixed to her belt, she turned and picked a couple of the sharpest looking blades off the rack. With her powers, she had a natural shield, so arming herself more heavily than Ishtar gave her a slight offensive advantage. She turned in time to see the Bakktu’s entire body dissolve into thin air. Danica gulped.
“It turned invisible.”
“Get ready,” Ishtar said, sword and shield at the ready.
The announcer’s two snake heads hissed into the shared mic simultaneously. “Let the gamessss begin!”
A series of loud alpenhorns blew from the tops of the portico of the arena, letting the combatants know it was time, and the crowd rose to their feet with cheers of elation as the penultimate match of this season’s humiliation bout got started.
Danica knew that if they survived this match, the next one in three days would be the Bull and Swan bout. The grand finale of her and Ishtar’s little drama playing out before a live audience. What would happen to her after that, she couldn’t guess.
Ishtar shouted, “Down!” and shoved Danica out of the way. A spear, seemingly coming out of nowhere, lodged itself in the dirt where she’d just been standing.
“Thanks,” she said, glancing at the spear and then back at Ishtar. Her partner merely nodded in reply.
“Use all the smoke bombs,” she said in a low voice, “and I’ll take the creature head on. You flank it from the left and use your forcefield power to knock it off its feet. If we time this right, we’ll be able to take it out in one go.”
“If we don’t?” Danica asked.
“Let’s just say failure isn’t an option.”
Danica nodded. It wasn’t the news she’d hoped for, but after several weeks of fighting, she’d begun to see the appeal Jegra found in the gladiator matches. There was a simplicity to them. A kind of unspoken understanding between warriors that if you fought with honor, you would die with honor. It wasn’t the kind of thing Danica ever expected she’d grow to understand, let alone enjoy, but here she was. Finding herself excited for the challenge.
“Go! Now!” Ishtar yelled.
Danica tossed two of the smoke bombs, making sure they landed roughly thirty feet apart. Then she began running. She glanced back to see Ishtar running toward the red and blue smoke that streamed out of the small balls and gradually filled the arena with a purple haze.
The arena wall to the east provided Danica with some shade. Keeping to the shadows, she ran along the circumference, making sure to keep just out of sight. In the distance she heard Ishtar engage with the creature whose purplish silhouette, like a giant translucent shadow, could be seen in the smoke.
She turned back in time to see the air waver before her, like a heat mirage, and she dropped and slid, narrowly avoiding the blade that flew over her head. Grinding to a halt in the sand, she quickly rose up, fist full of dirt, and threw the sand out at whatever was standing before her.
The fine desert sand rained down onto a second form, revealing the outline of another Bakktu.
“Fuck me,” Danica said. She turned to warn Ishtar and screamed out, “There’s two of them. Ishtar, we need to—”
Her warning was prematurely cut off when something gripped her neck and choked her throat shut. To her dismay, she felt her feet leave the ground as her body was hoisted into the air. Dropping her two blades, she gripped the wrists of the invisible hands choking her.
With wild kicks, Danica thrashed and squirmed, but she couldn’t break free. Her eyes turned to see Ishtar impaled with a spear right through her torso. Ishtar shot up into the air, like a skewered fish on the end of a spear fisherman’s harpoon, and the Bakktu’s invisibility cloak gradually dissolved and it reappeared. Hoisting Ishtar high above it, it began laughing in a guttural, throaty voice.
Almost as soon as the first Bakktu had turned off its invisibility cloak, so too did the one gripping her by the neck. She was a little bit shocked to find a female Bakktu holding her, but there was no doubt about it, it was just as strong and ugly as its male counterpart, but with massive breasts wrapped up in fishnet and armor plating.
Instead of shells for a bikini top, however, the female wore sculls over hear breasts, and instead of armored underwear, like her male counterpart, she wore a leather loincloth with teeth woven all along the seams, which gave it a jagged and formidable appearance. Strapped to her bracers were two blades that extended outward roughly thirty-five centimeters. If a swipe of her clawed hands didn’t do you in, then her blades certainly would.
“Let…me…down!” Danica growled, barely able to get the words out. Even though she pried on the Bakktu’s arms, trying to free herself, it was no use. The monster was too strong.
The female Bakktu just cocked its head, then snorted once and flung her into the arena wall as if she weighed nothing more than a ragdoll. Before crashing into the cement, however, she managed to throw up an energy shield to protect herself. Still, the force of the impact fractured the wall behind her, sending a cobweb-like series of cracks off in every direction.
She collapsed to the ground, coughing. Even with her energy shield up, the blow was enough to knock the wind out of her and she fell to her hands and knees gasping for air.
The female Bakktu tossed her dreads and then strolled toward Danica with a more or less feminine gait, the swivel of her hips setting her apart from the male. Other than her walk, her slightly longer tentacle-hair, which ran down to her buttocks, and the massive breasts she had, there was not much else to distinguish her from the male.
Danica spit out some blood and then rose to her feet. Shaken by the blow, she knew she couldn’t wait for the Bakktu to make its next move, not without taking another bad hit. So, she made sure to get the jump on it. Throwing up another energy shield, she raced forward and rammed into the creature’s thigh. It braced itself and Danica rebounded off of it as though she’d just crashed into the korridium bulkhead of a starship.
Her ass hit the dirt with a thump and she yelped. Not having the luxury of time to process the pain, she quickly scrambled back on all fours as the Bakktu bore down upon her and took a swing with its double-pronged blades.
She stretched her neck as far
as she could, leaning backward as the blade barely missed slicing through the bridge of her nose. She watched as several strands of loose purple hair fell away, severed by the blade. Scrambling to her feet, she managed to throw up another forcefield in time to block the Bakktu’s follow-up attack.
Irritated by the interference of the energy shields, the Bakktu roared out in protest and, then, leaning back, it kicked her shield with all its strength. Danica flew up into the air as though she were a child’s kick-ball, and then toppled to the ground again with another bone bruising thud.
This time she coughed up sand and spit up blood-laced with sand. Wiping her mouth with the back of her right hand, she looked up to see both Bakktu laughing and jeering. They were enjoying this brutality more than any creature should.
Danica rolled onto her side and glanced over at Ishtar. The male Bakktu swung the spear with Ishtar dangling off the end like a croquet mallet and, tearing the spear out at the height of its pendulum arc, flung her off the end. She hit the wall with wind-stealing force and a splatter of her own blood and crashed to the ground. Groaning from the pain, she forced herself to roll over onto her back and clutched the wound left in her abdomen to try and ease the bleeding.
“Fucking helios,” she cursed as she lay staring up at the open sky above the arena. It was blue and clear and there was only a trace of white cirrus high in the distance.
With both Bakktu barreling toward her, Danica used what remaining strength she had to throw up two energy bubbles–one around each Bakktu’s head.
The audience instantly began booing when they realized she was simply going to suffocate both creatures and end the match. But, to her dismay, the female Bakktu reached up and tore the energy bubble in half, as though it were little more than bubblegum.
Danica gasped. “Impossible.” That’s when she noticed the korridium plating on their sharp talonesque nails. They had literally welded sharp metal plating to their fingernails so they could cause more damage. They are every bit deserving of their infamous moniker, terrible demons, she thought.
Both Bakktu were nearly upon her when a spear pierced the male Bakktu’s shoulder. It let out a furious roar that seemed to startle its companion. It tore the spear out and then, in a fit of rage, snapped it in two across its thigh and tossed both pieces to the ground. Turning around, it saw the red-skin woman struggling to stand upright as she clutched her bleeding gut.
With a roar the male Bakktu leaped up into the air and flew across the arena in a single bound. It landed in front of Ishtar with a startling force, slowly rose up, and flared its mandibles and roared at her. She slowly craned her neck upward and grinned at it with a bloody-toothed smile.
“Over here, you ugly bitch!” she shouted, drawing the female’s attention back toward her. Waving her arms in the air, she added, “Yeah, you heard me. Ugly. Biya—”
The female moved so fast that Danica barely even saw it coming. All she knew was that the Bakktu’s fist had embedded itself in her gut and she heard several of her ribs snap.
A scream rose from the back of her throat but a follow-up punch by the creature’s calloused fist fractured her jaw and sent her straight down into the dirt.
The female Bakktu raised its foot high and Danica rolled over just in time to see the foot come down on her. She groaned as more ribs fractured inside her chest.
Desperate to not get stomped into mush, she grabbed the Bakktu’s foot and refused to let go, even as it tried to shake her off. But Danica knew that if she let go, she was done for. All her ribs were broken and another sharp blow could send bone fragments into her lungs and heart.
Saliva and foul breath flew from the male Bakktu’s mouth and plastered Ishtar’s chest and face. Ignoring her gag reflex, she flooded her system with biochems. A mixture of adrenaline, painkillers, and antibiotics surged into her system. The male Bakktu snorted and then threw a punch. Ishtar caught his fist with her bionic arm, and to their surprise, she stopped it mid-punch.
As the servos inside her artificial arm whined, Ishtar smiled and then growled through her clenched teeth, “My turn, asshole.”
Trained in over half a dozen forms of martial arts, Ishtar used the beast’s immense body weight to her advantage and tossed him over her shoulder. He landed with a thud and, without skipping a beat, she leaped into the air. As she came down, her bionic arm crackled with energy and fluidly transformed itself into a blade. With a wet sounding thwack, she buried the blade into the Bakktu’s chest. It howled with pain and flung Ishtar off.
The male’s pain filled cry momentarily distracted the female, who glanced back at her companion to see what the matter was. This gave Danica the opening she needed. Reaching down into her satchel, she retrieved the last smoke bomb. Using her remaining strength, she smashed it into the female Bakktu’s foot. It ignited with a hiss and smoke began streaming out of the clay ball that was now plastered to the creature’s foot.
The Bakktu hopped about, trying to shake off the clay bomb, but only managed to disperse blue smoke even further and in a much bigger radius. Using this diversion to her advantage, Danica drew back into the blue haze and unsheathed the swords that were strapped to her back.
By the time the Bakktu had finally stamped out the smoke bomb, it had lost sight of her. Angry, it roared menacingly at the wall of smoke.
A flash of silver cut through the blue smoke and a spiraling sword imbedded itself in the female Bakktu’s sternum. Screaming out in pain, the Bakktu reeled back and tore the small blade from her chest. Hot neon-green blood spurted out and the Bakktu flung the blade aside and then, with its clawed hands, began taking wild swipes at the blue smog, hoping to cut down its troublesome opponent.
Keeping low, she raced around to the side and flanked the Bakktu. As she dashed out into the open, smoke trails curled behind her as she flew into view. The monster barely had time to turn when Danica rammed into the back of its legs with a plow shaped forcefield.
Both contestants tumbled to the ground. As she hit the dirt alongside the Bakktu, she saw the creature’s twin blades snap under her weight as she threw out her arm to break her fall. Danica knew that her small size and speed were the only things giving her the edge now, and she sprang to her feet as fast as she could.
While the Bakktu struggled to roll over and push herself up, Danica thrust both of her blades into its back.
As the creature howled in pain, she bent down and picked up one of the broken blades. The weapon felt massive in her hands and she could barely hoist it up above her head, especially with her broken ribs. But somehow, she managed it. However, just as she got the blade to where she wanted it, her strength failed her, and the weight of the heavy blade became too much for her, and she let the tip fall back to the ground.
“Gah!” she growled, clutching her busted ribcage with one hand. With a deep grunt, she gave it another go. But, again, the heavy blade crashed back to the ground. “Come on!” she screamed, seeing the Bakktu pushing itself to its feet, her swords sticking out of its back.
With both hands resting on its knees, the female demon raised its head and looked right at her with those yellow, beady eyes. It flexed its freckled mandible and seemed to grin before letting out a hideous roar.
“Let me help you with that,” a voice said.
She looked over to see a bloody Ishtar standing beside her. The red-skinned assassin reached down and, fitting her hands between Danica’s, took up the broken blade. Together, they raised the weapon high, just in time to ram it through the chest of the Bakktu, right between her skull crested breasts.
The Bakktu gasped in shock as the massive blade passed through her, surprised by the fact that the two insignificant creatures had managed to run it through. Then, staggering back, it gave them a look that was both one of bewilderment and, at the same time, slightly amused. With a blood gurgling chuckle, it spit up neon-green slime and then crashed onto its knees again. Still laughing at its own fate, it fell to the side and landed on the ground with a harsh thud that
sent up a swirl of dust.
Ishtar kicked it in its ribcage just to be sure it was dead. Satisfied, she turned to Danica and nodded.
That’s when the most stomach-churning, spine-tingling scream they’d ever heard rang out.
Both women turned to see the male, gripping its wounded chest, standing in the clearing smoke only to see its beloved companion lying dead at the two women’s feet.
“Move back,” Ishtar said. “I’ve got this.”
Danica did as asked and watched in awe as Ishtar’s bionic arm crackled and then transformed into an arm mounted blaster-canon.
The large Bakktu raced over to its fallen companion and knelt down beside her. Putting its hand on her forehead, it wept and let out another deep, bone-chilling wail. A cry of pure misery compounded by heart wrenching sadness.
“Don’t worry, you’ll be reunited with her soon enough,” Ishtar said, placing her plasma canon against the creature’s ridged forehead.
It ignored her presence and just sat there, devastated, its heart broken.
Without hesitating, Ishtar fired a shot through the creature’s thick skull. The plasma blast punched through the Bakktu’s impossibly thick cranial plating and shot out the other side. Grey matter splattered across the arena sands and the male Bakktu slumped forward, a glowing hole piercing its forehead. Thin wisps of white smoke curled up into the air from the smoldering wound and the irritating televid drones swooped down to get a close-up of the grisly scene.
Ishtar raised her boot and, with a sturdy kick, knocked the Bakktu onto its back so that it could lay down beside its deceased lover, blade protruding from her sternum.
“May you be reunited in the afterlife,” she said stoically, as the televid drones swiveled around to capture the exhausted faces of the defending champions.
Still clutching her side, Ishtar looked back at Danica and then started to limp back to the exit.
Danica looked down at her badly bruised ribs and, realizing she’d broken more than a few, let out a painful sigh. Her breath caught prematurely in her chest, a spike of pain cutting every breath short, and she grunted out the remaining air. Turning slowly, she glanced back one time at the fallen Bakktu and then, realizing she’d just defeated a couple of demons, turned back and limped after Ishtar.