by E. A. Copen
“Their blade favors the claymore. Forty-one inches and over six pounds of raw cutting power. If you find yourself inside his range, get out of it. He will kill you faster than the druid or the ollepheist. Emma, if you get a clear shot, take it. Lazarus, you handle the druid. Work together. Work smart. Stay alive. Any questions?”
I raised my hand. “Oh! Pick me! Pick me!”
Morningstar’s mouth twitched. The clicker in his fist groaned under pressure. “If you say you have to go to the bathroom, you’re going to regret it.”
I lowered my hand. “What about their ranged fighter? You were sure Coyote would put in Sasquatch, and you were wrong. Don’t you think we ought to cover their ranged guy too?”
“Very well.” He clicked through some more slides full of boring looking graphs and statistics before settling on a guy with long coils of strawberry blonde hair and a square jaw. A long string draped from between two fingers that went somewhere off screen. “This is Donlin Finn. He’s half-fae, half-god, the lesser-known son of Lugh. You, of course, know of his older brother—”
“Cú Chulainn,” I said.
Morningstar raised an eyebrow and gave me an appraising look. “Very good. I’m surprised you know the lineage.”
Now it was my turn to cross my arms. “Kerrigan is an Irish name, don’t forget. My grandfather’s from there. Old man never shut up about those legends.” If there was one myth cycle I knew well, it was that one, but I’d never heard of Donalin Finn. Lesser-known must’ve been right.
“Donlin is eager to prove himself and make a mark. He’s young, stupid, and armed with his father’s sling.”
Lugh’s sling had been used to slay his grandfather, the Fomorian known as Balor the Strong-Slayer. It was a sort of David and Goliath tale on steroids. See, Balor had this magic eye that he only opened in battle. Anyone who looked into his eye immediately stopped fighting, making him easy to cut down. Lugh, who was on the opposing side in a battle, smacked him with a rock from his magick sling right in the eye. Supposedly the stone hit his eye hard enough to force it out the back of Balor’s head and cause it to bounce around in the ranks, causing Balor’s men to give up. Lugh the half-Fomorian, half-Túatha dé Dannan won the day for the Túatha dé Dannan against all odds.
If this Donalin had his father’s sling, I didn’t want to imagine what a pebble would do to my head.
“Note to self,” I said. “Don’t get hit by any flying rocks.”
“If they put him in instead of their blade, the tactic doesn’t change. Emma will take him. You’re still to focus on the druid. Is that understood?”
Emma nodded. “Understood.”
The screen switched off. “Your weapons are waiting for you in the prep room. There’s just one more thing to note. You all need to be wary. Loki was granted permission this morning to craft the arena for this round in a closed session. I would not expect the terrain to be favorable. In fact, I would expect all manner of surprises waiting. Pits with spears. Sinkholes. Falling rocks. The terrain will be your enemy just as much as the opposing team. Stay alert.”
I sighed and waved my hands in the air. “Go, fight, win, team.”
“You’re dismissed.”
Three chairs slid back all at once as Emma, Khaleda, and I rose. Spot shook as if he were wet and padded toward the door.
Magic weapons or not, this was going to be a tough fight, no matter who got into the arena with us. I’d never fought for a crowd before. Just knowing hundreds of people would be watching made me nervous. I looked over at Emma as we all filed into the common room. It didn’t matter. I had to win this so she could get her soul back. As long as everything went according to plan, we had a good chance.
Chapter Twenty
We filed into a replica of the room where I had fought Haru. Narrow with stone benches and a floor coated in coarse sand, the room smelled like hot stone. The wooden boxes containing our weapons had been laid out on the stone seats. Emma immediately went to open her box while I went to the end of the room to lean against the iron grates for a look at the arena Loki had crafted.
It was the exact opposite of Baba Yaga’s arena. Trees stood naked and sharpened as if they were broken toothpicks shoved into the ground. Splinters littered the ground along with huge tire tracks. Stumps broke littered the rest of the space. It looked like someone had come in and sliced down every tree with a giant scythe. Blood dripped from several of the spikes, a telltale sign of the battles that had come before ours. Moss crawled along the exposed forest floor and onto a crumbling structure of dark stone. The stone building was a ruin stretching high into the sky, a pyramid that would’ve been ten stories tall when it was new. Now, it marked a jungle graveyard.
“It’s an Aztec ruin,” I reported.
“Unusual choice for Loki. I assumed he’d go for snow and ice being, half-frost giant.” Emma loaded six bullets into her gun and spun the chamber.
“Me too.”
Pestilence’s Namer was an Aztec god. It couldn’t be a coincidence that Loki would craft an arena mimicking the god’s home and then destroy it. It felt like a message. I wondered if Xipetotec would get it.
I walked back to the stone seat and slid open the box containing the Rod of Aaron. The last time I’d picked it up, it hurt. It wasn’t any easier the second time, but the longer I held it, the less I was aware of the pain. It never let up. I just got used to it. As with all pain, eventually, the body adjusts.
With the rod in hand, I eyed the last box. “Suppose that’s got something in it for Spot?”
Spot whined and pawed at the box.
Emma opened the box. Inside, we found a note.
Dear idiots,
Since I can’t be in the arena with you to control him, and since letting him eat you wouldn’t be in my best interests this time around, I thought I should leave you with some control words. You’re going to need them. They’re on the back of this page. Die, and I’ll kill you.
Regards,
Khaleda
“As if I didn’t already know,” I muttered and held the letter out to Emma.
She frowned as she read it and handed the letter back to me. “I’ll leave the magic words up to you. I just shoot things.”
I folded the letter containing the dog’s control words and tucked it in my pocket while Spot looked at me with two of his three heads. The third was focused on the metal gate, ears up.
“You just remember whose side you’re on, big guy.” I patted his heads and went to bang on the gate. “Yo, we’re ready.”
Nothing happened for a minute. Wheels clicked somewhere in the wall, pulling a chain. The metal gate groaned and slid up. Against the roar of a thousand voices screaming as one, we stepped out into the arena.
Heat and humidity smacked me in the face and weighed me down almost immediately. I made the mistake of looking up into the crowd as I wiped away sweat and froze. I knew there’d be hundreds of people up there, but I hadn’t expected it to be like that. It felt like every one of them was staring at me, cheering for my blood. My heart kicked into overtime and breath caught in my chest. Cold sweat coated my palms.
“Doing okay?” Emma asked. She was beside me, her gun pointed at the ground.
I shifted my grip on the rod and nodded. “Just a little stage fright.”
“You? Stage fright?”
“Laugh it up. Not all of us can be as confident as you.”
Beside me, Spot growled.
A loud horn cut through the air. The sound woke something primal in me and made my hair stand on end. They were coming. The other team was about to walk out on the other side of the arena and spend the next ten to fifteen minutes trying to murder us. We hadn’t been able to strike a deal with the Celts, which meant it was kill or be killed. They hadn’t done anything to me, at least not personally. Could I really kill them? What if they hurt Emma? Would I be fast enough to stop them?
Focus, Lazarus. I closed my eyes and blew out a breath, trying to tune out the crowd. Get your breat
hing and heart rate under control. You can do this. You’ve done it before.
Something slammed into the wall behind me and exploded in a puff of dust, leaving behind a sizable dent in the arena wall. Holy shit. Whatever that was, I was glad it had missed me. That could’ve been my head. Another rock sailed through the air and smashed into the ground, knocking a tree stump out by the roots. This time, I saw where it’d come from. The little blonde asshole with the sling was up there on the temple. He smirked, tossed another rock in the air and caught it before fixing it to the sling and swinging it around over his head.
Before he could throw it, the ground rumbled, and a huge, hulking set of claws ripped open the ground between us and the pyramid. The ollepheist had made its appearance.
A terrifying snarl escaped Spot’s three heads and he bounded forward. With each successive step, Spot grew a foot until he was as large as the ollepheist with jaws big enough to crush it. The two behemoths clashed in a flurry of claws and snapping teeth. Fur flew and blood sprayed. The ollepheist let out a shriek and tried to retreat back underground. Spot bit it and held only to be dragged underground with it.
Donlin’s stone sailed through the air aimed right at Emma’s head. I pushed her out of the way and followed her to the ground, narrowly avoiding being hit myself.
Laughter erupted in the audience as she kicked me off her. “I had a clear shot and you messed it up!”
“You’ll get another. We need to get to the top of the pyramid so I can find the druid and put him down!”
To get there, we’d have to take the high ground from Donlin and avoid being smashed by his rocks on the way. The pyramid was also the only place we wouldn’t get swallowed by the ollepheist if it decided to come back above ground.
Emma and I got up and started running for the pyramid. Donlin grinned and took off the other way. He was giving up a prime spot for someone with a sling, and he wouldn’t do that without a reason. Donlin was daring us to follow him, or else there was a trap up there I hadn’t anticipated. Guess we’d find out.
We slowed once we reached the pyramid, mostly because there’s no fast way to ascend that many stone stairs, especially after you’ve already run half the length of a football field. Emma stepped onto the stone first, with me hot on her heels. It shifted under her feet, sliding away to reveal a pit of writhing, twisting forms about six feet down.
Snakes. Why’d it have to be snakes?
Emma managed to jump to the next stone, but I wasn’t so lucky. I lost my balance and tumbled into the hole head first. In a panic, I sent a blast of power into the rod as I fell. Magic exploded from the end of the stick and slammed into the ground ahead of me, disintegrating the serpents in a wide circle. My face hit the stone floor with a dull thud, and I blinked away stars. Another snake lunged at me. I rolled out of the way and staggered to my feet, ready to smack any snakes who tried that trick again.
My eyes finally adjusted to the dim light and I made out the shape of the room. I was in a round chamber with a hallway stretching out before me. A light at the end of the hall cast a shadow on the room and illuminated the figure of a man standing in the hallway. A man waving his hands and chanting. Hello, Druid.
He stopped chanting and the remaining snakes came to attention, stretching up to stand tall. There were twelve, maybe thirteen left. Way too many for me to just smack around.
“Listen, pal. I really don’t want to have to hurt you. What do you say we come to an understanding, wizard to wizard?”
He barked a word and one of the snakes sprang at me. Apparently, that was a no.
I tried the trick with the rod again, sending out another concussive blast. It dissolved all but one snake, turning them to ash. But the power bit back. Pain lashed out at my hand and snapped into my skull, making me teeter on my feet. Magical backlash. Been a while since I’d run into that. It was a symptom I’d faced often when first learning spell work. Like stretching a muscle you hadn’t used before, it only happened when you wielded a spell outside your normal range of power. I could disintegrate things all I wanted, but the more I did it, the more power I’d have to use and the stronger the backlash would be.
The druid picked up the snake by the tail and it formed itself into a staff. Classic.
Time for me to fall back on what I know. I swung the staff and struck the ground with a shout. The stone rumbled and split, the crack extending down the hallway.
The druid turned and ran. Coward.
I pursued, sliding past the hole I’d made. Lightning tore back through the narrow hallway. I batted it aside with the rod and winced as a throbbing pain settled in my temples. Shit, that damn thing was powerful. I wasn’t really strong enough to wield it for any length of time. This thing with the druid was going to have to end and fast.
He turned a corner. When I followed him around it, a fireball careened down the hall toward me, forcing me to duck back around the corner. Heat surged past me, singing the side of my face. I yelped and turned away, giving the fire my back instead as it slammed into the wall. Molten fire licked at my back and my shirt caught. I flung myself to the ground and rolled to put the fire out, cursing the entire time.
By the time I got the fire out and pulled myself, panting, around the corner, the only sign of him was the sound of retreating footsteps. God dammit. I limped after him. If the druid got back to the top, he’d take out Emma in a heartbeat.
The hallway ended in an intersection and I paused to make a choice. Both directions were dark and empty as far as I could tell and only one would probably take me to the surface.
I turned right. The very first floor tile clicked underfoot. I sighed. “You’ve got to be shitting me.”
A dull roar echoed down the hall. I readied my staff, expecting a monster. Instead, I faced a river. Water crashed down the hall in a tidal wave littered with sticks and moss.
I promptly turned and ran the other way and made it about thirty feet before the wave took my legs from under me. Darkness surrounded me. The crushing weight of the water bore down, trying to force the last desperate gulp of air from my lungs. It filled the hallway to the ceiling, leaving no space to come up for air. Damn it all! I’d have to swim for it and hope I found an opening before I ran out of air.
I kicked and waved my arms, trying to propel myself forward, but the tattered remains of my clothing made movement difficult. I couldn’t move and hold onto the staff at the same time. I ripped off my shirt, pushed it aside, and kicked, hoping I’d chosen the right direction. In the dark, it was impossible to know.
My chest began to burn with the need for oxygen. I considered discarding the staff so I could swim a little more efficiently, but it was my only weapon if I got free, too important to cast aside.
Just another few feet. Come on. Please be an exit. I reached and pressed my palm against a flat wall. Dead end. I had chosen poorly.
A ripple echoed through the water. Stone shifted and shook. I pushed back from the dead end, and a second later, the wall exploded. The water carried me through the opening it’d left, spitting me out onto the rear steps of the temple where I stayed on my hands and knees, coughing and gasping while the crowd cheered. When I looked up, I saw what had ripped up the temple wall. Spot had grown into a dog the size of a house and stood in the corner with the ollepheist in his jaws, shaking it like a dead rabbit. Black blood oozed from between Spot’s teeth where each head chomped into it. Holy shit.
No time to appreciate the shock and terror. Agony erupted in my shoulder as a stone smashed into it. I fell over and squeezed tears from my eyes. The world pulsed out of existence for a moment, leaving behind only pain. Oh, man did that hurt. When the next one hit, I’d be too dazed to move out of the way. He got me.
A gun barked twice in rapid succession. I opened my eyes to see Donlin stagger from his spot near the top of the pyramid. Red blossomed on either side of his chest. He touched it and pulled his hand away red before collapsing, his body rolling down the pyramid.
Two down, on
e to go.
Emma came from the other side of me and squatted next to me. “Are you okay?”
“You used two bullets,” I said, still feeling dazed. A wave of nausea hit me as Emma’s fingers brushed over my shoulder.
“I know. It was an accident. I’m rusty. I think it’s broken. I can’t tell if it’s your collarbone or somewhere in the shoulder.”
“The druid is still out there.” I grabbed her and hauled myself to my feet.
“It’s three on one now and I’ve got four bullets left. He doesn’t stand a chance.”
Something moved at the edge of my vision. I turned my head and saw a ghost sitting on the pyramid. Not just any ghost, either, but the ghost of Calamity Jane. She sat with her chin resting on her hand, looking bored.
A fireball exploded out of the hole I’d left in the pyramid. I grabbed Emma and pulled her away, attempting to put my body between her and the fire. Luckily, I didn’t get burned the second time. The fireball was barely half the size of the last one.
The druid stumbled out of the hole and scampered out of reach. Blood streamed from his forehead and down his nose. Looked like the flood hadn’t been kind to him either. He was on his last legs, probably running low on power. His eyes settled on Calamity Jane. He extended a hand. Jane’s head snapped up, a look of terror on her face. With every passing second, her form grew dimmer, the power of her soul transferring into the druid.
Oh, hell no.
I stood and called on my own power. Souls sprang into focus all around me. The arena stands illuminated in streams of gold and silver with occasional pits of black. I forced myself not to stand in awe at the sight and focus on the druid. His soul spun in his chest, a pulsing silvery mass growing brighter with every spin.
My head pounded as I found my feet and dizziness threatened to take me down the pyramid, but I forced myself to take a step. There was no way in hell I was going to let this bozo eat an American legend for a fireball. Another step.
The druid turned on me and swung his staff. It hit my injured shoulder, sending a thunderclap of anguish to my brain. My legs folded from under me and I went down, but I went down swinging. My fist caught his hip and pushed him off the narrow step with a grunt. I let myself revel in the satisfaction that gravity would pull him down the pyramid the rest of the way in an embarrassing fashion before the next stair slammed into my shoulder. Propelled by gravity, I rolled, and the druid rolled with me.