by Rosie Scott
Cerin, I thought, and immediately heard him, all the way from his view in the stands. I heard his breaths, each one, inhaling and exhaling shakily through rattled teeth as he watched the battle.
“What is she waiting for?” I heard Nyx cry, in confusion.
I was in shock at my amplified senses. I had no idea it could be this good, but then again, I had never fought a god.
I am waiting for the right moment, I thought, in an indirect response to Nyx's question, as I watched my foe complete his spin, his two axes bursting through the bones of the remaining skeletons. My eyes were on his axes, and though I still leeched from him, my right hand held the water magic, a shard of ice spinning slowly above my palm, itching to be used.
I continued to watch the axes as they slowed from the momentum of his spin. Then, at the perfect moment, I thrust the ice shard toward the two axes as they overlapped from the god's exertion, steel shining from over steel.
Crack! The shard shot through steel, cracking the thick blades of the axes down the center where the ice had hit. The axes did not break. Not yet. The steel, however, was becoming weak and brittle, and Malgor knew that to use them would break them. The god roared in anger, and threw the axes to the sands, where the steel of each ax immediately broke into two, leaving the long handles of the weapons to fall, unsupported.
“Bitch,” he seethed. He glanced toward the ground at his feet, where the two curved swords of the skeletons were lying amongst the bones. Perhaps he thought to pick them up, but considering what I had done to his axes, decided against it. “Those were my favorite weapons.”
“Then buy more with your winnings,” I taunted, just before the god charged.
My reaction times were higher than they'd ever been, but even I couldn't fully dodge his punch. Malgor had swung from the side, and though I'd dodged most of it, I felt my stomach scream in protests from a feeling of collapse, though my energy high prevented me from feeling most of the pain. All of the oxygen in the air must have been turned to sand, for I couldn't breathe, and I was suddenly watching the sands fly overhead. It was only when I saw the ground rush up to meet me that I realized his hit had flown me through the air. When I looked up to find the god rushing toward me, I knew the force of his might had been immense enough to make my body fly to the other side of the battlefield, where I had landed across the posted markings of the battlefield's edge. Somewhere, off in the stands, Cerin was screaming.
The guards at the edges knew I was past the boundaries, but I had been thrown there. Then, I realized they watched me as if I were dead. My eyes fell to my stomach, where I saw Malgor's punch had caved in my gut. The lowest two ribs on my left side were completely broken, the sharp ends caved into my intestines, which shone back at me in a mess of blood and slick internal skin. In my mind, I was freaking out, knowing this wound would kill me if I did not get it fixed.
“I cannot heal it,” I rambled to myself, panicking. I did not have enough time. I needed to set the bone before healing it, and I could not set the bone without letting my organs slip out in a rush of blood I could not afford to lose. I knew that it took much longer to bleed out if I was under the energy of a leeching high, which I was. It was the only reason I hadn't noticed pain from the hit that should have caused enough to render me insane.
I had to make a decision. I could either buy myself time by attempting to heal and keep my distance from Malgor, who was nearing, or I would need to hope I could finish him off in time to be rushed into surgery. Keeping my space from the god meant insufficient leeching, since the distance would be too great. If I healed myself fully, which I knew I couldn't accurately on the open battlefield given the severity of my wound, Malgor would also have the time to fully regenerate. We would be at square one. Given that the energy within my body was immense from leeching, I knew that if there was ever a time to test the limits of how long this high could keep my body alive on utilizing energy over blood, it was now.
I felt the vibration of Malgor's footsteps on the sands, and the guards at the edge of the battlefield made way, allowing him the space with which to kill me. The god ran along a path of my own blood which had splattered over the sands as I was previously thrown through the air. I could still feel the energy of the god sparking through my veins, making them feel like hyper serpents beneath my skin. Malgor had started to regenerate again, in the time it took for him to reach me. The open wounds from the skeleton's swords were slowly closing from their edges.
I heard Malgor's thick breaths, deeper and raspier than usual. I knew I was running him down. I heard the crowds roar with the anticipation of a kill. I heard Nyx crying, for the first time in my life, my ears picking up on that as being special.
I did not feel my severe, open wound, so I had to remind myself to guard it as I stood, favoring my left side. Malgor did not seem surprised to see me stand to face him. I was, after all, a god like him. He might have thought my strength came from my blood alone. Personally, I wasn't sure what had a bigger hand in keeping me alive at this point, whether it was my blood or the energy high. It didn't really matter, though. I didn't plan on dying here today.
I recited my next spell in my head, because I didn't want to move or speak more than I had to. Though my left arm was protectively before my wound, trying to keep my insides from coming out, energy swirled above my right hand. It was earth magic, but the energy was clear. Like earlier, I wasn't creating the earth; I was looking to transform it.
I directed the spell toward the sands just before Malgor's feet, and the sand sunk deeper into the earth like a crater at his boots, causing the god to lose his footing, and crash to the ground within the cup of earth.
Enflic le plague, I thought, and death energy the color of rotten sludge swirled above my right palm as I watched Malgor hurry to stand. I thrust my only free arm outward, inflicting disease and rot on the fallen god. It was the first time I had ever used the plague on a person, so I wasn't sure what to fully expect. But I knew I needed something to seep his energy from him as I fled to a different part of the battlefield, and this was one of the only things in my repertoire which could do that.
I didn't stay to watch the plague spread through the god's body. My eyes were on the patch of solid sandstone on the other side of the battlefield from my spell at the beginning of the fight, the stone thick within the embrace of the sand it was created from. As I hurried away from my foe, I noticed my body resisting me, and I covered ground as a limping, shaking mess. Though I still felt no pain from the leeching high, my body was in a state of shock from its injury, and fought my movements with a need for rest and healing.
I reached the sandstone patch, and tried to pay no mind to the sounds as Malgor followed me again. He was screaming in rage and frustration. He thought he'd had me one hit away from death, just minutes before. I had to imagine he was tired of covering ground on the battlefield. He was used to being able to melee, one on one. Perhaps he found my use of magic a weakness, since I was able to deal damage on him from a distance. I found it a strength.
“Summun te golum,” I whispered, my voice raspy and weak, despite the strength I felt. For the first time in my life, the energy that began to build above my palm was a combination spell of two elements. I was used to being able to combine spells to create differed effects, but thanks to Cerin and the necromancy spell book from Comercio, I now knew more powerful spells which combined two elements within one. They were rare spells, for it took a dual caster to wield them, and they had to know both elements used. In this case, one of the elements was death, so my upcoming spell was as rare as they came.
If the audience had come for a show, they were about to get one.
I thrust the energy toward the patch of sandstone, and while waiting for it to work my eyes darted to Malgor as he still came toward me. He was a frightening sight. The plague was slowly decomposing his body, fighting with his powers of regeneration. His tanned flesh boiled and popped, pus and acids from his own skin leaking out of open sores in rushe
s of clearish, bloody goo. His pace toward me had slowed, his body slowly weakening and fighting with his actions, much like my own.
Who knows? Maybe we will kill each other, I mused to myself, just as the earth began to tremble.
I backed away from the sandstone as it began to shake, intimidated by my own spell. My eyes stuck to the sandstone as it began to crack off of itself and into thick chunks, before building upward, boulder upon boulder, the death energy half of the spell animating the stone with fields of black magic. There was an inhuman groan that vibrated outward from the stones, as if I'd awakened a monster.
Perhaps I had. It is what I needed.
Within the minute that I had given the earth its energy, it had built a creature out of its own element. The golem stood twelve feet tall, and cast a shadow so large it even dwarfed Malgor. It was not alive, because I could not create life. Much like I could reanimate the dead, I had just used death and earth energy together to animate the earth.
I had done well in thinking ahead to transform the sands into stone earlier. For now, as the large monster clashed with the still decomposing Malgor, their strength was matched. Had I created a golem out of sand, it would have been decimated.
Malgor tried to dodge the golem to get to me, for he knew that even if he defeated it, he would have wasted his energy on a temporary foe. My monster protected me, following the god's movements and acting as a shield between us. It seemed the golem acted much the same as the dead, fighting until it could not while protecting its master.
I felt a new rush of blood leak over my left hand, which still held my ribs against my guts, flaps of my own flesh broken around my fingers. I needed Malgor dead, now. I needed him dead minutes ago. I needed a surgeon. And now that the golem was awakened, the energy I had used for the spell was out of my system, and I could feel the beginning of throbbing pain from my gut, where the ends of my ribs were stuck into the flesh of my organs like knives. I held my breath, because I felt I would vomit.
I thrust my right hand out, using leech again, hoping I could get some of Malgor's energy from through the golem as the two danced with death, throwing punches at one another that shattered bones of the god and crumbled the sandstone of the monster. I felt some energy begin to be siphoned, though the spell was muted as it attempted to connect through the death energy holding the golem together.
I could not get enough energy to sustain me, and I needed the god dead to save myself. I built fire energy above my right palm, and willed the golem to the side, hoping the direction would work on it as it did with the dead. The golem sidestepped, and I threw fire at the other god. Malgor's screams were of agony as he caught fire, the scorching heat ripping his already weak, diseased flesh from his body and causing it to fall heavily to the sands below.
Malgor was dying. Slowly, but he was. I was throwing everything I had at him at risk of my own life, for the more energy I used, the closer I was to dropping from the pain of my wound alone. I threw death energy toward one of my earlier fallen skeletons. Normally, I would use the area of effect spell to raise them all, but I only needed one.
The skeleton rose in the sand from the middle of the battlefield as the continued sounds of stone against flesh rang out behind me. Though the skeleton began to ran toward Malgor with the desire to fight, I willed it to grab the sword at its feet, and it did. It rattled over to me, giving me the sword as I willed it to, the creaks of its rib cage meeting my ears from the breaths it didn't even need.
I held the curved sword in my hand, and watched as Malgor finally fell, his skull shattered from a hit of the golem. Still, he lived. The god was so strong that he had endured enough leeching to kill one hundred mortals, a lightning strike, many bone crushing blows from the golem, and his body was feasted upon by a disease known to wipe out whole towns. Now, his skull was shattered, but the fucker still breathed.
“Move,” I breathed, to the golem. The monstrosity shuffled to the side, no longer attacking, because I didn't want it to.
Malgor stared up at me from only one remaining eye, breaths wheezing through his lips as his body still attempted to regenerate. I knew that if I gave him any time, he would eventually become whole again. His power was immense. I could not give him the time.
“Curse you,” he wheezed, the voice still hollow and demonic. On the side of his skull that was shattered, his left eye hung out of its broken socket by a thread of muscle, staring toward the desert sands. Though much of the fire had been squelched out by his fall, I still smelled burning flesh.
I did not reply to the god, because I needed to save my energy. I lifted up the curved sword, bringing it with all my strength down onto the soft flesh of the god's throat. I wasn't strong enough to decapitate him fully with one swing, so with a scream of rage and effort, I brought it down again. And again, and again.
The god's head finally fell as the spine cracked in half with repeated trauma, rolling onto the desert sands in a mess of pus and gore. I stared at it, breathing so hard that the movement threatened to topple me over. My ears rang, and the pain of my wound reverberated through my body, making me wish for death.
I dispelled the golem and the skeleton with a wave of my right hand, hearing the boulders of sandstone hit the sands below with heavy thumps. I leaned down, grabbing Malgor's heavy head by a handful of bloody hair. I turned toward the crowds, which were roaring and chanting my name. I held Malgor's head up to them, letting the image stick in their minds for a few seconds, before throwing it away from me, letting it tumble heavily over the rolling sands toward the audience.
“We have a winner!”
I fell to the sands, preparing to die. In my hand, I held one of my ribs, which had loosened during my rage in decapitating the god. Only one rib still held my intestines from falling out. I tried not to think of it. If I was going to die, I just wanted it to be quick.
I kept my eyes on the beautiful, open blue skies of Nahara, even as a welcoming blackness began to fade inward from the edges of my vision. The announcer's next words echoed in my mind as I gave into it.
“The winner is Kai Sera, the God Killer!”
Sixteen
Perhaps I really had believed I was dead, because when I awoke to the golden walls of an unfamiliar room, I felt surprised more than anything. I lifted my head in confusion, before I felt a sharp pain from my left side. I let my head fall back down to the plushness of a pillow.
“She's awake!” Nyx's voice sounded ecstatic, coming from somewhere by my feet. I turned my head, finding Cerin waking slowly beside me from my best friend's voice, lifting his tired head from where he'd been sleeping uncomfortably in a chair.
“Kai?” The necromancer's eyes flashed with relief. “Oh, thank the gods.” He leaned forward, resting his head at my shoulder, careful not to move me.
“Yes...” I wheezed, the effort to speak still painful. “Thank them. Not me. I had nothing to do with it.”
I heard Theron's dry chuckle, and saw the side of his face from where he stood just out of my full vision. “I thought you were a god, Kai. Perhaps he is thanking you.”
I smiled, though it was restrained with pain. I felt like my stomach had a sack of rocks in it, for it was heavy and swollen. “Where am I?”
“You are at the royal surgeon's,” Nyx replied, her dark face coming into view above me. “They set your ribs correctly, and gave you a blood transfusion. Cerin's healing has expedited the process, but...” Nyx shrugged. “You have been asleep for nearly three days, Kai, worrying us all to death.”
Cerin's warm hand was slowly rubbing my forearm, as he still leaned his face against my shoulder. The poor man was exhausted. I could tell that he had continued to give me as much energy as he could over the days I had been here, depriving himself.
“Where is Jakan?” I asked, my voice weak. “And Anto?”
“They were here early this morning to see you,” Nyx said. “They've been going back and forth between waiting for you to get up, and fucking like rabbits back at the Oasis.
”
I chuckled softly, though the pain in my gut cut it short. “So he is free,” I murmured, closing my eyes in relief.
“Anto is free,” Nyx confirmed. “Thanks to you.”
“King Adar has been sending his messengers here to check on your progress,” Theron informed me. “You have evidently impressed him. Your plan is working, Kai.”
I sucked in a shallow inhale. “At least something is,” I mused.
Though I was alive, I was still immensely weak from my days of healing with little energy intake, and my friends summoned a hospital worker to bring me food. Apparently, King Adar had admitted me into this surgeon's office at no charge. I took it as a good sign; I knew his armies often healed here, and letting me do the same appeared to mean he considered me an ally.
Jakan and Anto came to visit me a few hours after I was awake. The two men moved through the open door toward me, their faces lighting up when they saw I was conscious.
“Kai!” Jakan hurried to my side, grinning down at me with a smile of youthfulness, his bronze face lively with happiness. His reunion with his lover had clearly taken an extreme load off his shoulders. The Vhiri thought to hug me, before looking toward my stomach and thinking twice. He settled for rubbing my shoulder. “You're awake,” he said, before glancing up to the others. “You should have sent for us.”
Theron shook his head. “I don't wish to make anyone go through that mess,” the ranger replied.
“What mess?” I asked.
Though I could barely see him from my vision, I heard Anto ask, “You have not told her?”
“Not yet,” Theron replied. “She's been awake for all but a few hours. She needs to heal.”
“I can hear you guys talking about me, you know,” I said, though it came out as little more than a whimper.