by Jeff Sabean
Before Di’eslo could respond, King Rattanda stood, openly carrying his sword at his side here as he had in the arena, and walked out the door through which the companions had entered, with Master Kaine following closely behind him. When the door slid shut, all eyes turned to Aldith, who was digging into the feast without a care in the world, even though she sat across the table from seven dangerous men who wanted to kill her.
“You. Witch. Explain yourself before I cut your tongue from your head,” Di’eslo demanded, his rage barely contained.
“Oh, you will see that I am in absolutely no danger of that happening,” Aldith began, smiling at the shadow elf. “You are being allowed to speak to me because the king wishes it, but make no mistake, if you move to harm me, he will have you back in your cages before you can get across the table.”
“Captain Aldith, or should I just call you Leigh?” asked Heishi, raising his eyebrows at the question.
“As long as you don’t call me, what was it? Sweet butt? I don’t care what you call me, Master Sergeant. But if you are trying to guess whether or not I am actually a Captain in your Army, the answer is no, I am not. That was just the cover I needed in order to get close enough to your team to see the portal in action.”
“About that,” Heishi continued, his eyes blazing as he watched her every movement, “You mentioned that you were going to send us through the portal but that you hadn’t planned on going through. How exactly did THAT work?”
“The plan was that I was supposed to be on the ground when the portal opened. I was attempting to get there first, and would have been able to look up to see you go through. It was the first one I attempted to open horizontally, about two hundred feet from the ground, and I was hoping to see it in action. Unfortunately, I did not know it would send us floating back UP into the air before it opened, and then I was trapped in it the same as you.”
“If something from the other plane of existence replaces anyone going through, why would you want to be so close to the portal?”
“The portal was horizontal,” she said slowly, as one would to a child. “As I’m sure you can understand, it is, ahh, difficult, to find volunteers to willingly walk through a portal to another plane of existence. The idea was that with a horizontal portal I could get...volunteers...who couldn’t back out at the last moment. The added benefit is that whatever came through the portal to replace you, and coincidentally me as well, would be dropped from two hundred feet in the air and splattered to the pavement below, thus removing any danger on our end. As I’m sure you have guessed by now, there have been some rather dangerous beasts that have come back through to our end, and not all of them have been easy to contain.
“From a scientific standpoint, I was supposed to be recording it on video to document everything and to hopefully see the other plane as the portal opened.” She paused, looking around, then flashed a brilliant smile at the group, “I suppose I saw the other side of the portal.”
“Why not just keep sending the beasts from other planes through the portals to be replaced by something new?”
Aldith stared at him like he had two heads before answering sarcastically, “Did you just miss the part where I said a lot of the beasts have been rather dangerous? You can’t exactly send a monster back through after it’s been killed now, can you?”
“Why choose us as your guinea pigs?”
“Because you are the best at what you do. I am not a monster, contrary to what you may believe. I was hoping that by sending highly trained Soldiers through the portal that you would survive wherever you landed. I was right.”
Heishi thought about that for a few minutes, the whole table silent and waiting to follow his lead.
“I suppose that is fair. However, you forgot one little detail that proves you are, in fact, a monster.”
“And what is that, Master Sergeant?” she asked, a confused look on her face.
“The nuclear bomb. You pulled my team out in the middle of a counter-terrorism operation and guaranteed that the bomb would go off. For that matter, you are LUCKY that you accidently came with us, or you would have been incinerated along with the tourists.”
A positively smug expression plastered itself on her face as she looked back at Heishi.
“Is THAT what you are so worked up about? Do you think I would be stupid enough to jump into a nuclear disaster and have my only hope of survival whisked away before stopping the threat?” She paused, giggling to herself as she looked at each of the members of Ronin team in turn. “There never was a nuclear threat. I made that up to get you to jump where I wanted you. I set it in a theme park to limit the equipment you would have on you. I picked your team to be the ones to respond. I did it all, and you fell for it.
“There never was a bomb, it was simply my equipment set up at the peak of that roller coaster mountain that I used to open the portal that sucked us through to this hell hole. The only bad thing that happened on earth was some orcs or giant rats got dumped into the middle of the theme park from two hundred feet in the air, splattering all over some little kid as they waited in line for the roller coaster.”
With that, she broke into a fit of laughter as she continued looking back and forth between the faces of the Special Operations team.
“And you find it funny to drop monsters on children?”
“’Everything is funny if you can laugh at it.’ Lewis Carroll said that, and I agree,” she responded, laughing harder at the incredulous look on his face.
“And we all came through at different times due to our elevation when we hit the portal,” Heishi reasoned, working through the details out loud as she continued to laugh. “I know how long we have all been here, and you were below us when the portal opened, so the last question I have is how long you have been here?”
“A few years, who keeps track?” she replied, continuing to laugh as tears rolled down her face.
“And my brother?” Di’eslo interjected, causing all at the table to stop and stare at him, including Aldith. “What is your purpose in kidnapping him and performing experiments on him, witch?”
Her laughter had ceased immediately when he spoke, the icy tone cutting through her humor.
“Your brother can see things before they happen,” she began slowly, keeping an eye on the elf. If she truly believed she was safe from his wrath, her face betrayed any doubt she held. “I have not been cruel in my experimentation, but yes, I have had to hold him against his will while I attempt to discover how he sees things. I have drawn blood, done tests on it, and there have been interrogations, but none of it has been needlessly painful. If I can harness his power, I will be able to see what plane of existence my portals will open to ahead of time, thus guaranteeing myself a trip home. You see? It has nothing to do with you, your brother, or any of Ronin Team...I just want to be able to open portals to specific planes at will. Is that so wrong?”
Di’eslo continued to stare at the woman, his eyes boring holes in her head as he attempted to calm himself before answering. Suddenly, the answer became clear to him, and an evil smile spread across his face.
“I assume King Rattanda is listening to everything said in this room,” he began without taking his eyes from her. “I know the secret this woman seeks, and assume that is why you keep her here. In exchange for my brother’s freedom, I will tell you what you wish to know.”
The room was deathly quiet, no one even daring to take a bite as they waited for a response. Silently, the door slid open, revealing Master Kaine standing on the other side.
“My master says you will tell him the secret now,” the lion-man stated in no uncertain terms.
“I will not. An agreement must be reached first. I will tell the king the secret to how my brother can see events before they happen in exchange for his freedom.”
“You will return to your cage, and if you live through tomorrow you will be given the choice to answer my lord’s demands, or you will continue fighting in the arena until you are dead or you do as you
are commanded.”
With that, the door slid shut again, and all at once the floor and chairs disappeared beneath each of the companions, depositing them back in their cages.
“I didn’t even get to eat!” shouted Hankish before the cages closed and the team were each trapped in darkness once more.
Chapter 15 – Another Day, Another Fight
After a restless night of very little sleep, the team found themselves on the edge of the arena once more in their cages. The dome above was in place, and there was no noise from the crowd, which Di’eslo assumed meant the crowd could not hear them either.
The only difference from the day prior was that Leigh Aldith, the woman who had brought his friends through the portal to his world and who held his brother captive, was sitting beside the king in the chair formerly used by the vampire Soran. When she saw his eyes lock onto her, she blew the shadow elf a kiss and winked before giggling and turning her head away.
The king stalked across the arena to stand in front of the elf’s cage.
“You will tell me the secret to how Fion sees into the future,” the king stated, leaving no room for debate.
“As I told your minion, I will give you the information you request in exchange for his freedom,” replied Di’eslo, his gaze never wavering.
“It is not a request. You will watch your friends die, and then you will tell me, or you will die as well. Make your peace with whatever god you serve, as today will be your last if you do not give me the answer.”
“Do your worst, you will get nothing until Fion is returned to me. Unharmed.”
With that, the king unexpectedly thrust his sword between the bars of the cage, stabbing Di’eslo in the stomach between where his breastplate stopped and his greaves began. The blade ripped through his gut and stuck out his back before the king extracted it and turned back to his seat.
“I hope you can heal that. It would be a shame to watch you die like a dog instead of like a gladiator,” the king stated as he stomped back to his seat.
Gasping, Di’eslo placed a hand on his stomach, the healing waves of energy rolling over his body as the muscle and bone repaired itself. When he finished and could move again, he looked across the arena to see the three in the box seat watching him and laughing.
As he watched from his cage, the dome above them dissolved, allowing them to see the crowd above them in the arena seats. The sound of the crowd became gradually louder as the dome disappeared, and once it was at full strength, Kaine stepped down from his box and raised his hands for quiet.
“Ladies and gentlemen, by order of our gracious king, you no longer are required to watch the fights through the protective barrier he created to keep the sun from harming Soran. The wretch proved unworthy of service, so we no longer must hide from the sunlight!”
With that, the crowd cheered loudly, with some chanting the names of each of the companions in anticipation of seeing their favorite fighter win again.
“Our guests of yesterday have become our prisoners today,” the lion-man growled, silencing the cheers as he spoke to address the entire arena. “Our gracious king treated them as guests, and they spat in his face. Today, you shall watch them die.”
After a moment of silence as the spectators digested what they had just been told, a cheer rose, drowning out anything Kaine was going to say next. He let it continue for a few minutes, then raised his hands for quiet once again.
“The first to die will be the dwarf. Come out and meet your doom, half-a-man!”
With that, Kaine stepped back into his box seat, and the cage door in front of Abugraic opened for him to step into the arena. As he walked onto the sand, boos echoed from all around him as he slowly turned, waiting to see which direction his opponent would appear from.
A door slid open on the far-right side of the arena, and a manticore bounded out onto the sand. The half lion-half scorpion roared as it came into the sunlight, shaking its mane and stretching out its long scorpion tail, clearly having been cramped in the cage it was released from.
The beast looked around the arena, and its eyes locked on Abugraic, standing in front of his cage and looking very tiny indeed. It took off at a sprint, obviously expecting an easy meal as venomous slobber dripped from its fangs.
Abu calmly watched the beast rushing toward him, as he used the ring Heishi gave him to coat both his daggers in poison for the fight. The blade in his right hand had a greenish tint already, and it would naturally apply a slowing poison to anyone he cut with it, and now with the deadly poison ring he was not concerned with this fight at all. He simply had to not be eaten as the poison worked.
When the manticore was five running paces away from him, Abugraic reached out to the energy in the air around him, used it to wrap around himself, and simply disappeared. The beast took another step and came to a screeching halt, roaring in frustration when it could no longer see its meal.
The invisible rogue stood still for a moment to throw the monster off, then sprinted to the side as it started thrashing around looking for him. The sand kicked up by the manticore covered his footsteps as his camouflage ability kept him hidden from sight. He raced to the side, and as he came up behind the lion head of the beast he leapt forward, returning to view as he landed on its back and stabbed out with his right hand, the dagger sliding into the manticore’s brain at the base of its skull. His attack complete, the rogue nimbly pushed off the beast’s back, performing a back flip and landing safely out of range as its tail whipped around while the monster went through its death throes.
When it stopped moving, Abugraic looked up to King Rattanda, gave an overly formal bow, and walked back into his cage as the crowd screamed in protest.
Stepping onto the sand, Kaine motioned with his hand for slaves to remove the dead manticore from his arena.
“The little one has tricks, that cannot be denied,” the lion-man announced, waiving his hands for the crowd to calm down. “But we will see how the next heretic’s luck holds. The one they call Aki, come and die well for my god.”
The cage opened, and Aki strolled out onto the sand as Kaine turned his back and returned to his seat. He looked around, waiting, but nothing happened. The crowd began chanting in unison for the human’s blood, but still nothing happened. As the spectators whipped themselves into a frenzy, Aki continued to slowly turn as he waited for something to happen, but nothing did.
Finally, as his palms began to sweat a bit and the stress of the unknown began to take its toll on him, a door slid open just underneath the king’s seat, and a cyclops stepped into the arena. It stood at least ten feet tall, its single eye prominent in the center of its face made even more obvious by its lack of hair anywhere on its body. It wore nothing but a loincloth and carried a club with spikes driven through it that was at least as long as Aki was tall. It grinned, showing teeth filed into points, when it saw the small human, and began walking toward him swinging its club.
The crowd was hysterical as it closed on the human, taunting him in a language he did not understand.
Aki slipped his tonfa from their leather holsters on his side and activated the shadows that curled around the weapons and absorbed much of the impact from anything that hit them. He spun them a few times to loosen up as the cyclops got closer and closer, the shadows masking his movements some as they left a trail of shadow in front of him.
When the cyclops was just out of reach, a razor-sharp blade popped out of the end of the tonfa, and with a grin the human threw it at the cyclops like a spear. The monster laughed as the small weapon flew toward its chest, swatting it aside with its club and turning its attention back to the human.
But the throw had simply been to distract the beast as Aki drew the pistol from the holster on his right thigh, and he was now pointing it at the single eye that was staring back at him. The cyclops had no clue what it was, and grinned as it took one more step, then Aki shot him through the eye, stopping him in place. The monster dropped to its back in a heap and Aki casually wa
lked to retrieve his tonfa from the sand before returning to his cage with a smile.
Absolutely furious, the crowd gnashed their teeth and begged their god-king to destroy these enemies.
After a moment of stunned silence, Kaine stood, walking again into the arena and waiving for quiet. He was not as arrogant this time, still trying to figure out how the human had killed his cyclops with such ease. Even he, the king’s own bodyguard, undefeated in battle by all but his king, could not kill a cyclops so quickly.
“Apparently we have been too easy on the heretics,” he called out, faking enthusiasm again for the sake of the crowd. “But we will not make that mistake again. Here, let us watch one of the small ones die! The gnome called Zatus will be the next to be carried from our king’s arena!” he shouted as the slaves dragged the cyclops away.
The cage opened, and Zatus stepped out, looking very tiny in the center of the sand. This time, the king was taking no chances, and two orcs were released to kill the gnome. As they rushed him, Zatus smiled a sad smile as a burst of multi-colored lights shot from the end of his staff, stunning both orcs at once.
As they stood there stupidly, he looked the first in the eyes, and with another flash of colored lights, the orc belonged to him. Before the other could react, the orc under his control decapitated its friend with a single swing of its sword, then stood and stared at Zatus, waiting for another command.
As the crowd watched in horror, the orc turned its blade around and with both hands on the hilt jammed it up underneath its own chin, the tip protruding from the top of its skull before it dropped to the sand.
A stunned silence fell over the arena as the gnome turned and walked back to his cage, just as his friends had done before him.
Kaine looked at his king, who shook his head once and pointed at Di’eslo. The shadow elf needed to die to end this.
The lion-man walked into the middle of the arena, the silence from above still holding as the crowd waited to hear how their king would respond. Kaine never took his eyes from the cages holding the companions, and when he took his place, he pointed at Di’eslo with his obsidian staff.