Bez mumbled something bitter in response but sent a short stream of energy floating over to soak into the other arbiter.
Above us, the sky danced with new colors. None were as powerful as the ones Dorian and I had made, more like light mists. A slightly thicker red cloud hung over Bez.
It was a complex and convoluted obstacle course.
"Those poor proxies," Dorian muttered with a shake of his head. "You'd think a species of ultra-powerful beings would use their vast quantities of energy for good once in a while."
I nodded, agreeing completely. This reminded me of the opulence of the Immortal rulers. They used the lower castes to their complete advantage, essentially treating them like indentured servants with zero rights. The only difference was that the arbiters had created the proxies for this express purpose.
The five remaining proxies continued their valiant efforts. More obstacles came. Icy tornadoes, a bouncing trampoline that required excellent aim to reach the next section of the track, a floating golden circle. On the circle, a squat black goblin sat with his chubby fists in the air. As soon as the cat-like proxy landed on the orb, the goblin rushed forward. It was another proxy, but clearly one meant to be an obstacle. The two proxies battled one another, blocking the path of the others. The cat proxy let out a mewl of pain as it was sent careening over the side into the liquid below. There were four proxies left in the game. I turned away for a moment, carefully studying the faces of the arbiters.
It was fairly easy to find the four corresponding arbiters in the crowd. I could see on their faces how invested they were. They were all dressed in blue robes, but each had an intricate hairstyle that differentiated him or her from the others. I counted one female and three males among them. One bit the end of his finger as he muttered a series of incomprehensible phrases. Mantras for good luck?
My eyes slid past the four players who'd sent their proxies into battle and landed on an interesting sight. A crowd of mostly physical-form arbiters jostled to get closer to a large pink orb. The rose light floated above their heads. Hands reached out. Voices shouted at the pink orb.
"Debt Keeper, put my bet on Fiz. Fifty energy units."
I glanced back at the poor proxies and suddenly felt very protective of Jia. Although he’d originally been assigned to do little more than spy on us, and his mannerisms were taking some time to get used to, the fact that he had helped me haul Dorian back from the edge of a literal black hole had endeared him to me. The arbiters were gambling energy, betting on which proxy they considered most likely to be successful. It's a crowd, at least. We can try to connect to more of the arbiters.
I marched up to the closest arbiter, a bald male who wore a large golden necklace.
"Arbiter, we’ve come to seek your assistance. There's something terrible happening to all three planes."
Our impassioned spiel had improved, and we'd found that urgently launching into the details usually got more attention than any other method. The arbiter glanced at me, but his body was still facing the perilous obstacle course.
"Shush. I'm winning right now." He turned away. After experiencing so much rudeness over the last few hours, it barely even stung.
Dorian jumped to another, a periwinkle orb. "Please, we need your—"
"Go away," the orb snapped angrily. "I've already lost a hundred units. You're ruining my focus. Don't be such a pest at the peak of the Games."
Dorian and I stepped back from the crowd, silently fuming. This was getting us nowhere.
"They're really just called ‘the Games,’ huh?" I wondered aloud. Jia hadn't just been vague with his phrasing.
Dorian shook his head, exasperated. "This is ridiculous."
We retreated a short distance, Jia following along with us. Did it bother him to see this? No emotions, but still… The Games clearly got the arbiters worked up. It was the first time I'd seen them passionate about anything since the discussion of Gate Maker's punishment. As I considered this fact, Dorian caught my eye and jerked his head toward the end of the track before changing trajectory to move in that direction. I followed; I knew that calculating look when I saw it in his glacial eyes. What was he planning?
The crowd had gathered at the finish line, and they paid us little mind as we skirted around them. The track ended in a long downward slope, narrowing to a small path that veered into a fiery hoop and a series of massive floating boulders that formed an uneven, challenging route down to the ground before finishing a short distance in front of the main crowd.
As we reached a gap in the gathered arbiters, I leaned into Dorian, catching him by the elbow.
"I know what you're thinking," I told him. “You want to disrupt the show, don’t you?”
He bit back a bitter smirk and gestured toward the very end of the track. “It’s the only thing the arbiters pay any attention to. Shall we try our hand and give these poor proxies a break?”
I recalled my feeling of wanting to scream until I had their attention. Maybe my idea hadn’t been such a bad one after all. If we had to do it this way, then we would.
I grabbed his hand and focused hard on the end of the track, as Jia had taught us to envision things in the Higher Plane. We took two steps, and then suddenly we arrived at the end of the course farthest from the flaming spike vaulting station and just below the final floating boulder. The proxies still had a way to go before they reached the series of rocks, but they were coming up fast.
"Get on my back," Dorian said and stooped down.
I climbed on without question, and he immediately launched himself up the rocks. I clung to his shoulders as we flew through the air. His hand just caught the side of the first one, which was almost too high even for his impressive jump to reach, and he hauled us up onto the boulder.
“I would strongly advise you not to continue what you are doing,” Jia said, but he was drowned out by the collective gasp that traveled through the crowd as they noticed us.
I pushed my focus away from them. Dorian jumped more easily after clearing the first rock. After a few more leaps—I estimated the spectators to be roughly a football field away from us now—Dorian pulled us up onto the rock directly underneath the fiery hoop. We would wait there for the first of the remaining three proxies to reach us—the poor slug thing had fallen into the liquid below at some point.
The valiant second-in-place was the spidery creature, scuttling toward us on all eight legs. He overtook the monkey. The crowd jostled, some booing while others cheered.
"I know you don't want to harm them," Dorian muttered, "but we've got to get the arbiters’ attention somehow."
I nodded and slipped into a fighting stance. If this is what it takes to get them to listen, then I’m willing to do it. Jia seemed completely robotic, so I needed to bury my guilt that these proxies had to participate in a game like this. If they could fight flames, they could fight me. I knew what I had to do. The spider proxy launched itself at the boulder. As soon as it landed, I used all my strength to deliver a powerful kick to its side. It flew off the rock with a terrible clicking yelp.
Oh my God, it's like kicking a dog! I felt awful, guilt writhing in my stomach.
The crowd went ballistic, screaming with outrage. The spider proxy had flipped in the air and now clung to the side of the rock. It scurried back up and hunkered down more solidly, watching me with dark, beady eyes. When I approached, it darted underneath the rock before I could catch it, coming up the other side to leap to the next rock and going on to finish the obstacle course. But there were no cheers of victory, only a sea of uproar beneath us that reverberated in my ears.
"Get those stupid vampires out of here," someone screeched, his shrill voice rising above the rest.
“Not a vampire,” I yelled as loud as I could, squaring up as the two remaining proxies hurried toward us.
The monkey-like one launched itself at me, and we grappled. She was surprisingly strong for her small form. Dorian dealt with the other, the blue clay golem studded with precious g
ems. The proxies tried to shove us off the rocks and into the silvery liquid below, but I had zero desire to find out what that fluid was. I could tell it wasn't water—more like liquid metal.
My proxy swiped at my eyes, but I managed to spin and used that force to pitch the creature to the rock above us. She paused, but instead of heading back down to exact revenge, she merely finished the course from there. When I looked at Dorian, I saw that he'd done something similar. The two proxies finished without a problem as we peered down to the end of the course, where the arbiters were all flailing their overly long arms and screaming in fury. It was pandemonium.
A giddy feeling of rebellion filled me. Maybe now you'll listen, jerks. If not, we’d at least returned some of the frustration we’d experienced since arriving here. A mob of irate arbiters rallied below. Those with bodies lifted their hands to shake them angrily at us. Many of them cast shocked glances at the Debt Keeper, perhaps wondering if their bets were now void. Orbs of light bobbed up and down, zipping around frantically.
But we had the full attention of the crowd, and that had been our goal.
"Hello," I called down triumphantly. Dorian smirked beside me. “We’ve got something very important that we’d like to say to you.”
Chapter Ten
The arbiters jostled each other, fighting to shout the loudest about our actions.
"Somebody get them down from there," a loud voice complained. “They’ve violated the sanctity of the Games and require punishment.”
I glared at the angry crowd. Okay, sure, we'd interrupted their Games, but if they would shut up long enough to listen to us, they’d realize that we were trying to save the actual universe. I exchanged a look of frustration with Dorian. We’d managed to get their attention, but it looked like getting them to actually hear what we had to say was going to be slightly more difficult.
In the bustle of the crowd closer to the front, I spotted the familiar face and figure of Un. His two elaborate white braids and the dramatic gold edges of his eyes stood out as clear as day. I watched as the spidery proxy scuttled over to him energetically and happily curled around the arbiter's feet, it’s spiny mandibles clicking rapidly in a horrifying imitation of a purr.
"Enough," Un called over his peers. He spoke with such a withering edge to his voice that it succeeded in cutting through the clamor. The crowd quieted—not immediately but quickly enough to convince me that Un was someone to be reckoned with. "It is clear that my proxy is the winner of this course of the Games." He preened at this.
An unbelievably tall, onyx-skinned arbiter with various types of tree branches growing out of her body—she seemed to be the creator of the monkey-like proxy—took offense to this. She angrily cried out, "You can’t claim the prize! There was interference not included by the designers. The end result is compromised, as the race wasn't fair."
Un shot her a disparaging look. "It was a new and unexpected obstacle, but they all faced it, so it was fair. After all, each proxy managed to best these little vampires in the end after mine won and—"
“Not a vampire!” I called through my cupped hands. “Really not that difficult to tell the difference.”
Unsurprisingly, Un ignored me. “It was merely an unplanned surprise." He let his proxy scramble up his body to perch on his shoulder and patted the odd creature, not with the love of an owner for a pet, but more like an inventor pleased with his creation. I shuddered, unsettled by Un's presence and general haughty attitude. Un tossed his braids to rest behind his shoulders, and the edge of his lips quirked into a victorious smile. "Clearly, my proxy is the winner, and the pot for the Games goes to me."
A new chorus of angry shouts arose from the crowd.
"That's not in the rules."
"Un just wants to win this pot. It’s a large one, so he’s being greedy."
"Debt Keeper," an arbiter I’d heard referred to earlier as Fiz yelled to the pink light. "What do you think? Surely, this is unfair! The race was tampered with."
I rolled my eyes at the outrage of the crowd below and shot Dorian a quick smirk as he let out a muffled groan that was somewhere between annoyed and amused. I understood his feelings completely. We’d caused a ruckus all right, but we’d already lost the crowd’s attention. They’d returned to ignoring us and talking among themselves. Knowing we needed to get things back on track, we jumped one after the other from boulder to boulder away from the fiery ring, heading down toward the crowd. We stayed on the last one, keeping our distance from the enraged crowd as every arbiter turned their attention to the pink orb floating above everyone's heads. I had almost forgotten about the Debt Keeper, the Higher Plane's own bookie. My shoulders sank with disappointment. Frustration snapped inside me like a rubber band. Could we shout over this pink orb? Or should we wait? Dorian sent me a cautious look. We could wait a few seconds to see what the orb had to say.
This arbiter hadn't spoken at all yet, merely soaking in the jostling requests and demands of all the nearby arbiters. It struck me that this Debt Keeper was much like our Gate Maker—a bit unusual, serving a slightly different purpose than the rest of the arbiters.
Debt Keeper spoke in a high, feminine voice free of any emotion. "There shall be a rematch to ensure complete fairness. Otherwise, I shall not enforce any of the wagers made for the Games."
Upon hearing this, some of the arbiters protested again. Un’s face twisted in displeasure, and he gave us a filthy look.
"Those irritating mortals ruined the Games," one orb lamented. An arbiter next to him nodded her bald head in furious agreement. Nobody was the winner right now, except maybe Dorian and me. It would depend on whether our gamble paid off.
Un narrowed his eyes in annoyance, but he kept his proud composure. Since his proxy had won once, he likely assumed the spider could win again. His flat white eyes focused on us, and they were filled with loathing. A zap of anger and fear ran through me, triggered by the various ways that his features, though they’d been crafted to look human, weren’t quite right. His brow ridge sat far too high, stretching his unnerving eyes even more, while the mouth was slightly too wide, reaching too far back along the cheeks. The slight snarl he gave us showed off a mouth filled with too many shark-like teeth.
Un came for us. He leapt up—the effortless, fluid motion more akin to floating—and landed directly in front of us on the boulder. His eyes narrowed, the white brimming with annoyance. I stiffened as I noted that the edge of my heel was just skirting the boulder's end. It was a small space for three bodies, especially when one was as large as the arbiter’s. Un turned his fury on Dorian first.
"You've cost me my game," Un said icily. "I don’t know what you were hoping to achieve with this interference, but all you have done is anger me and many of my people, and prove that you share Ruk’s preference for treachery and underhanded meddling. Not only that, but you've caused me to lose a large amount of energy my proxy was going to win for me. That means the both of you are now in my debt."
Panic clutched at my throat, and I saw Dorian’s shoulders tense. Had we just saddled ourselves with a debt of our own?
“You are so very melodramatic, Un,” came a warm and slow voice from down below. “They didn’t steal directly from you. The energy hadn’t been allocated yet.”
I peered past Un to see that an arbiter in physical form was the one speaking. She was of average height, but her skin was a mottled green and brown that reminded me of a frog—this comparison was confirmed when I realized her facial features appeared deliberately amphibian.
“Keep your silence, Pik,” Un snapped. “These creatures are in my debt because their meddling cost me this game.”
Pik merely shrugged and gave us a quick wink, a curiously human action that surprised me.
"Un, you are a selfish cretin," someone else added, jostling against another body below. "We all had our bets nullified for this game."
"Yes," someone hissed in agreement. "We're going to face off again in the future. Prepare yourself and stop tr
ying to swindle energy you are not owed.”
Un curled his lips in distaste at the crowd's pushback. "We shouldn't even have to deal with these lower beings." He aimed the comment both at us and the crowd, where some voices roared in agreement.
"Don't let Un convince you. He doesn't speak for all of us," Fiz said.
My throat tightened with frustration as the crowd argued among themselves.
Dorian let out a growl. “So we’re not important enough to be acknowledged, even when we have crucial information for you, but we are still able to be in your debt? You can't think of us as irrelevant, inferior beings and consider us capable, even responsible, enough to pay energy to you. I would advise you to make a choice between the two, because your position currently only highlights your hypocrisy. Either you admit that we're worthy of being dealt with and acknowledge our presence in this plane along with our very urgent concerns about the lower planes, or you admit that you can’t claim debts against us or blame us for our actions."
My indignation rose alongside Dorian's impassioned speech. "We don't want to fight you,” I said. “All we want is to get out of your way and go back to fix the tear, which we’ve recently discovered threatens to destroy all of us, including you. Our allies and friends we left down in the lower planes are fighting a war to save the Mortal Plane without us."
Dorian pressed on. "It's an issue that you should be dealing with. Overseeing the planes is your job, isn't it?"
Exactly. Un had some nerve to boss us around this way when he and his fellow arbiters got us into this mess in the first place. They needed to give Gate Maker what he needed so that we could get out of the Higher Plane.
"Give Ruk enough energy to get us to the Immortal Plane," I said. It felt strange to say Gate Maker's “true” name. "He'll be able to fix the tear and fulfill the terms of the pact that we’ve already made with him. Then you can deal with him however you need to, and we'll be out of your way for good. You can spend the rest of infinity with your proxies, your Games, and your judgments." The hot frustration in my chest pushed the subtly scathing remark through my filter at the end, but I couldn’t bring myself to care. Why should I, when Un and the arbiters had been nothing but rude to us?
Darklight 6: Darkbirth Page 13