* * *
Ruk took us to one of his remaining towers for a practice course.
“I’ve retrofitted it for practice,” he explained. He must have used some of the energy he’d recovered from his estate to build it. “This will teach you one of the most common strategies employed in the Games. All you need to do is get to the top. Jia and I will wait for you here.”
I evaluated the tower. Seven stories high, similar to the other towers in the walls, that didn’t look so difficult. But I assumed that appearances were deceiving. Dorian and I exchanged a glance, then strode forward to throw open the door.
I suppressed my annoyance as I looked up into the tower.
The staircase had a mind of its own—sometimes it followed the shape of the square tower, clinging to the wall, but in other places the steps swerved across the central area of the tower wall to meet the other side. Right now, we were on a flat landing in a stairwell of sorts. I peered up and saw several more stories of crisscrossing staircases, about thirteen by my count. Then the stairs disappeared at an angle. Okay, so it was bigger on the inside, but I didn’t see any other difficulties.
“Do we just… climb stairs?” I asked.
Dorian shrugged. “I assume the trap will reveal itself on the way up.”
And so, we started our climb. At first, we were very cautious, testing each step with light pressure, concerned that a hidden trap might spring on us at any moment. The first few flights took us a long time, but nothing happened. No traps, no creatures jumping out to grab us. I frowned, worried that this meant something more sinister awaited us. The place had to be rigged for the lesson to be interesting. We continued to climb, floor after floor.
“I can’t sense any presences of anything hidden…” Dorian murmured. If Ruk was hoping to lull us into lowering our guard, he’d only succeeded in making us more wary.
As we climbed, we tried to keep a tally of the flights of stairs. Dorian spoke the number after the next flight, and I repeated it while my wary eyes watched the walls. Dorian focused on the steps. Sometimes we saw a window. I peeked through once or twice, but they always showed the same uninterrupted landscape of mist. I saw no sign of Ruk or Jia when I tried to look down.
When Dorian announced our twentieth flight of stairs, I paused at the landing and scowled, glaring upward. "How long will it take to get to the top? Are we sure we’re making progress?"
Dorian stared down at the stairs below us and counted flights. Twenty. We settled on forging on, seeing no other option but to continue climbing. After all, it made sense that infinite or stretching time might be part of the challenge, since arbiters evidently had so much of it. We got to thirty, and Dorian let out an annoyed growl. Though the flights below us seemed real enough, we never grew closer to our goal of the top of the tower.
"This is similar to how we were struggling to travel anywhere in this plane in the beginning," I recalled. "I feel like we're trapped in some kind of evil stair-climbing machine that goes on forever. Do we have to imagine our destination, or something?"
Dorian stared up at the flights of stairs still hanging above our head. "Sure, but we’ve never seen the top."
I sucked in a deep breath. "Might as well try." I rubbed my temples and tried to conjure the idea of what the top of the building might look like. An old memory of the battle on the Bureau's Chicago HQ went through my mind. The top of that building held a visceral and specific place in my memory, and it was a location I remembered vividly, for better or worse. "I've got something in mind. Let's just try it." We forged on with a vague sense of hope, and I tried to keep the image of the top of a towering building in my mind.
When we moved again, the flights seemed to pass faster than before, but Dorian's endless count of the flights only seemed to be inching higher and higher with no real progress toward an end point. Finally, on fifty, we stopped again. I let out an aggravated sigh, and Dorian glared out the window set into the wall of this landing. Nothing but gray and white surrounded us. Part of me wished for just a spot of color in this maddeningly blank landscape.
"Do we need to climb the outside?" Dorian asked, peering out the window. He shook his head, confused. “There’s nothing to hold onto out there. No crevices, no tiny outcroppings, nothing. It’s completely smooth. We must have to go up the inside.”
"Then why aren’t we reaching the top, no matter how many stairs we climb?" I muttered, joining him at the window. We’d finally reached a window that looked out over Ruk’s estate, and I saw the tiny forms of Ruk and Jia far below. That was odd. Ruk said that they would wait for us at the top of the tower.
Dorian sighed, annoyed. "Something is off about them. About this whole course. We must be missing something.”
I focused my attention on Ruk and Jia, straining my eyes trying to pick out any details. It was hard to tell at first, since their distant forms were so tiny, but I realized that their proportions were wrong, even more so than usual. Looking closer, I realized that they appeared to be upside down, though the rest of the estate was rightside up.
I scoffed in disbelief. “That can’t be right,” I said. "Is this a trick? He might be casting an illusion to screw with us."
Dorian looked closer with his superior vision and came to the same conclusion. They truly were floating upside down in the ruins of the estate.
"We went down a staircase the first time we entered Ruk’s estate, and ended up at the top of a tower," I mused aloud. I sucked in a sharp breath and turned to Dorian excitedly. "Wait, the laws of physics don’t have any reason to work here. What if we're supposed to go down to reach the top?" I pointed to the dizzying number of flights of stairs below us that disappeared into the unsettling gray light. It was as if treading the stairs had brought them into reality, but above us, they stretched on into hypothetical infinity.
Dorian processed that for a moment, then groaned. "That would be just like him, to design something that operates with reverse logic." He met my gaze with a determined half-smile, some levity breaking through his frustration. "It's worth a try. God, all those flights… what are we on, fifty now?"
It was an annoying thought, but it sounded plausible. Retracing our steps, we turned on the landing and headed back down. At first, my stomach clenched with disappointment as the stairs passed in much the same way as before, but after our second staircase, something shifted. My breath caught in my throat, and my head went dizzy. Suddenly, the world spun around me. I steadied myself against the wall with one hand, clutching for Dorian with the other to make sure we stayed together if we were about to fall. We stared at each other, panting in surprise. I moved my feet. They were on the stairs, and yet I was now upside down. My messy hair fell in a curtain above my head, pointing to what had formerly been the ceiling.
"What the hell?" Dorian's own dark locks turned into a spiked hairstyle. He growled and rolled his eyes, clearly unamused by Ruk’s little trick.
Was this good or bad? Who could even tell at this point? Figuring we were on the right track, we moved forward cautiously. This time, going down the stairs seemed like a much longer journey than before, made worse by my blood pooling until my face felt hot. We increased our pace. Eventually, we returned to where we'd started.
But when Dorian set foot on the final landing, the structure gave a giant creak around us and trembled. We grabbed one another as, like a washing machine, everything was flipped rightside up again, and we crashed in a tangle of limbs on the ground. Not just any ground, but the roof.
Ruk stood over us, Jia at his side.
“I feel like you could have made your point more concisely,” Dorian said.
“Remember,” Ruk said, ignoring him, “if you find yourselves wasting energy, you’re going about it the wrong way.”
* * *
Ruk stared at Jia. "You're beginning to be an eyesore. You were useful for transportation practice, but your face is annoying me." Jia stared back without answering.
“That’s a little harsh,” Dorian said. “
He’s not so bad. There’s no need to be rude.”
"And he can't leave," I said with a shrug. "Even if he tells Xiu that we're training, there's no use in trying to get rid of him. They probably assume we’ll be doing something like this, anyway."
Ruk studied the little proxy. "Hm… Perhaps we can use it as a way to test your emotional energy."
With the winds and bolts of lightning? I eyed Jia nervously. Logically, I knew he was sturdier than his toddler-sized body implied, but he looked so fragile to me.
"Would you be okay with that?" I asked.
"I have no function built inside me that allows me to say no," Jia replied, which wasn't exactly a yes. “I cannot be harmed in a traditional sense, so you should not be concerned.”
"Great." Ruk pointed him to the center of the space. "Fry him with a lightning bolt and toss him around like a ball with your tornadoes."
I grimaced, whispering a quiet apology to Jia and reminding myself that he couldn't actually feel anything. Dorian and I did as Ruk said. Soon poor Jia was getting zapped and tossed from either side of the room. I kept yelling apologies, though Jia appeared to suffer no actual pain.
"This fulfills my purpose," Jia automatically replied each time. "Continue, but I suggest you aim for my legs, as they are my center of gravity." A helpful tidbit, and his emotionless replies soothed my guilt.
Eventually, I sent a gentle gust of wind to let Jia drop gently down to the ground. I stared at Ruk grimly. "Surely that's enough." If it wasn’t, I was going to switch target practice to him.
"It's sufficient,” he said with a sniff. “Let's move on."
* * *
"You've found an accidental unity with the universe, but now I need you to deliberately ask the universe to do something for you," Ruk said.
He stood in front of us as Dorian and I sat on the ground, exhausted in the strangest way—not quite physically, definitely mentally, partially spiritually—and stared up at our relentless teacher.
"Ask the universe to send a message for you. Seek out a specific person and intend for them to get a certain image, a small phrase or a voice. This is how we arbiters usually complete short-form communication. It's not very powerful, and it usually doesn't last more than thirty seconds, but it will help you communicate with each other. Although you two do this well already, knowing this skill can only help you. It will also allow you to contact me if needed."
Even though I was ready to collapse, I drew myself up once more. Dorian squeezed my hand. We dove into the training with everything we had left.
It was hard to say how long we trained. Days? A week? More? It didn’t matter here, but my mind was constantly thinking of our friends back home and how I wanted to be back sooner rather than later. Sometimes our bodies gave out, and Ruk conjured up a makeshift bed for us to sleep on until we woke up and started again. Slowly, we made progress. The first shift passed painfully, but the next was easier.
At one point, several rounds of sleeping and training later, Ruk stiffened and stopped us suddenly in the middle of an exercise. I paused, confused. Had we done something wrong? It was just the message exercise, and it seemed to be working well.
"I've just received a message,” Ruk said. “The Games will begin soon." His lavender eyes shot up to level a serious gaze at Dorian and me. "They have told me that my guests and I are invited to attend."
Dorian and I looked at one another, processing this news. If Ruk was expected to also attend, that presented a slight issue for our plan to be the distraction while he went searching for Aurora.
Regardless of how we were going to work around this, one thing was certain: our training was about to be put to the test.
Chapter Twenty-One
Dorian and I stood beside Ruk. Nervous jitters made me shift on my feet, too antsy to stay still.
We were at the location of the upcoming Games, and there was a buzz of excited activity everywhere I looked. I’d thought we might cause an uptick in the popularity of the Games, but I’d severely underestimated how Dorian’s and my presence would shake things up. The crowd of arbiters was huge, almost as large as the gathering at our trial, and I was sure that any stragglers would show up to watch these Games once word had spread of our presence.
"Unbelievable," Ruk muttered. "They truly are starved for something new."
It was more than half the arbiter population, based on what Jia told us. Ruk was right when he said arbiters took their entertainment seriously. All manner of strange and unreal humanoid figures and orbs chatted excitedly in the crowd.
We hurried through the crowd, pushing our way to the front so we could check out the arena. My mind replayed the advice Ruk had passed on before we left his estate. He’d reminded us that everybody expected us to be at a severe disadvantage in the Games, so we needed to underplay our hand at the beginning to give the false impression that we were much weaker than we were. It was an excellent bluffing strategy. The less likely it appeared that we would win, the more likely that the others would bet against us. Not to mention that with Ruk in attendance, every arbiter would think of Dorian and me as Ruk's pets. We needed to take advantage of this first moment to bet as much as possible. If we did win—and Ruk made it clear that he didn't expect us to, since he was more interested in us staying alive—we could win big and shock the arbiters enough that everyone would be much more cautious next time. So we would play weak, hide our powers, and bet big. We could only use this strategy once, so it had to be done right.
Dorian stood with his head held high. He ignored the chattering arbiters, even though some of them cast us amused or pitying looks. How many had bet on our success today? Probably very few. God, I've never wanted to win something so badly. Especially as I caught sight of a flash of white braids somewhere in the front. The gossipy arbiters parted to let us through, giving Ruk haughty and suspicious looks. The weather around Dorian and me, however, was crystal clear as we kept our emotions completely under control. For the Games, he’d removed his cloak, and a surge of pride struck me as I traced Dorian's strong back with my eyes. He moved with such powerful, decisive movements that I felt a pang of attraction despite the stakes of the situation we were in. I quickly brushed it aside, reclaiming my focus, not wanting it to show in the weather. Talk about embarrassing. Although I do wonder what color it might be… pink? Sensual periwinkle?
Our presence made a statement, that was for sure. It struck me how surreal it was that we— a human and a vampire—were even here, providing entertainment for a race of powerful, deathless beings as a way to strive to get back to our friends. Yet despite their position as higher beings, the arbiters failed to understand that we had a cause far greater than anything they could be bothered to care about. The motivation surged hot inside me as my feet fell, one after the other, behind Dorian and Ruk as we marched up to our newest challenge. We needed to save all three planes of existence from melding together—no pressure—and I'd be damned if a group of pompous "higher" beings was going to stop us. We would act weak, we would play this game, but neither Dorian nor I intended to ham it up that much for their entertainment. I planned to give them a stupid smile now and then… before unleashing our skills like a wave from the depths of the lower planes that these arbiters were so quick to underestimate.
Jia followed close by my side. The poor thing. I still felt a little guilty about using him for training. I knew he was meant to stalk us and didn’t feel pain, but his plain face was still smudged with smoke from our lightning bolts.
At the head of this massive crowd, five arbiters gathered. The reflective ground they stood on suddenly ended in a violently sharp drop into a misty abyss that reminded me uncomfortably of the cliff by the vortex. Un was of course among them, his taut face eyeing us keenly as soon as he spotted our movement in the crowd. Today, he’d spent the energy to pull his immaculate white braids up around his head into an elaborate crown. I got a sudden mental flash of the younger Irrikus wearing his understated crown but pushed it away to avoid the w
eather suddenly turning red with rage.
Most arbiters in the group had humanoid bodies at the moment, but I spotted an especially pretty floating orb of mint green with specks of gold.
"And now our… unexpected addition to the festivities," Un announced, raising his voice so that the closest crowd of arbiters turned with interest. "Here, we have our guest team of lower beings, provided so kindly by Ruk."
With a note of sarcastic mockery that was so typical of the lower planes that I was fairly sure the arbiters wouldn’t pick up on it, Ruk gave a slow clap. An awkward smattering of applause followed from one or two arbiters nearby, and I looked down to see that Jia had also joined in, apparently merely trying to mimic Ruk's movements.
Oops. Maybe we fried his poor brain with those lightning bolts.
Un coughed. "Yes, well, it goes without saying that you know who I am. But for the benefit of the lower beings, allow me to introduce the other four teams. I must inform our guests that each arbiter has won the Games at least once before." He gestured to the mint orb beside him. "Alai and his two proxies."
Alai hummed with energy, bobbing slightly in acknowledgment. If he had hands, I imagined he might point proudly to the pair of proxies standing below him. They were twins in form, a cross between an alligator and a stout dragon, both featuring long snouts filled with sharp teeth. Forked tongues zipped in and out of their mouths, which dripped with purple-tinged saliva. I ignored their beady black eyes—they each had three, and it made me feel uncomfortably watched.
"Metz and his proxy." Un raised a challenging brow. Metz was tall, with two strips of hair running down either side of his head in a faint shade of coral pink that looked nice against his slate-gray skin. “Feeling confident, even after you tried this one proxy trick with the Games three hundred and two courses ago?"
Darklight 6: Darkbirth Page 27