Jia threw off the bolt by skidding to the side. He fired off his own versions of bolts, although they were more like gusts of energy than anything else. The powers were clumsy, but he was still fast. I cried out as one gust of energy struck my uninjured foot. Dorian let out a grunt as Jia smashed him into the side of the corridor. Poor Dorian smacked right up against the invisible misty wall. A devastating crunch radiated out from his injured shoulder, followed by a foul curse from his mouth.
Hot tears blurred my vision as fury filled me. How dare Xiu allow this, how dare Un arrange this… I cursed every arbiter under the sun aside from Ruk. My anger formed a massive tornado. Dorian was back on his feet. The tornado was ours. It was the shade of dark eggplant mixed with Dorian's bright red fury. It slammed into Jia and knocked him on his back for a moment.
Dorian darted toward me. I jumped to my feet, continuing to meld our storms together, trying to drive Jia back down the passageway toward the doors that led to the chasm. His body was just huge. It was meant to take up the entire length of the passage. When we pushed him back, I lunged to the side and twisted a smaller tornado into Jia’s right side.
It sent him closer to me. His blue eyes swung toward me, his new target. Dorian cursed.
This is not the way I’m going out, not by Jia. I’d trained too hard to let it stop just before the finish line, even if it was poor Jia against me. Genuine fear pulsed through me as I tried to pull myself up in time, but Jia grabbed my ankle. He hauled me into the air, letting me dangle by my foot. His other hand curled into a fist. Pain shot through my leg.
"No," I cried. My training kicked in, everything Ruk had taught us. I thought I'd be fighting Un's proxy. It would have been perfect for the strategies I’d practiced, but I'd have to change my plan. I focused on my overwhelming emotion—grief—and channeled it into a blue wind. A sob left me as the circle appeared around Jia, the one I used on him during practice. His eyes widened a fraction as the band snapped tightly around him. Surprised, he released me. Dorian ran forward to snatch me from mid-air as I fell. Jia tumbled to the ground like a fallen bowling pin. He lurched back just in front of the finish line. The screen above it was still gray with nothing on it. The crowd on the other side of the transparent white wall was completely obscured, as if there was a blurring effect on the forcefield. The arbiters were just beyond this point.
"Lyra," Dorian screamed. "We have to kill him.”
Hot tears kept running down my face.
"I know." And yet it was still hard to fight through this last obstacle. I didn’t want this to be the way we triumphed over Un, but he planned for that, didn’t he? Jia was incredibly powerful. I needed to focus. He was as powerful as Inkarri at her full strength.
The ground trembled. Great. He was up again. That hadn't taken long. Dorian and I ripped apart from one another as Jia hurtled toward us. Dorian and I dipped and weaved, using every technique Ruk had taught us. I imagined myself behind Jia and then in front of him, transporting myself in mere seconds to avoid his smashing fists and lightning bolts. Dorian turned him round and round with a super-powered wind full of rage. We managed to get on one side of him and focus all of our combined fury and sadness against him. His feet scraped against the ground as he tried to fight against our hurricane-force winds, but he lost. He tumbled backward.
Dorian and I darted for the finish line. Only one of us needed to make it. We just needed to get there. It was only a few yards away.
A blinding light erupted from my left side. I turned toward Dorian's gasp of pain before I’d even processed the meaning of the sound. I stopped, frozen in shock to see Dorian on the ground. Jia had managed to catch up, and he'd thrown a blast of energy straight at Dorian. He was on the ground, faint black smoke drifting off his body. My fiancé, my partner, the person I loved more than anyone else.
Dorian wasn't getting up. He was still. Too still.
My vision blurred for a moment.
I whipped around to face Jia. My rage, grief, and pain grew. There was no choice.
“One of us has to win,” I whispered desperately. The tears dripped off my jaw. I could feel my hands shaking. "I don't want to do this."
And I didn't, but I had to. My eyes narrowed as I turned the blast of air onto Jia, forcing him back and holding him at bay, hoping it had the strength for what I knew I needed to do to win this fight.
"No more tricks."
Focusing with everything I had left in me, I started to try to manifest a weapon. It was something I’d struggled with—the creation of a weapon was so different from the copies of ourselves that Dorian and I had made in the previous Games. This had to be solid and useable; it had to have mass and purpose and strength. But, from nothing, a long, sturdy sword began to coalesce in my hand. Still maintaining the gale that was keeping Jia far away enough that he couldn’t hit me, I pictured the sword becoming real, imagined my fingers wrapping around the solid handle, the weight of the blade, the balance of the weapon sitting comfortably in my grip. Then, in the way that things often were in the Higher Plane, it was suddenly real.
I’d trained with weapons all my life, far longer than I'd trained in the Higher Plane. It felt natural in my hand. My pride at my achievement was irrelevant as rage became hot magma inside me, and I channeled it into the blade. I whipped it through the air, not immediately striking Jia physically but sending a rush of hot air like a whip at him as a warning. He drew back away from my blast.
Poor Jia. I didn't want to hurt him. And yet… there were so many things I hadn't wanted to do on this journey, before being forced to fight our strange new proxy friend. We had no choice. No, I had no choice. Dorian remained motionless. If I wanted us to leave, it was up to me to do it. I steeled myself as Jia rushed me. He dove at me, attempting to use his six arms to get me into a vice-like grip. I dodged and managed to teleport myself to his left.
Dorian won’t stir. I gritted my teeth together. It was time.
Preparing myself, I raised the blade and brought it down as hard as I could, slicing through the extra two left arms, and then started on the right ones. I got through one before he caught me with a backhand from one of his two remaining right hands. I flew backward and smashed into the invisible forcefield.
He pounced. He was nearly double my height, but Inkarri and the other hunters had been great practice for me. I used every emotion I had. I brought down bolt after bolt of lightning upon him, carving off chunks of his plain gray body with my sword, weeping and screaming with rage and emotional agony all the while. He grunted and grimaced, writhing as my blows removed pieces of his form, forcing him to reshape, his body slowly becoming smaller and smaller. When he was only a few inches taller than me, I drove my sword into his side, hoping if I returned him to his original size this would all be over. He fell backward, his leg swiping at my knees. I buckled to the ground, and we grappled.
“Surrender, Jia,” I begged, gasping. “Please.”
“I cannot do that,” he replied, his voice exactly the same as always. “It would go against my current directive.”
I hated the feeling of his clammy, unbelievably strong hands as they reached for my throat. A flashback to Sempre's decaying form trying to choke the life out of me came to mind. No. I would do whatever it took to make it to that finish line. I prepared to sink my blade into his neck.
But then I remembered how Jia had helped pull Dorian back from the edge of the cliff. How he’d so carefully looked at my wounded foot. His willingness to aid us in our training. My blade faltered in the air.
The current version of Jia didn't hesitate to take advantage of this. Reversing our positions, he slammed me back onto the ground, straddling me as I gasped from the impact. Forced to drop my sword, I managed to get him into a defensive hold. I was far more skilled at grappling, even though he was larger than I was. The arbiters knew little of the fighting styles of mortals, and I'd been trained in a variety of martial arts and combat techniques. In only a few moments I’d returned us to our original pos
ition, scrabbling for my sword and holding it to his throat. There was no expression of fear or hate in his face; it was just blank, with those large blue eyes staring up at me.
I can win. The hopeful thought floated above me like the hazel confetti.
The misty screen blocking the finish line flickered, an image swimming onto the misty surface.
It was Zach. He was breathing heavily in some dark corner, sweat dripping from his brow. My stomach clenched as tears streamed down his face. This wasn't an illusion from the arbiters, was it? No, it was so much like the images Ruk had shown us. I forced every cell in my body to focus on Jia even as Zach wailed in pain and terror in front of me on the screen. I had Jia pinned down. I could sink my blade in, and yet my knife sat unmoving, a hesitant weight in my hand.
Zach let out a weak sob, a cry so pained that I’d never heard such a sound from his mouth before.
My brother is hurting somewhere, and I can’t get to him.
Tears still falling, I kicked Jia off, shoving him hard with an extra gust of wind to send him a few feet back. It gave me enough time to see the light go out of Laini’s eyes, as blood streamed from her mouth. It was more than enough time to see a gem blast burn Gina’s face to the bone, to see her body hit the ground. I felt so powerless.
This window might be real. After all, the arbiters had more control over their windows into the Immortal Plane. They could be showing me something that had already happened, or something that was happening right now. My blood turned to icy slush as Jia came back for me. Dorian still hadn't moved. I had to win. I had to focus.
I was so tired. The strain of this game, and everything that came before it, weighed on me. Jia managed to knock me to the side with a sudden sweep of his legs. I watched blood splash across the screen as I fell.
"No," I breathed. Jia straddled me. Two of his remaining three hands pinned my arms to the ground, the third reaching for my throat. I needed to find the strength to send a wind to knock him away, but I was so drained.
The tears kept falling. Jia tightened his grip around my throat even as I thought I saw a flash of regret and sadness in his eyes. Is this how I die?
The blue counter flickered inside my mind until suddenly, I felt a cool sparkle inside my chest. Four. I’m so close.
"This connection to the lower planes is currently accurate," Jia whispered suddenly. He didn’t release his hold, and his voice was flat but pained. He was like a string pulled too taut. "However, time is fluid. If you escape the Higher Plane, you might be able to intervene before these events come to pass. Defeat me, Lyra. My body is not my own, and this is not the purpose I was created for. This is a corruption of my intention to safeguard you and Dorian. You both have taught me many things. You have shown me kindness. I do not want to remain in this version of sentience." As he continued his desperate begging, his hand around my throat loosened. "Please. For me. Beware the black hole before the finish line, and test where you step."
My cheeks burned from the blood rushing to my face. A new wave of determination filled me like liquid fire. Jia wanted his freedom, and I had to kill him in order for both of us to get what we wanted. I always wanted to save him, and this was the only way to set him free. I would release him even if it broke me. He’s using his own agency to ask for this. And who was I to refuse to honor his valiant request?
There were lives left to be saved in my realm.
“Thank you for showing me new ways to exist, Jia. You’ve taught me more than you can ever know,” I whispered to him. He fell backward as I enacted my plan, and his body curved to the side as I sent the wind to flip him on his heavier side. Gripping my sword, I screamed as I drove the blade into his neck, sobbing my apologies all the way. My thanks to him I kept silent, so none of the arbiters could hear.
His bright blue eyes went gray, then black. The strange mouth of his, like a child had carved a line in the dirt, turned upward at the corner. I stood to my feet, shaking and weeping as his form disappeared into blue dust.
Thank you, friend.
I limped toward Dorian. Nobody could stop me now. The screen flitted away, fading to the same shade of white as the wall. A door appeared in the wall, two large narrow ones that opened into pure white light. I glared at the finish line as I stooped down, hauling Dorian into a fireman’s lift over my shoulder. He was almost too much for my weakened body to handle, but I staggered forward anyway. My muscles surged with new strength, strength that wasn’t entirely mine, as I inched toward the finish line.
Thank you, I told the universe.
Recalling Jia’s final warning, I flung my sword into the few yards of space between me and the door. A giant black hole opened up, a pit designed to catch us out in the last few moments. With the last scrap of my anger and grief and strength, I summoned a wind underneath me that carried me to the finish line. It was a faint red line in the reflective ground, nothing special and yet the most important thing in the universe right now.
Broken, exhausted, and weeping, I stepped across it. My body seared with a dull pain that sank deep into my body. The adrenaline was fleeing my system, leaving me raw in my battered state. Sweat covered every inch of me. My face stung with dried tears.
Un's white eyes stared at me in disbelief as I walked up to him, setting Dorian gently down on the ground. Straightening up, I glared straight at Un with my chin held high, though I swayed on my feet. I was victorious. Even if I did something that broke my heart, I did it and I would get what I was owed.
"I beat your game," I said fiercely. "It's time to honor our pact. Now."
Chapter Thirty-One
Un's composure crumbled. He opened and closed his mouth, nothing but lost hope and silence sitting on his tongue. How smug he had been earlier. His face collapsed like a mountain in a landslide.
Good.
I gritted my teeth, wavering on my feet, as reality struck me. I’d done it. We’d won.
I groaned, finally succumbing to my pain. My knees buckled, and I stumbled back to sit on the ground but kept my gaze on Un’s face, only moving my attention to take in the expressions of the other arbiters. I knew I looked like I'd been through hell and back, but I wouldn't let anything take the pride from this moment. I gently cradled Dorian’s head as my eyes blurred with tears. Please, be okay.
"This can't be," Un muttered.
A sharp murmur of dissent against Un’s words rocketed through the crowd. They’d watched the entire thing, and he was still trying to cast doubt? I narrowed my eyes.
Un snapped his mouth shut for a moment. His body tensed under some invisible weight, and he let out a hiss. "But it cannot be denied that the two mortals, Lyra and Dorian, have successfully completed the course and have won the Games. All of their winnings from this course and the previous course will be honored." His shoulders dropped after his announcement. He looked shaken.
Xiu let out a slow breath of relief. She rushed forward with Pik and Sen to help me with Dorian.
"We'll heal you," Xiu whispered.
I glared into her sharp, pointed eyes even as I gratefully accepted her unexpected aid. "Jia—your proxy…"
She pressed her hands on my body. Immediately, warmth flooded into me, and the pain lessened.
Bowing her head, ashamed, she said, "Un asked to buy him from me, and I didn't think anything of it. We arbiters have a different relationship with proxies than you had." Her throat tightened, and her eyes found me again. Her voice was cool when she added, "I didn't see the harm it might do against you, at the time. I was a fool."
I shook my head. "I didn't want to kill him, Xiu, but I had to." I swallowed my sadness as the crowd of arbiters cheered wildly. Heated debates popped up, mostly yelling about bets, but Debt Keeper barked at everyone to keep it down. I relaxed my body as I let Xiu's energy run through me. It felt exhilarating. A shot of pure energy hit me, and I shivered as it settled into every nerve.
“We were told nobody would heal us,” I managed to whisper.
Xiu shook her head.
“Nobody has ever given us Games like that.”
Pik and Sen went to work on Dorian, pulling him away from me to send energy into him.
“His shoulder,” I offered weakly.
Pik put one webbed hand there and nodded. “We’ll do everything we can. It is a worthy use of our gathered energy.”
Dorian stirred beside me. My sadness lightened when I saw his eyes flutter. Xiu pressed her hands onto me again.
"This will feel odd," she warned.
I nodded. This time, she sent more energy, but it began to move things inside me. Pain shrank to nothingness. The broken bones and dislocated joints I hadn’t registered slid back into place with a feeling like writhing creatures beneath my skin and around my organs. Xiu had been right; it was very odd, but there was suddenly no pain. It left an almost hollow feeling in my chest when she finished, as if I was still anticipating the pain. I shook off the empty feeling, merely grateful that my body was in working condition and not currently being dissolved into dust.
Shifting closer to Dorian, I was there when his eyes fully opened. Pik and Sen gently moved him over to rest his head in my lap, and he looked up at me with a delirious smile. Pride beamed from every inch of his face. Pik watched us closely with fascination, but I didn’t care.
"You won it for us," he whispered hoarsely. "I knew you would, and you did." He pulled himself up, now healed by the energy donations of our arbiter allies. He brought his hands up to my face and pulled me down to press his forehead against mine. I breathed in his scent and broke into sobs again as I thought of everything we’d just gone through. We kissed hard, not caring about the arbiters staring.
Let them. This is my future husband, and I managed to save him today.
We pulled away and carefully got to our feet. It was strange. I felt lighter on my feet than I had when I got to the Higher Plane. I lifted my shirt, which was still ripped, but all my bruises were gone; my ribs felt brand new. The corner of Xiu's lips lifted slightly.
Darklight 6: Darkbirth Page 40