Something captured my attention. A lioness emerged from a cage, its head low, and slowly crept toward me. I had slain far more ferocious creatures.
“Heeeere, kitty kitty kitty,” I murmured, my muscles tensed.
In reply, the feline opened its enormous jaws wide. I gaped at its many rows of teeth. There wasn’t even room in its mouth to devour its prey unless it was already torn into tiny pieces. It was definitely a very unusual lioness.
With a roar, it swiped at me with its giant paw and pounced, knocking me to the ground. I struggled to keep it away as it offered me a close-up of its entire mouth full of teeth. “I didn’t come this far just to get torn apart by a she-cat,” I warned it. Somehow I managed to reach my knife and stab it between the eyes, but the blade shattered into a thousand pieces when it hit its skin. “Wow, are you hardheaded,” I joked. “Not as much as me, though.” I bit down on its jugular, squeezing my teeth shut.
The beast instantly froze, gripped with convulsions. I quickly rolled away before the electric charge could knock me out. “I didn’t know I had such a shocking bite.”
“Biting’s against the rules, didn’t you know that?”
I pulled myself out from under the feline, which had slumped on top of me, lifeless. I knew that voice. It was Faust, his stun gun still pointed at the lioness. For a second I’d hoped the Witch had rewarded me with a superpower, but now I saw it hadn’t been my bite that had electrocuted the beast. Faust laughed, seeing the disappointed look on my face.
“There’s a rulebook?” I asked.
“It’s one of those things they teach you in preschool. I guess you never went?” He held out his hand to help me up and I grabbed it. Faust was a good friend. We had often battled in the Opalion, but outside the Arena he had always proved to be an ally.
“Nice gadget,” I said, pointing at his stun gun.
He showed it to me. It was large and streamlined. Its projectiles were positioned around it: glass capsules with lightning bolts inside them. Electric and lethal. “I’m the king of thunderstorms,” he said, blowing across the muzzle of his weapon. “What have you got?”
I pulled out my arsenal. It took a while to show him all the weaponry. When I was done he whistled. “Watch out for metal detectors.”
“Good advice.”
Something landed on the wall above us. We spun around, weapons drawn. The enemy had been so fast that neither of us had seen him coming. In a flash he was behind us, pressing our own weapons against our backs.
“I would not do that again if I were you.” His voice was deep, his accent ancient. I wondered how long he had been in Hell.
“No need to get your panties in a bunch, Amhir,” Faust said, slowly turning around. “We’re on the same side.”
The man lowered the weapons and with a single movement returned them to us. “For now,” he replied sternly. He had dark skin and a crew cut. I remembered his chart. He was the Champion sent in by Bathsheeva, the golden-eyed warrior Witch.
“For now,” Faust mimicked him behind his back.
Laughing, I elbowed him. “Come on, let’s go. If there’s one thing I’ve learned from playing video games it’s that you’ve got to keep moving forward if you want to track down your opponents.” We walked down the narrow corridors of the ancient arena like mice in a maze. The only way out was death. The death of all but one of us.
The Champions were stronger than any Souls I’d faced in Hell. Not only because they were Subterraneans but also because they’d all been trained—and for a lot longer than me. Still, I was confident. Anyone who tried to come between me and Stella, I would kick their ass.
A cable shot past me and coiled around Amhir’s ankle. It yanked him off his feet and dragged him away. I looked around, disoriented. It had all happened so fast I didn’t even know where it had come from. Amhir, however, wasn’t about to be defeated so easily. He grabbed the metal line and tried to break it. When that didn’t work he pulled out a large flamethrower. A spurt of flame burst from its barrel, lighting everything up. The cable snapped and he somersaulted backwards, landing in perfect balance. The other three Champions, our opponents, climbed over the walls of the ancient arena and leapt down.
Amhir turned to face them, a threatening look in his eye. “Time for a barbecue,” he said, pulling the trigger on his flamethrower, “and I want meat.” He directed the flames at the three soldiers, but one of them blocked the oncoming fire with ice.
Faust brandished his gun, the lightning bolts dancing inside the bullets anxious to unleash a firestorm.
I pulled out my machine gun, sure there was still some ammo left . . . well, pretty sure. “And I thought I had cool weapons.”
Faust laughed. “It’s not the weapon that counts, my friend. It’s how you use it.” He fired silent shots toward the stream of ice, which shattered into a thousand pieces. Now unhindered, Amhir’s fire spread out, driving our adversaries back against a stone wall. “Okay, the weapon counts too,” he said, shrugging.
I shook my head and followed him, running toward the three Champions. Each of us aimed at one adversary. The blow had left them dazed, but they too had their Amìshas’ blood in their veins. Underestimating them would be a mistake.
They all got up at the same time, like marionettes. But then again, we were all puppets. That was partly why I was fighting: to finally cut the strings that made me the Witches’ slave.
Faust took aim at the tattooed Viking with the blond beard. I remembered his chart: his name was Bohr and he was battling for Zafirah, the Witch with violet eyes.
Assin and I stared each other down. He was my sole objective: the Subterranean who had killed me on Earth. An even worse enemy than the Witches. I would make sure he never made it to the next level. I wasn’t about to give him the satisfaction of chalking up another victory against me.
I launched my attack, but Misha the Russian stepped between us, blocking my way. It was Amhir who challenged Assin instead. Whatever. If there was anyone who could keep him from leveling up, it was Amhir.
“Your race to glory has just ended, Champion.” Misha spat the words out in his Russian accent while he brandished his heavy weaponry: jointed metal claws and a hook to gouge my eyes out.
“Didn’t they ever trim your fingernails when you were little?” Dodging the claws, I jumped back, then swung the scythe and chopped off his fingers. “Voilà. Problem solved.”
He screamed in rage and pain and his hook lodged in my side.
I cursed, gritting my teeth. As I readied myself to finish him off, a strange low-pitched noise echoed through the Arena. Another blast of the horn, grimmer than the ones before it. This time it wasn’t announcing a victory; it was a death knell instead. The first player had been defeated.
We peered around, trying to understand what had happened. Amhir was on the ground. His limp body disintegrated and disappeared. He had left the level. Two of our adversaries ran off and Captain Hook followed them, depriving me of my revenge.
I couldn’t believe Assin had defeated a fierce Champion like Amhir. Faust ran up to me, also shaken by what had happened. Not because we’d had a bond with Amhir, but because he’d had one of the highest scores. Amhir had been powerful, but Assin had eliminated him all the same. We needed to stay alert.
“Let’s split up,” I suggested to Faust. He nodded and disappeared among the ruins. I looked around and for the first time, surrounded by the ancient walls, I felt like a gladiator. I spun the knife in my hand, thinking of what Misha had said.
He’d been wrong. My race to glory had just begun.
28
Ghosts in the Mind
I leaned against a wall and slid down to the ground, clenching my jaw against the pain in my side. That hooked bastard had dug a hole in my flesh. The scratches elsewhere on my body soon vanished but the wound was deep. I pulled off my armor, leaving my chest bare. Drops of sweat slid down my skin, setting my wounds aflame. At least the spectators watching me on the screens would be focused on how
sexy I was shirtless rather than thinking about my weaknesses. I tensed my jaw and rested my head against the wall as the wound sealed up, burning even more. A small reward for my presumptuousness, like Kreeshna always said. I wondered if Stella was watching me.
“Drake!” My blood ran cold when I heard her voice. I shot to my feet and followed the echo, but came to a dead end. “Drake! Help me, please!”
I raced in the opposite direction, following the sound—but ended up in another dead end. Confused, I looked around, my eyes narrowed. It was a trick. The Witches wanted to slow me down. While I was wasting time on their little mind games, the others were battling it out to clinch a place in the final round. I had to stay focused on my mission. Now that so few of the Witches were left, the competition was getting fiercer. There was no way for me to know what kind of moves they would come up with to annihilate me.
“Drake! I’m over here!”
Ignoring all logic, I raced toward her voice. “Stella!” Her name echoed off the ancient walls.
“Help me, please!”
I turned a corner and went stock-still at the sight of her. It was Stella, yes, but not the one from Hell. It was the Stella from my past, the one I had abandoned.
“Drake,” she murmured, “help me.”
Slowly I came closer. Her clothes were threadbare and torn, her skin covered with bruises, scratches, and burns. Who knew what she had been through in Hell. And it was all my fault.
“I’m here,” I replied in a whisper. “I’m here now.” With a frightened shake of her head, she raised her palm to keep me away. “Stella, it’s me.” Didn’t she recognize me?
She let out an anguished shriek, her eyes suddenly filled with terror. I couldn’t stand seeing her like this. I rushed to embrace her, but the moment I touched her she exploded into a million pieces, leaving me with a handful of ash. I staggered back. What had I done to her?! Her experience must have been atrocious. I would never forgive myself for abandoning her.
“Drake.” This time her voice was barely a murmur.
I turned around and she was there again. A tear slowly trickled down her cheek. “Don’t leave me here alone. I’m afraid.”
A shiver ran down my spine at her ghastly whisper. “Stella,” I said softly.
A patch of black blood appeared on her chest, quickly spreading as she fixed her terrified eyes on me. “It hurts!” she screamed.
Once again I ran to her, but her eyes changed, becoming cold and detached. They were the eyes of an Insane Soul, exactly what Stella had been turning into before I arrived. Refusing my help, she huddled in a niche in the wall, chewing on the hem of her dress.
“Stella, get hold of yourself. It’s me. I’m here now.”
“It’s too late.”
I turned toward the new voice. Toward the new Stella. This time I recognized her: it was the Stella who had risen from the ashes. The one who wanted to kill me. Her bow was drawn, the arrow aimed at me, just like at our first encounter in the Gluttons’ cave.
“You’re the cause of everything.”
It was true. It was my fault Stella had become a ruthless assassin, unable to control her thirst for blood.
She released the arrow, but it didn’t hit me. Instead, the young Stella crumpled to the ground. I ran to her. Blood gushed from her mouth. She tried to tell me something but before she had the chance she exploded into millions of pieces, making me shield my face.
I looked up. I was alone, but my remorse hadn’t disappeared with the Stellas. To survive, she’d been forced to kill her own innocence, to become someone else. To become something else. Thanks to me, that innocent part of her had vanished forever.
“Drake!” Again her voice echoed through the Arena like an obsession.
I knew she wasn’t really there. The Witches were putting my mental endurance to the test, trying to break me. Or maybe it was just a trick to slow me down.
“Drake, help me! Please.”
I didn’t hesitate a second. “Stella! Where are you?” I had to save her. I would never stop trying to save her. I threw myself to my knees and grabbed her hand before she could fall off the edge of a cliff that had just appeared.
“Don’t abandon me again,” she begged me.
A tear rolled down my cheek as I realized I would never stop feeling guilty about what I’d done to her, about everything she’d had to go through because of me.
“Drake, I don’t want to be one of the Insane. Please, save me.” My eyes widened. Her voice was like it used to be, exactly how I remembered it: free from all traces of Hell. Innocent.
“You broke her,” Kahlena the warrior said. She was crouched atop a wall, enjoying the scene. “You’ll never bring her back.”
Her words were a stab to my heart. I looked at the hand I was gripping to keep Stella from falling into the void and finally understood.
“I don’t want to bring her back.” I released my grip and Stella’s hand slipped from my fingers.
The remorse I felt for having left her had never ceased to haunt me, but there was one thing I didn’t regret: the new Stella I’d met in Hell. Kahlena. I touched the strip of cloth tied around my arm, my heart full of her. I had to accept her. In her situation, many others would have died, or worse. She, instead, had been reborn by becoming stronger, more determined. Hell had put her to the test and revealed her true soul. It was the soul of a warrior, and I was proud of it.
I stood up and Kahlena also disappeared. If all this had been yet another of the Witches’ trials designed to distract me from my goal, I must have passed the test by banishing the phantoms trapped in my mind.
I felt stronger. Freer.
All at once something gripped my neck and forced me to the ground. I thrashed my legs, trying to break free, my hands clutching at the steel cords. I recognized the weapon, one of the two large, lethal yo-yos with metal cords the Viking Bohr was skilled at using. It was he who had lassoed Amhir.
The wire went slack and retracted. I remained on the ground while the wound Bohr had just inflicted on me healed. The Viking stood above me. “Want to play with me for a while?” he asked with a smirk, making his deadly toys dance.
I rolled over to avoid the spinning blades and leapt to my feet. “Why not? Let’s see what you can do with your little circus tricks.”
He whipped a yo-yo at me, but I was faster and backflipped off the wall, landing on the ground amid the shower of sparks the lethal yo-yo had struck off the stone. Yo-yo-man launched a second attack, the sparkling spheres slicing through the air, longing to taste my flesh. I studied his movements, waiting for the right time to counterattack.
“I like this game,” I said, brandishing my scythe, “but I’m getting kind of tired of it.” I intercepted the trajectory of the metal cords and with a flick of my wrist coiled the yo-yos around the scythe’s handle, leaving Bohr unarmed.
He stared at me in shock. I could be fast too. He tried to attack me but I dodged his punch and slammed him into the wall with a kick. Quick as lightning, I slid across the ground and delivered a right hook that missed his throat by an inch. “Sorry, I’m kind of in a hurry.”
He laughed, his expression mocking. “You’ve failed.”
The horn of death sounded in the Arena as blood began to trickle from his throat.
“I never fail.” The crescent blade in my glove retracted as swiftly and silently as it had appeared.
Bohr crumpled to his knees and vanished. My lethal blow had eliminated him from the game, but he wasn’t really dead. Only the two Champions in the final round would truly put their lives at stake. And I was going to be one of them.
29
Level Two
Four of us were left.
Unfortunately, the Viking’s weapons disappeared along with him before I could get my hands on them. Oh well. I would get by without his deadly yo-yos. Now all I had to do was find the next Champion to defeat.
I wandered among the ancient stone walls. The section where I was had once been the underg
round level of the Colosseum, where the gladiators prepared to make their entrance into the arena. Back then, a wooden platform covered with dirt had rested atop the now-uncovered stone walls. That had been the battlefield. It was the Witches who had brought the gladiator games to Earth, a primitive version of the Opalions that mortals called munera.
A stream of water flowed from a small fountain. I scooped some up in my cupped hands and the liquid turned orange. Challenging fate, I drank deep. Not bad. Tasted like an energy drink. Maybe it would give me superpowers. I stared at my fists but nothing happened.
Something darted past underground and before I knew it a stone wall right in front of me collapsed, followed by another one that almost crushed me. The earth beneath my feet lurched and I fell. It was as though someone had stuck out their foot and tripped me. What was going on?
“Drake!” Faust rushed toward me, his tone urgent. “Did you see it too?”
“See what?”
The thing darted by underground again. Whatever it was, it was enormous.
“That!” he shouted as a beast burst through the earth, its fangs open. Faust and I dove to the ground to avoid ending up in its belly. “Run!”
“What the hell is it?” I shouted as we fled. The beast chased us with its enormous head and sharp teeth. It was like the mutant offspring of a dragon and a snake.
“How should I know? All I know is that it wants to eat us!”
The beast slithered after us like a possessed serpent. Escaping would be no easy feat, with the walls crashing down all around us. From time to time it reared up and dove back down into the ground like a worm.
All at once it stopped and everything went quiet.
Something flashed above us. We both looked up at the dome. Electrical charges were snaking across it like lightning bolts in a storm.
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