Trampolining with Dragons

by S. W. Clarke

  “B-bro?” No one had ever called him that before. That was a term reserved for clutch mates.

  Bocephus ran a taloned hand over his smooth head. “Well, yeah, I guess. You’re my caddie now. That means you’re part of the Zetas. Unless you already have a clutch?”

  Malfius shook his head.

  “Yeah, I didn’t see a sigil on your scales.” The fancy squiggle that was the letter Zeta was burned into Bocephus’s right bicep, branded there when he’d emerged from the Phlegethon as a spawnling. He braced his hands on his hips and craned back to take in Malfius’s full height. “Damn, you’re big. How’re you not a battler?”

  “Being of great height does not automatically predisposition me for physical combat. I am formerly a familiar demon from Level 4.”

  “Don’t ramble. It makes the Zetas look bad. Be concise, yeah? And you’re a familiar? I thought you guys were all small, like two feet tall. It’s why the Phlegethon makes such a good boundary. They’re too small to jump the gap. How the hell did you get on Level 5?”

  Malfius swallowed. “I was demoted,” he said concisely.

  “More like promoted. You’re a level 5 demon now, even if you’re just a caddie. Name another familiar who’s ever left Level 4. You can’t, right? Now if there’s going to be anything left in that keg, we’d better get going.”

  Malfius took two eager steps before Bocephus flung up a hand. “What are you doing?”

  “I inferred from your reference to the keg that I was invited to accompany you—”

  “What’d I say about the rambling?”

  “I am … coming with you?”

  “Not without my weapons you aren’t. You’re a caddie, remember? Now caddie.”

  Malfius inserted a talon behind a scale on his abdomen, yanked open his pouch, and started throwing in the weapons.

  “Damn it, not like that!” Bocephus exclaimed. “Don’t just toss them in there all haphazard-like. Didn’t your previous battlers ever teach you anything?”

  Malfius shook his head.

  Bocephus dragged a hand over his eyes. “Okay. Lesson One: weapons go into your pouch in an orderly fashion. How else are going to give me the right one during the heat of battle if they’re not sorted properly? Seconds count, bro.”

  “Right.” Malfius sorted the weapons according to their ability to inflict damage and ran his hand over his abdomen, sealing his pouch. His scales lay flat, like he had never just stuffed an arsenal into his belly, and the weight didn’t even slow him down.

  “Good. Now one more thing before we get hammered and watch pretty girls dance.”

  Bocephus pounced, clamping his hands around Malfius’s throat. His feet pinned Malfius’s arms to the ground, and his tail wrapped around his chest so he doubly couldn’t breathe.

  Malfius wiggled, trying to dislodge the battler, but the demon’s grip was unbreakable. “Boce – ack!”

  Squeezing Malfius’s airway shut, the battler lowered his face until he was just a scale’s breadth away from Malfius’s snout. “I don’t know what your beef with Thaddeus is, and I don’t care. But I have worked too hard to become Destroyer for a reject like you to mess it up for me. You do that, and you’ll wish Thaddeus had gotten his hands on you today. Your continued affiliation with the Zetas – our protection – is dependent on my promotion to Destroyer. Anything I just said in any way unclear?”

  Malfius could barely shake his head from Bocephus’s grip around his neck.

  “Outstanding.”

  Malfius wheezed as the battler released him. He coughed when Bocephus yanked him to his feet.

  “Now dust yourself off,” Bocephus said. “Zetas are always presentable. And let’s go get some beer, yeah? C’mon, bro, before they drink it all.”

  Malfius rubbed his throat as Bocephus sprinted across the Black Plains. “Yeah … bro.”

  Chapter 4

  Malfius stalked across the Black Plains with his head held high.

  Nothing could ruin his day, not even if Bocephus lost.

  After that blistering threat the day of the first Prizefight, the battler had been nothing but fraternal.

  During the two days between matches, Malfius had learned a lot about what it took to be a caddie to a battler of Bocephus’s caliber. He’d learned what weapons were best used when, what Bocephus’s signature moves were – spinning prehensile tail snatch and hurl – and how to keep focused when someone – aka every Zeta clutch mate – was shouting at him. It’d been a whole clutch effort to get Malfius up to speed.

  When he wasn’t sharpening weapons or being conditioned to ignore extraneous noise, Bocephus taught him how to spar. Despite protests from the other Zetas that Malfius wasn’t even a real battler, Bocephus insisted on training with him because of his size. They were only a handful of battlers taller than six feet, and Malfius was one of them.

  And when he wasn’t caddying or sparring, Malfius spent the rest of his time with the Zetas either at Club Avernus playing a demonic version of beer pong where the ball was a freshly severed Baelfrog head – nothing bounced better – lifting weights, or pranking other clutches.

  As a familiar, he’d been dependent on whatever sorcerer had summoned him for companionship. And that companionship usually didn’t progress past the enslavement stage. But now he wasn’t alone anymore. Now, he had a whole clutch of demons to call mates.

  Up in the pinnacle, a new Scorekeeper dodged Ichabod’s teeth and claws and wrote down the names of the Prizefighters. Their stats rippled across the leaderboard, Bocephus’s BAMF rating jumping up another five points from his victory in the first match. The Infernal Rooster crowed three times, and the Black Plains created another arena.

  Instead of a wide pit, jagged spikes resembling the Level 6 boundary rose from the lava fields next to the steaming banks of the Phlegethon River. The demons flocked to the arena, but half of the kappas were missing.

  “Pulled away for security detail,” Bocephus said. “Apparently the Sages of Level 7 just received a big shipment of artifacts, and the last thing they need is a bunch of celestials breaking in and stealing them before they’re put in the vault.”

  Malfius nodded. He’d seen the vault when he’d been a janitor, had watched under a lowered gaze as the Sages had categorized each magical artifact before destroying the ones that were lethal to demonkind in their own personal well of Phlegethon magma, or storing them safely away in their own compartments.

  “When I’m Destroyer, the Sages will want the Zetas for protection detail, not the kappas,” Bocephus promised. He clapped Malfius on the shoulder. “C’mon. You’ll have to be in this arena with me. Thaddeus is going to be so screwed. Bet his caddie can’t run as fast as you.”

  Malfius swelled with pride.

  But Thaddeus didn’t look concerned. Instead he looked rather cocky standing there on an outcropping with his thick legs in a wide-set stance and a halberd in his fist. A ragged black tassel just beneath the blade fluttered in the infernal breeze.

  Bocephus climbed onto the opposite outcropping, staying well away from the edge and the jagged spikes of rock below.

  “You ready for this?” Thaddeus asked.

  “Of course I’m ready to make you my bitch. Again.” Bocephus held out his hand. “Hook swords.”

  Malfius quickly and efficiently produced the weapons and pressed them into Bocephus’s waiting hand. They wouldn’t do much against Thaddeus’s thick hide, but they would be great at slinging rock into his face or swinging Bocephus into a more advantageous position.

  Malfius flashed to a jagged rock where he wouldn’t be in the way that was still within weapon throwing distance of Bocephus. Thaddeus’s caddie took a lot longer to climb into position, puffing and glaring at Malfius the entire time. He lumbered up to the same outcropping Thaddeus was on, doubling over with his hands on his knees and wheezing.

  “Hmph. Might want to tell your caddie to get back,” Bocephus called. “I might accidently cut him when I’m decapitating you.”

&n
bsp; Sneering, Thaddeus thumped his caddie on the shoulder, nearly breaking it. “He’s right where he’s supposed to be.”

  “Suit yourself.”

  The new Scorekeeper rang the gong, and black ash sprang into the air.

  Malfius kept calm, knowing the dust would eventually dissipate. He just listened to the churning sounds of the molten river beside the arena.

  The ash rippled away in the infernal breeze, and Malfius panicked.

  Thaddeus had moved.

  No longer was he on the opposite outcropping with a halberd in his fist.

  He had jumped the expanse, hiding his movement in the reverberating echoes of the gong and the cloud it had created.

  Now Thaddeus stood just an arm’s length away from Bocephus, a malevolent grin on his face and an ironwood staff in his hand. He’d switched weapons with his caddie, too. The jewel on top of the staff shone a sickly yellow.

  Bocephus stumbled back a step. “What the hell—”

  Thaddeus lunged, ramming the yellow jewel into Bocephus’s gut.

  “No!” Malefius shrieked.

  He flung up an arm to shield his eyes as the yellow jewel flared as brightly as the sun.

  When the light faded, a hedgehog cowered in the spot where Bocephus had once stood.

  “What did you do to me?” the hedgehog demanded in a high-pitched squeak.

  Laughing, Thaddeus wound his foot back and kicked the hedgehog with all his might.

  Bocephus slammed against the rock, slumping into a mound of quills and purple blood.

  “Bro!” Malfius shouted.

  But he didn’t get an answer.

  Instead the Black Plains rumbled, the jagged spikes of the arena returning to the semi-smooth landscape of the lava fields.

  The second match was over.

  Still laughing, Thaddeus scooped up the pair of hook swords he had won and tossed them to his caddie. “How do you like those rules?”

  Malfius flashed to Bocephus’s side and gingerly lifted the hedgehog into his hands.

  The transfigured battler coughed, purple spittle bubbling at the corner of his mouth. His pale belly was already soaked in it. “Fine,” he croaked. “You win. Now throw me into the river.”

  A magma pit hadn’t formed in this arena, given is proximity to the Phlegethon. Apparently Hell had assumed the victor would just toss the loser into the molten rock himself.

  “No,” Thaddeus said.

  The hedgehog narrowed his beady black eyes. “Then I guess I’ll have Malfius throw me in instead.”

  “I don’t think so.”

  Thaddeus rammed the staff against the lava fields, and a wall of obsidian shot into the air, snug against the bank of the Phlegethon River. It was so tall that it even blocked out the red glow that the magma always cast on the underbelly of the black clouds. Flawlessly smooth, without cracks, the wall was completely unscalable. Demon talons couldn’t find purchase in it, and none of the Level 5 battlers could fly. Even if they could, the wall was simply too high.

  “What are you doing?” Bocephus shrieked.

  Thaddeus snapped his fingers, and a Kappa rushed up to him. The battler carefully placed the staff into his clutch mate’s hands. “Return that to our boys with the Sages, would you? Don’t want them to think anything’s missing.”

  “You bastard,” the hedgehog raged. “If I can’t get into the river to respawn—”

  “Then you fight the third match as a hedgehog,” Thaddeus said with a smirk. “See you in two days, pipsqueak.”

  Chapter 5

  “Bro …” A Zeta nudged the hedgehog with a talon. “You are totally messed up.”

  “Tell me something I don’t know,” Bocephus groaned.

  After a day of wallowing at Club Avernus, Malfius had convinced Bocephus to let him try to throw him over the wall. Being eight-feet tall and full of muscle, the drunken demons were convinced Malfius stood a chance of lobbing the little hedgehog over the impossibly high wall and into the Phlegethon. But so far, the hedgehog had always bounced off the obsidian with pathetic little whumps. Now he slumped in the bowl of Malfius’s hands, sporting two black eyes he hadn’t had after the match with Thaddeus.

  “Sorry,” Malfius mumbled.

  “Without the Phlegethon, you’re toast, bro,” another Zeta said.

  “Again, I know.”

  “Damn, bro, you were our ticket to the big leagues! What are we gonna do now?”

  “We’re gonna change me back, that’s what!” the hedgehog snapped. “I’ll have to heal the old-fashioned way, but at least I’ll be me. And I’ll stand a chance in the third match.”

  “Change you back with what?”

  “With that staff, of course! It’ll be easy. Infiltrate the Tower, find the staff. In, out, and then I make Thaddeus my bitch.”

  The Zetas glanced at each other and backed away.

  “Hey,” Malfius said, taking a step after them. “Where are you—”

  “Dude, the artifacts are guarded by the Sages. Do you know what they’d do to us if they caught us?”

  “I’d rather have my BAMF reset to zero!”

  “Besides, they’re on Level 7. That’s restricted access unless you have a pass. It’s impossible, bro.”

  “Are you … are you abandoning me?” Bocephus sputtered.

  The Zetas shrugged.

  “We gotta close ranks, ya know, bro? When Thaddeus becomes Destroyer, you know he’ll be coming for the Zetas.”

  “When Thaddeus becomes Destroyer?” the hedgehog squeaked.

  “Sorry, Bocephus. You’d do the same if it were one of us.”

  The Zetas formed a pack and sprinted across the Plains, probably back to their nest to fortify it.

  The hedgehog gripped one of Malfius’s talons in each little paw, his quills rattling as he shook with rage.

  “You can put me down now,” Bocephus shouted. “I’m not helpless!”

  Malfius kept the hedgehog cradled in his talons. “Despite these quills, I don’t think that’s a very good idea given your diminutive stature—”

  “Again with the rambling!”

  “You’ll get stepped on,” Malfius said lamely.

  “Then at least I’d be a thorn in someone’s foot instead of a pathetic excuse of a battler!” Bocephus bit Malfius’s finger. “Put. Me. DOWN!”

  The bite didn’t hurt, but Malfius was afraid the hedgehog would have a brain aneurysm. He set the hedgehog carefully on the ground and crouched down low beside him.

  The infernal wind that always blew across the Black Plains threatened to roll the hedgehog off his feet, but Bocephus merely put his head down and turned into the wind. Malfius didn’t ask where the hedgehog was going – and at such a slow pace, too – but it was clear he hadn’t given up.

  Despite his new exterior, Bocephus was still Malfius’s best bet at getting Thaddeus off his back. Bocephus had maintained his huge personality – full of fire and ambition – so if Malfius could get the battler’s insides to match his outsides again, they stood a chance.

  After a particularly strong gust of wind blew the hedgehog back a few feet, Malfius shifted to block the next gust. Blinking the dust from his beady black eyes, Bocephus glared up at him.

  “What are you still doing here?” he demanded. “Why aren’t you with the rest of the Zetas? Bastards all of them.”

  “You know they wouldn’t accept me without you.”

  “Then it looks like we’re both shit out of luck. I’m not a battler anymore, Malfius. I’m not even me anymore. Go away and let me just … wallow.” The hedgehog burrowed into the lava fields, kicking up little black flakes in his wake.

  “What if I could change that?”

  Bocephus paused in his burrowing self-pity party. “Change what?”

  “You.”

  “Don’t be stupid. You heard my ex-cutch mates, may they all die a thousand deaths. Only the Sages have access to those artifacts – minus that momentary theft by the kappas – and visitation to Level 7 is strictly
… What are you doing?”

  Malfius inserted a claw behind a scale on his abdomen and opened his pouch. He fished around for a second before he pulled out an orange card. It was actually a fire opal, forged into the shape of a rectangle with a demonic glyph glowing in its center.

  “What is that?” Bocephus asked.

  “A Level 7 access pass. Though I had thought I had been doing a rather exemplary job as a sanitation and inventory management officer—”

  “Rambling!”

  “I used to be a janitor, and the Sages kicked me out of Level 7 so fast they forget to confiscate my pass.”

  “This could work!” Bocephus jumped, little paws swiping for the glowing access pass, but Malfius yanked it out of reach.

  “We do this, and you owe me,” Malfius said.

  The hedgehog crossed his arms over his chest. “Owe you what?”

  Malfius lowered his lizard-like head until his ember-like eyes were level with the hedgehog’s. Orange flames of excitement sprouted from their sockets. “We restore you, and I become an official clutch mate, Zeta brand and everything.”

  Even though he’d been demoted or promoted to Level 5 – however you wanted to look at it – he was still a familiar from Level 4. A familiar with a primitive instinct to be bonded to someone else, to have some sort of companionship.

  Familiars didn’t do well alone.

  Bocephus snorted. “As if I want to be part of the Zetas when I respawn. They abandoned me.”

  “Demons are fickle,” Malfius said matter-of-factly.

  “But not you. You didn’t leave me.” The hedgehog spat into his paw and held it out. “We do this, and when I respawn, we’ll make a clutch of our own.”

  Malfius spat into his own hand and shook the hedgehog’s paw. “But what would we call it? Every Greek letter is already taken.”

  “HOG. And our sigil will look like this.” Bocephus gestured to himself. “So all those bastards will remember that a pipsqueak and a Level 4 reject were the next clutch to make a Destroyer.”

  Malfius handed over the access pass, and the glow reflected the determination in the hedgehog’s beady black eyes.