The Gang of Legend

by Robert J. Crane

  But it hadn’t. Not deep, anyway. The blade had sliced open my top and the vest underneath. It had sailed across my stomach, cutting a long line across it just above my belly button. It wasn’t deep, though, no more than a millimeter maybe; the surface layer, and no farther.

  The next wouldn’t be so kind, though.

  The lizard’s pupils widened, like a cat spying prey. Its fangs lengthened, like a movie vampire—

  The blood—

  I clenched my fists about Decidian’s Spear’s haft. Bringing it around with teeth gritted, I thrust out madly at the lizard.

  It sidestepped.

  “Get back,” I warned.

  Was that my voice shaking?

  Another jab with the spear.

  The lizard dodged again.

  It swung down with the hooked blade, aiming it this time at my hands, perhaps trying to slice off my fingers and stop my swinging—

  I rolled sideways, avoiding the swipe. A whoosh of air blasted by though—another close call.

  Before I’d even planted my feet, I swiveled, shot out another blind thrust with the spear.

  This one hit true: right between the overlapping scales that were the lizard’s crimson carapace, where its stomach was (assuming its anatomy aped my own).

  For one glorious moment, I believed I had gained the upper hand.

  Then the spear simply bounced off.

  I stared in open-mouthed horror. The spear should’ve impaled him! It should have driven through that crack in the lizard’s armor, cut through its stomach and disembowelled him, just as he was trying to do to me.

  So if I couldn’t slice him open—how in the world was I supposed to beat this thing?

  The lizard swiped again. The horror wrought all over my face, it recognized, perhaps in a basal, animalistic way, that this was its advantage; this was its time to press. It flew at me, the hooked blade arcing through the air—

  I could do nothing but defend—not only because I didn’t have time to mount an offense, under the flurry of blows the lizard directed at me, but because there was no offense I could mount against those seemingly impenetrable scales.

  I threw up the spear again and again; and the lizard swung for me, out with the hooked blade, then with clawed fists, raking for me. They caught me, across the arm, the back of the hand—the spear clanged, clattering against the blade—it vibrated, as the blade sunk into the haft, then shuddered again as the lizard wrenched it out—

  And it pushed forward. Seven feet of muscle and armor and teeth, it forced me back with every advancing step, every punch and swipe it directed at me. I backpedaled and backpedaled, fighting for every step of distance I could put between us—

  And then my back hit the rear wall.

  I gasped. Twisted, as far as I dared, to see—

  Rock, nothing but.

  I was cornered.

  The lizard’s black pupils widened. It hissed again, showing lines of serrated fangs.

  I clutched Decidian’s Spear tight, the only thing between me and this monster.

  It leapt forward, swung—

  I raised the spear, closing my eyes—my last instinct now, to block my gory death from reaching my brain, at least visually—

  Suddenly, out of nowhere, a noise rung out across the Peaks of Pote-K’ah: the universe’s largest bell, ringing with one echoing bass clang.

  The light shining from the central transport button turned from orange to blue.

  “ONE COMPETITOR MAY PROGRESS,” announced the voice of an Antecessor in the back of my head.

  The lizard flinched backward. As though someone had pressed a Taser to the back of its neck, it jerked around, twitching. Its hissing noise gone from an aggressive sound to a pained, panicked whine, it dropped its blade. Clutching the back of its head, it raked its claws across the back of its skull—

  My one chance.

  Swinging out with the spear, I clouted the lizard hard across the side of the head—

  And then I sprinted past.

  The lizard shrieked. It bowed—I heard, behind me, the sound of its blade dragging on the floor as it picked it up—it bounded after me, pushing into motion again—

  I pumped my arms, forced every ounce of power I possessed into my frantic sprinting, across the rock, my feet slapping on the stone beneath, up the steps—the lizard was just feet behind me, shrinking to inches—it was hissing, roaring, its blade swinging for me again, for my neck—

  I screamed, throwing myself forward in a desperate final leap—

  My body sailed through the wall of blue light.

  And then I was gone. The landing pad was whisked away. Likewise, the lizard disappeared in a momentary flash of crimson. I was contorting, turning around and around in the air as this new transport chute forked and wended, cutting into mountains and out of them and around them in an impossible-to-follow path leading up, up …

  I slammed down on my knees again. My palms came out to catch me, Decidian’s Spear spilling out of my grip.

  I gasped.

  “For crying out loud,” I groaned.

  For long seconds, I just crouched there, breathing. My lungs burned. The pain in my knees and palms was worse—but then came the sting from my stomach. It hit me all at once, completely out of nowhere, overridden until now by adrenaline.

  It seared. Like someone had pressed a red-hot poker to my skin, the burn was white hot.

  I clenched my teeth, gasping pained breaths. Pushing onto my knees and straightening, I pulled up my top, to assess the cut the lizard had etched into my stomach. Had my assessment before been wrong? Had it successfully cleaved through to my guts, and I’d only noticed now because the fight-or-flight reflex pushing me to survive had gone?

  But of course, my innards were not spilling out of me. The cut really was shallow. It was long, though. Thin, too—like a lengthy paper cut. The lizard’s blade had been sharpened down to a very firm point.

  At least it would make a decapitation quick, I thought grimly.

  No. Don’t think of that. Your friends are out there right now, fighting the same fight you’ve had.

  Trying to put it out of my mind, I pushed unsteadily onto my feet. I was on another pad, of course, on a higher mountain now: I could see a series of lower peaks. In the distance was the Velocity. Preston’s pufferfish-like ship was nowhere to be seen; I figured it remained in the landing bay where it had arrived. Perhaps there was no crew to speak of anymore; the full complement of mercenaries might be on the landing pad, or engaging in smaller one-on-ones throughout the Peaks.

  Which meant there was likely another to come at me any moment.

  I steadied my feet. Decidian’s Spear gripped in my bloodied hands, I pivoted around the smaller fighting space I was granted. It looked much the same; a cube cut into the rock at the mountain’s side, with two opposite transport pads complete with blue chutes, and a third centrally, the light shining from it pale orange.

  I descended the steps of my own pad. Crossed the middle. And then waited, by the opposite pad, spear clutched tight.

  I forced my breathing to be regular. In; out. In; out.

  No one came.

  It was just me, breathing in the cool air of a mountain suspended in the sky of a gas giant, in the eye of a storm, overlooked by a blanket of star-speckled velvet space.

  And eventually, when my heartbeat had returned almost to normal, the bell rang again across the mountains, closer now.

  “ONE COMPETITOR MAY PROGRESS,” announced an Antecessor’s voice, as the orange light about the central transport button turned blue.

  I leapt onto it, before anyone—anything; I had a hard time thinking of those lizards as anything even close to resembling people—could arrive on my tail.

  I stretched, zipped through the air …

  And landed, opposite—

  “Tyran,” I breathed.

  “Mira,” he said, voice quavering. His golden garb smeared with blood, he clutched his sword tight in hand. All his fingers we
re scarlet. One sleeve had been ripped off. He’d tied it around his forearm, improvizing a bandage. It hadn’t had much effect: crimson liquid ran down his arm from under it, a river that flowed down to his fingers and then dripped off in spatters.

  “What happened to you?” I breathed, jogging across to him.

  “It’s nothing,” he said shortly.

  “This is not nothing!” I grasped for his arm—but he swiped it away.

  “I could ask the same of you,” he snapped back. “Preston’s lizards happened, that’s what.”

  “How many have you fought?” I asked.

  Tyran sighed. “Two. And yourself?”

  “Only one. At the first stage.”

  “The second …?”

  “No one arrived. Not one of my friends, no one from your crew, nor any of Borrick’s mercenaries.”

  Tyran sagged at that. “Heavens. That means—”

  “They might still be fighting somewhere,” I said fiercely. I didn’t dare entertain the other possibility—that somewhere below us, two fighters had driven themselves to mutual death—one of whom might be one of my own friends.

  What if Borrick had come face to face with his father down below us?

  What if they had been forced to fly for each other’s throats to progress through this bloody challenge?

  I shoved the thought aside. It didn’t do to think about. Not right now—not until I knew it had happened. Until then, it was nothing more than a morbid what-if.

  Tyran sighed. Descending down the steps, he approached the central transport button with me, still orange. “So,” he said, tracking it up the mountain—to the very central peak, where it disappeared somewhere near the top. “Are they expecting us to duke it out, do you think? For the final spot?”

  “Maybe,” I said.

  Tyran eyed me sceptically. Hand on his sword, he paused a moment—then he broke into a weary grin. “Well, we won’t give them the show they’re hoping for.” He stowed his sword into its scabbard. “Ruddy fools, the lot of them, if that’s what they’re waiting for. Friends fighting friends … hah!” He barked the laugh to the stars.

  “They are worse than fools,” I said.

  “But alas,” said Tyran, “they possess what we covet. And so we do this dance … again and again …” He sighed. “Sometimes, you know, I do get tired of it.”

  “You do?” I asked.

  Tyran nodded—and in that moment, he looked terribly aged, not just the late forties or early fifties or wherever he was, but so close to old age that I expected him to fall into the seat he would spend much of the rest of his life in. Forehead lined, his face was a mask of shadows.

  “Oh, I adore the glory, of course,” said Tyran. “But it’s all the same, isn’t it? Temples following the same pattern; get one key, get another, use them to access the prize. Perhaps use that to open a new questline. Research some other tract, find some other way forward … rinse and repeat. Honestly,” he said, turning an eye on me, “at times, I do think to myself … ‘This is getting boring.’” He chortled at that, as if he’d made a joke—but there was nothing funny about it. I knew this feeling all too well, now. “A whole universe of possibilities, and the Antecessors chose this. Makes you wonder what the point of it all is, doesn’t it?”

  Blood trickled down his hands. Slicking his fingers, it oozed down, dropping in spatters at the floor.

  “Tyran,” I said, “let me do this last one, will you?”

  He looked at me curiously. “Sorry?”

  “Let me do it,” I said. “You’ve been through enough. You’re tired. If that’s really the last battle up there—if they’ve whittled us down to just two, or three, or however many they’re letting through to the final challenge—let me do it. Take the backseat for now, okay? Just this once.”

  He peered, considered.

  “You would do that?” he asked.

  I nodded. “Of course.”

  The bell chimed across the mountains one last time.

  The transport tube’s light turned blue. “ONE COMPETITOR MAY PROGRESS.”

  “I can do it,” I said, stepping forward. “I’ll fight.”

  “That’s very kind of you, Mira,” said Tyran. He looked down, tiredly, closed his eyes …

  “But no.”

  And then he leapt through the wall of blue light, and vanished.

  “Tyran!” I shouted, surging after him.

  I passed through the blue glow a moment later, but too late to catch him. I was whisked up—the air zipped by, mountains and anti-aircraft guns disappearing in a streak against dull brown cloud alternating with the black of space—I could almost see Tyran, ahead of me, within reach—if I just stuck my hand out, if I leaned forward—

  At the last moment, the tube split. The golden blur that was Tyran shot ahead—but I was carted sideways.

  I squealed a cry as I was whisked another direction around the mountain—through a hole carved in the rock—and then landed in a clatter beside Borrick and Heidi, bloodied and trussed, on one side of a viewing platform arranged around one last arena—

  And in the center of it all: the golden-garbed form of Tyran Burnton—and Preston Borrick, face grim and determined … and a hooked blade of his own poised in hand.

  28

  “FINAL COMPETITORS,” the Antecessor’s disembodied voice announced in the backs of all our heads. “THE WINNER WILL BE GRANTED THE SPOON OF ABUNDANCE.”

  “Winner of what?” asked Heidi. “Another—?”

  The Antecessor both finished her thought and answered the question at once: “FIGHT.”

  Borrick lurched forward at the same time as Tyran unsheathed his sword. Clenching it in claret-coated fingers, he leapt forward, bringing the sword up easily to meet the hooked blade in Preston’s grip—

  They’d no sooner touched than the weapons disappeared, as though disintegrated into a fine powder and dissipated into the air.

  “NO WEAPONS PERMITTED,” said the Antecessor. “USE YOUR FISTS.”

  “Fists?” I echoed—

  Preston swung a punch.

  It clocked Tyran across the face.

  He stumbled backward … and then he corrected his footing, turning the stagger into a kind of dance that brought him two arms’ lengths away from Preston.

  Grinning winningly, he said, “A good swing, Preston, truly—but you’ll have to do better than that.”

  He pushed off on his toes, swinging his own fist.

  It cracked Preston across the nose.

  He staggered back, head whipping around.

  Tyran delivered a one-two punch, right fist then left sailing across Preston’s jaw. Preston whiplashed back with each—I clenched my fists, pumped them, even as Alain beside me flinched—

  Then Preston ducked the third swing Tyran sent sailing for his head. He shoved, low, catching Tyran in the midriff with his shoulder.

  The golden-garbed King of the Skies sailed backward. The grin wiped from his face, he grasped for Borrick’s back—

  Preston shoved him over. Tyran hit his back on the stone—

  Preston threw a hard uppercut. It smashed Tyran in the chin—he grunted, claret spraying from between his teeth—his head bounced on the stone, and I saw the stars on his behalf—

  “Come on,” Heidi urged. “Do him in!”

  Preston slammed a fist down, hard, on Tyran’s nose.

  It hit—there was an awful crunch, as Tyran’s nose broke, and his nostrils erupted with a crimson tide—then Preston lifted his fist high, sailed it down again—

  Tyran twisted.

  Preston’s fist hit stone.

  Tyran bucked—

  Preston lifted. Balance thrown, he canted sideways—

  Tyran swung his legs out and around. He threw Preston over sideways, like a horse tossing its rider off its saddle—

  In a flash he was up on his feet again. He swung a punch at the back of Preston’s head—it was Preston’s turn to grunt, flailing forward on his hands—then Tyran threw an
other, crashing it against Preston’s skull. He pistoned a kick, hitting Preston in the backside, sending him scooting forward on his hands once more—

  “HAH!” Heidi roared. “KICK HIS ASS!”

  Alain flinched beside me. Teeth gritted, his jaw was a hard line. His fists were clenched too, the fingernails likely pushing bloody crescents into his palms.

  I gripped his wrist, to try to ease him. “I’m sorry about this. It must be hard.”

  “It is,” he said tightly. “But it is also well deserved—and the only way to stop him from …”

  “I know. But still.”

  Tyran had the upper hand. Preston scrabbled forward, trying to evade the flurry of kicks and punches Tyran rained down upon him. But he could not get far: Tyran followed him at a close clip, landing blow after blow—

  “That’s for my hand, you crooked cheat,” he bellowed, thumping Borrick in the neck.

  Preston coughed, stumbling sideways—

  “I warned you,” Tyran taunted, half jovial and half threatening. “You should have stepped aside, Borrick. You cannot win—not against the Golden King of the Skies.” He sailed another punch through the air, cracking Preston across the jaw as he twisted. “And you will not—” another punch to the jaw “—take—” another; Preston jerked, spun round onto his back “—my—” Tyran sailed an uppercut across Preston’s jaw, jolting his head backward “SPOON!” he finished.

  He raised his fist high, sailed it down—

  Preston caught it.

  Gritting his teeth up at Tyran, he glared at him through dazed, yet very angry, eyes.

  Tyran pulled his hand back—but Borrick had him tight.

  His face fell. Expression contorting, he began, “What is this …?”

  Preston coughed a spray of red up into Tyran’s face.

  “The King of the Skies,” he growled, voice thick— “is dethroned.”

  He pistoned up a hard kick, sailing it right between Tyran’s legs.

  Tyran yelped. He buckled—

  Borrick thrust out another kick, slamming his heel right into Tyran’s balls. The King of the Skies fell backward, hands shooting out to protect himself—but Preston still had one, and he used it to lever himself up as Tyran tumbled down, held it firm as he loomed over the golden figure—