Page 73 of A Queen Of Broken Realms
It takes a few turns to catch up with the group. The scent of blood surrounds them like fog. Urtur presses them forward, following close enough to be menacing but far enough that the audience can see the obstacles the group encounters clearly. I hear Zida hiss over the wall to my left and know the groups are getting close to the courtyard where the weapons lay waiting.
I slow as I reach Urtur and use his body to block me from view, but the demons are so focused on what’s ahead of them that they don’t see me coming.
Music rushes toward us from every direction.
Mayday!! Fiesta Feversurrounds the playing field. The energy from the audience fills the cavern so completely that it feels like there’s no room for air. It washes over me. I smile.
Do I want to play rock and roll in a disco party?
Yes. Yes, I do.
The demons still haven’t seen me. They’re too distracted by the loud music and the beasts and the cheers. They run to the weapons in the wide room. Duman’s group is just a second behind Pyrrhus’s. There are only four weapons for the taking among eight competitors. Their tenuous threads of allegiance are about to snap.
I slip past Urtur and run after them, my arms pumping, my grip tight on the handle of my sword. Two of the injured demons fight over an ax. Another scoops up a dagger and runs for a corridor on the far side of the square as two men chase after her. Another pair of Reapers have Duman cornered, and he swings a scythe in wide arcs in a bid to hold them off. Pyrrhus grabs a sword but the archer from Imhas kicks the back of his knee and Pyrrhus goes down, a second kick to his wrist dislodging his hold on the weapon. Pyrrhus tries to fight back, but with his existing wounds from the dangers of the maze, he’s in little position to defend himself as the archer aims to strike him down.
I plunge mykatanathrough the archer’s back before he has the chance.
My hiss is drowned by the rapture of the crowd that surrounds us. Guitars and drums trap my heartbeat. The stomping boots weave a beat through the lyrics. Crumbs of rock dislodge from the roof and rain across the Gauntlet. As my sword slides free of the archer’s lung and he falls to the floor, the crowd cheers.
They cheer for their Queen.
I grab the archer’s shoulder and turn him over. His eyes are wide with shock and pain. His pupils are little more than pins of flame. A bloody froth foams from his lips and nose as he exhales.
“Uh oh,” I say as I lean over the archer with a sweet smile and a wicked glare. He begins to convulse. His chest spasms. His eyes stay gripped to mine as I tilt my blade between us and examine the sharpened steel. “Looks like there might have been Angelwing poison on that blade. I wonder where I got more of that from.” I give him a smile of fangs and glowing eyes.
Eyes that glow ice blue.
I drive my blade through his throat, pinning the vertebrae to the stone floor and twisting until the satisfying pop and crunch of bone vibrates through my palm.
The air is charged, like static before the lightning strike. It’s the shock in the crowd. Someone screams. When the first hybrid gallops into the courtyard and barrels down a demon, a deafening ovation erupts around us.
The presence of the hybrids is like something both foreign and comforting in my thoughts. A ball of cotton rolling across the inner surface of my skull. The fuzzy presence of something that shouldn’t be in my head, yet feels soft and yielding, malleable to my own thoughts. It doesn’t hurt. It doesn’t feel like they push for too much space in my mind. Maybe it’s because I don’t tell them what to do. Theywantto be here.
They want justice from wherever it can be taken. And traitorous demons who hoped to force them to serve a war they never asked for? Well, that seems like a pretty good place to start.
I catch Zara Sargan’s eye as she enters the courtyard and smiles at the chaos spread before her. An ancient, powerful vampire, she seems to have withstood Semyon’s hybridization better than those creatures created from younger vampires, some of which are a grotesque combination of skin and snout, fur and fangs and claws. She gives me a little grin of pointed teeth then rushes forward as the players try to flee this latest, deadliest trap. More hybrids enter the space and I turn my attention to Pyrrhus who’s still on the floor, his jaw is clamped tight, though his wild eyes and ragged pulse belie the panic heating his veins. He clutches his hand to his chest. I smell the marrow of broken bones.
“Time to go,” I say, getting to my feet. I drop my left hand toward him. He hesitates to take it, even with the sounds of Joash screaming nearby as a hybrid slashes his calf with long claws as he tries to run toward us. “I’m picking your side.”
With a final exhale of trepidation, Pyrrhus takes my offered hand and I draw him to his feet. “Thank you,” he says.
“Don’t thank me just yet. If you fall at the bridge, I’m not fishing your melting flesh from the acid with a pasta strainer.”
Pyrrhus replies with a worried grimace, and then we take off for the corridor I know will lead toward the end of the maze. We pass the female demon around the first corner, her bloodied body turning to ash.
I help Pyrrhus dodge an obstacle of wires set on tracks through the floor and walls, ready to slice through whatever triggers pressure sensors built into the corridor. There’s a body sliced into numerous sections that are turning to cinders. There’s a severed foot on the floor and a trail of blood. It isn’t long before we encounter the foot’s owner staggering down the hall. I cut him down and we keep going.
It’s a few more turns when we make it to the unstable bridge.
Curls of acrid smoke drift from the deep pool of heated acid. It bubbles beneath the broken panels of the bridge that hang by frayed rope from a steel trellis. Some sections of the bridge are thin, narrow boards that twist in the slightest hint of shifting air. Others are large enough for two or three people at a time but are spaced far enough apart that we’ll need to jump.
I know I could leave Pyrrhus here to find his own way. I could backtrack all the way to the starting line. But if I do that, I’ll lose the crowd. No matter how great this show is, no matter how much is satisfies their need for violent entertainment, they would never forget it if their Queen came down to fight only to turn up a coward.
And right now, they’re cheering my name.
There’s no other way for either of us.
“You first. Take your time. I’ll watch your back,” I say as we climb the stairs leading to the broken bridge. Pyrrhus nods, his jaw crushing his nerves tight between his molars. When he starts the crossing, I turn to protect our back, my weapon at the ready. The crowd claps and whistles for every step he crosses, and they ooh and gasp for every near miss. But Pyrrhus crosses the bridge to the sound of the crowd calling his name. Part of me thinks he’ll take off now that he’s made it to the landing, but he doesn’t. He stands and waits, though I wouldn’t put it past him to try to steal mykatanaor push me into the acid if I make it to the other side.
