Page 40 of Of Spindles and Nightfall
The prince spat on the ground before stalking to the side.
“From the Kingdom Misophae,” the announcer said, unfazed by the threatening display. “Rebos the Spliceborn and Dravrek the Ravager.”
The pair stepped through the entrance to the throne room—a half-basilisk and a werewolf, both slick with blood along one side of their bodies. Heavy chains hung from their necks, not as bindings, but as a statement. They were Misophae. Outcasts, half-bloods, the broken and discarded of demon kind. Their shackles, once symbols of subjugation, were now worn as trophies. Like threats.
Gasps rippled through the chamber as several demons caught sight of the shards of glass embedded in the skin above their collarbones—a brutal, near-fatal ritual meant to protect against hostile enchantment. Few survived the procedure. Fewer still emerged strong enough to compete in the trials.
The blood slicking their forms was fresh. Human blood. It dripped from their flesh and clung to their weapons, trailing behind them and seeping into the floor, filling the fractures left by Terra Monstrum’s entrance. The cracks resembled veins, pulsing with dark promise.
Zarathos eyed Rebos, the half-basilisk. Human above the waist, serpentine below, his scaled body slithered along the stone in cold silence. Zarathos had struck a bargain with him not long ago. Rebos gave no sign of it.
Although not forbidden like those with the trial council, these deals wouldn’t gain him favor with the council.
He’d let them suspect nothing.
Zarathos nodded to the two champions. After Rebos, Zarathos’s luck ran out. The rest were coming for his crown. “May you fight with ferociousness and without mercy to your last breath.”
“Next is Eldravis, the Spirit Crusher, and Valkotha the Harrower from Kingdom Spiritu Malignos.”
Zarathos fought to keep his apathy in place. He didn’t have bargains with either champion from the last two kingdoms, though not for lack of trying. What was worse, he suspected that both Kingdom Spiritu Malignos and Kingdom Aeria had banded together in their own attempt to bring him down.
The temperature in the room dropped, a chill running over Zarathos’s skin and going straight to his bones. A white mist floated eerily through the doorway and within its haze, he made out two pairs of orange glowing eyes.
Eldravis and Valkotha stepped forward, graceful and silent. To compete in the Demon Trials, the spirits of Spiritu Malignos were required to inhabit the bodies of other demons, giving them physical form. But the illusion never held perfectly. The faint stench of rot lingered around them. Dark, jagged cracks ran through their borrowed flesh. Their movements sagged in places they shouldn’t, their eyes blinked just a second too slow. These bodies weren’t theirs and everyone could see it.
Eldravis moved within the frame of a troll—originally of Terra Monstrum. Smaller than Tigon, but still formidable, with thicklimbs and fists made for pulverizing. Valkotha, on the other hand, had taken a formicidra: tall as an abaddon, with a spindly insectile body. His head resembled that of an ant, crowned with twitching antennae and serrated mandibles. Wispy wings jutted from his back, pulsing faintly.
The imperfections of their stolen flesh mattered little. Even though they looked haphazardly pieced together, when the time came, they’d show their prowess. No doubt they’d been training in these bodies for years. They remained silent. But the expression in their glowing eyes, glinting with deadly hope, spoke volumes.
They bowed before Zarathos as he repeated the ceremonial phrase, then moved aside to sign their oath agreement, the mist curling after them.
“And finally, from Kingdom Aeria we have Xaphoron, the Weightless Dagger and Balafur the Thunderclaw.”
The windows along the side of the chamber exploded inward, wind howling through the room as the curtains snapped and billowed like sails in a storm.
From the skies above, the two sky-stalkers for Aeria descended, wings slicing the air as they landed with practiced, deadly grace. Both were armed to the teeth, weapons strapped across their backs and sides, and each bore the warrior crest of their kingdom, a skull wreathed in broken, jagged wings, sewn over their hearts. A mark of the elite.
They bowed in unison, and Zarathos recited the ritual line.
“We look forward to the opportunity to prove ourselves in combat,” said Balafur, the gargoyle, his voice rough as stone.
“May the most deserving demon win the Demon Trials,” Xaphoron added, his storm-colored eyes glowing with a pale, near-white light.
They both looked at Zarathos. He saw it in their expressions. They didn’t believe the most deserving demon sat on the throne before them. Not a threat. A vow.
Zarathos rose from his seat, letting the silence stretch just enough to draw every gaze.
Then he spoke, voice low and sharp as a blade.
“Do you know whose bones adorn this throne?”
Xaphoron’s eyes narrowed, but Balafur answered. “That is your father’s throne, so I’d assume the extinct races, the ones he wiped out, shapeshifters and incubi.”
The answer was most likely correct, though Zarathos hid the way it unsettled him. “And who else?” he demanded, as if testing a child.
“Your half-siblings,” Xaphoron offered.
Zarathos forced a cruel smile over his face. “Myhalf-siblings. Twenty-four of them whom I bested to become the demon arch king, and now I sit ontheirbones.” He bared his teeth at kingdom Aeria. “And you don’t think I can do the same to you in some meager Demon Trials?”
