Ravenous (Taint of the Gods #1)

48. RIEKA

48

RIEKA

F reshly fried meat sizzled, the smoked smell salting the air. My stomach growled begrudgingly as a reminder I hadn’t yet eaten dinner.

But food was not what greeted me when I opened my eyes.

A burning corpse lay feet away, the skin blackened and cracking. A chorus of cheers ripped violently at my eardrums as I snapped into a sitting position.

The dirt floor of a cave was beneath me, the white limestone walls around me spattered with dark charred lines as if struck by a burning whip. Wide arched windows cut out of the walls several feet from the ground were filled with shouting spectators.

Spectators of an arena.

I was in a Fiend Pit.

The concept of forcing wild creatures to fight to the death for entertainment was already considered barbaric in Deos, but the fact those creatures were made by Organics through the process of Bio-Architecture, creatures considered unnatural to the natural world created by the gods was tantamount to sacrilege, a crime that constituted immediate Sundering. Fiends were all but extinct in Deos, culled in the name of the Celestials. The last sighting west of the Erania Range had been over fifty years ago in an arena very much like this one.

My instinct told me to reach for my boot. But about halfway down my leg I remembered I’d chosen to wear nice shoes instead of practical ones. Etrina was still in my boot. On the train.

Gods damn it!

Slowly I rose to my feet, my dress disturbing the dust on the floor. Eagar and curious faces stared down at me, contempt and something akin to frenetic excitement oozed down from the galleries.

“Ladies and gentlemen,” a voice announced over a speaker system. “For the finale, on the left I present to you our female fighter.”

Holding a long slender silver baton to his throat, and pointing a gnarled hand in my direction was one of the stocky men from the Soulstitcher tent. “And to our right our reigning champion. Now who said they’ve never seen two Kanahari fight before.”

I spun around at the pitmaster’s words, desperate to see exactly who he expected me to fight. A tall figure by the opposite wall, wings outstretched turned around, his focus on his hands as he attempted to wrap them.

“Taren!”

The Talon stilled his movements. Slowly, brown eyes rose to meet mine. The moment he saw me, the bindings fell from his grip.

My feet were faster than I expected. But so was the pitmaster’s reaction. No sooner had I crossed the halfway point of the pit was I whipped back across the dirt by the collar around my neck. An electric blue tether shimmered in the air above me.

“Looks like someone is a little too eager for a fight. Bets up!” he shouted.

I rose back to my feet, ignoring the pitmaster’s excuse for humour and returned my attention to Taren.

“Rieka are you hurt?” Taren’s inner voice called out. He’d stretched himself to the limit of his collar, the same blue tether stretching out behind him and into a plate in the far wall.

They’d collared him.

A small part of me had hoped that he had escaped before they had put that on him. But I saw the scabbed skin around his neck, the extreme chaffing. He’d been here a while. Taren saw what held my focus and a sad smile rose to his chapped lips. “I see neither of us managed to escape.”

They cut his hair.

Kanahari culturally grow their hair long for warmth, but the quality of ones hair also serves as an indication for health. And Taren had such beautiful hair. It was now no longer than Rhydian’s but it was far too short for him to bear his tribal colours. I could not see the purple-dyed strip of hide anywhere on his person.

“How did you get here?”

Taren turned and picked up his bindings, making a choice to return to wrapping his hands. “I was not a good fit for their Sky Hawk program. Being Kanahari made me useless in their eyes. These wonderful gentlemen thought I was better suited here.”

“You won’t fight for others,” I said in realisation. Kanahari pacificism permits violence only under one condition.

He nodded. “They bet on the fact I would fight to defend my own life.”

“They want us to fight one another?”

Taren shook his head. “I will not fight you Rieka.”

“And yet you strap your hands?”

His expression told me I’d wounded him. “It is not you I do this for now.”

A gong was struck and from over the edge of one of the empty windows something large was thrown in. I’d had no time to think. The creature charged me and Taren ordered me to get down. I ducked just in time for Taren to fly straight over me. A horrible scream ripped from the creature’s throat. Blood peppered the air. When I looked over, Taren’s bare feet were covered in blood having just torn through its chest with his talons.

Taren prayed over the body as the crowd cheered in excitement of the creatures slaughter. When I approached it, I realised it wasn't just any creature. Half in transition, nails long, hair matted—this was a Rabid.

From inside the gallery I saw another Rabid being moved into place to be thrown into the pit. Taren was already preparing himself for the next kill he was to make, moving into a position where he could defend me if he needed to.

A fire roiled inside my veins. We were nothing but entertainment to these people, pets and animals used for sport. Had they nothing better to do with their time than spend in on betting which of us would outlive the other?

Fear is what drove these people. They feared us and what we could do. But more than anything they feared their gods.

But perhaps any god would do.

I knew what I needed to do next. And I knew what it would take out of me. Bespelling them was out of the question. There was no telling what they would do to me or to Taren if I failed. This was my only choice. I’d never done it to more than a few people at a time, never forced them to see things as I wished. But I refused to be what they wanted me to be and I refused to be scared of them.

I took a step forward drawing Taren’s gaze, ignoring him when he urged me to stop, and I growled at the spectators. The sound reverberated off the walls so loudly that the women in the gallery screamed in terror, the pitmaster dropped his baton in shock before looking down at me from his little hole in the wall.

I exhaled calmly when I had his attention and silence had fallen on the arena.

“Someone wants to talk to you!”

I let the confusion knit his brows for only a few seconds, long enough for me to force myself into their minds. Into all their minds.

The spectral I created appeared before them in the blink of an eye. Robes of black adorned his eight-foot frame, curls of pale blond bounced off broad shoulders as golden eyes studied the crowd in apt boredom.

He was perfect. Identical to the real thing.

The spectral turned and found the pitmaster, fixing him with his gaze.

With a voice I knew as well as my own I let the spectral speak, though his lips remained unmoving.

“You have something of mine.” The voice drawled in their heads melodically, causing several women to immediately faint. It’s not every day one gets to speak to a god.

The spectral moved closer towards the pitmaster’s window, his size increasing the closer he got until he stood at face level with the cowering man. My hands started to shake so I fisted them in my skirts to hide them from view.

“The girl is mine. You have no right to take her.”

“We didn’t know,” the pitmaster said, his voice quivering as the spectators around him fled for the walls but not the arena, every one of them too scared to look away. “We’ll release her,” he replied, keeping his eyes locked on the golden ones.

“Yes, you will.” The god spectral leaned in so that his face was inches from the pitmasters. “ You will do anything she asks of you. Treat her words as my words. Do you understand me?”

The pitmaster nodded.

“DO YOU UNDERSTAND ME!”

The scent of piss saturated the air.

The pitmaster fell to his knees, his face white, his pants wet. “Yes, Divine One.”

The god spectral smiled, and I had to look away.

“Good human.”

Then I released them all. The god vanished and I staggered right into Taren’s arms. When I gazed up at him, realisation had settled on his features. He knew I’d done it.

Silence lay heavy on the arena as the spectators stood frozen, terrified by the thought that they had been moments from death. Fear, and terror, piss, tears, puke. There was nothing quite like the stench of the presence of a god.

“Rieka?”

My gaze shot up into the gallery where only now a whisp of pine permeated the rest. I saw a stranger staring down at me, an expression on his face I couldn’t quite place. But his eyes.

“Rhydian.”

“Someone get her out of there!” shouted the pitmaster. His words sent the arena into a frenzy. Spectators fled, screaming and running for the exits. No one wanted to stay where a god had declared his anger.

Two men jumped into the pit, one to the wall and the other to me. He hesitated when he saw Taren wasn’t moving from my side. Cautiously, the man pulled a tech piece from his pocket and held it to my collar and then turned his attention to the man at the wall, a similar tech piece in his hand. They pressed a button on their respective devices at the same time. The blue tether rippled in the air, then shot off from my collar and into the wall.

“And his.” I indicated to Taren.

The two men hesitated, looking to their boss for answers, only for the pale man to nod his approval.

The man moved to Taren. “Now,” I said with as much authority as my shaking body could muster. “Remove his collar.”

“Do it,” the pitmaster ordered.

Within a few minutes Taren’s collar had departed his neck for the pocket of the man who removed it, the marks left behind making me wish I kept my golden-eyed spectral around a minute longer.

“Now mine.”

I could feel the heat of Rhydian’s eyes watching me from the gallery, his shadowed figure emerging from the dark to watch as the man approached me.

He targeted my collar with the device.

Nothing happened.

He did it again, and again until sweat started to drip down his brow and he frantically kept looking over his shoulder at his boss.

The pitmaster frustrated, jumped down from the gallery. He kept his distance from Taren, his knuckles turning white as he tightened his grip on the silver baton in his hand and approached me.

“I can’t do it, sir.” The device beeped loudly as if in agreement.

Their boss snatched the device and attempted it himself. From the gallery, Rhydian leaned against the arch of the window.

I returned my attention to the pitmaster, his own brow knitting in frustration until he too began to sweat in fear.

I tried to remain calm. “What is the matter?”

He smacked the device against the inside of his palm a few times and tried using it again, only to have the same result. The device beeped in objection.

“I can’t release it. There is some sort of lock code on it.” He touched a button on the device and like the techboard at the slave camp, an image was projected on the air. My stomach seemed to want to crawl out of my throat.

Rotating inside a set of consecutive circles were dozens of glowing blue patterns — characters of a language I have known since birth.

It wasn’t a code. It was Gods’ Tongue.

Dirt shuffled underfoot. I glanced back up at Rhydian and found him departing from the window.

“A code like this,” the pitmaster added. “Only the manufacturer would have the key code.”

I let a rumble rise to my throat. The pitmaster staggered back under my gaze. I knew he was right, but it still pissed me off.

I closed the distance between us once more, keeping my voice low. “My Divine One will be displeased. It’s probably best you flee this place and never return; he’s not known to be forgiving.” I then paused, another thought occurring to me.

The pitmaster swallowed hard as I closed the gap between us.

For a human, he was larger than most, but under fear of divine anger, he was no taller than a child. I leaned in, my lips close to his ear. “However many others you’ve got fighting here, collared or chained in a cell, if I were you, I’d release them too. Who knows who they belong to?”

Ten minutes later, Taren and I found ourselves in an alley, the door we’d walked through slammed shut behind us.

“What now?” Taren asked.

Fragrant pine and wet soil drifted down the alleyway. I spun around and found Rhydian leaning on the alley wall fiddling with the band around his wrist. The leather of the jacket glistened blood red in the amber glow of the Kindling fires that mounted the stone above him.

I moved to approach him, only for Rhydian himself to push off the wall, the stench of anger tainting our reunion. “The train arrives in fifteen minutes. We need to be on it.”