Chapter Eight
Malira’s charge is a chaotic, hopping thing that makes it hard to read which direction she will come from. I swing my weighted chain, trying to keep her at a distance, adrenaline rushing through me as I find myself in a fight that I did not want or expect.
The worst part is that there's no reason why she should be my enemy, except that Vex got to her and started talking to her before I could. Malira swings a thunderous blow at my head, and I barely dodge in time to avoid it. I hear a click as my foot touches one of the pressure plates on the ground and I throw myself aside as a spear shoots across the chamber ,only just missing both of us.
Malira bares her teeth again. “That's going to make this interesting. But then, I don't need to use the floor.”
She runs up one of the walls, swinging at me, forcing me to duck. I jab with my spear, making her move away, but she comes back at me again. The ferocity of her attack is hard to contain when she is moving so quickly and attacking from such unpredictable angles. I barely get my weapons up in time to protect myself.
“You're not so dangerous without a bunch of animals to do your fighting for you,” Malira snarls, attacking again and again. My training has given me considerable skills by this point, but there's no denying that she's right: I am much less dangerous when I can't call an animal to my side to aid me.
I end up having to use the traps on the floor to try to hold her off, stepping on them deliberately, so that the spears fly across the space in which we're fighting. We both need to dodge when that happens, and it means I get some respite.
But she's still advancing, still attacking, I'm not sure I can beat her in a straight up fight. I keep using my chain to force her to move away from me, and I slash with my spear in an attempt to stop closing the distance in between sweeps of the chain. But I know there's only so long I will be able to keep it up, and I don't like the thought of what will happen when she manages to make it inside the arc of the weapons.
Even now, she's closing in, moving from unpredictable angles, her great sword raised, ready to attack. As she does it, though, another figure enters the room, moving up behind up on nearly silent feet. Vesper is advancing on her, his curved blades ready in his fists.
Malira must see me look his way, because she turns at the last minute, arresting her charge and bringing her sword up to block. It means that she stops the blade aimed at her throat, but she still cries out as she suffers a nasty wound on her side.
Malira falls back, looking from me to Vesper, as if trying to decide if she can take both of us. She clearly decides that she can’t, because she stands and runs from the chamber, leaving the two of us alone.
“Are you all right?” Vesper asks.
I nod. “Thank you for saving me. I owe you my life.”
“Well, you can repay me by helping me to get out of here,” Vesper says. “I figure we stand a better chance of getting through the maze if we work together.”
That sounds good to me. I have just seen the danger of trying to progress alone when there are other gladiators here who are my enemies. There are so few of us in the Champions Trial. How is it that most of them seem to be interested in hurting me?
“I can find the way,” I tell Vesper. “If you stick with me, we might be able to overcome any challenges in our way.”
He gestures for me to lead the way, so I do, picking one of the tunnels out of this chamber and testing the ground ahead of me again with my spear.
“You're sure this is the way?” Vesper asks.
“I can see through the eyes of one of the birds above,” I explain. “My powers are more limited than they were, but I can still do that, and I can sense when beasts are close.”
It's a combination that means we can make progress, avoiding the most dangerous spots while continuing through the maze. I hear the sounds of battle again somewhere behind us. Through the eyes of the bird, I can see Vex taking a more direct route, using his knives to slice through a spider the size of a small horse.
He has the advantage in that respect. I must move around all the animals within the maze because I cannot control them. I must find a route that does not involve so much combat.
It means winding our way deeper and deeper into the maze, then finding a route out again. The way to the exit seems clear, although I know better than to trust that, still testing the ground, still trying to make sure we're not about to fall into any traps.
Ahead, there is another large chamber, and the lack of obvious threats within it makes me cautious. Perhaps there is a trap there that I do not see, but as far as I can tell, there are only the broken bases of several pillars, casting shadows on the ground from the sun above. There is a passage beyond the chamber that I know will lead to the exit. Given how far we've come, there is no other route that makes sense. We must go this way.
“What are we waiting for?” Vesper asks.
“I'm not sure. Something just feels… wrong about this.”
“We need to go this way, don't we?" he says. He might not have my bird's eye view of the maze, but at this point, there isn't any other way we can go.
“Yes,” I admit.
“Then waiting here won’t do us any good,” Vesper says. He starts to lead the way, moving forward into the chamber, so that I must choose either to stand there alone or follow him. I do the latter, keeping my spear ready just in case.
All my caution is for nothing, though, when we reach the center of the room and I suddenly feel the presence of almost a dozen beasts around us. A familiar kind of beast: shadow cats.
A dozen of them slink from the shadows of the broken pillars, looking half-starved, snarling at us and ready to attack. They are not pouncing yet, but I get the feeling that's only because they're waiting for one of us to move, one of us to give them an opening in which to strike.
I also know that the pause won’t last forever. Sooner or later, their hunger will overcome their need to wait for the perfect moment. The instant one of them attacks, I know that all of them will do so.
Vesper looks around with obvious fear at having walked into such a dangerous situation, but he looks over at me as if he expects me to solve it easily.
“You can persuade them to leave us alone, can't you?” he says.
I wish it were that easy. I wish I still had the power to do something like that. As it is, controlling one bird is pushing me to my limits.
I hold up my arm, showing him the dampener. “This is restricting me too much.”
“Then I will cut it off you,” Vesper offers.
It's the same offer Alaric made, and I can't accept it for the same reasons.
“If you do that I will be punished, even executed, afterwards. It's one thing that Naia cut it from me without me knowing she was going to, but for someone to do it when I've asked them to would just be open defiance.”
“Then we will do this the other way,” Vesper says.
I feel something touch the edges of my mind. It feels like when Ravenna is trying to control me, only different. Rather than wrapping around me and trying to push me down, to overwhelm my being, this force seems to be helping me, drawing power up from inside me, boosting the little that I have access to with the dampener.
I stare at Vesper, realizing that he has access to mind magic.
“You’re like her,” I say. “Like Ravenna.”
Vesper looks a little annoyed. “Our powers are opposites. She can control others, belittle them, push down their consciousness until they do what she wishes. My gift is for boosting the powers of others with my mind. Like this.”
He puts a hand on my shoulder. I feel power rolling through me now, easy for me to access even with the dampener in place.
With that power, I am able to reach out. I can feel the minds of the shadow cats, and I grasp them, sliding inside, taking control. I'm surprised to find that I have missed this. I have missed having this much power at my fingertips. I have been so weak and so helpless, but in this moment I am neither. I whisper to the shadow cats.
“You don't want to hunt us. Go back.”
They stand there staring at me for a moment or two, golden eyes locked onto me. One by one, they slip back into the shadows that they had come out of, disappearing from view, leaving the way clear for the two of us.
“That should be enough,” Vesper says. He lets go of my shoulder, nods to me, and then walks on through the chamber.
I stand there for a moment to try to make sense of what has just happened. I had power in the seconds when Vesper was near me, but now I can feel it draining away, leaving me as restricted as before. I realize that my control over the shadow cats will be failing, and it won't be long before they come back looking for food.
I hurry after Vesper before that happens, heading for the exit to the maze.