15. Lira
15
LIRA
I hadn’t realized how massive the space was until the full obstacle course came into sight. Though the area was still dark, the moon rose high in the first clear sky I’d seen in ages, illuminating the entire coliseum.
The ground was rock and dirt and shaped in a perfect oval.
I swallowed, taking in a massive fifty-foot-tall tower on our right. I wasn’t sure how the darkness had obscured it, yet despite its height, it wasn’t even half the size of the stadium.
Directly across from us sat an enormous axe gauntlet trial with double-sided axes swinging in different patterns. There was no way I would have tempted fate and tried to navigate that obstacle for any sort of protection, but then the moonlight glinted off the blade of a sword that was tied with other weapons right smack in the middle of the course. Weapons for protection. Something I needed.
I edged back to hide in the darkness as the people in front of me gave me dirty looks then took off, no doubt desperate to get a weapon to protect themselves and come back to kill me. I wasn’t a threat to them.
I was thankful for that, but the reprieve wouldn’t last long. They’d be eager to spill my blood, so I needed to get my bearings. I suspected there was more to this place than what I could see.
“Over here,” the dark-blond man shouted, running left. “Let’s get these. They’re easy pickings.”
I looked over just in time to see a cluster of weapons tied together on the ground.
The blond man and five other men ran toward the weapons while the rest rushed off toward the axe gauntlet. For the moment, I wasn’t their main target, which gave me time to survey my surroundings for a chance to survive.
I scanned the rest of the area. A massive white rock took up thirty feet of space across from the tower. Numerous weapons had been laid strategically in the center on the top.
A boom pierced my ears, and a male prisoner screamed in agony. He dropped, and another explosion went off, but I couldn’t make out what was happening. Ten people were between me and the person.
In a chain reaction, a platform sprang up on my left, hurtling the blond man and one other across the arena. Their bodies smacked against the tower, barely missing one of the eight people climbing to the top, and the sound of cracking bones reached me. Black blood sprayed from their bodies and dripped down the gray stone.
With the crowd in front of me now cleared, I could see across the entire arena. Four people in various spots in the center of the floor were sinking into the ground.
My throat clenched as I realized that the area around them was faintly darker than the dirt, and the way they sank faster as they fought told me everything I needed to know—quicksand.
The body of a man only ten feet away appeared to be missing a leg and half his side. He must have been in the explosion. Another boom sounded from the area between the axe gauntlet and the massive rock. A female with white hair that had frosted tips widened her eyes and stared down. Half of her foot was missing. She wobbled, trying not to fall, and searched the ground around her.
Then I noticed blackened rocks similar to what was under the man in front of me.
My chest heaved. This was worse than I’d expected. Not only did we have to fight each other, but there were booby traps all around us.
I could use that to my advantage if I thought quickly.
From the platform on my lower left, level to the ground, came groans from a man who’d jumped on the massive rock. Sharp edges stuck through his hands, and blood puddled from them and even out of his shoes.
A sour taste filled my mouth, and I tried not to let hysteria claim me.
Whimpers from the four fae trapped in the quicksand snapped my attention back to them. Blood pooled around them like the sand was ripping them apart. My heart quickened. It had to be porous quicksand, which was worse than the soupy kind. This kind would indeed rip them apart and push all the oxygen from their lungs, killing them before their heads went under.
Eldrin beamed from his spot beside Tavish. He was enjoying watching his own people die.
Tavish, Finnian, and Caelan all wore sober expressions like this was the last thing they wanted. The contrast between the four was striking and spoke volumes .
Tavish wasn’t as coldhearted as I’d believed. He had baggage, but he hadn’t gone down that evil of a road.
Knowing I couldn’t help the trapped prisoners, I turned my attention to the axe gauntlet. There had to be more to it.
Another group of men was working together to figure out how to get the weapons from the platform, and I couldn’t keep standing here. I needed to get a weapon or find a hiding place for the next hour.
People had reached the top of the tower and were climbing over the edge, which meant that it wasn’t a place I could hide. My ears rang, and my blood turned cold when the truth settled over me. There was no place to go. I’d have to fight and hope like hell I survived.
My attention focused on the hidden platform. The weapons had been jostled during the launch, meaning the rope might have loosened. I just needed one of the men to loosen it further for me to grab one.
Two men squatted by a third man’s legs and grabbed his ankles. Once their grip was secured, the third man inched across the platform, reaching for the weapons. The crawling man yanked on the rope, loosening one side just as the platform sprang.
The two guys tried to yank the third back, but they weren’t quick enough. The man jolted upright, and the two of them rose a few feet off the ground. They released their hold on their friend, and he flew off the platform as the two of them crashed to the ground.
With the awkward momentum, Crawling Guy didn’t smash into the tower but instead landed in the middle of the quicksand trap, which was still tugging down two who hadn’t died yet. He landed facedown in the sand and died almost instantly.
The weapons he’d loosened landed a few feet from me— one short sword, one dagger, two quivers of arrows, and a slingshot. The rest of the items scattered into the quicksand, including all three bows.
I took off running, needing to get there before the others. I had my eye on the short sword and the dagger, but ten others were rushing in the same direction.
I pumped my arms faster, but the others moved quicker. They reached the stash of weapons seconds before me and began fighting over the sword and dagger while I swooped in at the edge, grabbed a quiver of arrows, then snagged the sling. I pivoted to get out before anyone noticed me, but a gigantic, calloused hand caught my arm.
I got spun around to face a man with hair the color of coal. He sneered, “Not so fast, sunscorched . You don’t get any of these.” He reached for the arrows protectively tucked like a football against me, leaving himself open for me to kick him in the gut.
His breath whooshed out of him, and he stumbled back, taken off guard. Then, his feet began sinking.
I froze, realizing what I’d done.
I’d kicked him into the quicksand. I’d moved to help him when another man turned to look at us.
“Aron!” the sinking guy called out. “Help me.”
“I’ll help you all right.” Aron chuckled, strode up, and sliced the man’s throat with the dagger. “This death is better than one by that quicksand.”
“Allies,” the man gargled as he clasped his hands around his throat like that would stop him from bleeding out. Black blood trickled between his fingers and ran down his arms as death overtook him.
My body became heavy as I realized I’d caused the man to die. But if I continued to stand there, I’d die alongside him .
The nape of my neck buzzed like I could feel the prisoners’ gazes around me. I didn’t bother to glance at them, not wanting to acknowledge them or allow them to see my fear. Instead, I ducked, spun, and raced toward the side of the arena to keep my distance.
“The princess is mine !” Aron bellowed. “Her death will be at my hand.”
I watched the ground in front of me for dark rocks and traps, listening to the pounding of the man’s boots as he chased me. The other two men were still focused on the weapons on the platform, so I shifted direction and ran toward the outline now that it had sprung from the ground, and I edged around the men.
Aron was only a few steps behind, so I ran right like I was going to land on the platform. Just as my foot hit the edge of the line where I could see it would spring forward, I spun left. Aron ran onto the platform. I’d hoped that with his speed, he’d get off it before it launched since the others had needed to pull the rope first, but with my sudden disappearance, he stumbled over his feet. His right boot got stuck in the rope, and when he yanked to break free, the trap sprang.
The rope sent his body jolting up instead of toward the tower, but when the rope finally snapped, he soared forty feet into the center of the stadium in front of the spectators. He tried to flap his wings, but the chains still bound them, and he plunged to the ground. He clung to his dagger as the other weapons landed in front of the two men who’d been trying to reach them.
My heart lunged into my throat as Aron’s body thudded to the ground, and the dagger sliced into his side. He didn’t move, but his chest rose and fell.
This cache of weapons had three of each weapon— swords, daggers, slingshots, bows and arrows, and short swords.
I moved toward the gigantic rock, hoping I could hide near it for a few minutes as I formed a plan. I’d seen a slingshot like this before, though I couldn’t remember where and hoped I could figure out how to use it.
When I focused on my destination, a rancid, salty taste filled my mouth. A man was using two other bodies to climb the rock toward the weapons. He used one body to lean on while pulling the other body up to move toward the center of the rock. Blood coated the rock over the entire track he’d taken while two men and one woman below cheered at his progress.
I’d never seen anything so revolting in my life. He had no respect for the bodies of the people who had died. But I was guilty of helping to kill two people today, so I wasn’t much better.
The walls closed in on me as the horror of what I’d done sank in, but I had to push it away. Falling apart would only get me killed sooner.
I moved around the rock, cold wafting from it into my skin. I paused and touched it lightly then realized what it was—ice with edges made into frozen spikes. I had no doubt someone had used their magic to create this.
More things exploded, and a person to my left screamed in torment.
I snapped my head around to see that a man had been sliced in two while walking on the wooden plank through the swinging axe blades. A sword had shot up from underneath him, stabbing him between the legs, and then an axe had sliced into him. The axe kept moving, slowing down only marginally as it chopped through the body. Blood and guts hit the wood and dripped onto the ground below, where someone was neck-deep in quicksand.
That had to be why the other person had tried to make it across the plank. It was either that or die trying to take a shortcut.
Everywhere I turned, I saw death, blood, torture, and chaos. The sounds were deafening. If we’d all just stayed in the entry area and refused to fight one another, things would’ve been different. There wouldn’t be all this destruction and death, but that had been the point of the incentive for a reduced sentence and the directive to gain a weapon before attacking. Eldrin wanted us to fight each other and wanted this devastation.
The remaining prisoners had separated into small groups, leaving me to fend for myself.
I needed to do something to gain an advantage, so I scanned the area and noticed that the eight people who had climbed up the tower were watching the chaos from above.
For me to make it up there, they had to come down from their safe haven and fight for weapons.
I edged between the axe gauntlet and the frozen rock, noticing a couple of small pieces of black rock that had exploded just moments ago. I bent, gently picked a few up, and placed them in my slingshot.
Let’s see if my plan works.
I swung my arm, spinning the sling over my head. At first, the motion felt strange, but then something natural kicked in. I homed in on the blue-haired man who’d spoken out in the hallway and flipped my wrist forward.
The rock soared from the sling to the tower, hitting it below the railing of the top platform. The rock exploded, and the tower shook, stone crumbling from the blast .
The eight men jerked their attention to me and realized I’d attacked them.
“It’s the sunscorched!” the blue-haired man shouted as if no one else was aware.
Okay, I hadn’t quite thought this through.
Two men climbed onto the platform with the swinging axes as I bent down and picked up two more exploding rocks to fling at them.
“Bran, we need to get down!” a dusky-haired woman said loudly. “She’s going to knock the tower down.”
The blue-haired man turned to her and scowled. “She can’t possibly hit it again.”
Wanting them to see I meant business, I slipped another rock into the slingshot. I aimed for Bran again. This time, I hit the tower platform right at his feet, causing the side closest to me to tremble.
“We got it!” someone exclaimed.
I turned toward the axes. The taller man was holding the feet of a dark-green-haired man and lowering him from the upper platform to grab a similar bundle of weapons as those on the spring platform. Once the dark-green-haired man had the weapons in his hands, he tossed them five feet away to a woman with the same color of hair as him. She caught the weapons and removed a bow and arrow then turned to shoot at three men barreling toward her. She fired in rapid succession, and the men thumped lifelessly to the ground.
Once the dark-green-haired man was back up on the platform, he patted the other man’s back and laughed before giving the guy a huge shove. The bigger man tried offsetting the push but couldn’t, and he fell into the quicksand below.
The woman with matching hair laughed so hard she hunched over .
These people were worse than I’d expected.
I had to get away from them now that they had weapons, so I turned to go back to the other side of the arena near the spring platform, but the man using the two bodies as his shields had gotten his own weapons.
My heart thundered so loudly that I couldn’t hear the cries. Now that all the weapons had been claimed, they were all focused on me.
There was only one thing I could do, get to the platform and figure out a way to remain on it as it sprang up. Maybe I could use my slingshot to hold on to the edge or tie it to whatever it was that secured the rope that had bound the weapons.
I ran toward the rising platform, keeping close to the edge of the coliseum. As I rounded the spot where the spiked ice and platform were, a hiss came from beside me.
My feet dug into the dirt, and gray gas rose from a vent in the ground.
What the hell was this ?
The gas funneled quickly, swirling around me, and my body did something that terrified me.