Chapter 16
“How much longer?” complained Axel.
For a child who’d wanted to escape the demon realm, he sure didn’t want to explore for potential routes out.
“Just wait until you see where we’re going,” I said, well-versed in the art of making a toddler walk further than they wished.
Tsan snorted.
Axel sighed. “I’m hungry.”
I swung my pack around and tossed him a ppli, a purple apple-shaped fruit that tasted like melon.
He sniffed the fruit.
“Why exactly are we visiting the Crave Arena?” Tsan asked as Axel slowed while eating his snack.
There was a chance that Tsan could reveal absolutely everything to Carmine. Carmine was powerful enough to force the truth from Tsan. And my son was on Earth.
With that assurance, then this mother needed a friend.
“Remember the craving after each round of Tiers?” I asked him.
He grimaced. “Sure do. You had it worst of all of us.”
As memory served, I hadn’t been the one locked in the frenzy of a threesome. Though I would have gladly locked in a frenzy with Carmine if I’d made the mistake of going anywhere near him while under the spell of the craving. Which I had by accident after the second round.
“After the last round, I discovered coils of white magic in my body. When I got rid of them, the craving left me.”
We walked through the passage that led to the crowd seating. The Crave Arena was unguarded and open to the public. But for some strange reason, they never visited.
Since the end of Tiers, this place had remained empty.
Tsan glanced at me. “White magic? You mean animal magic?”
I wouldn’t call Neti an animal by a long shot. Not now. She was either a hidden member of Ronj or she possessed the power of a Ronj member. Either way, she was far too intelligent for animal status. “Not sure about animal magic. Whatever its origins, the magic was powerful enough to control me.”
He peered ahead. “So you’d like to… visit that force that controlled you?” He halted. “Oh, you want to control it.”
Shit. “Knew you were smart.”
“All yellows are, for whatever that’s worth,” he muttered.
Didn’t doubt that for a second.
I checked on Axel, then lowered my voice. “If that power can be harnessed… Though I have reason to believe he has already figured this out.”
Tsan grunted. “You want to even the odds.”
We paused at the end of the passage to watch Axel lick his lips and fingers.
I murmured, “More than that. I know a way to get rid of the magic, remember?”
With a caveat. Neti’s magical healing had only worked through the blue gem Adeuto gifted me. Without more of that, I couldn’t be sure of any future healings. Or of robbing Carmine of his white magic either.
Tsan stole a look out into the arena and blanched. “I never wanted to see this place again.”
That made two of us.
Tsan had expected, and perhaps wanted, to die in the arena, and I’d expected not to kill so many people, and to make it through the game in a similar emotional and mental state to when I’d entered. Compared to the version of me that had entered, I felt fragmented and overextended.
Take me back to desert life.
I didn’t really mean that. The only way forward was through the steaming lake of demon shit.
Axel walked ahead of us to the railing of the bottom row seating. “What is this place?”
“Fighting arena,” I answered.
“Can I go down?” he asked.
Could he go down to the blood-stained fighting ground where sharp and jutting rocks had painted the scene for the death of thousands of demons? “Maybe. Give me a sec.”
“What are we looking for?” Tsan asked.
I exhaled. “I don’t really know yet. I’ll scan from up here first.”
The crowd hadn’t appeared to suffer any effects of craving, so the white magic operated on those down on the battle floor.
I moved forward to the railing. What a strange feeling to be standing on this side.
I shook the weirdness off, then closed my eyes to cast my magical senses wide. Where are you? At first glance, the arena felt devoid of magic. Rock, sand, blood, and dirt.
Then again, I’d had to inspect my body so carefully to locate the white coils. They wanted to be missed at first glance, and even at second. I chose a rock and raked through the mass with my magical lenses.
If there was something there, then I couldn’t find it.
I lowered my focus to the smooth stone that had assisted the slipping of many demons who’d then either impaled themselves on the sharp stones or had been impaled by an opportunistic contestant.
What is that?
I backed up and trained my attention on the flicker of white that I thought I’d seen. Or imagined. Another flicker.
Not in the stone.
“It’s in the sand.” I gasped, “The dust.”
I dove back into my magical sight, this time raking the layer of sand on top of the smooth stone. The coils in the sand were miniscule. I could only catch flickers of their presence as the wind rolled granules about.
As contestants ran through the arena, rolled, crouched, and shuffled, they would disturb the sand.
And inhale the dust. The white magic with it.
I stared at the arena. No one had guessed. Ever, from what I could tell. Aside from Carmine.
“Can we go down there yet?” Axel moaned.
“No,” I sharply answered, earning an intrigued glance from Tsan and a crestfallen expression from a young boy. I forced myself to soften my tone. “But you can climb as high in the stands as you want, Axel.”
His eyes lit up, and the little Luther was away.
Tsan raised his brows.
“Can I look at your magic?” I turned to him.
“If it helps. Why?”
“Because you never seemed affected by craving. I have a theory about scale color.”
Tsan tilted his head. “The more powerful the demon, the more powerfully they were affected by craving.”
I had a feeling that Tsan could have solved this mystery on day one. “Exactly. Did you feel any lasting difference after each round?”
“Not lasting difference. The craving seemed to wear off for everyone.”
That was true. Though that didn’t mean the white magic left the person’s body. “What did you feel after each round?”
“More sadness to hold my mate. I missed her more. I could never be sure if surviving each round had something to do with that.” He rubbed the back of his head.
I nodded. “Okay, I’m going to look.”
Tsan closed his eyes, and I gently urged my demon power over his body. He sucked in a breath but didn’t fight back.
Not that he could have if I’d wished to hurt him, and some pain was inevitable due to our power difference. I worked as fast as possible.
“Anything?” he wheezed when I drew away.
“Still there,” I murmured.
Tsan shivered. “There’s stuff inside me? Gross.”
“I know the feeling. But the white magic doesn’t affect you the same.” I’d been mindless, both during the craving effects, and then after the joining ritual. I hadn’t been me.
“How do you know?”
I leaned against the rail to watch Axel bound between the rows as only a Luther could. “Because what you cared about at the start is the same thing you care about now.”
Ronj’s motive was to ensure only white scales could lead demons. It made sense that the demons they’d most feared to gain leadership were crimsons, who had the least ability to do so in their eyes. Whereas I could imagine they might have viewed yellows differently. More like equals.
What if the Istg sect really did perform some kind of magic to get rid of Tyran’s reign? But what if Ronj responded with their own group magic?
More and more, it felt like both of those forces were still in play in the realm, and we were the unsuspecting pawns. I had to question whether both sects—cults—had sacrificed their physical forms in the name of what they believed in.
But to this day, they retained a magical presence in the realm.
And the volume of their magic remained consistent. Tsan and I were the only survivors of Tiers this year. Everyone else had either died on the way to the arena, or in the arena. Everyone who’d inhaled the dust here would have died here. Other than Tsan and me.
Tsan was only alive because I’d claimed him as my prize.
So the white dust would have only continued to have infected me, assumedly the most powerful demon to play the game. That would be true of all past winners.
I said slowly, “I wonder if the white magic was feeding on contestants. When they died, it returned to the dust.”
Tsan shivered again. “If so, that stuff gets fed every year.”
“And every year it remains in the winning contestant,” I murmured.
“To control them?” he asked.
I shrugged a shoulder. “That’s all I can guess.”
I’d never spoken to a contestant. I’d never seen one out in the realm—which wasn’t necessarily a suspicious thing as I’d lived in the desert and only visited the realm for supplies. Now I had an inkling to seek them out.
“What did the magic make you feel?” Tsan asked.
I released an exhale. “Like the thing I was willing to risk everything for wasn’t so important any longer. I wasn’t myself, but couldn’t see how I’d changed until free of the magic again.”
Controlled was a good description.
“So Tiers is his way of eliminating competition,” Tsan said darkly. “Clever. He didn’t create the game, but he’s figured out how to use it to his advantage.”
I looked at the yellow demon. I hadn’t thought of that, but that made sense.
Carmine wielded the white magic, and so it obeyed his wants.
He wanted to remain king and conquer from dusk ’til dawn.
My teeth clenched at how gleeful he must have felt at my craving.
I’d fallen into that trap, well and truly.
Every demon had during his reign, I guessed.
What a simple means of reducing any threat to the throne.
“And you want to harness this magic?” Tsan asked.
“There’s an antidote, so if this is the only way, then yes.”
Tsan folded his arms. “What’s next?”
My sources were running dry. I wanted to track down past Tiers victors. Then there was Neti, who I could only approach when Carmine was occupied or out of the realm. Then there were the two remaining books to retrieve from the archives when Carmine was also occupied or out of the realm.
Unless…
“I need you to visit the archives for me,” I told my friend. We were friends now, right? “And I need you to visit my hideout, too, and try to coax a nismus to speak with me. Before any of that happens, we need to search you for a human tracking device.”
Carmine was far more knowledgeable about human tech than I’d known. He’d already gotten the jump on me once by using it.
“Is that all?” Tsan flashed me a grin.
“Probably not.”
I would say definitely not.