Chapter Thirty-Seven Arturo
Thirty-Seven
Arturo
The arena was packed, everyone standing shoulder to shoulder.
Alanik, Gilaf, and I couldn’t get seats, so we squished together in the aisle, pressed in on all sides by sweaty, cheering fans.
I was glad we’d sent half the taynix with the other group—it was hard enough to shelter Suki from the crowd.
Crammed in this close, there was no way we could talk to her without our neighbors wondering why our backpacks could speak.
Sadie and Nedd had disappeared down the stairwell that led beneath the arena.
I hoped they wouldn’t meet too much resistance down there, but if they did, at least they were together.
Alanik could still communicate with Bob and hyperjump our team if she needed to, though that would obviously draw varvax attention.
And we didn’t know if the communication would work once Sadie and Nedd passed through the portal.
Ivy’s voice finished introducing the gladiators.
Kalia Killcot was there, as well as a large guy with his chest and arms completely covered by a tattoo of a mighty scion.
Its eyes stared out from his chest and wicked branches spiraled out over his shoulders and down his arms. I didn’t know if a scion could be intimidated by tattoos, but I sure would have been.
He carried a massive axe in both hands, the handle nearly as tall as he was.
He’d been introduced as Errol Executioner, which was a fitting name if I’d ever heard one.
“My money’s on that guy,” I said, nudging Alanik as Errol jumped down into the arena, and the other gladiators followed.
“Shouldn’t you be cheering for our ally?” Alanik whispered to me.
“I am,” I said. “But look at him!”
The gladiators all ran toward the scions.
Dayan shot out in front of the pack, running up to one of the battle-scarred creatures and lassoing a top branch with their light-whip.
Dayan hauled themself up into the branches, planting their feet and wrapping the whip around a nearby limb.
The tree thrashed, but Dayan held on tight.
The other gladiators spread out among the five targets. “Stars, that’s a lot of scions,” I said. Almost one per gladiator. The last fight we’d watched had been three on one.
“Makes sense,” Alanik said. “More enemies means more opportunities to earn points.”
That was true. The scion Dayan perched on tried to reach them, but Dayan sheltered themself behind the branches, so the creature resorted to tossing its entire body forward and backward, flicking Dayan back and forth in a tremendous arc.
Dayan’s feet left the branch, and they clung to the tree by their light-whip alone, the strands of light wrapped double around their wrists.
I wondered what would happen if the gladiators stopped threatening the scion.
Would the creatures still fight, or would they look for an avenue of escape, like the one in the woods?
Around us, the crowd counted for Dayan. “Eleven…twelve…”
“Look at that,” Alanik said. She pointed to the camera drones.
In the last fight, they had pointed only at the gladiators, projecting them onto the screen.
Today several of them also floated along in front of the crowd, taking footage of the spectators and occasionally projecting them onto the screen.
Ivy was probably looking for us. The varvax knew what we looked like now, but we had the protection of the crowd, and at least for now, Ivy appeared to be more interested in sending as many gladiators to Elysium as possible than she was in mowing through a city full of people to reach us.
I wondered what would happen to these people when the fight was over—if the varvax planned to abandon the planet, retreat through the portal, and disappear into the nowhere.
That would be good for the people of Blightfall, who would be free from varvax manipulation, but it wouldn’t answer our bigger questions about what these varvax were doing here, and why.
The scion finally shook Dayan free, though their light-whip was still tangled high in the branches.
Alanik grabbed my arm as we watched Dayan land and roll to a stop alongside a twisted, broken branch.
Another gladiator, this one with a spear gun, charged in, stabbing the scion from behind.
The creature convulsed, and Dayan climbed to their feet, though they seemed to be favoring their right arm.
The crowd roared, counting again, this time for Errol, who faced off with one of the healthier scions, chopping its branches off one at a time.
“Look!” Gilaf said, as Dayan took off running toward the scion with their whip tangled in its foliage.
They held the short sword in front of them and leaped into the branches, stabbing and using the weapon as a handhold to propel them upward.
The creature shook off the electric shock delivered by Dayan’s opponent’s spear, its branches bristling and quivering.
Dayan climbed up the scion, grabbing hold of the end of the light-whip and turning it off.
The light disappeared, which disentangled the handle from the branches.
Reigniting it, Dayan wrapped the whip around a particularly thick branch, pressed their body against it, and used the whip to lash themself around the waist so they wouldn’t be easily dislodged.
This time the scion stumbled across the arena, nearly bowling over the gladiator who had stunned it.
Its remaining limbs clambered across the sand, lifting the massive trunk over the corpses of rotting scions.
Another count arose from the crowd, though Errol was still going, having hacked a good quarter of the branches from his scion, all from one side, so the thing limped sideways on lopsided legs, trying to get away from him.
The two counts—Errol’s branches and Dayan’s time aloft—mixed with each other so I couldn’t tell what numbers the crowd was chanting or for who.
On the far side of the arena, three gladiators finished off the other battle-scarred scion and ran to join the fight against the others.
On the far wall, the scoreboard listed their names; Errol was leading in points, no doubt because of his enormous lumber pile of severed branches, while Dayan was in second place.
“Errol Executioner has earned enough points to ascend!” Ivy shouted as the numbers scrolled up next to Errol’s name. “Please proceed to the gate and wait for the others to finish.”
Errol hesitated as the scion dragged itself away from him, unable to get the leverage to lift its trunk completely out of the sand. Several other gladiators stopped fighting and looked over at him, while the crowd murmured in confusion.
Last time that announcement had come at the end of the battle. They hadn’t withdrawn Timon mid-combat, regardless of when he had accrued the appropriate number of points.
“Errol Executioner, please proceed to the gate to Elysium!” Ivy shouted again, and Errol jogged to the nearest arena edge and hauled himself up onto it. The nearby crowd reached for him, and he sprinted past their arms toward our end of the seats, where he climbed down onto the empty ramp.
The gate remained closed, and Errol held his axe, waiting. I wondered if he was one of the ones Dayan had warned about what was coming.
“The battle continues!” Ivy proclaimed, and the other gladiators continued to fight.
While Dayan recovered from their second fall from the branches of the scion, Kalia stunned one of the remaining healthy scions with a blast from her shock spear.
Two more gladiators, carrying laser swords, encircled the beast, strategically cutting the branches that held up its trunk.
The scion shuddered, leaning to the side after losing its support, and Kalia gave it another shock and then a shove with her foot, sending it rolling on its side into the sand.
The crowd went crazy, and Kalia picked up points, surpassing Dayan to take the top spot on the leaderboard.
That scion tried to right itself and failed, falling again to the sand, and Dayan charged right at it, climbing up the trunk and into the branches.
The scion jerked back, trying to toss Dayan free, but Dayan already had a hold on the creature, braced between two branches with the light-whip wrapped securely around each. The scion planted its remaining branches in the sand and stood, and the crowd began to count.
Dayan’s points on the scoreboard rose every moment they remained aloft. Kalia stabbed at the tree with her spear, and Dayan leaped into the air, swinging free of the tree as an electric shock rattled its body.
Dayan landed on the tree again and the count continued.
Their score continued to rise. Kalia stabbed at the creature again, and this time Dayan vaulted from the branches, landing in the sand as Kalia continued her attack.
The scion rolled over in the sand, digging in with its remaining branches as if in surrender.
It was one thing to fight a creature bent on attacking you, and another to torture the thing as it literally buried its head in the sand.
When the scion didn’t get up again, Kalia pointed her spear in the air in victory, and her score rose again, though Dayan’s was now higher than either hers or Errol’s had been.
“Kalia Killcot and Dayan Dayright have earned enough points to ascend!” Ivy shouted. “Please join Errol Executioner at the gate as the battle concludes.”
Dayan ran toward the edge of the arena. Instead of climbing out immediately, they jogged through the sand until they reached the ramp, climbed over the arena wall, and joined Errol. Kalia arrived a moment later, clapping both Errol and Dayan on the back.
There were five gladiators in the arena now, and only three active scions. I hadn’t been able to track the strategies of the rest of them, but their points were steadily rising.
“Are they all going to win?” I asked. “If they’re going to take them all, what’s the point?”
Alanik shook her head.