Chapter Thirty-Seven Arturo #2
This was all theater. It had to be. But if the varvax didn’t care who the best fighters were, if they only wanted to take humans through the portal, why bother staging games at all?
Why not steal away humans in their sleep, or take criminals, or prisoners?
The varvax were putting so much effort into these games, into making the humans fight.
Was it all because they believed we were violent, believed this was what we wanted, or was there some deeper purpose?
Two more scions fell, and two more gladiators joined the others on the ramp.
One of the remaining gladiators had limped over to the edge of the arena, taking shelter near another fallen gladiator and clutching his own arm, which looked broken.
Some of the spectators helped pull both wounded gladiators over the edge of the arena and out of the fight.
The last gladiator stared up into the eyes of the remaining scion, which had managed to hold on to at least half of its limbs.
The crowd seemed to take a collective breath, and then the gladiator charged at the scion with a spear.
The creature shifted, and the gladiator ran past, then turned and threw the spear into the scion’s back.
The scion toppled over, rolling into the dirt.
I couldn’t tell if it was dead or only incapacitated, but when it didn’t rise again, the crowd cheered so loudly that I couldn’t make out the announcement of the last gladiator’s points.
The gladiator joined the others on the ramp.
I eased my way against the wall, watching as smoke began to rise from between the slats of the decorative metal gate.
“Gladiators!” Ivy’s voice boomed. “You have proven yourselves worthy to join the ranks of your ancestors in Elysium! Step forward to claim your place in the armies of your forefathers.”
From the bottom of the ramp, Dayan met my eyes and nodded.
“Here we go,” I said to Alanik and Gilaf.
The gate to Elysium slid upward, and fog rolled down the ramp in waves, like an avalanche of clouds, revealing two robed figures. Alanik and I were only a few meters from them, but we waited as Dayan and the other gladiators approached the top of the ramp.
Errol Executioner went first. He walked with his head down, in deference to the priests, but his axe was still gripped in his hands.
Ivy couldn’t call for them to be disarmed—they were going to war, after all, to defend humanity in Elysium.
Dayan followed immediately behind Errol, light-whip turned off, posture unassuming, unthreatening.
The other gladiators trailed behind them, giving no indication that anything was amiss.
But when Errol was knee-deep in rolling fog, only a meter from the robed priests who would usher him off through the portal, he pulled back his axe and swung it at the nearest priest, cleaving him fully in half.
A stunned silence emanated from the crowd. Those near the ramp watched in shock as Dayan stepped forward and tore the robes off the remaining pieces of the varvax’s now-exposed carapace. Dayan grabbed a piece of the carapace, lifting it out of the fog. It dripped with a tan liquid—
And a creature that resembled a crab scrambled out of it, falling into the rivulets of fog. Dayan reached down, grabbing it by the leg, and held it up. For a moment, the screens showed the crablike varvax in all of its naked glory.
And then the screens went black.
“We’ve all been deceived!” Dayan shouted. They were addressing the crowd, but their voice wasn’t loud enough to be heard by most of the people without amplification.
“Dayan Dayright.” Ivy’s voice echoed through the stadium, drowning out Dayan’s words. “You are a traitor to your kind, and a traitor to Elysium!”
Oh, stars, Ivy was going to portray Dayan as the problem, and without a way to broadcast a message of our own, the crowd would have no one else to believe.
“Is Bob still on this side of the portal?” I asked Alanik. “Can you communicate with him?”
Alanik was quiet for a moment. “He’s still here. What do you want me to say?”
“Tell him we need him to come here and broadcast Dayan’s voice to the crowd through the coliseum’s hypercomm,” I said. “Can he do that?”
“I think so,” Alanik said.
Stars, if we did this, we’d be leaving Sadie and Nedd without a way to communicate with us after they passed through the portal.
But we couldn’t risk Ivy turning the crowd against Dayan.
If they did, we were all dead. We’d have to find another way to communicate with them, or hope Nedd and Sadie could make their way out of the portal on their own.
The remaining robed varvax pointed its pistol at Dayan, but Dayan lashed out with their light-whip, forcing the varvax to step back, disrupting its aim. The crowd was beginning to grumble about Dayan being a traitor, and we didn’t have long to turn the tide.
The gladiators charged the varvax, and I jumped over the wall between the crowd and the Elysium gate. Alanik and Gilaf followed me, as did several crowd members. Moments later, Naga disappeared and then both she and Bob appeared on my shoulders.
The gladiators wasted no time with the varvax: Kalia caught the robed one with her spear and sent an electric pulse through it, the carapace flying back into the fog and landing with a thud. Errol and another gladiator took the other from Dayan and held it down.
Reaching Dayan, I put a hand on their shoulder and handed them Bob. The slug drew its orange spines up straight, as if at full attention. “Address the crowd again,” I said. “Bob will broadcast your words.”
Varvax subdued, Dayan turned to face the crowd. “We’ve all been deceived!” Their voice reverberated over the speakers.
“Keep talking!” I said to Dayan.
“We’ve been lied to!” Dayan shouted. “The robed priests aren’t taking us to Elysium. They’re an alien species who are abducting our best fighters. They’re keeping us down, preventing us from fighting back!”
The crowd buzzed.
“I don’t know where our gladiators have gone,” Dayan said. “I don’t know what waits for us in Elysium, but we have to resist them!”
Some in the crowd yelled angrily at Dayan, while most just looked confused. The gladiators formed a tight circle around Dayan.
“We’ve had visitors from another planet,” Dayan said, pointing to me. “They are allies, other humans who were also imprisoned by these strange aliens.”
“They’re the enemy!” someone in the crowd yelled, and many echoed agreement.
“The varvax who have kept us here,” Dayan said to the audience, gesturing to the one restrained by Errol, “who have kidnapped our gladiators with promises of Elysium, they’re the enemy.
These humans have come to help us. They’ve brought news beyond our imagining.
The galactic wars are over.” Dayan looked me in the eye. “And we won.”
There was a moment of silence, and then some in the crowd began to cheer, though they sounded confused and uncertain.
Things were a lot more complicated than these humans could imagine, but if they could at least believe this much—there was no need for further fighting, the war had already been won—then maybe we could convince them to begin seeing aliens as potential allies.
Maybe we could bring them one step closer to being ready to join our alliance.
“It’s true,” I said, and Bob amplified my voice so it joined Dayan’s, becoming audible to thousands of humans. “We’re friends, and we’re here to help.”
Such a simple sentiment, but it was the only one I felt I could convey to this many people at once. It was the message the taynix gave to us, over and over, the basis of our alliance with them.
Maybe it was the most important message one group of people could give to another. Maybe everything else was just noise.
“What about Elysium?” someone shouted from the crowd. “Where are the gladiators if the war is over?”
“We need to find them,” Dayan said, “and we need to bring them home.”
Dayan looked to me again. I didn’t have any answers about the gladiators or about Elysium. I hoped Nedd and Sadie were using this opportunity to get inside the portal, if they could.
“We’ll help you find them,” I told Dayan, Bob broadcasting my words.
But then, far over our heads, at the edge of the coliseum’s wall, something caught my eye. An object, moving in the sky.
An enemy drone fighter, heading straight toward us.