Chapter Twelve Dirantas, of the Darkest Night and the Tricksters #2
Feet planted apart, Lythlet raised her hands. Two fingers crossed over two fingers, she swore the oath back at Master Dothilos: “Witness me, upon the blood of my ancestors!”
Master Dothilos cast a bright smile at her, an eyebrow crooked skyward. He bowed deeply, flamboyantly, to her, and she knew at that moment, he was welcoming her to their partnership.
“Then release the beast!” he said into his speaking-trumpet.
As the gates ground upwards, metal grumbling and creaking, Lythlet pushed all distraction from her mind.
Remember the compendium!
Page upon page flew through her mind as she stared into the now gateless abyss, illustrations of beasts waxing and waning in her imagination.
It came then: the soft padding of feet bumbling across the sanded ground.
A tiny little monster emerged from the darkness, scrabbling across the ground clumsily, leaving claw marks behind.
Wrapped in a halo of brown fur, it had a flat face with two large black pupils.
It froze mid-step when it caught sight of them, then plopped its round bottom on the sandy ground, stunned by their presence.
“Lythlet?” said Desil hesitantly, with a hint of confusion.
Oh no . She could read his thoughts; the two of them were hopelessly susceptible to the small and the furry. It’s rather adorable.
“Are we supposed to kill it?” His sword was already lowering.
“Wait,” she commanded, clenching her spear. “This match is dedicated to the warden of tricksters, is it not?”
She glared at the beast, waiting for its secret to unravel.
She could not recall anything so small and underwhelming from the bestiary, but she hadn’t had the time to look at every page.
Her eyes traced its rounded belly, its cherubic snub of a nose, the tiny little stumps starting to grow from the crown of its head—
“Bugbear.”
No sooner had she spoken did the young bugbear shriek, an awful cry warbling from its furry throat.
Thunder rolled forth, thunder from the deep. From the abyss beyond came a roar, a stampede, and at last the true bugbear emerged, a hundred times larger than its offspring. The earth trembled as it dashed to the cub’s side.
Lythlet pulled Desil back, trepidation rising. “Mind the horns. They like to gore their prey.”
“What else?”
“Avoid the cub at all costs. Killing it will only enrage her.”
“We’ve an issue then. They don’t seem easily parted.” He pointed at the mother bear gently ushering her cub underneath the safe stretch of her belly with her paw. He frowned, reluctance washing over him. “Must we kill them? It’s no more than a mother protecting her child.”
She had been thinking the same, but the weight of the spectators’ stares forced her to reconsider.
“These are dangerous beasts, Desil. Same as the sentari, same as the anzura. We came to slay sun-cursed hellspawn, and so we must. We’re not allowed to spare pity on one just because they look comelier than the others we’ve encountered. ”
His sword remained tilted to the ground. “I haven’t the heart to do this, Lytha.”
Something deep within her tightened. “Would you have us forfeit?”
He did not answer.
From above, Master Dothilos’s gaze burned into her. He must wonder why we’ve yet to make our move. Surely no other conquessor would wait so long—most would strike the cub the moment it stumbled out .
“We’re being silly, Desil. These aren’t sun-blest animals, sweet and harmless like a bitch and her whelps sent by the heavens to aid us in our mortal toil.
Sun-cursed devils, isn’t that what the Poetics would call them instead?
” she reasoned, pulling from what little she could recall of the religious canon.
“Monstrosities set loose in our land by the Scorned One to try us, to sully the Sunsmith and Moonmachinist’s good creation. ”
For once, the religious appeal failed to strike gold with Desil. “They aren’t even approaching us,” he argued, slowly raising a hand to his forfeit pendant, the other sheathing his sword.
She opened her mouth, torn between debating further and acquiescing, but a bone-shaking howl interrupted, followed by the earth trembling.
Perhaps it was reacting to the violent flicker of light reflecting on Desil’s sword as he moved to sheathe it, perhaps it was no more than beastly instinct driving it to attack—but the bear charged at last, and she charged with a fury, ginormous paws throwing up storms of dust toward them.
They split paths, Desil darting down one side of the arena, Lythlet skirting the edge opposite, clambering upon the elevated platforms rimming the arena. Higher and higher she climbed, hoping for a good vantage point.
“Seven tons,” she murmured breathlessly, rattling off bestiary notes as she jumped from scaffold to scaffold.
She grabbed onto a lone bamboo shaft jutting out of the wall, swinging from one platform to another.
“Not to be confused with the bogbear native to the southwest. Fiercely protective of its young. Often depicted with two horns, but some subspecies will grow up to six.” The bugbear below was the classic dual horn, however.
She stayed high, watching Desil scramble to safety on a platform.
But the bugbear followed him closely, the cub straggling at its rear, and he struggled to lengthen the distance between them.
The bugbear went on its hind legs, long claws stretched toward Desil, missing him by what seemed like minuscule gaps of sheer luck.
One paw smashed effortlessly through a corner of the platform he was trapped on, shattering its edge.
The bugbear struck again, demolishing another corner.
Lythlet pulled out the bag of slingstones—after the last match, it seemed useful to have at all times—and started pelting the bugbear, hoping to distract her.
The bugbear turned around, narrowed its bottomless black eyes on Lythlet, and rampaged toward her. But Lythlet was high beyond the bugbear’s reach. The beast roared, smashing the lower platforms into fragments.
Desil panted, arriving on Lythlet’s ledge. “Forget what I said about it being no more than a mother protecting her child. I thought she was about to gut me until you took her away!”
“It has a temper,” Lythlet agreed, holding onto her ledge. The bugbear was fruitlessly clobbering the walls of the arena beneath them, making everything near them vibrate.
“What do we do?”
“The bestiary had little to offer by way of defeating it.”
He looked disappointed. “Nothing at all?”
“Well, there was one part I couldn’t understand,” Lythlet said slowly. “An offhand note. ‘ True to its name, the bugbear finds extraordinary comfort and grows deeply drowsy in the presence of summer’s most disagreeable creature. ’”
Desil raised a brow, impressed at her memory. “What’s it supposed to mean?”
She shook her head, lost. “Most entries were straightforward, but some had vague notes like that. Scholar Lewenskiros is a polymath who’s written scholarly compendiums on several other fields, and sometimes he writes in a way that seems to be referencing one of his other books.”
“Cheeky.”
“But effective marketing,” said Lythlet begrudgingly, wishing she had a complete library of Scholar Yavida Lewenskiros’s work.
“While we’re stuck up here, let’s put our heads together and decipher the note.
It may be useful. True to its name , it says.
I think it must be referring to the bug part of it—there are dozens of sun-cursed beasts with bear in their names, so it makes more sense for it to be referencing the most unique aspect. ”
Desil nodded. “All right, that makes sense. And what’s this about summer’s most disagreeable creature?”
They sat there, stumped, deep in thought, holding onto their shaking platforms. Lythlet’s mind raced.
Summer had descended swiftly over Setgad, the days turning sweltering.
Her kataka flat was humid at all hours of the day, and she felt sticky and awful constantly.
Moreover, her sleep was frequently interrupted by some very unwelcome guests flying in through the gaps in their walls—
“Mosquitoes.”
Desil stared at her like she’d lost her mind, then widened his eyes. “Mosquitoes! Brilliant! But what can we do with this? We can’t summon a swarm of mosquitoes to assist us. Not sure I’d want to, anyway. My arm’s still red and itchy thanks to the one bothering us last night.”
“Maybe we needn’t actually have those pests here. We just need to make the bugbear think they are, then it’ll calm down enough for us to kill it.” She pointed at the yutrela poles. “Remember the tale of Atena and how she hid in the forest from the first of the Heavenly Dragons?”
“By using a yutrela leaf the way Pa used to make music on a gumleaf?” Desil’s father had had the knack of taking the common gumleaf and humming a vibrating tune out of it.
Desil could never achieve more than blowing the leaf out of his grasp, but his father had better luck teaching Lythlet a few sound variations.
“The tale does say she used it to make a sound akin to the hum of insects.”
“Do you think it really works?”
“The best tales are the ones rooted in truth, and Atena must be a legend for a reason.”
He smiled. “There’s something rather daring about you today. Go on! Best you have a go before the bugbear destroys more of the arena.”
Lythlet sprang from platform to platform, rising in an arc that brought her near the height of the spectator stands.
Keeping her momentum, she launched herself at the yutrela poles, grasping one, her weight sending it swaying back and forth.
The groaning of the bamboo was akin to the yawn of giants, and the bugbear jolted, turning.
Terror crept through Lythlet as the bugbear loped toward the bamboo ring, toward her.
Her hands scrabbled around the bamboo notches and hoisted herself up, feet securing her weight. But one boot suddenly gave way, sending her swaying precariously through the air.