Talos Drake stood up. His height was impressive. His long coat was decorated with gold trim and bone fetishes. Braids of hair that were obviously not his own dangled from chains wrapped around his wrists.
The other vampires all looked at their leader. Hundreds of pairs of vampire eyes trained on Drake, and waited. Talos smiled a toothy smile, and nodded.
A platform descended from above. It had been entirely concealed in the false night of the aerial dome. Eyes turned to the circular slab of rock as it slowly sank down. The loud clang of chains and industrial gears rattled as the stone made its grinding descent. Over a dozen gladiators cast their gazes skyward, worried, bitter, angry and confused.
Cross looked with them. He was afraid that he knew exactly what it was they would see.
It was an inverted altar, a chunk of layered granite. A statue protruded from the bottom of the slab, dead center, a manmade stalactite. The statue was of vague and dark sexual creatures with bat wings and fangs. The statue-creatures twisted together in an orgy of black stone, many made one, a molten amalgam of succubus angels.
Suspended around the statue were the hostages. They hung cruciform, and they dangled like meat on hooks. Each prisoner was fastened to an inverted wooden pole that jutted down from the stone slab, and they were held in place by ropes and chains that kept their arms pinned behind their backs. Their bare feet dangled helplessly over the arena floor. The stone came to a drastic and ear-shattering stop, and it hung suspended a good thirty feet above the arena.
The prisoners had all been beaten and cut. Fluids dripped down, a slow tide of blood and urine and drool. Even the stench of decay from the presence of hundreds of vampires could not mask the scent of the prisoner’s suffering and fear.
Not every prisoner was human. Cross saw a half-Doj with one eye sealed shut beneath a wound; a Lith, with crushed toes; a Gol, whose bonds looked so loose he might fall at any moment.
He saw Cole, her face bruised, her cheeks cut, and her neck bloody. There was no sign of Ekko.
But he saw Dillon. The ranger’s feet were bare, and blood sluiced down his legs and ran off of his toes in a thin stream that pooled on the ground far below. His face was a mess of cuts, and some sort of crude pattern had been carved across his chest, an idiot artist’s attempt made into his dark flesh.
Dillon met Cross’ gaze. Somehow, he managed a weak smile, and he nodded.
Cross, again, felt that he had seen this before.
Fight, said the gaunt skeletal being without making a true noise. The sound echoed inside of Cross’ mind like a sonic bruise. Fight, and win, or they will suffer even more.
The stone groaned upwards. Cross looked at the skeletal creature. His hands tensed, and his spirit crackled. Without thinking, he breathed her in. Her heat filled his lungs with fire. Blood trickled from his eyes and turned his vision red. His skin smoked as he fused his spirit into a lance of black ice that he cast into the skeletal being.
The spear pierced the abomination’s folds with a sound like metal scratching glass. White sparks erupted from its dark heart. A rush of dead air escaped the figure as it collapsed in on itself in a shrinking black cloud. Cross smelled foul meat.
For a moment, no one moved, even as the slab of prisoners slowly groaned its way back towards the vast darkness of the ceiling. Black liquid oozed out of the tattered cloak.
Sharp pain filled Cross’ head. He heard the sound of screaming metal. Explosions rang inside of his soul. His skin went damp as invisible claws raked across his nerves. He fell to the ground screaming.
Above him, suspended and immobile, Dillon screamed, too.
“ No, no, no,” Talos Drake spoke. He was suddenly on the ground, looming tall over Cross’ hunched form. Cross felt as if he’d been beaten with stone clubs. He could barely lift his head to look at the vampire who stood like a pillar of shadow before him. “There are rules, warlock. You just broke one. Now your friend suffers, as well.”
Cross struggled. Every motion was wracked with pain. His muscles were on fire. He craned his neck and looked up at Dillon, whose desperate eyes looked back.
It’s okay, he mouthed. The raw meat of his legs was exposed. They’d carved into his thighs like he was a flank steak. Cross could barely breathe. He wasn’t even aware of the tears in his eyes until they ran down his face and neck.
You barely even know him, a voice told him. His voice. But that didn’t matter. He knew him enough. Dillon was in pain because of him. Any chance the ranger ever had of eating his sister’s crappy cooking or seeing his nephew (what was his name did he ever even tell me?) rested squarely on Cross’ shoulders.
The Sleeper. Lucan. There’s still so much that I have to do.
Cross felt the weight of another man’s life push down on him. Slowly, he rose. He met Talos Drake’s gaze, a difficult task since the Viscount stood a full head taller than Cross did. No more words were spoken. The vampire smiled, and the stone of prisoners continued its ascent into darkness. Dillon’s eyes never left Cross until he and the others vanished into a sky of shadows.
Focus.
Dillon. Lucan. Snow. Graves.
Kane was one of the first to fight. He and the Gorgoloth matched up while the rest of the gladiators were compelled to form a perimeter around the circular battlefield. Massive white serpents swam through the darkness around them as if it were water. The air tasted cool, and Cross smelled the white worm’s oceanic breath.
Kane made quick work of his ebon-fleshed opponent and proved himself the more barbarous combatant by far. Axe blades swung and connected with diamond sparks. The fighters danced around the dark and steaming husk of the tall skeleton. Kane moved with expert grace and sinuous side-steps that defied his size and that sent his opponent into frustrated moves that proved to be its undoing. When their axes became entangled and clattered noisily to the ground, Kane snapped the Gorgoloth's kneecap sideways with a well-placed punch. He calmly drew a bone scimitar while the Gorgoloth desperately tried to re-set its knee bone with a series of sickening snaps. Kane waited until the Gorgoloth realized the futility of its actions before he finally took off its head with a cold and efficient swing.
In the darkness above, whatever prisoner the Gorgoloth had been attached to howled in pain.
The vampire crowd remained silent. No bodies were cleared and no cheers erupted. The fighters moved when it was their time to fight, directed by some psychic missive.
Cross watched as humans slew humans and the Doj slaughtered the Lith. Blood and broken corpses collected on the once pristine floor. The smell of open bodies grew strong. The pale serpents writhed with excitement, and they hissed and bared enormous fangs. The ground turned red.
He realized that no mages had battled until it was his turn to fight. He wasn’t sure how he knew when it was time: he suddenly stood on the circle, as if he’d woken there. He held a thin but wickedly sharp bone blade in one hand, while his gauntlet crackled with dark fire and gripped his spirit in the other. She closed around his body like a suit of shadow armor. His flesh ran cold at her touch, and his lungs cooled when he breathed her in.
Up above, he felt Dillon wince in pain. Talos Drake and Tega Ramsey looked on, unmoving.
Win, he told himself. Focus. Dillon. Snow.
He sees Snow, burning in the train.
You failed to save her. Don’t fail again.
His opponent was the Regost, which didn't surprise him. Only it or the Vuul would provide an adequate challenge to a mage, due to their innate resistance to magic. The Regost — the Hollow Men — were husks of humanoid bodies possessed by angry spectral beings that existed only as vapor, and who were forced to possess flesh automatons constructed in the strange factories they controlled at the bottom of the Ebonsand Sea. This figure was seven feet tall and sheathed in dark leather armor covered with metal plates positioned to protect the weaker joint areas. The Regost bodies would lose audio input from a strike to the head, but the hosts were more concerned with guarding the mobility of their flesh vessels, as well as the precious organic heart-engines that kept the host alive. The Regost’s face was little more than a fleshy mask fused to a rough piece of steel. Dark blue and black armor covered the thin body, which yielded a sharp steel blade set with an exceptionally long handle.
Cross knew he had to plan every step carefully. No magic would directly affect the Regost or its vessel, and while Cross had spent the better part of the last year learning to better use a blade, the bone hand-and-a-half sword they'd given him felt awkward and heavy at the tip. Cross feared he was too unfamiliar with the weapon, which he felt didn’t have a large enough hilt to counter the weight of the blade.
They circled one another. Their booted feet shuffled noisily on the stone as they turned. Each matched the
