He certainly had enough juice to do it. Even all the way down here, I could feel the arena’s magic building as the crowds piled in. The huge swell worked in our favor since it would push Kauffman’s spellwork to its limit, making it easier to break, but it was also a terrifying reminder that we were playing chicken with a god. A smaller one than mine, true, but still huge next to me.
But as scary as things were getting, we were still on target. Despite everything, the plan was working. All we had to do was keep on keeping it together and we’d snatch Nik right out from under the Gameskeeper’s nose. But as I opened my mouth to tell White Snake we didn’t need a ride, thanks, but would she mind breaking as much stuff as possible on her way out, the growing magic that surrounded us suddenly lurched sideways.
Lurched and expanded, the magic crashing over me until it felt like I was back in the arena with the screaming crowd. The change was so explosive, it knocked the breath right out of me, which was why I couldn’t shout a warning to my father when the Gameskeeper condensed out of the magic-saturated air right behind him.
***
I didn’t have time to scream. I barely managed to choke before the Gameskeeper lifted his hand to point the biggest gun I’d ever seen at my father’s head. I was still boggling at the size of it—seriously, that thing had a barrel like a drainage pipe—when the door behind us burst open, and dozens of armored, armed men poured into the cave.
Oddly, White Snake was the first of us to recover. Maybe being drained had slowed my father’s reflexes, or maybe years of living on the run had honed his sister’s survival instincts to a razor’s edge, but the first of the men had barely made it through the doorway before she reared back and blasted them with fire.
The dragon flame passed so close to my head, my hair crinkled from the heat. She caught the first group flat-footed, but the soldiers behind them already had their guns up, a whole firing line of ridiculously oversized arm-cannons identical to the one the Gameskeeper was pointing at my dad. That was all I managed to see before they opened fire.
The barrage was so loud in the enclosed room, I went deaf for several seconds as a fusillade of sharp-pointed shells covered in glowing spellwork split White Snake’s plume of fire to land in her open mouth. The explosion that followed was so bright that I lost my vision, too, leaving me clutching the stone floor in a world that consisted of nothing but blinding light and terrible ringing.
By the time I came back to myself, White Snake was a bleeding mess on the ground. She wasn’t dead, but whatever they’d shot at her had clearly taken a chunk out. The wounds were already healing before my eyes—classic draconic toughness—but she didn’t look eager to eat another barrage. Even after her bloody face had knitted itself back together, she stayed down, watching the Gameskeeper and his men with patient, calculating hate.
She was doing better than me. The moment I could see and hear again, my body had launched into a full-blown panic. I’d never seen anything like those weapons before, but between the old Algonquin Security Force logos stamped onto their huge barrels and what they’d done to White Snake, it wasn’t hard to guess that these must be the Anti-Dragon guns my god had foolishly sold to the enemy. The man-portable version, thankfully, not the giant tractor-towed cannons we’d passed on our way down, but this was still a disaster. Normally, a weapon small enough to be lugged around by humans wouldn’t do anything but piss a dragon off, but we weren’t exactly at our best, and from the smug smile on his face, the Gameskeeper knew it.
“Well, well,” he said cheerfully. “Look what we’ve caught.”
“How did you know?” I asked, partially to keep the Gameskeeper talking because talking wasn’t shooting, but also because I really did want to know. I’d thought we’d done an exemplary job sneaking down here, and now that I was recovering from my initial panic, the fact that he’d had an army waiting to jump us the second we finished felt supremely unfair.
“I didn’t,” the Gameskeeper said, keeping his huge gun pressed against my father’s skull. “Not specifically. I suspected you were up to something when Mad Dog suddenly took an interest in fight promotion, so I went ahead and armed an anti-dragon team. I’d originally set this ambush up for Kos’s room given your past antagonism with my lovely challenger, but then I saw her camera go out and realized I hadn’t given you enough credit. Not that it made a difference since we still arrived in plenty of time to catch you, but I have to say I’m disappointed.” His eyes flicked to White Snake. “I expected better of you. We had a good deal. What happened?”
“He offered me a better one,” White Snake replied, her eyes never leaving the row of guns that was still pointed at her face.
