I’d known it would be huge because we’d planned it that way, but the chaos I saw on the screen was absolutely insane. They must have taken out the seats—and completely ignored the concept of fire safety—because the arena stands were at least twice as packed as when I’d been here last Saturday. People were crammed in shoulder to shoulder, sometimes even closer, screaming at the top of their lungs as the drone cameras swooped by. Now that I wasn’t entirely focused on Kauffman, I realized I could feel their stomping through the carpet, the beats hammering in time with the bloodthirsty magic that saturated everything.
I’d never felt anything like it. Even in the Gnarls where magic had been coming up from the dark like a waterfall in reverse, it hadn’t been this intense. There was so much power in the air that even a handful would have been enough to blast Kauffman and his stupid couch into confetti, but I couldn’t get a handful. I couldn’t grab so much as a finger’s worth, because even at this enormous size, Kauffman’s spellwork had the crowd’s magic locked down tight, swirling the power around the arena like a washing machine on the spin cycle.
Just trying to grab it as it flew by was enough to make me dizzy. I kept my mental hand out anyway, feeling the magic as it slid through my grasp in an attempt to gauge how taut it was and therefore how close the spellwork holding it might be to capacity. Before I could get a good measure, though, the crowd on the screen above my head burst into even wilder applause.
When I looked up to see why, all the cameras were focused on the north door into the arena where ten men were dragging what appeared to be a circus cage on wheels onto the sand. Then the cameras zoomed in to show the man behind the bars, and my heart stopped.
It was Nik. Nik was in that cage, and he looked absolutely horrible. His face was pale and he was trembling bad, which was a perfectly natural reaction for someone who was about to duel a dragon to the death. I was far more worried that he didn’t seem to be armed.
Nik’s pistols and shotgun were nowhere to be seen. Instead, he was wearing a full suit of crush armor, the sort they put on miners who worked way down at the bottom of the ocean. Aside from that, though, he had nothing. Not even a knife.
Considering he was going to be fighting my dad, I was trying to see Nik’s empty hands as a good thing when the announcer came on to say there’d been a change in plans. The undefeated champion Mad Dog would not be fighting the dragon White Snake as previously scheduled. Instead, he’d be fighting the dragon who defeated her. The powerful, the dominating, the ancient Yong of Korea!
There’d been some booing when the change was announced, but it was absolutely destroyed by the roar that followed my father’s name. I hadn’t realized he was so well-known among arena fans, though it could have been that they didn’t know him at all and were just cheering because they were getting the bigger of the two dragons who’d fought over the river. Or maybe they were just caught up in the screaming magic that was pulsing through the air like blood from an arterial wound. Whatever the reason, the crowd went absolutely nuts. I thought people were going to start tearing each other to pieces as the doors at the opposite end of the arena opened, and my father walked through.
He was also unarmed. Unlike Nik, though, Yong did not have armor, just the fancy suit he’d been wearing when the Gameskeeper had taken him away. But while I was relieved to see him walking in alert and seemingly free of any pre-fight shenanigans, the crowd instantly began to jeer. Apparently, they wanted to see an actual dragon, not a human who was supposed to be a dragon. The ugly turn in the crowd’s demeanor made the pulsing magic lurch sharply, and Kauffman jerked on the sofa, nearly spilling his drink.
“What’s wrong?” I asked mockingly.
“Nothing,” he said stiffly, settling back in. “Pressure’s just running high. Nothing you’d understand.”
“Even I know all spellwork has a limit,” I replied with a grin. “Not that I want to die in a giant magical explosion, but it would be the height of irony if the Gameskeeper stopped me only to have his spellwork overload anyway from the energy of his own record-breaking crowd.”
“It would also be the height of improbability.” Kauffman glared down at me through the glass. “Unlike some people, I’m not a spoiled brat who has to crib her spellwork off the internet. All of my circles are top-notch work with multiple overflow vectors capable of modulating even the sharpest of power spikes. That’s how a real mage operates.”
That jab hit a bit closer than I liked, but I didn’t have anything to prove to this man. My magic worked for me, even if it wasn’t working right now. I was far more concerned with watching my dad stride toward the center of the arena where the stagehands had already deposited Nik’s cage.
He was still standing quietly inside, his eyes closed as if he were meditating. My father looked equally calm, dipping his head to Nik, which was a great show of respect. Together, the pair of them formed a quiet, dignified oasis in the sea of screaming bloodthirsty chaos, and that gave me hope. A warm feeling that Kauffman immediately ruined.
“Ah, this is nice,” he said, taking a sip of his drink. “I almost don’t know who to cheer for. On the one hand, watching Nikki get eaten has always been one of my fondest wishes. On the other, seeing an arrogant dragon dismembered by a human would also be most delightful.”
I rolled my eyes.
“I just
