My mother nodded and turned back to her riot-geared unit. “You heard the Great Yong’s daughter!” she said in the firm, authoritative voice that seemed to work as well on soldiers as it did on servants. “Our dragon’s victory depends on dispersing the locals. Groups one through four, you take the north side. Groups five through eight, the south. Use non-lethals only, but leave no one in this building.”
“Yes, First Mortal!” they replied in unison, sliding their guns off their shoulders to replace their live rounds with clips full of rubber bullets. My mother did the same to the weapon strapped across her own back, popping the clip out of the submachine gun and replacing it with a deftness that made me wince. Was there anything she wasn’t good at?
“We’ve got the crowd, daughter,” she told me as she slid her gun back onto her arm. “You stay here and do whatever you can to help your father.”
“On it,” I said, but she was already jogging away with her men.
“Is everything good?” Nik asked as they left. “Because I didn’t understand a word of that.”
I frowned at him, confused for a second before I remembered he didn’t speak Korean. “It’s great,” I reported. “Mom’s people are going to disperse the crowd for us.”
“Sounds good,” Nik said. Then he scowled. “Does your mom always arrive with an army?”
“Pretty much,” I said, watching my mom’s soldiers use their grapple guns to scale the arena walls into the stands above, where people were already starting to panic. They’d had no problem with a dragon or helicopters so long as they stayed in the arena, but armed troops climbing into their seats was apparently where even the most hardcore arena fans drew the line. Most people chose to run, but a few blood-drunk idiots started throwing things, forcing Mom’s teams to shield their faces as they pushed forward.
“Should we go help them?” Nik asked. “Even with armor, there’s enough people up there to trample them if the crowd turns.”
“She’ll be fine,” I said confidently. “Mom can do anything. That’s why she’s been First Mortal for the last thirty years. And she’s not alone. Look!”
I pointed up at the top level of the arena stands where people were screaming and fleeing in panic even though Mom’s troops were nowhere near them. This was because, while there were no soldiers up there yet, there were several dozen rats. Huge ones the size of sheep all moving together under the direction of a scrawny old man wearing sewer-worker coveralls. He waved when he saw me looking, and I realized that this must be one of the priests the DFZ had sent in to help hide my presence from the Gameskeeper.
I waved back. Someone less familiar with the DFZ would probably have been shocked he’d been able to get all those rats in here, but not me. Honestly, the rats were the most plausible part of all of this. You couldn’t keep those bastards out! I was far more astonished that they listened to him. So far as I knew, DFZ rats didn’t listen to anyone. These followed their priest’s orders gleefully, jumping at the arena-goers with squeaks of glee. The people screamed and fled, dropping their nachos and popcorn and cotton candy, which the rats devoured in greedy abandon before scurrying over to the next tier of seats to repeat the process all over again. They cleared an entire section in the few seconds I was watching, proving that the DFZ had been wrong. Her people were good in a fight after all!
Hopes soaring that my god hadn’t abandoned us after all, I turned back to my father, who’d planted himself between us and the Gameskeeper. The blood-rage-fueled spirit hadn’t gotten any bigger, but I could still feel his magic hanging in the air above me like an iron weight. It wasn’t a patch on the DFZ’s magic, but it was still way more of a power reserve than my dad possessed, which was going to be a major issue if I didn’t find some way to even things out.
“I’m going to help him,” I said, sitting down in the sand. “Cover me.”
“Opal, he’s a dragon,” Nik said frantically. “What are you going to do?”
“Anything I can. Just watch my back. This is going to take all my concentration.”
“I won’t let anyone touch you,” Nik promised. “But…” He trailed off, gritting his teeth. “You aren’t always the most responsible with magic, okay? I’m all for beating the Gameskeeper, but I just got you back. What do I do if things go wrong?”
“Wait for me to make them go right again,” I said, lying back. “I’ve learned a lot over the last two months. Trust me. I can do this.”
Nik still looked skeptical, not that I blamed him. I wouldn’t have trusted the me of two months ago with this kind of giant magic either. Thankfully, I wasn’t that person anymore. There was no way to make Nik believe that except to show him, though, so I gave him a final smile and closed my eyes, focusing all my attention on the magic roaring all around us.
There was a lot. It reminded me of the time I’d fallen into the void below the Gnarls both in terms of sheer volume and rampant chaos. At least when it was being channeled through Kauffman’s circle, all the magic had been spinning the same way. Now it was just a cacophony of angry screams, panic, and the clenched desperation of a fighter with nothing to lose.
Not the sort of power any mage in her right mind would touch, in other words, but I’d gone way
