The reduced magic volume seemed to be working enormously in his favor, actually. The mountain of power he’d built at the start of Nik’s fight must have been way too much for him to personally control, which was how I’d been able to steal it, but the level he was at now was apparently perfect. Siphoning magic off him this time felt like trying to pinch sand out of a rock. And that was a problem, because despite everything, the Gameskeeper was still a god, and even though my father was back to his old self, he was still just one dragon, and he was getting hammered.
I saw now why he’d sent Mom and the other soldiers away. The Gameskeeper’s magic encircled the area around him like an iron fist, crushing anything smaller than a dragon. Even Yong looked beaten down, his body low and coiled. But a cornered dragon is the most dangerous dragon of all. My father fought back with claws and fangs, blasting the Gameskeeper with gouts of white-hot fire that turned the sand beneath him to glass.
If he’d been anything else, that would have been it, but the Gameskeeper was a spirit. His body was no more physical than my dad’s smoke form had been. Every fiery breath and slashing claw passed straight through him, leaving him free to swing the arena’s thick magic like a whip, battering my father with invisible blows that sent him staggering. It was a bad, bad situation, but with the Gameskeeper’s power surrounding them both like an iron wall, I couldn’t do anything to help.
“Crap,” I said, opening my eyes again. “I gotta get in there.”
“Uh, this might not be a good time to move,” Nik’s strained voice said from somewhere above me.
I sat up in a rush only to get shoved right back down into the sand by Nik as a bullet whizzed over my head.
“What the hell?” I said when he let me up. “Who are these guys?”
When I’d closed my eyes a few seconds ago, we’d been alone at the edge of the arena. Now, Nik and I were trapped against the wall by a circle of guards dressed in the arena’s trademark cheap security armor and carrying guns that, while equally cheap looking, were still doing a good job of keeping us pinned.
“Security team,” Nik replied, blocking a bullet on his metal arm while a second pinged off the shoulder of the crush armor he’d been given to draw out his fight against Yong. “Didn’t think they’d be brave enough for this shit, but apparently the Gameskeeper is still calling the shots, and he still considers you enemy number one.”
After all the trouble I’d caused, I could see that. I was more annoyed that an asshole like the Gameskeeper commanded such loyalty from his employees. Once I got a look at their faces, though, I realized I was wrong. This wasn’t loyalty. These men were terrified, firing their cheap guns at Nik with a desperation that made me sick to my stomach. I didn’t know what the Gameskeeper had on them that could make them this crazy, but it didn’t really matter. Whatever it was, we clearly weren’t getting out of this without killing him. Or killing them.
I knew my preference. “Can you hold them off?” I asked Nik.
“Probably,” he said, ducking a shot without even looking. “Even if their guns weren’t shit, they’re too scared to shoot straight, and you’re wearing your bulletproof tarp.” He nodded to my poncho, which I immediately slapped my hand against to activate the anti-bullet ward. “We’ll have a problem if they charge us, but until they get the spine for a direct attack, we should be alright. What are you going to do?”
Something crazy. I knew better than to tell him that, though from the grumpy look on his face, Nik already knew.
“Just don’t die, okay?”
“Same goes for you,” I said, rising up to give him a quick peck on the cheek before I closed my eyes and plunged back in.
And ran right back into the wall of the Gameskeeper’s magic.
I beat my mental fists against it, but it was no use. The spirit was locked up tighter than a dragon’s treasury, and my dad was trapped inside. I tried reaching out to the DFZ for help next, hoping that shrinking the Gameskeeper’s power had also shrunk his domain, but I got nothing. Despite the chaos, the Gameskeeper was clearly still the god of this place. My mom’s troops and the DFZ’s rat priest were making chaos of the stands, so I knew he had to run out of oomph eventually, but I didn’t know when that would be or if my dad would last that long. Yong was already looking bloody, his blue scales soaked with that shimmery, magical dragon blood I never wanted to see again.
I glanced back at the Gameskeeper, cursing as my father’s claws slid through him yet again. It didn’t matter how strong Yong was. If he kept taking damage while the Gameskeeper didn’t, there was no winning this fight. I had to get through that barrier and help him before things got too lopsided to fix. I was wracking my brain to figure out how I was going to do that when something sharp cut into my palm.
I gasped in pain. My first thought was that a bullet had gotten past Nik. When my eyes popped back open to check, though, my hand was fine. There was no wound or blood, just the faint silver glow of the thread.
In my
