I wrinkled my nose, trying to envision it. Not the image itself—I could picture an arena-sized bowl full of water swirling to the left like a flushing toilet just fine—but magically speaking, what he was describing made no sense at all. Even in a city as magical as the DFZ, ambient power always rose from the ground. Some spots were more animated than others, but even in places were the magic danced, it never all danced in the same direction. Natural magic was chaotic and mushy, moving in jerks and swells and hitches, never solid flows, which was why most mages put it into a circle before trying to do anything with it. Even Shamans had to squeeze the power tight before attempting to use it.
The only time you ever saw large amounts of magic flowing together was inside a spell, and there was no way that was the case here. I mean, it was technically possible, but if someone were casting a spell using an arena-sized circle, every mage in the city would be freaking their shit.
“Are you sure it’s circling? You’re not just caught in a draft or something?”
“I know what I’m feeling,” my father snapped. “The magic is moving left and downward in a spiral. It’s also getting stronger. I didn’t notice something was off when you stopped in the doorway, but now I can’t feel anything else. Look.”
He held up his arm, and I cursed under my breath. The smoke of my father’s transparent body was trailing off him as if it were caught in a stiff breeze. He wasn’t getting smaller that I could tell, but I didn’t think there was any way that could be good.
“What the hell is going on?”
That’s what I’d like to know, the DFZ said, her disembodied voice shifting through my head until I had the distinct impression that she was peering out through my eyeballs. Let’s see if it gets bigger as the night goes on.
I didn’t want it to get bigger. Just knowing that the already suspect magic here was all moving in the same direction was sending my sense of impending doom skyrocketing. I understood the DFZ keeping information from me to ensure my observations tonight were free of prior bias, but I was starting to get really freaked out.
You’ll be fine, the god assured me. You’re my priestess, remember? Nothing bad can happen to you so long as you are mine.
That mollified me a little, but I was still on the edge of my seat. It was actually a relief when the speakers kicked up with pumping music, signaling the crowds to head to their seats. My dad made an exasperated sound as hordes of people started pouring into the bleachers around us. The seats next to me ended up being taken by a group of six German tourists. The middle-aged men were very friendly, but also very drunk. One of them actually tried to feed me his popcorn before I switched to Korean, waving my hands as if I had no idea what they were saying. They stopped paying attention to me after that, turning their attention to the arena floor where spotlights were swinging wildly.
After all that buildup, I was expecting a circus ringmaster to appear out of thin air, but the spotlights actually went up to focus on one of the sky boxes hanging below the second tier of bleachers. Inside, behind a wall of bulletproof glass, was a very ordinary-looking man. The crowd went wild when they saw him, but I didn’t see what the ruckus was about. The man in the spotlight looked like a typical businessman. He wasn’t even dressed like a gangster, the usual go-to for people who wanted to be taken seriously in the Underground.
I couldn’t make out his face at this distance, but he didn’t appear supernaturally handsome or tall or anything like that. I was wondering if he was just some rando who’d paid to be in the spotlight for his birthday when a deep-voiced announcer came on and told us to pay our respects, because this was the man who made it all possible: the one and only Gameskeeper.
My frown deepened as the arena exploded into applause. This was the infamous Gameskeeper? The Underground kingpin Nik was so afraid of? Not that you could measure power from appearances, but dude seriously looked like a mattress salesman. He waved and nodded at the screaming crowd as if their frothing was his due, but he didn’t say anything, and eventually the spotlights moved to focus on the arena’s huge metal gates, which were rolling up so slowly that either the motor was broken or someone had set the speed to maximum drama.
I squinted at the Gameskeeper’s box for a few more seconds, but it was impossible to see through the glass now that the spotlights were gone, so I sighed and turned my attention to where the lighting technicians so obviously wanted it to go.
“Okay, Sibyl, what are we in for?”
“Looks like manticores,” my AI replied after checking the program.
I blanched. “Aren’t those super endangered? And intelligent?”
“Yes to both,” Sibyl said.
My mouth pressed into a thin, angry line as the achingly slow gates finally opened enough to allow two creatures to be dragged out into the sand by teams of handlers. Morbidly curious, I switched on the drone-camera feed I’d purchased, and my vision was suddenly filled with a dazzling close-up of two fantastic creatures the size of cars: beasts covered in burnished red fur with the bodies of lions, big black scorpion tails, and the faces of terrified men.
The crowd’s screaming got louder as the armored handler teams dragged the manticores to opposite ends of the arena. My still-churning stomach clenched in a knot when I saw it. Even without my drone cameras, it would have been obvious from anywhere in the arena that these creatures did not want
