I sprinted around the rim of the crater and ran up a broken section of the arena stands. I leapt over multiple steps at a time, careful not to cause them to fracture beneath my boots. The Blood Giant was still being peppered by Cold arrows and howling with agony, and I managed to ascend to his shoulder height on the arena’s stands. Before I could leap from them and sever his head with a flash of my chain, he saw me coming and started hopping in the direction of the portal.
“No way, you’re not escaping this time!” I shouted as I vaulted from the stands and landed on the ground with a roll.
He half-heartedly blasted a few bolts of red lightning my way. It was clear that losing a hand and half a leg had taken the fight out of him. A steady rain of Cold-enchanted arrows continued to slam into his body, causing him to jerk and scream and twist. He got closer and closer to the portal, but I was gaining on him, even though every leap he took on his single working leg carried him dozens of yards. With every jump, his gigantic body became smaller; he was losing power, and losing his ability to remain in Blood Giant form too. As he fled he scooped up stones the size of cows and flung them at me, but I ducked and dived and rolled, dodging every one of the projectiles until he got too small to pick them up any longer.
By this stage he was only around ten feet tall, and his body was riddled with glowing blue arrows. One final lash of my kusarigama chain would certainly finish him off. I just had to hope that Layna’s webs would keep him here long enough for me to get to him. If I took down the Hooded man who’d transformed into this giant, then I could deal a serious blow to the Blood God.
The giant saw this was the only thing that mattered anymore too: he didn’t turn back, but aimed his right hand toward the portal, and blasted a potent lightning bolt at the webs surrounding the portal. It tore through the webs, and the rather small hole was big enough now he’d shrunk; he dived through, and he was saved.
“No!” I roared as I hit the ground, my chain just grazing his back as he passed successfully through the portal.
The light in the portal span into a vortex, but as it began to close and seal the way through shut, I realized what I had to do. The system of portals had to be destroyed. Wherever he was now, he would be trapped there.
In a flash, I resurrected the peasant girl he’d just killed. I filled her scrawny body with as much Death power as it could hold, and then, as the final vortex of spinning light was closing, I sent her sprinting toward the portal. She dived into the light, and at the instant she passed through the portal I detonated her body.
I timed it perfectly, and through the portal I saw the explosion again, again, and again, completely identical each time, as if viewed through a series of mirrors facing each other. In the space of a few seconds, there were over a hundred explosions. The last one exploded right in front of me, obliterating the portal and showering me with chunks of stone and a cloud of masonry dust.
I could only hope that the explosions I’d seen had been the destruction of every last portal. I wouldn’t know for sure, but at least I had put a serious dent in the Blood God’s ability to move his followers across the world at will.
Anna-Lucielle and Layna raced toward me, both women wrapping their arms around my neck and showering me in kisses.
“I can’t believe you killed the giant,” Anna-Lucielle said.
“I didn’t,” I said. “See?”
I walked over to the severed body parts and found that they had turned back into human body parts. The severed hand was liver-spotted and wrinkly, and the severed lower leg was skinny and pale, with long, yellow toenails. Hopefully these sinjuries would slow him down considerably. His voice rang again in my mind; where the hell did I know it from? This question was driving me crazy. I just couldn’t place that strangely familiar voice, but I knew I had heard it before, long before I’d even known the Blood God existed.
“Want a taste?” I held up the severed hand to Layna and smiled.
She shuddered. “Old man tends to taste gamey. And I imagine a follower of the Blood God has all kinds of diseases.”
I shrugged. “Then I guess we’ll leave it for the worms. I can’t imagine a zombie hand would be all that useful.”
“Are you feeling all right, Lord Vance?” Zhenwan asked me as the Blind Monks surrounded me.
“Uh, yeah, I think so.”
That was when I felt how completely the fight had drained me; it had taken all of my power to absorb the energy of the Blood Giant’s red lightning strikes, and as much to inflict damage on him.
But someone had helped me.
I recalled the Cold-infused arrows that had struck the giant and whirled around, scanning the ruins for some sign of the shooter. Standing on the edge of the ruined arena, holding a glowing blue longbow, was a familiar figure in a black enjarta catsuit.
I immediately recognized those athletic legs, that firm ass, those small but perky breasts, that tawny skin and silky black hair, straight as falling rain, that delicious little rosebud of a mouth, and those sultry, dark almond eyes.
“Rami-Xayon,” I said, “you got here at just the right time, but I didn’t think I’d be running into you nearly so soon. Where’d you find that Ice bow? It’s pretty damn impressive.”
“I’m not Rami-Xayon, but you could be forgiven for thinking I am,” the beautiful Yengishwoman said. “I’m her twin sister Yumo. She didn’t tell you
