“These are the ones who destroyed my Bogland location?” the Shogun said, looking down his nose at us.
“Yes, mighty Shogun,” Biggerstaff said.
I tried for oblivion again and got nothing.
Hungry Ghost, help me out here, I thought desperately. I need Last Light, Last Breath.
No answer.
The Contrails’ horned Shogun snapped his fingers at his entourage.
A fragile-looking space moth wearing a black suit stepped forward. He held his hands out in front of him, and dark sapphire Spirit coalesced into an oversized executioner’s axe. The blade on that thing was so big it made the blade on the scythe look almost practical.
“Yoki, oblige the Contrails’ Executioner with a neck rest.” Biggerstaff was talking to the jackal, but he glared at me, as if I didn’t already know I was running out of time.
Come on. I took a deep breath and blew it back out in a slow, shaky stream. Come on, come on...
Sweat poured down my back, and my heart flopped around in my chest like it had come unattached. I couldn’t stop thinking about what would happen when I did cloak my Spirit. Hit Hungry Ghost, kill the Shogun, and then what? Kill all the Contrails in this place? Go on a murder rampage?
Biggerstaff’s eyes widened like I was screwing this up on purpose.
In front of the axe-wielding space moth, a thin platform of stone rumbled up from beneath the dirt, just wide enough to lay your shoulders across with your head dangling off the far side.
“Bring the first offender,” Biggerstaff said to someone over my shoulder.
“Get your mitts off me, ya trash lumps a’ space shite!”
The pair of Ratas and the shark lady dragged a thrashing Warcry to the boulder, fighting them every step of the way.
The Contrails’ Shogun watched, black eyes sparkling, as the Dragons’ probationary hooligans wrestled Warcry onto the platform.
My whole body shook, and I breathed out so hard and long that I almost started hyperventilating. Why wasn’t this working?
“Hake,” Rali said from my right, his voice low and panicked. “I was wrong before. I thought you should never kill anyone, ever. But then that girl in the Contrails’ location—she wanted to stop them from enslaving anyone else, she didn’t want revenge—and I know you weren’t trying to grab power when you grabbed that hawk guy’s life point, you were just trying to protect Kest—and when you killed that Nameless assassin—look, man, I don’t want to tell you to take a life, but what I’m saying is I get now that it’s not always for power or selfish reasons, and maybe if you have to kill to save our friend—”
I tried to shut Rali’s rambling out of my head and focus, but Warcry yelled, “Don’t you bleedin’ do anything that slime-coated cove wants, grav! Nothing, ya hear me?”
One of the Ratas slugged him in the mouth, shutting him up. The other Rata and the shark lady flopped across Warcry’s back, while the one who’d punched him held his shoulders down.
The executioner moth stepped up to the block and raised his sapphire Spirit axe over his head. The axe started to fall.
Last-Ditch Battle Royale
WARCRY SCRUNCHED HIS eyes shut as the axe dropped toward the back of his neck.
Screw the cloak. I shotgunned Miasma from Hungry Ghost and smashed through the last of the fist gripping my Spirit sea.
Instead of clamping down to stop me, Biggerstaff’s Spirit suppression disappeared completely, like dropping an attack dog’s leash and yelling “Sic ’em!”
I sent Dead Man’s Hand racing into the executioner moth. His life point sifted through the fingers of Dead Man’s Hand like dust.
The axe kept falling.
Rigor Mortis! I thought, hitting the sifting life point with the technique. The grains solidified and stopped filtering through my Miasma.
The executioner moth’s eyes widened, and he stopped the swing of his axe.
“Who the hell...?” He spun around, searching for whoever was attacking him.
“Me.” I bucked Yoki’s hand off my shoulders—much easier than it should’ve been considering the size and strength difference—and stood up.
The executioner jerked back his axe, teeth bared in a snarl, and took a step toward me. His life point fluttered like moth wings in Dead Man’s Hand.
I crushed it.
Before he even hit the ground, the rest of the Shogun’s entourage took off, wings flapping as they climbed toward the ceiling of the arena.
“Get these shackles off,” I snapped at Yoki, knowing he would do it. Not just because he’d heard what Biggerstaff wanted, but because he was scared of me. He respected me the same way you respect a loaded rifle or a rattlesnake. I’d seen it in that split-second hesitation upstairs, when he had the choice to go for me or go for Warcry.
The stone sloughed off my wrist. Blood pumped back to my hands, making pins and needles stab through them as they woke up. I stuck my right hand out to my side.
Gleaming black bone tore through my muscles, and the Lunar Scythe ripped into the world like it was tearing through the fabric of reality.
I could start tearing out life points like these guys were nothing more than a massive band of bog ferals who could fly, but that same part of me that had known Yoki wouldn’t try to stop me wasn’t satisfied with simple death. It wanted fear. Fear was respect. Fear was power.
Devil Corruption helps Death cultivator understand, Hungry Ghost croaked in my brain.
Keep me stocked on Miasma, I told him.
Contrails swooped overhead, throwing Spirit attacks aimed to kill. Rali leapt over the dead executioner and jerked Warcry up off the block. Yoki had released their shackles, too.
I hit a squid guy who got too close to Warcry and Rali with Rigor Mortis, knocking him out of the air.
Pain corkscrewed into the knife scars in my left side. I could feel the rat’s nest of hopelessly tangled Spirit rivers screwing down tighter, the built-up soul contamination throbbing. My knees went weak, and my fist bones tightened down on the
