The Leviathan awakened. With its step, the ground trembled, sending a shockwave through the ground. Animatronic constructs—which, from the stadium seating, passed for birds—scattered from the trees and collided beneath the beast's colossal, squared maw. A tsunami trailed in its wake, large enough to rattle the sturdy clear material separating the arena from the audience; a dark sea parted to reveal six sets of tree-trunk legs set against a slender serpent's blue-scaled torso.

  This is it, came the collective thought—a million eyes all glued to their screens, in awe of the Leviathan. This is it. A manmade God, a creature with ferocity unmatched in seas and on soil, operating at the behest of an unseen pilot. Its head lifted to the sky in a fashion so organic that, for a moment, one might think it sentient . . . Black eyes watched their prey, small and round on the front of its head, larger still than a starship.

  The Hellhound perched below, an ant in the shadow of a dragon. It burned atop rocks torn asunder by the Leviathan's wake, the grisly remnants of an arm clenched beneath its canines. Beneath that serpentine form, the fiery little dog felt no shame. The arm lulled from its snout like a bone, and then fell limply to the ground.

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  The Hellhound howled.

  Then there came a crescendo of fury, a harrowing roar from the Leviathan's waterlogged throat. It lurched skyward, leaving only dry bed behind. The beast twisted in the air and coiled upon itself, and launched a downward preemptive strike.

  When their bodies collided, no one remembered the upheaval of rock. Nor did they remember the Hellhound's defiant leap toward the mouth of its predator. Nor was it the smoke pillowing up from the rubble just past the impact, where some third beast laid waste to the castle.

  They remembered the faces of the pilots, front and center on the screens.

  Leonidas, pilot of the Hellhound, his jaw set to match his dog's bite, and with eyes so wide that they’d been perfect circles. CLOUD, the Leviathan's pilot, bent forward and sweat-drenched, coldly assessing his odds of success.