Chapter Fourteen
Learning on the Job
“Oli, eyes up!” Sarah yelled.
The demonic horse of shadow and smoke roared toward him.
Oliver tried to dive to the side again, whipping his sword in a defensive arc but the beast ducked the blow and bowled through his lower legs, throwing him violently to the sand.
Sarah barrelled up from behind as the horse turned to face her. It lashed out with its clawed-foot but Sarah took a hasty back-step, avoiding the strike with firm ease. She waited until it snarled and lunged again, and in the same movement she twisted, letting it pass her and brought her sabre up in a concise flick, glancing the monster across the side of its jaw.
The horse screamed, reared and barrelled forward, forcing her backward across the sand to avoid its gnashing teeth.
Oliver fought back onto his feet and groaned, “Michael! When you’re ready!”
“It’s made of shadow, what on Enthall is a silver arrow going to do?” Michael yelled as his heart raged inside his stomach.
Sarah narrowly rolled out the way of the creature, kicking up a mist of sand and yelled, “I’ll explain later, but for now can we just agree to say magic?”
The horse banked hard and bolted at her once again but Oliver barrelled in to assist.
Michael drew back his bowstring and mumbled, “Fuck it, then.”
He let the arrow launch across the arena as the dark stallion made to leap at his companions and it glanced the creature’s muzzle with the strength of a punch, sending the beast tumbling.
It regained its footing and Oliver drove it further back, and like it was rehearsed, Oliver shouted and ducked and Sarah leapt over him, bringing her gilded bladed down and around, clean through the creature’s neck.
The monster collapsed into a pile of dust at Oliver’s feet, and he stepped quickly away from the mess.
Sarah turned and looked him over quickly. “Good?”
“Good.” Oliver smiled brightly, though his legs ached through and through. “Good, Michael?”
Michael was sweating through his clothing, almost glad he wasn’t covered in leather or iron. He gave a shaking thumbs-up, trying to slow down his heart.
The chains and gears of the next gate along began to rumble and from above the man in Javen armour called down, “Combatants on your feet!”
The second portcullis hit its apex with a boom and the darkness of the empty cell seemed to sing a hallowed song of silence to the Arena floor.
Michael’s hand began to twitch and a faint ache echoed in his head as he nocked another arrow to the bowstring. “What’s next?”
Sarah and Oliver stepped backward to the centre of the stadium and the young woman mumbled, “I have a bad inkling.” And with that, she pushed her thumb and forefinger to her mouth and let out a loud, far-crying whistle.
Oliver mumbled, “Hope your friend isn’t busy.”
Michael didn’t dare break his eye-line from the cage door. “What are you two talking about?”
As though waiting for him to speak, three small shapes scuttled out of the darkness, diving in and out of the sand like sharks dipping beneath ocean waves.
Michael sprinted into the centre with the others as the three shifting shapes rounded on each of them. “And these are?”
Sarah grinned and asked, “Come on, Michael, did you never read The Ahuran Prince and the Sand King?”
Michael nearly turned out of shock. “You trying to tell me these are royal fairies?”
She frowned and glared at him. “What? No, not The Ahuran King and the Dust Prince-”
Oliver made face caught between incredulousness and amusement. “Are you two shitting me?”
From the sand burst the first of the three creatures launching itself at Michael’s jugular. He yelled in panic and only a wild swing of his bow saved him, smacking the creature back into the dust.
Michael stumbled out of the circle and watched as the horrid creature pressed toward him. He squinted through the cloud of dust and sand and realised the monster was exactly as Sarah said. The story of the Sand King was about a great, secret ruler who lived in the middle of the Great Pale Desert, beneath the dunes of a forgotten kingdom. Long story short, he turned out to be an enormous scorpion, but he was kind, wise and powerful, unlike the other beasts of the land, so much so that it was said he could even read and write and speak.
The creature before Michael was almost the exact shade as the sand around it and the only inconsistency was the shimmering reflection bouncing off its crystal-edged pincers. However large it was, Michael didn’t think it seemed to be much the talking type.
The oversized scorpion lunged forward with its stinger and Michael leapt back so tensely that he accidentally triggered the hidden blades on his bow.
The scorpion almost seemed as surprised as Michael when he slashed the blade through its carapace, dissipating the coyote-sized bug into black dust at his feet.
For a moment, he just stared at the mess by his feet. He felt sick. The feeling thickened in his stomach as he turned to see Oliver and Sarah pushed back toward the walls of the Arena. He drew an arrow but their scuttling pincers and feet kicked up such a thick cloud he could scarcely see his friends, let alone the monsters.
Michael yelled, a shade shy of screaming, “Guys?” when overhead a flash of green-lighting licked across the sky, followed by a bone-chilling roll of cavernous thunder. He couldn’t be sure where to look, be it the heavens or the soil, when another flicker of lighting broke down from the sky and exploded onto the sand stage.
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Michael threw himself backward as sand was cast high into the air, showering everyone in a curtain of grime. He pushed himself back to his knees and tried to peer through the settling cloud. Shapes of beasts and lunging, thrashing fights flashed through but not a single detail more.
As it was slowly swept away, Sarah and Oliver were revealed to be leant up against one another, staring with relief at the two piles of ashy grain.
Behind them a shape stepped gingerly out.
Michael tore an arrow onto his bowstring and cried, “Look out!”
“Stop, Michael!” Sarah leapt in the way, holding out her hands.
A creature moved out into the open. It was long, broad bodied and covered with green and black scales, all beneath a jacket of long, folded wings. It had to be six foot in length before its tail, held up by four staunch legs and thick-toed feet. The creature’s skull was tall and long, aglow with bright yellow, cat eyes that stayed dead-locked onto Michael.
“Put the bow down, slowly.”
Michael eased the bowstring back into a neutral state and disengaged the arrow. “Is that- is that a dragon?”
Sarah gently ruffled the scales behind its jaw and nodded. “Almost. This is Raeken,” she said gently. “He’s a Storm Drakonian.”
Michael’s hands were still shaking and he couldn’t decide whether it was excitement or leftover fear jittering through him. “To think I always wanted a puppy...”
The small Drakonian cast its gaze at him and Michael knew with certainty that it understood his every word and action.
Above, Jack the Supervisor watched the trio as they muttered back and forth. Beneath his Javen-helm he rolled his eyes and pushed the next lever into place, sending the gate up with a hideous racket of noise. He then barked down into the arena, “Raeken, keep that poisonous gaze in check. We’re training here, not executing.”
Michael wanted to ask exactly what he meant by “poisonous gaze” when a set of heavy footsteps rumbled from the darkness of the cell. He cast a glance to the warriors and both seemed paler than they had before.
Oliver looked to Sarah and cleared his throat. “Troll?”
She glanced at Jack and caught him on the end of a smirk. “Somethin’ bigger, I think.”
Another footstep crashed and the trio moved into the centre of the Arena floor.
Michael’s heartbeat thickened again and his breaths became short.
Oliver took his hand. “You don’t have to be nervous. I got you.”
“We got you,” Sarah echoed, nodding gently to them both.
A third crushing stepped resounded from the dark, and piercing outward from the shadow, a dull meat cleaver drifted out in the clutch of a knotted, pale hand.
Michael nocked an arrow.
Sarah squared her shoulders.
Oliver straightened his blade.
Raeken rumbled like a closing monsoon.
Out from the shadows stepped a slouch-shouldered behemoth of a humanoid. In the centre of its head was a singular, sickly-blue eye. Beneath it, a wide, sneering mouth, so full of jagged teeth that it seemed unable to close its maw. Its arms and legs were thick and rigid with callous-covered muscle, the colour of white ash. From its long, hairy feet to the top of its bald, scarred scalp, the creature towered over the trio by two feet at the least.
Michael moved his hand to his bowstring and whispered, “Got a kid’s story for this one?”
The enormous humanoid snarled, and then like a tar-pit bubble gurgling to the surface, it spoke, “My kind are known as Enolician.”
Michael’s eyes went so wide they were dried by a gust of wind.
Oliver shivered and tightened his grip. “Really freaks me out when they know Common.”
Michael lowered his bow and looked back and forth from his friends to the foe. “Wait, I mean, maybe- can’t we talk this out?”
The Enolician answered by drawing out a second cleaver and whipping it their way. Raeken tackled Michael to safety and the blade smashed into the far wall.
Sarah launched forward, heaved herself up and kicked the monster square in the jaw, knocking it back into a stumble.
Oliver chased her into the fray as Michael righted himself again and sprinted around to the left to flank it, shouting, “Thank you!” to the lizard.
Sarah swiped her blade up the creature’s tumbling leg and accidentally forced it to drive a kick into her chest. She was thrown hard into the sand, as Oliver launched passed her.
“Michael!” he yelled, parrying a slice from the cleaver and ducking another swing. “Slow ‘em down! Raeken, get his attention!”
The archer lined up the giant’s leg and loosed his shot right through their calf, impacting with a small puff of black sludge and smoke.
The creature roared in pain and brought its last cleaver up to throw in Michael’s direction when the lizard reared back and sent up a viscous spray of acid from the back of its throat, half-blinding the giant.
Michael winced in fear as he watched it stumble aimlessly and heave its weapon toward Raeken, missing by some distance as the lizard swept his wings and launched high above the Arena.
The Enolician roared through the pain of the acid and brought both fists down in a vicious smash, narrowly missing Oliver as he rolled away, sending up a plume of sand.
It turned grabbing for Oliver when Sarah jumped in, sword-first, and plunged the ceremonial sabre through its back, tackling the massive creature to the floor. She rolled off, leaving the blade in the giant and wheezing in pain as she clutched her gut.
The monster spit up all manner of dark sludge, mumbling foreign curses as it crumbled slowly into dust around the gilded steel, though not in any manner of hurry.
Michael’s adrenaline faded and the sickness in his stomach returned as he watched it go. The young man nocked an arrow and stepped forward. “Move, Oliver.”
Oliver pushed himself up and stepped away and Michael quietly put his silver arrow through the beast’s eye socket, instantly turning the entire mass to dust.
Standing by the railing above Jack frowned curiously behind his dark visor.
Back down in the arena Oliver hurried over to Sarah and the warriors quickly helped one another clean away the dust with an odd amount of urgency. Afterward they both looked up to Jack, who was still leant on the rail, looking severe and clinical through his sharp helmet.
Jack unloaded the steel crossbow bolt and cranked the firing-string back into a neutral position. “Jacobs, your strokes were exemplary but your footwork was out of time. Robinson, stop using hand-to-hand unless you’re using your Arcancy, otherwise you were spot-on. You, what’s your name?”
Michael blinked and rubbed his sore fingertips, stammering, “Michael Williams.”
“Williams, take deeper breaths. Think before you fire. You glanced every shot you rushed. For a first time... not terrible. I like the way you fight.”
Michael blinked, noticing Sarah and Oliver smiling at their exchange. “What way is that?”
Jack slung the crossbow back over his shoulder. “Fighting so you don’t have to fight anymore.” Jack walked over to the rope-ladder and slid to the ground. “Med-bay, eat, then rest. Go.” He then turned and cranked open the main portcullis to let in a group of Legacies due for training.
Oliver sheathed his sword and winced as he tried to stretch to his full height.
Michael hurried over and asked, “You good, dear?”
He nodded, gritting his teeth but smiling nonetheless. “Just some bruising, I think. I’m goin’ to see Lillian for a bit. You both okay? That kick was no joke-”
Sarah waved him away but winced as she touched her abdomen. “I’ll be ‘right. Want to get a drink, Michael?”
The archer nodded but wearily looked at his new friend. “You sure you’re okay?”
Oliver looked softly at him and his smile warmed onto his face, like he couldn’t decide if he wanted to forgo the moment. He allowed the two of them to walk him to the keep, dismissing them gently as soon as they stepped beneath the pavilion.
Michael and Sarah eased themselves onto the benches and watched him as he wandered toward a great, white tent on the far right of the keep.
They were too far to hear him when Oliver mumbled, “Michael Williams,” again, smiling quietly as he played the afternoon over again in his mind.