A hush fell over the audience, breaths held in anticipation of the cruel spectacle to come. The rhino gazed into Sarah’s eyes, then reared up high on two legs, poised to bring its entire arsenal of natural weaponry down upon her quaking form in a single strike.
The fallen beast stretched to its full height, as if reaching out to reave the heavens themselves, revealing its glistening pink underbelly, a foul sheet of bulging muscle. It was at least twenty feet tall when standing on two legs, with more gristly mass than two regular rhinos chained together. A monster by any reckoning.
The crowd was on the edge of their seats, ready to go absolutely fucking nuts the moment that its bulk came down. They started cheering once again, but Nick shut out the thunder of their applause. The rhythmic chanting of a million voices repeating a single word. “Kill. Kill. Kill!”
Nick walled out his pain and his fear. His certainty that this was the end of Sarah’s story. Everything but the pumping of his legs and the bellows of his lungs. He kept on striving for everything he was worth, desperate to make it to Sarah before the beast struck, even though he knew that he would never arrive in time.
Time slowed down to a glacial crawl, but even that wasn’t sufficient to salvage the situation. He didn’t want to admit it, but the truth was undeniable. There was simply nothing that he could do. No matter how many plans whirled madly through his mind, it was already far too late.
The slowdown did, however, give Nick a chance to observe what happened next. To follow what would have otherwise been a chaotic jumble of events that were resolved within the blink of an eye. The fallen rhino cast its forelimbs wide, ragged talons splayed out to form a living wall of jet-black ivory. Its slavering jaws cracked open, eager to devour whatever remained of Sarah when its wrath was unleashed upon her.
The hideous mockery of the once noble creature stood balanced for half a heartbeat more, savoring the scream that emerged unbidden from Sarah’s lips. Then its weight came down, as ponderous as a mountain falling. A living avalanche of muscle, horn, and claw.
That was when Nick saw the shadow.
Confused, still fighting with every step to close the distance, he tracked the blob of spreading darkness gliding across the rhino’s muscular profile, as if a cloud were passing in front of the sun.
He looked up and then up some more, to where a person was falling from nearly halfway up the arena’s inner wall. A person wielding a massive two-handed sword. His eyes widened with astonishment when he realized what he was looking at.
It can’t be… but it is. It’s Bret. Shocking Nick to his core, Sarah’s brother had closed the distance with blinding speed, springing off the base of the wall to gain over forty feet of air. That’s why his shadow is so big. He must have burned stamina while using an ability.
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Understanding dawned as Nick took in Bret’s falling form. No, he isn’t falling. That’s an attack!
Both of Bret’s arms were arced behind his head, reaching back as far as he could go. His hands were clasped around the hilt of his claymore, every muscle rigid with strain, bulging and corded as he tensed to unleash the full power of his body in a single strike.
As impressive as this was, it wasn’t the most remarkable part. Every inch of the four-foot sword was covered in a coruscating sheet of shadow, as magic dark as midnight spread out to enshroud the blade.
As one, the audience’s chanting fell silent. They had all noticed Bret’s incredible approach in the same breath. By now, the warrior had crossed half the distance, plummeting toward the arena floor like a comet descending from the heavens.
Below his boots, the fallen beast lunged for Sarah, who was tensed to make a final, desperate dodge. A last-ditch effort that had no hope of saving her life. But Bret wasn’t about to let that happen.
Propelled by an ability that the man hadn’t revealed during their strategy session, Bret’s form rocketed toward his foe like the fury of the gods descending. Powered by his meteoric dive and gravity’s embrace, his sword struck first.
Before the mutant rhinoceros closed the distance to Sarah’s head, Bret joined the battle in a midnight flash. A fraction of a heartbeat before contact, he swung with everything he had. His great sword came whipping around and down, cleaving the very air as it went streaking past, leaving a stark black crescent behind like a tail.
Bret had been silent while setting up his all-or-nothing attack, but in the moment that he struck, the warrior unleashed a primal scream of rage, meeting the raw fury of the fallen beast hate for hate.
Half a heartbeat later his claymore struck true, the screaming blade tearing into a thick wall of muscle where the beast’s neck met its shoulder. With a sound like every bungie cord in the world snapping in chorus, the glistening mass of meat parted, muscle fibers snapping as they were freed from the enormous strain of carrying the corrupted rhino’s mass. The sword carved a shadow-strewn wound into the beast’s body, lodging deep into its bones before Bret’s incredible momentum was absorbed.
At that point, three things happened at once. The first was that Sarah dove through the rhino’s legs, the maneuver that she’d been planning all along. It would never have worked when the mutant was watching, but due to the distraction of taking a critical wound, she barely made it through. Sarah tucked in one shoulder as she dove, coming to a rolling stop ten feet behind the creature’s claws.
The second event was that a pair of crossbow bolts sank into one of the rhino’s rear knees with a hearty thunk. One of the missiles was shining with a sickly emerald light as Veronica’s acidic ability landed on target.
The third thing was that Bret’s body collided with the rhino’s torso, nearly impaling himself on its horns in the process. With a wet smack he rebounded off its bulk before slamming into the floor in a sprawling heap of tangled limbs, dazed or unconscious Nick didn’t know. The rhino came crashing to the ground beside him, wicked talons falling short of decapitating the man by the width of his palm.
For a heartbeat more, all was still. The only sound to reach Nick’s ears was the slap of boot leather striking marble as he kept on running for everything that he was worth.