Death Drop (39 page)

The tunnel wound ever to the right and Abalias lost count of the cell doors they passed. They marched for the better part of an hour, and with each step he felt the gradual incline of the floor gnaw at his aching, shattered leg. They were climbing from the bowels of the dark arena—dungeons where most prisoners unlucky enough to have survived an onslaught of the Berzerkers soiled themselves in fear at the awful terrors that lay in wait for them above ground. Abalias was as clever as they came, but he was groggy and confused, beaten and battered, and the fate of the Dissension weighed on him like an anchor that slowed both his body and his mind. Only when Noruuka’s whip stung his skin again did he realize the score.
They were climbing and it was getting noticeably hotter.
The temperature shifted ten degrees in as many steps. Twenty. Fifty. One hundred. Swelter.

Killikbar spun around as the lead ghosts unbolted two huge doors at the head of the tunnel and threw them open. The barricades groaned on their gigantic hinges, and the blinding white light and scorching heat that streamed into the bore transformed the tunnel into a blast furnace. Abalias could feel his body struggle to maintain the internal ice casing around his shattered leg. He gasped for breath and the burnt, dry heat was like a fire in his chest—consuming all the oxygen for itself and leaving none for Abalias’ searing lungs. It felt like he was being cooked from the inside out. He wanted to fall to his knees—a charred pile of ash scattered back to the depths by the arid wind— and he wondered how Killikbar, with his matted, encrusted fur, could stand there seemingly unaffected.
“Must be more dark magic,”
he thought to himself.

“It’s time for you to die now, Colonel. I wish I could say die well, but I
know
you’ll die whimpering for your wasted life, screaming in pain as Gyumak tears the flesh from your bones in juicy ribbons!” Killikbar grumbled his sinister laugh and then retreated down a side tunnel with his two lead phantoms. The helmed spirit flicked his long blade toward the opening, and Abalias, one forearm shielding his brow, cautiously walked into the light. Noruuka lashed him one more time for good measure as he crossed the threshold and screeched triumphantly as the colonel let out a beleaguered moan. He spun around to curse the phantom beast, but the stone doors swung inward and boomed shut as the sun baked the torn, exposed skin on his back and the roar of the crowd crashed into him like a thundering wave of hatred. A million thoughts filled his mind as he turned to survey the field of battle.

Coarse crystals of white sand washed over his feet as he trudged forward, turning his head in wide sweeping arcs to see as much as possible. Black monolithic spires pierced the ground and rose angrily toward the sky, cursing the three suns mercilessly burning above them. The stones looked as if they had grown from the land in random shoots like indestructible thorns pricking from a sinister weed lurking somewhere beneath the surface of the sand. They were gnarled and worn with deep gouges and craters where many a sword, spear, axe, and bullet had tried to topple them. His eyes adjusted to the light—but not the heat—and as he looked past the obelisks, he saw that the field was surrounded by a high oval wall made from the same dark rock as his cell and the dungeon tunnel. Beyond the lip of the wall, the rock was carved into tiered rings that circled the field and climbed to almost impossible heights. Stone platforms, broad and sunken at their tops, rose from each tier. Every pedestal hoisted a hundred or more ravenous Berzerkers into the burning air, all clamoring for blood. Long pikes supported heavy fabric canopies that waved above each column, but despite the shade, Abalias could still smell the fetor of animal sweat and rotten meat, intensified by the heat, wafting from the crowd. There were at least forty thousand horrid soldiers pounding the air with their weapons and clamoring for the slaughter of the ice king.

Legend had it that the black arena was the body of a Dunewokt—a giant creature that lived beneath the sand—that had been petrified by Killikbar’s sorcery as it breached the desert and tried to swallow him alive. The arena stands were the Dunewokt’s rows of teeth; the battlefield, its sand-filled mouth; and the spikes, venomous throat spines. The edge of the top wall looked exactly like a Dunewokt’s strange, thick lips, and two bulging eyes were perfectly placed on the exterior among millions of intricately carved scales. Even if the story of Killikbar’s defeat of the Dunewokt wasn’t true, the black arena was still an amazing and horrifying spectacle to behold. The dark general wasn’t exaggerating when he said the arena was vast, and at first, Abalias couldn’t understand how the upper levels could possibly see the field. Then he saw them: four holodex images, several stories high, that towered over the crowd and divided the stadium into quadrants. All the images were of him, and as he maneuvered his right hand about his brow for a better view, his four doppelgangers did the same.

He had chosen a sight line that hugged the left wall to eliminate his chances of being flanked from that side. As Abalias jogged along, he could clearly see Killikbar surrounded by his phantoms. The wicked leader of the Berzerkers had the best seat in the house: a black throne that jutted from a private platform just beyond the inner wall. The dark general craned his head back and laughed a maddening howl that was drowned by a bloodcurdling screech. Abalias’ chest and back exploded with pain as Gyumak whipped an enormous tentacle from behind a spiked monolith and sent him hurtling through the air. The crowd roared with delight and the beast cried out again as its huge arms pounded the ground in dusty, alternating thuds, pulling its hulking mass toward its dazed prey just a few meters away. Abalias got to his knees and gulped for air. Somehow, he had managed to turn his torso at the last moment so the blow had glanced off of his chest onto his shoulder. Abalias’ lucky move had saved his life: a direct hit from any of Gyumak’s tentacles would have crushed Abalias’ bones. The colonel could clearly see Gyumak between two obelisks directly in front of him, and Abalias knew whatever plan he formed had to rely on his speed to keep out of harm’s way.
“But what?”
he thought to himself.

He scrambled to his feet and dashed to his right in a wide arc away from the wall and toward the far side of the nearest pillar. He dove through the air as another one of Gyumak’s thick, purple-gray tentacles slapped the ground, sending a spray of white granules speeding through the air in all directions. Abalias stretched his arms down to the sand, tucked his head to his chest, and rolled across his back, quickly stopping in a sitting position before scampering backward a few feet on his butt to the base of the big stone spike. He guessed that Killikbar would gladly kill him if he didn’t fight back soon, and just as he thought that he had better come up with something pretty damn quick, several ghoulish figures stalked from around the back of a column ahead and to his right, and several more emerged from another on the left.
“Ah, here come the persuaders,”
Abalias thought as he peered around the edge of the stone he was hiding behind and caught a glimpse of more Berzerkers, tasked with hurting him if he didn’t stand toe-to-suction ring with Gyumak and fight. They were all carrying guns and certainly wouldn’t hesitate to mow him down, or any of their comrades that happened to get in the way, if he were to try and disarm one of them. Nope, he only had one chance and he knew it.

The Berzerkers and Gyumak were closing with each passing second and the holodex images were sending the crowd into a savage frenzy. The screams and jeers for his death shook the stone and rang in his ears, but Abalias had to focus. He had to call on all of his strength to summon his powers in this sweltering desert. It was the only chance he had to live. He tried to block out his impending death and the roaring chants of “KILL! KILL! DEATH! DEATH!” He closed his eyes and tried to think of his father and his father’s father and the lands of his home world and all he had been taught about his people. He opened his eyes and they shined with the piercing blue glow of his powers. He held out his snow-white hand and smiled his mischievous smile as he watched the ice-blade rise from his grasp. It sparkled in the air and blurred the view of the white sand of the battlefield beneath it as the light of the three suns bent around and through its translucent form. He stood as the blade rose higher and higher. The gelid sword spiked higher still and he turned; prepared to charge the giant, hacking and slashing for his life.

But keeping his internal temperature cold enough to maintain the ice cast around his broken leg took almost all of his skill, let alone sustaining the type of weapon needed to fell a creature like Gyumak beneath the raging triple suns of Pelota del Fuego. His eyes dulled and the blade sagged; then it evaporated into nothingness as Abalias stepped from the cover of the monument. The shock and terror on his face at being suddenly unarmed and in the open was replaced by pain as Gyumak struck solidly across his shoulder. Abalias cried out as his collarbone gave way with a noisy crack and he tumbled sideways through the sand. The four holodex images showed Abalias painfully clutching at his shoulder, and the reaction from the crowd was deafening. He groaned again as he internally sealed the bone in ice and his entire body was encased briefly with a centimeter-thick sheen before it, too, succumbed to the blazing inferno.
“That’s never happened before. Adrenaline? Scared shitless is more like it!”
he thought and then the breath was wrenched from his lungs by a crushing grip around his midsection. His arms were pinned at his sides and his ears were filled with a sharp, slicing pain as Gyumak lifted him off the ground and pulled him closer with an ear-lacerating death screech. The giant was steadily increasing the pressure—playing with his food.

He was well above the height of the arena wall as Gyumak drew him in closer. From his vantage point, Abalias could see Killikbar flexing his big paws and digging his razor-edged claws into the stone arms of his throne. He was breathing heavily and frothing at the mouth in animal ecstasy for the coming slaughter. Abalias could see the persuaders circling the giant beast and joining in the murderous orgy of the arena with weapons raised and teeth snapping wildly. He hadn’t gotten a good look at the giant Berzerker monster in the shipyard; he had been too busy wreaking havoc with his service revolver to analyze the beast. But now that he was tethered by one of its powerful tentacles and floating helplessly toward its head, Gyumak filled Abalias’ vision and the sight terrified him.

Killikbar’s giant death machine had six enormous tentacles with a tough, fleshy membrane that stretched between each one at the base of his body. As he drifted ever closer, Abalias could see that Gyumak’s head was unlike any creature he’d ever laid eyes on. Purple-gray flesh swam beneath a semi-transparent skull on the outside of his body. His eyes, black with golden-yellow streaks like a supernova star, bulged from two massive sockets. But it was the mouth that horrified Abalias the most. The skull was complete with a lower mandible, and the bone mouth was rent open and lined with massive teeth. But the nightmare didn’t stop there. The space between the jaws had dark lines that converged in the center, and as Gyumak pulled Abalias toward the gaping orifice, the lines cracked and peeled back into slithering tentacles that curled around the prehistoric skull’s fangs to reveal a deadly and poisonous beak. Rows of eyes that matched the two orbs jutting from under his exo-cranium lined each arm and rolled fluidly as they dilated in the light to spy the meal and guide it to his bone-crushing maw.

“GRRROWWWL!” Killikbar’s amplified voice boomed over the melee and filled the arena. “Shower your master with the ice king’s brains!”

Gyumak’s beak snapped shut, and Abalias thought he saw a sliver of disappointment flicker in the beast’s eyes. The Berzerker giant conceded to his master’s command and slowly turned to drag himself closer to the wall where Killikbar waited impatiently in his throne to lap up the soft, bloody morsels of Abalias’ brain. Three pulls of his long tentacles and the colonel was hovering just over Killikbar’s head. Gyumak turned him upside down in his grasp, and Abalias was now nose to nose with the dark general and flanked, once again, by Noruuka and the helmed phantom warrior.

“I told you you would meet your death soon enough,” Killikbar said sardonically. “Will the proud Dissension colonel give in to his fear and beg for his life?”

“Screw you, you murdering puke! You’ll never be anything more than Helekoth’s pathetic pet trying to follow in his master’s footsteps!” Killikbar inhaled sharply.

Abalias’ insult struck an egomaniacal chord.

“You’ll regret those last words, Colonel,” he hissed.

“My only regret is that I won’t be around to see Helekoth mind-rape you until you’re dumber than this giant shitbag!” Abalias wormed his body violently to make it clear that he was talking about Gyumak. The giant beast screeched in protest and wrenched his tentacle tighter around Abalias’ midsection until the colonel groaned in pain.

“I told you you would whimper!” Killikbar said with cruel satisfaction.

“Eat shit and die, shitball!” Abalias coughed back.

“Crush his skull and squeeze out his brains!”

Gyumak wrapped another tentacle around Abalias’ head and he squirmed for his life as the thick, muscular cord tightened, choking off his air. The pressure was already unbearable and just before the guttural, airless wail could rumble from his stomach, two things occurred to him. First, his cries of terror had nowhere to go—Gyumak’s tentacle was crushing his mouth and his nose—so he shouldn’t bother. Second, and more importantly, Abalias remembered the thin layer of ice that had formed over his body when he set his collarbone. He had been annoyed when it happened because the brittle layer could barely withstand Gyumak’s horrid breath, let alone a blow from one of his powerful arms, but he had been thinking defensively at a moment when he should have been planning his attack. He now realized that if he could sustain a thin layer of ice for even a brief instant, then he could save his brains from being wrung from his skull. Suddenly, centimeter high strips of ice ran from the base of his neck at half-inch intervals and completely circled his head with their razor sharp edges. The snaking action coupled with the immense pressure of Gyumak’s grip made Abalias’ head as dangerous as the sharpest sword.