The Firedragon (6 page)

Suddenly she understood why Connor was so
scared. No one had told her what kinds of monsters the contestants
would face, but she’d been certain that they’d be the same
creatures she was accustomed to dealing with, like bloodwolves.
She’d never imagined that the contestants would be thrown against
something as dangerous as a hellhorn.

This wasn’t going to be
the game she’d thought it was. She’d known it would be dangerous,
but the thought had been a faraway idea … one even
she’d
believed was
exaggerated for the sake of publicity.

Now, it was real, and Vilk
might actually …
die
.

Was he right? Had the Triumvirate planned it
that way? And if so, why would they bring one of their best
Defenders in, just to … sacrifice him?

She watched the Procul Mirror intently,
wondering what Vilk would do. If the hellhorn scared the old guy at
all, he didn’t show it. His dark, steely eyes blazed, no less
ferocious than those of the monster facing him. He let it get
closer to him, then yanked out a pistol and began firing. The
creature bellowed in pain, but continued toward him, its large
hooves pounding against the stone floor. Vilk fired again, but he
might as well have been throwing pebbles for all the good the
bullets were doing him.

“
The throat!” Aurelia
yelled at the Procul Mirror, wishing she could jump in and help her
fellow human. “You’ve gotta cut its throat!” That was the only
surefire way to kill a hellhorn, and it would be much easier than
trying to chop off its huge head.

Vilk seemed to know that, because he dropped
his pistol and held up his sword as the flaming bull thundered
toward him. Aurelia realized now that he must have been shooting at
the monster to weaken it. But would it work?

The beast spat a yellow fireball, and Vilk
ducked and somersaulted out of the way.

Aurelia gasped. She was terrified for the
Defender, but couldn’t tear her eyes away from the Procul Mirror.
If only she could do something to help! She watched Vilk charge at
the hellhorn’s neck, but the yellow flames must have been too hot,
because he jumped back at the last second. The monster kept coming
at him, and he dove out of the way, narrowly missing the sharp tips
of its horns. A moment later he sprang up and faced his foe,
undaunted. She had to admit, the old guy was pretty good. He
grabbed a knife from his belt and threw it at the hellhorn, taking
out one of its eyes. Before it could recover, he grabbed a second
knife and struck the other.

The blinded bull stumbled and let out a
bellow so loud that it seemed to shake the room, though Aurelia was
only watching it through the mirror. Vilk raised his sword and let
out a primal cry, then threw himself at the blazing creature. His
clothes caught the flames, but he didn’t pull back this time,
rushing forward to slice its throat in one fell swoop. Blood
spurted onto him, and he dropped to the ground and thrashed to put
out the flames.

The hellhorn fell onto its side, dead.

Aurelia let out a breath. She’d only just
met Vilk – and disliked him right away – but was relieved, even
glad, that he wasn’t dead. People mattered more than monsters any
day, and Vilk, annoying as he was, counted as a person. Plus, he’d
given her some important information, just by going before her.

The cheers of the crowd
buzzed through the mirror, then, and her eyes flew to the judges,
who raised their wands and shot red numbers into the air. Two
sevens and an eight – Vilk’s scores out of ten.
Pretty freaking good, Gramps
, she
thought.
But not as good as I’m going to
get
.

Despite the hurried self-reassurance, her
heart was beating faster than she cared to think about. This
competition was going to be a lot scarier than she’d expected. The
Challenge officials had managed to capture a hellhorn and throw it
at one of the contestants, and those things were rare. There was no
telling what else they had planned.

A few minutes later, Vilk reentered the
room, face contorted with pain. His shirt and jacket had been
almost entirely incinerated, and his face and body were covered in
painful-looking burns. Aurelia flinched at the slight.

Professor Williams rushed to Vilk and helped
him into a chair, then pulled his thick, dark red wand from his
sleeve and muttered something she couldn’t make out. Carved into
the wand’s surface were intricate symbols, whose ancient meanings
she could only guess at. They glowed gold at Williams’s words, the
haze reaching out into the air around the wand as Williams aimed it
toward the burn on Vilk’s neck. Aurelia watched, shocked, as the
burn slowly transformed back into normal skin.

She couldn’t stop staring at Vilk’s wounds,
even as Williams sought to heal them. The sight of the blackened,
bloody flesh made her stomach turn. He’d brushed up against the
hellhorn’s flames for mere seconds when he’d sliced its throat …
how could they have hurt him so badly?

If that was the kind of monster he’d been
put up against, what would she face?

She suddenly felt like she was eleven years
old again, facing her first real supernatural creature. The
memories of the fear flooded her – how she’d had no inkling of what
she’d be up against. How her life had depended on recalling a
handful of obscure facts about the monster’s vulnerabilities. How
she hadn’t known if she’d even had the right weapons to kill it.
Now here she was again, preparing to go up against the dangerous
unknown, by herself and possibly without the knowledge or tools she
needed.

Whatever it is, I can deal
with it
, she told herself firmly. No
monster had ever been a match for her, and if Vilk, who was
at
least
three or
four times her age, could take on a hellhorn, so could she. Plus,
now that she had a moment to think about it, if she’d been in his
place, she would have
thrown
the sword to cut the hellhorn’s throat so she
wouldn’t have to get burned.
I’m totally
better than him
, she thought.
I’ve got no reason to worry.

But she couldn’t quite make herself believe
it, and the fear, still rippling beneath her repeated attempts at
confidence, refused to leave her.

She glanced at the Procul Mirror and noticed
that the next contestant – one of the Triumvirate Enchanters, whose
name she’d forgotten – was walking into the arena. She’d been so
busy thinking about the hellhorn that she’d missed the part when
they announced his name, nation, and opponent.

The Enchanter threw off his brightly colored
cloak and held up his blue wand, prepared to do battle.

There was a long, pregnant pause, and then
the gate creaked opened, slowly revealing a creature Aurelia
recognized immediately as a manticore. The muscles on the monster’s
golden-brown feline body rippled under the lights. Its grotesque
face was almost human, and it sneered as it spread its eagle’s
wings. Its tail – as sharp and deadly as a scorpion’s – snapped
behind it as it stalked toward the Enchanter.

Whoa.
Aurelia stared, hardly able to believe her eyes.
I was
sure
those things were extinct!
She’d read about them, but her studies had told her that the
Sentinels – the special class of Enchanters who guarded the
Triumvirate – had killed every single one of them. Apparently, the
textbooks were wrong. Either that, or they’d all been deliberately
lied to.

Suddenly the manticore shot its tail up over
its head and released a volley of spikes straight at the
Enchanter.

“
Tego!
” The Enchanter threw up a force field and the spikes bounced
off, leaving small black marks wherever they hit. They were
poisonous, Aurelia knew. If they’d hit the Enchanter …

The manticore jumped up
and flew toward the man, whipping its tail from side to side, new
missiles emerging every instant. For several minutes – or maybe it
was just a few seconds that
felt
like several minutes – the creature darted around
in the air, throwing those black spikes at the Enchanter. The man
dodged and grunted, keeping his force field steady, and himself
safe.

Then, he made a mistake.

He must have realized that
he was going to have to actually
do
something, because he let down his shield to
throw a spell at the creature, his magic words lost in the boom of
the resulting explosion.

“
Don’t!
” Aurelia cried, knowing something horrible was about to
happen.

For a few moments, though, she couldn’t see
anything through the red smoke from the explosion. When it finally
cleared, the Enchanter lay on the ground, a spike protruding from
his arm. His eyes shifted around swiftly in terror, but he didn’t
move. He was paralyzed.

The manticore swooped toward him, baring its
razor-sharp teeth.

Aurelia screamed and squeezed her eyes shut,
her hands flying up to cover her ears as she turned her back to the
mirror. She knew what would happen next, and she couldn’t
watch.

A
person
was dying in that arena. One
of her fellow contestants was being
killed
, and eaten alive. That wasn’t
supposed to happen. Yes, people talked big about how dangerous the
Challenge was, and yes, people ended up dead in the real world all
the time, but this
wasn’t
real. You couldn’t help that there were monsters
in the wild. But someone had created the arena, caught the
manticore, and put the Enchanter in there.

Someone had chosen to let that man die.

When she turned back to the mirror, she saw
that a dozen gold-cloaked Sentinels had appeared in flashes of gold
light, forming a circle around the manticore and aiming their wands
at it.

“
Dissolvit in
cinerem!
” they yelled in
unison.

The creature turned to ash.

Aurelia was too shocked to
move. Why hadn’t they come the moment the Enchanter fell? Why had
they waited so long? She didn’t even hear what the announcer said
after that. The manticore … it had …
killed someone
. And the people
running the Challenge had let it.

No wonder Connor had
called the Challenge a “meaningless blood sport.” She’d heard
plenty about how contestants might die in the arena, and she hadn’t
cared. The fact that Vilk went up against something she’d never
seen before was one thing. But now that she’d seen a monster
actually
slay
a
person, the full impact of it struck her from all sides at once,
and her heart began to tremble.

She might
die
. She’d been so
certain before that she’d win, but now she wasn’t even sure if
she’d see tomorrow. This might be the last day of her life. In the
blink of an eye, it could all be over for her. Just like it had
been for that Enchanter.

If the Triumvirate had allowed an Enchanter
to be eaten alive by a manticore, what would they do to a Norm?

“
Contestant Twenty-Four,
Aurelia Sun, please report to the arena.”

The announcer’s voice rang in her ears. It
was her turn. For a fleeting moment, she wondered if she could back
out. Then she scowled at herself, shocked that the thought would
even enter her head. She was no coward. She was the Firedragon.

I’ve gotta get it
together
. She filled her lungs with a long
breath and exhaled sharply.
So some
Enchanter got himself killed. Nothing’s changed. I’m still going to
kick some monster butt, I’m still going to win, and I’m still going
to prove that Norms are as good as Enchanters.

She shook her arms to
release the tension, knowing she’d have to stay loose if she was
going to be at her best.
No need to be
scared. I’m better than both those suckers. Vilk’s as old as time,
and that Enchanter guy got all cocky with his magic.
I
wouldn’t have been
dumb enough to let down my shield.

Glancing at the weapons on
the wall, she considered whether to bring any. She could take
whatever she wanted, as long as it fit on her person. Her eyes
lingered on a shield, and she forced her gaze away from it.
No. I’ve never needed one before, and it’ll just
slow me down.

Instead, she grabbed a pair of silver-bladed
swords – her favorites – and marched determinedly out the door.