“Life is not a fair fight.”
The dark angel followed up that pearl of wisdom by opening another door. A second dragon entered the pit, just as the first dragon freed itself. Both beasts turned their burning green eyes on me.
This all started with a single dragon, but believe it or not, it only went downhill from there. Each battle was harder than the previous one. Each foe tougher and less willing to forego a chance at killing me. The dark angel must have emptied the kennels of hell to unleash these monstrosities on me.
Over the next couple of days, I fought battle after battle against monsters I hadn’t even known existed. At least I thought they were days. They could have been hours or minutes or weeks for all I knew. Starving, bleeding, and sleep-deprived, I’d lost all sense of time. I knew only two things: the fights, the slaying of monsters intent on slaying me; and the time in between when I slept as my body struggled to heal the burns, cuts, and broken bones the monsters had inflicted on me.
With each passing battle, my magic grew weaker. The respites felt shorter, and the fights were definitely longer. I was going into new battles with lingering injuries from the previous ones, wounds my body no longer had the magic to heal.
I was famished. That strange yellow sand was looking better and better. In my dazed hunger, I could hear it calling out to me. I had to remind myself more than once that it wasn’t a good idea to eat sand, especially not strange glowing magic sand that talked to me.
I was growing weaker, my optimism fading. I was in desperate need of a shot of cheer. The only good part about the fights was at least they kept my mind off the eerie sand telling me to eat it. How was that for a silver lining?
I stood at the center of the arena, my arm bleeding from the birds who’d spent the better part of an hour diving at me. Their beaks cut like knives. I swung my bloody sword, felling the last bloody bird in the bloody flock. This fight had cost me a lot. Crimson drops dripped from my body. As it sprinkled across the sand, the yellow grains hissed and steamed in response. Weird.
A whole flock of birds, dozens of them, lay on the arena ground like a black carpet. They were like very large crows, each the size of a cat. And together they’d been absolutely deadly—pecking, diving, evading, swooping, scratching. It was really hard to take out a killer bird swarm when you couldn’t fly.
I glared up at the stands, where I knew the dark angel was lurking. “Why am I here?” I demanded for at least the hundredth time.
Soulslayer didn’t answer, just like so many times before. All he ever said was, ‘fight or die’.
I flicked the last dead bird off my lightning blade. The sword popped and sizzled out, dissipating. Then I collapsed to the ground, exhausted.
The ring of the bell chimed once more. It was a sound I’d come to hate and fear. The next battle was about to start. My rest denied, I pulled my tired body off the ground, preparing myself to face my next foe. It swooped out of the open door—a big black bird, larger than all of the others put together. It was the emperor of all birds. And it was breathing fire.
I tried to create another sword out of lightning, but my magic didn’t come. The bird landed with a thump and stomped toward me, shooting a miasma of fireballs and other elemental magic out of its mouth.
I shook out my hands. Sometimes when one branch of magic was dry, there was still some juice left in the others. I drew on my telekinetic magic. I could still feel some of the Nectar in me from the gods’ last gift. I swept my psychic spell over the dead birds. They lifted off the ground, hovering for a moment in the air. Then I shot them all at the big bird, blinding it behind a mass of black feathers.
Big Bird fireballed, froze, zapped, and blew them out of the air. I came around, snatching up four dead birds still glowing with Big Bird’s spells. One was burning, one was solid ice, one sizzled with lightning, and one was trapped inside a whirling mini tornado. I smashed the four birds together, combining the lingering spells on them to set off a clashing elemental explosion under Big Bird’s ass.
The bird shot up and collided with the Magitech barrier. As the bird swayed, dazed from the impact, I searched the arena for something—anything—to help me in this fight against the jumbo bird. I didn’t see anything but the dead crows. The elemental spells had faded from their bodies, so they were of no use to me anymore.
I looked down at the sand. It had begun to glow. As I continued to stare at it, I realized why it felt so familiar. The sand was laced with Venom, the demons’ equivalent to Nectar. Just as Nectar, the food of the gods, bestowed Legion soldiers with light magic abilities, Venom bestowed the dark magic ability counterparts to the demons’ Dark Force.
I’d had Venom before. Someone had laced my Nectar with it when I’d gained the power of Siren’s Song. When I’d drained the Venom out of Basanti, more Venom had gotten into my body, merging with my magic. The Venom in the sand was singing to me now because I was weak—because my body was in desperate need of healing and food.
I glanced up at the stands. The dark angel was watching me closely. From the look on his face, he’d realized that I’d figured it out. I swooped up a handful of sand. He leaned forward, looking almost eager.
He wanted me to consume the Venom. But why? Did he want to turn me into a soldier of the Dark Force?
No, it was something more. This was all too staged, too planned. He must have known I possessed light and dark magic, that unlike others, I could consume both Nectar and Venom.
I sniffed the sand in my hands. It smelled good, like chocolate cake with cherries and ice cream on top, like the end of all my suffering. But Soulslayer wanted me to take it, the person who was holding my sisters hostage. The person who had trapped me here and was having me battle in this arena like a lab rat. His intentions were not benevolent.
Concentrated dark magic—poison—that’s what Venom was. But there was also light magic nearby. I could feel it. Where was it? I searched the arena, honing in on the Magitech barrier. This place had not been built solely for me. It was a lot older than that.
It was for training, I realized. Training for the Dark Force. The barrier was sizzling with concentrated light magic. With Nectar. Just as Venom was poisonous to Legion soldiers, Nectar was poisonous to soldiers of the Dark Force. It was meant to hurt when they banged against the Nectar-infused barrier, a punishment for failing in training. And maybe it had another purpose: to build up their resistance to light magic. That would be the angel way, to kill two birds with one stone. And the dark angels were no different.
Allowing the yellow sand to pour out between my fingers, I walked up to the barrier and thrust my hands through the Magitech field to grab the bars. I gripped them tightly, even as the magic pulsed through me, trying to overload my body, to knock me out. And it hurt like hell. But then again, every fiber of my body already hurt so what was a little more pain? I began to bend the bars, the tubes the magic field was running through.
Soulslayer jumped to his feet. “What are you doing?” he demanded.
I just held on, gritting my teeth, bearing the pain. I broke a magic tube off from the net. I tossed that charged tube to the ground, igniting it against the sand beneath the bird monster’s feet. Light and dark magic clashed, and opposites ignited to create a mega explosion. The bird blew up.
I peeled my burnt and blistered hands off the bars and stumbled to the center of the fighting arena, stepping over a burning pile of bird goo. Then, planting a big smile on my face despite the pain, I swept my stiff body into a deep, smooth bow.
“You cheated.” Soulslayer sounded offended. “I want to see your magic at work, not your cheap tricks.”