So the explosion had done more than release him from Nin’s cave.
When Merlin stood, his body weighed several thousand pounds, and his brain might as well have been a briny pickle in a delicate glass jar. “I’ve been heavily sedated,” he said, but it came out more like, “I’be en hemily sebated.”
He hated the thought that Mercer had been taking his blood and running tests, but he didn’t have time to destroy whatever evidence of his magic they’d collected. He needed to get to Ari before Mercer killed one of his friends.
Merlin gave himself a tremendous smack, which succeeded in shocking away the worst of the sedative. He began to stumble out of the medical facility, but one of the bodies on the floor caught his eye. This one had been locked to a chair—and taken down along with it. Scorch marks had fileted her skin with white burns. Merlin pushed the black hair back from her face and whispered her name, “Morgana?”
Nothing.
In a moment that melted the color from the body, Morgana materialized beside him, freed from Merlin’s corporeal gift—and no small amount pissed.
“That is the last time you kill me, old man.”
“Apologies,” Merlin said. “Truly, it was collateral damage.”
“There are worse ways to die, I suppose,” Morgana admitted. “Those people,” she cast dirty glances at the dead associates around them, “would have taken apart our cells, if allowed. I locked several of them in the asylum of their worst memories, but more just kept coming.”
Merlin wanted to tell Morgana about his run-in with Nin, but there was no time. He asked the only question that mattered. “Where are the others?”
“They were speaking of a ceremony.” Morgana’s body faded back to its familiar transparent state. “This way.”
Merlin chased after her, stumbling out of the medical facility, into… a mall, of all places. The white lights made him blink while the sterilized air left a dead taste in his mouth. At first he spun around in the hall, but then he caught the sounds of a great, cheering crowd. He followed it to a huge set of double doors just as a great roar went up from behind them. Were they cheering on Ari—or the dragon she was fighting?
“Tickets,” a Mercer associate asked, barring the way and pushing out a hand.
Merlin didn’t have tickets. He did a quick bodily check—no magic, either.
Morgana had already slithered past the associate and was watching him with frantic impatience. Even she was terrified on Ari’s behalf.
Merlin gave the Mercer associate a high five, and then used his momentary confusion to run past him into the stadium. “A trick as old as time!” he cried as he took off, hoping the associate wouldn’t fire his gun straight into a crowd.
As he ran into the massive tiered stadium, the vicious cries for blood summoned his worst fear. He could only hope that this time, he hadn’t reached his Arthur too late.
Big Mama’s jaws snapped tight on Ari’s thigh.
A half-moon of pain pierced the chain mail, sinking into Ari’s muscle and causing her to scream. She brought Excalibur’s pommel down on the taneen’s nose, knocking the dragon in what she knew to be a sensitive spot.
Big Mama snorted and reared, letting Ari escape. She limped across the red sand floor of the massive arena, warm blood sweeping down her leg from a dozen new punctures. Ari ducked behind a large stone dais in the center, trying to catch her breath.
To make a choice.
All around, the endless screams of the crowd and the flashes of thousands of cameras kept Ari’s heart thundering and Big Mama’s roars furious. Mercer had spared no expense for this show. The million-seater auditorium rose up for half a mile around them, the uppermost tiers barely in sight. It felt like being at the bottom of a well—and just as hopeless.
Big Mama didn’t care who Ari was or how long they’d known each other. Like Ari, Mercer had piled the dragon heavily with armor. They’d starved her strategically. They’d killed her baby in front of her. Ari had half a mind to let the grieving taneen eat her, but that wasn’t the game, was it? Ari had to win.
That was the only eventuality the Administrator would allow. If Ari died, there would be no king to place a cursed Mercer crown upon. Her friends would be erased from existence like Ketch had been. And yet none of that truth made it easier to kill this dragon.
Big Mama scuttled around the dais, head bleeding from two spots, the red washing the taneen’s vision. Ari scaled the stones, swinging one-handed when Big Mama’s teeth snapped at her arm. Once she’d rolled over the top edge, she kept herself in the center. Big Mama was as tall as the dais, but she couldn’t fit on it. She spun around it a few times, roaring in disapproval, Ari just out of reach.
Ari had to find a way to get the taneen to remember her. If she could, maybe there was a way to avoid turning the dragon’s death into a spectacle for an uncaring, unfeeling universe. Maybe she could show them that this was not a senseless beast to destroy…
Ari wished she still had some lamb jerky as she ripped at the pieces of the King Arthur armor Mercer had fitted her with. Nothing would budge but the helmet, so she tore it off and held her sword behind her back in one shaking hand.
Big Mama had her front legs on the edge of the dais, jaws snapping at the air.
“Hey… it’s me. Remember me?” Ari mimed taking a piece of jerky out of her pocket. Big Mama’s dark, liquid eyes roved over Ari’s empty palm. “I don’t have anything for you. They’ve taken everything from me. And you. They…” Her voice choked up as the words rose out, broken and excruciating. “They killed Kay.”
Both of them.
“And we can’t… we can’t beat them all. Neither of us can.” Ari moved closer, sword arm still held back. Her other palm was held out emptily, offering nothing but friendship to the enraged dragon.
“Do you remember how Kay would play dead?” Ari snuck a few steps closer. The taneen was taking in the tears in her eyes, the flush of pain in her words. Ari had wondered how much she could understand. Kay had been limited, but then, he was just a baby. “Do you think you can do that, Big Mama? Can you play dead?”
The taneen’s jaws closed, her head cocked. She understood Ari, maybe.
“I’m going to shove this sword through that terrible armor. I’m going to get it off of you. But you have to stay down afterward. Do you hear me? Play dead.”
Ari couldn’t tell if this would work. She doubted it, and yet, what choice did she have? She closed her eyes and took one last step closer. Big Mama could have snapped her head off, if she wanted.
But she didn’t.
Ari swung Excalibur around, slicing across the terrible armored plates Mercer had tied to Big Mama. The armor fell away at the same time that the dragon teetered upright on her hind legs—and then fell backward with an enormous, bone-crunching crash that shook the arena and left it in silence.
Ari rushed to the edge of the dais, unsure if she’d convinced the dragon, or if Excalibur had been too sharp. The taneen’s long, thick neck, now free from the armor, was bleeding into the red sand. Were those injuries from the armor or Ari? She couldn’t tell.
And Big Mama didn’t move.
The crowd went berserk, and the great rolling doors at the end of the arena opened, filling the floor with an army of Mercer associates, as well as her friends on horseback, and the devil himself, the Administrator.
Ari knelt against her will.
Her eyes were stuck on the sand smeared across the stone dais. Rusted red. Ketchan sand; she would have recognized it anywhere. Stolen from her planet and spread across this sick arena. This touch of detail was so cruel, it made it hard to breathe. To be killed on soil that had been stolen from her murdered planet was one thing.
To be made into a puppet figurehead upon it was something else entirely.