Siret shot forward, pressing a finger to my lips. His head was bent down, his lips trying not to smile.
Right, I thought. Don’t reveal to everyone in the middle of a public death match that you snuck into Topia.
His grin finally broke free, and the finger against my lip slid away.
“Vintage?” Johnny questioned. They were back to staring at the server. “What the hell are you?”
“The Sacred Ones care about more than just your ability to stab each other,” Vintage announced. “This is a test of the mind.”
Johnny groaned. “Can we stab her?”
“Interesting choice.” Vintage turned her waxy eyes to Johnny. “Is that your final answer?”
“Wait, what?” Johnny started doing his nervous shifting thing again, bouncing from one foot to another. “You didn’t ask any questions.”
“Here is your question.” Vintage made a little mechanical sound, like she was clearing her throat but she didn’t really need to clear her throat. It was as though she was reciting what someone had told her to say—right down to their throat clearing. “If one dweller befriends five Sacred Sols, how many dwellers die?”
“What a convenient question,” I drawled, as Aedan choked on a laugh and Siret rolled his eyes. “I’m guessing one dweller dies?”
“All the dwellers die,” Vintage answered, completely sapped of emotion.
She disappeared, and I met Siret’s eye. “Was that a threat?” I asked softly.
“It wasn’t a freaking pony.” Johnny decided to answer my question as we walked cautiously across Vintage’s stage—or at least the rest of us walked cautiously. Siret strolled along, looking mildly annoyed.
“This is a pretty easy obstacle course,” I noted aloud. “I mean … other than the death-spikes.”
“Really?” Johnny asked, stepping aside so that I could see around him.
Several feet below us was a pit of mud, and I could see things moving around inside it. I had no idea what the things were, but I wholeheartedly didn’t want anything to do with them. All I could see of them were curved, silver tips, poking up out of the surface. They cut through the mud, swerving all over the place.
“Blacktips,” Aedan grumbled, sounding as though someone had personally offended him.
“Is that a bad thing?” I asked.
“Not if you like things eating you,” Siret answered easily.
I turned and glared at him, before softening my expression … because I kind of needed him to keep me alive.
He obviously knew what was going through my head, because he started grinning again. “Can you swim, Rocks?”
“No, water was not really a thing in the outer circles of Minatsol. Mud on the other hand, definitely a thing. But with freaky, dweller-eating monsters? No. No way.”
He laughed, tossing an arm over my shoulder. “Should we feed them one of these two, then?”
“We agreed to help you!” Johnny spluttered, taking a sudden, rapid step away from Siret.
“It’ll help me if you let the blacktips munch on you for a little while.” Siret gave my shoulder a squeeze before releasing me. He was stepping toward Johnny. I was pretty sure that he was joking.
Until he pushed Johnny off our platform.
“Five!” I yelled, rushing to the edge and dropping to my knees, peering down.
The blacktips had all been stirred into a frenzy—but they weren’t heading for Johnny. They were heading into the corner of their mud pit, swarming around a certain point that held nothing as far as I could tell. Trickery. Siret pulled me back up to my feet.
“Go,” he told Aedan, “while they’re distracted.”
Aedan jerked his head in a nod and started pulling knives out of his clothing. I supposed he didn’t need so many with Siret on his side. After he was down to just four blades, he jumped off the platform.
“This is all for you,” Siret whispered to me. “This whole spectacle.”
“How do you know?” I asked, even though Vintage had been a pretty big hint.
“Because, little dirt-dweller,” Siret continued to whisper, the insult sounding almost like an endearment, “we’re about to jump into a pit of dirt.”
Ten
Before I had time to compute this information I once again found myself sailing through the air. Thankfully though, this time a strong arm remained wrapped across my middle, cushioning the blow as we hit the dirty sludge. We sank about four feet deep, the thick ooze sucking us down and slicking over our skin. I understood now why Aedan had ditched so many of his weapons, the guys were already deeper and at a disadvantage to me, being that much heavier.
“How long can you hold off those blacktip things?” My voice was a stuttering mess as I reluctantly separated myself from Siret and tried to ignore the panic that was clawing at my insides.
We were sharing space with killing monsters. I might not have been able to see much of them, but I knew that they were bad. If they were in there at all—if the gods had chosen to use them to test us—there was no way they would be anything but bad.
“Just move, Soldier. I’ll keep you safe.”
Siret was completely unruffled, which should have been reassuring, but it wasn’t. I had yet to see the Abcurses get very ruffled. I was thinking it would be the end of the world, or worse, before that happened.
Since it didn’t seem as though I was about to get any more reassurance from him, I sucked in another shuddering breath and nodded, whilst simultaneously swallowing hard and trying not to vomit. Siret started to move and I stuck as close to his side as I could.
“You might as well climb on my back at this rate, Willa.”
“This is no time for joking,” I bit out through clenched teeth.
Our pace increased as we moved through the mud pit. I concentrated on holding onto the fine tendrils of bravery that I had found somewhere deep inside myself. It was all I had left.
After a few clicks, Siret gave a snort of laughter. “What the hell, Willa. You’re about to overtake those useless sols, and they had a huge lead.”
Shifting my eyes from where they had been focussed on the end of the pit, I realised he was right. I was almost even with Aedan and Johnny.
“This isn’t my first mud pit swim,” I confessed. “And survival skills are actually something I have in abundance. Sort of. Sometimes.”
Before he could say anything else, I heard a muffled gasp from the crowds around us—crowds that I had completely forgotten were even there, which actually made sense since they seemed to be silenced to us in the arena. I couldn’t hear them or the announcer anymore, but that collective gasp had broken through, which was a little worrying. If any sound was going to break through, I would have preferred it to be applause. Or maybe someone yelling, “Leave the dweller alone!”
Utilising my pathetic amount of muscle and core strength, I leveraged myself up as high as I could in the mud, craning my neck to look around. “You lost control of the killer bug spiky things!” I shouted over my shoulder—unnecessarily shouted, because Siret was right behind me.