“What happened in the mud-pit?” Yael asked as he moved his arm so that it was resting behind me. I decided to stay put for the rest of the round, so I allowed myself to relax against him, needing the comfort of his touch.
“I have no idea. I was under the mud fighting the blacktips when everything started to get really hot, which solidified the mud. The harder the mud got, the more I was able to use it to pull and kick myself up. It was almost like the mud was helping me get out, like it was pushing me up …” Which, come to think of it … “Why didn’t Johnny’s body rise too? He was stuck under the solid mud, but he should have risen up!” A note of hysteria crept into my tone as I mentioned the sol, his chewed-up arm flashing through my mind.
“You burst from the mud like someone pushed you up through it.” Yael’s hard words brought me back from the place in my head where the sad memories were momentarily keeping me trapped.
“Where were you all when that happened? How did you get down to us so quickly?”
Aros answered this time. “After you went under, a blast of heat knocked everyone in the entire arena down. By the time we got up, you were out of the mud with Trickery and we were already on our way to the underground area. That kind of power … only a god could have managed it, otherwise it never would have knocked us out along with everyone else. But we got there as quickly as we could. We needed to see that you were okay.”
A half-grin tipped up the corner of my lips. “I knew you five liked me.”
Yael cast a half-slanted brow in my direction. “Don’t push it. We could probably learn to unlike you just as quickly.”
I snorted and shook my head a few times; the straggly strands of my hair, which had fallen from my ponytail, brushed across my neck. “I don’t doubt that for a click, Emmy is the only friend I’ve ever had who has stuck around longer than a few moon-cycles.”
I was side-tracked by a kragill attack on Rome and Coen, who were now in the centre of the arena. I had no idea if this was a new water beast, or if the last one had been recovered somehow, but either way … I didn’t like all those sharp teeth snapping at my guys.
I swallowed a shriek as Coen strolled right up to it—something which made Siret snort in amusement. When the beast opened up its massive jaw and snapped hard, Coen jumped right on top of it. The pair wrestled for a while, Rome standing to the side and looking bored while he waited for his brother to finish. Then, in a rapid movement, Coen lifted the kragill up and shot-putted it across the entire Sacred Sand arena, where it smashed into the god box.
Gasps and cries were let out en masse, the crowd all on their feet as they waited for some kind of retaliation.
“Breathe, Willa.” Siret’s softly spoken words were enough for me to notice that I was also on my feet, my hands clenched at my sides, my breath rattling inside my chest.
“Why would they do that?” I let the panic take control, and my breathing became even more laboured. “Now they’re going to come down and fight. And that stupid box might be full of the most angry and dangerous and revengey gods in Topia.”
“Revengey?” Siret caught both of my hands, wrestling me back into my seat again. “What the hell are you trying to say?”
“I think she means vengeful,” Yael noted, sounding vaguely amused as he turned his attention back to the fight again. Coen hadn’t even paused to wait for the reaction of whatever mysterious god or gods were currently hiding away in the glass box.
I watched on the edge of my seat—with my hands held prisoner in my lap—as Rome and Coen leapt over walls meant to stay giants, and fought off monsters meant to challenge the strongest beings in Minatsol. Their particular round in the arena looked far more dangerous than mine had been. And that was considering the fact that I had almost been eaten alive. It took only five clicks for the first sol to die, and the second was lost halfway through—wrapped up in the punishing grip of yet another monster—after which he was veritably pulled apart. I felt sick to my stomach by the time Rome and Coen strolled to the end of the arena, moving down the stairs and into the underground chamber at the end. We all waited for the next round of names to be called, but it didn’t happen. The magic dropped from the obstacle course like a sheet pulled from a bed, leaving only the bare mattress of enchanted sand for us all to stare at.
“Holy shit!” I jumped to my feet, staring at the arena—which now looked just the same as it always had. “Where? How?”
“Trickery,” Siret said with a frown. He had been forced to jump up beside me, since he was still keeping my hands prisoner.
I was about to ask what the hell he meant by that—since I was pretty sure that the whole obstacle course hadn’t been an illusion. It certainly hadn’t felt like an illusion. Sols had created it all, right? Not to mention illusions probably couldn’t eat people. Probably. Okay … nothing was really impossible when it came to the gods.
“Oh,” I replied, suddenly understanding. “Wait … your da--Abil did this? Got rid of all of that?” I waved my hand toward the sand: toward where at least a handful of people had already died that sun-cycle, toward where Vintage-the-mean-version-of-Jeffrey had made it abundantly clear that this whole surprise challenge had at least something to do with the Abcurses and me, if not a little more than something. Like possibly everything.
“This has Abil written all over it,” Yael confirmed, rising on my other side. “He no doubt assisted those sols earlier, helping them create everything.”
Aros had been quiet ever since we had come back outside, and he remained seated now, his eyes fixed to the god-box.
“How can he do that?” I leaned over the edge of the barrier, staring down the short wall as though expecting to see everything stacked up neatly there. Even the monsters.
“What do you mean?” Siret, who had released my hands half a click ago, leaned over the railing to see what I was looking at.
“I mean how can he just materialise stuff like that? And how can you materialise stuff like that? It’s been at the back of my mind for a while, but I usually ignore the back of my mind because I don’t like nasty surprises and that’s what it always gives me—”
“Rambling,” Aros cut in, his eyes flicking from the arena to me. At least this time he looked amused. “You’re rambling again, sweetheart. Get to the point.”
“Point being,” I narrowed my eyes at Aros, trying to tell myself that I was getting to the point of my own volition and not because he was ordering me to. “I thought the whole Trickery thing was about illusion? Like … tricking your brain into thinking something is there when it isn’t. I didn’t think it was about actually creating something. Something real. That’s almost like the Creator power, right?”
Dresses were one thing, but something on the huge scale of the arena. That was proper creation.
“Let’s walk and talk,” Yael answered, spinning on his heel and moving toward the end of our row.