CHAPTER TWENTY TWO
Selene attacks me almost as soon as the word is spoken, firing darts of violet magical force in my direction and forcing me to dodge.It’s a tactic I expected from her, and I’m grateful for all the hours I’ve spent preparing with Alaric, letting him throw illusory versions of Selene’s powers my way while I tried to avoid them.
It means I can dance through the bursts of energy now, jabbing with my spear, probing Selene’s defenses.She leans back from the first blow as the crowd gasps, avoiding my attempt to finish this quickly.
I start to pull in power from the creatures beneath the colosseum, only to find that thereareno creatures there.The beast pits are empty.Somewhere in the space between this morning’s fights and now, someone has removed every creature I might rely on.
“Something wrong, Lyra?”Selene asks with a smile, even as she flings a devastating blast of power my way.I barely weave aside from it, deflecting the last part of the attack with my shield.
Selene did this.For all her talk of wanting one final battle to prove herself, for all that she’s stopped her followers from sabotaging me, she’s carefully taken away the thing I would normally rely on in a fight like this.Selene has decided to make certain of her victory by limiting the powers I might draw on.
I curse her and reach out to the small creatures around the colosseum, instead.There are still birds roosting in the highest reaches of the stadium, still rats scuttling through its dark places.I feel bats above in the moonlight and I steal some of their speed, their ability to change directions impossibly in flight.It’s enough to let me twist aside from more of Selene’s attacks, the crowd roaring with each one I avoid.
“I thought you wanted to win fairly?”I say.
Selene’s smile broadens.“I’m not a fool, Lyra.I don’t want an opponent as strong as me, just one whoappearsthat way to the people.”
She punctuates her words with a slash of her blade that I block with my spear, giving ground and then slashing with its head.Selene ducks under the attack, firing another dart of magic at me and forcing me to dodge again.
Controlling the distance is important in this fight.My choice of weapons means I can’t fight in close, but I also can’t be so far away that Selene can simply pick me off with her magic.It’s a careful balancing act, which forces me to use every scrap of grace and speed I can borrow to keep avoiding Selene’s magic as it sears into the far walls of the colosseum, shattering stone with every impact.
“You can’t keep avoiding my attacks forever,” Selene says.
“It’s more about whether you can avoid mine,” I shoot back, and attack her with a barrage of blows with my spear, thrusting high and low, spinning it to strike with the haft and then bringing the head back into line to slash.
“Lyra!Lyra!”
Selene is briefly forced onto the defensive as the crowd chants my name.She parries the blows, but she’s forced to give ground as she does so.She attempts a slash at my throat, but I block it with my shield, then swing my shield forward, striking her in the face with the metal boss at its center and sending her sprawling.
I close in, but Selene throws up a shield of violet force and I feel her gathering more magic, pulling it from the stones she’s had embedded in the colosseum to fuel a magical working on a scale greater than anything she’s done before.
Around me, the floor of the colosseum starts to shift.Before, there was a map of the city on the floor of the colosseum, but now that map starts to rise in a facsimile of the city.Aetheria rises around me, but it’s not the Aetheria I know.It’s some remade version of it, redesigned in ways that presumably come straight from Selene’s imagination of her future empire.
The buildings are obviously on a much smaller scale than the real city, but they’re still high enough to duck behind, making it impossible to see exactly where Selene is.She’s brought the map beneath us into three-dimensional life, and that means we’re no longer fighting in an open arena, but hunting one another through a tangled maze of buildings.
I start to do exactly that, moving carefully, aware that Selene might attack me at any moment from the shadows.The crowd of the colosseum is calling out suggestions and directions to each of us, but half of them seem to contradict one another, and I’m not willing to trust my life to that information.
“You can only hide from me for so long, Selene,” I call out.
“You should be grateful,” Selene says.“The longer you get to play this game, the longer it is before you and everyone you care about dies.”
A flash of violet power comes at me from the space between two buildings, but I dodge to the side, letting it impact on the wall of a grand temple, recreated in miniature.The building is destroyed utterly, bursting into fragments of marble.One of them stings my cheek, drawing a line of blood there.
I climb the nearest building now, standing atop it like some giant while the crowd cheers me on.I look around for Selene and instantly realize my mistake as I spot her.I’ve given myself a height advantage, but I’ve also silhouetted myself perfectly against the backdrop of the crowd, making myself into a target.
Selene throws more beams of violet death at me, and I'm forced to run across the rooftops of this miniature Aetheria to avoid them, springing from one building to the next.I barely stay ahead of her magic, pushing myself hard, drawing more and more from the creatures whose abilities I'm borrowing.
I dive into cover among the buildings again, keeping out of sight and trying to look down from above using the eyes of the circling birds.I spot Selene, but she seems to realize what I’m doing, turning her powers upwards now to target the birds I’m using to watch her.She picks one from the sky, then another, targeting them with the precision of a hunter picking off small game.
“Do you think I don’t know all your tricks?”Selene calls out.I start towards her voice.“I hunted beast whisperers in Arboria while I was in exile.I learned everything I could about your kind.I learned whole new fields of magic, just so I’d be prepared for this moment.When I put myself into the games, it was as much to learn the physical skills of a gladiator as to gain popularity.I’ve watched every fight you’ve had, Lyra.I know everything about you.”
I keep following Selene’s voice, closing in on her.I see her ahead, taking cover behind the corner of a building, while the crowd urges us both on.I can feel the tension building among them, Selene’s supporters screaming for her to finish me, even as my own want me to kill this woman who would be empress.
I rush her and she turns to me, attacking with her magic in controlled bursts that force me to zigzag as I run.We clash, spear against sword, exchanging blows.I receive a cut on my arm, while Selene takes one across her abdomen.
I call to the animals around me to help.A wave of rats rushes up from the depths of the arena, scurrying forward to try to overwhelm Selene with sheer numbers.She breaks off from me, sending out a wave of violet force to scatter them, but I’m already calling down whatever birds are left to swoop at her in a deadly flock.Selene throws more blasts of magic upwards, but she’s also forced to pull back, hiding behind another shield of magical force.
I call on every small creature I can, now.Rats, birds, the spiders that cling to the walls of the colosseum, and the lizards that scurry between its seats.I reach out further, beyond the boundaries of the colosseum, calling to the stray dogs of the city, the cats that languish in the shadows.I pull in everything that crawls or scuttles, flies or slinks on clawed feet, bringing it in a wave that thunders into the arena.The guards leap out of the way, and I bring the animals forward in a tidal wave of biting, clawing death that pours onto the colosseum floor.
