Selene manages to pick off a few of them with individual bursts of magic, but quickly, she’s forced to construct a dome of power to keep the animals at bay.They swarm over it, testing her with the sheer weight of their numbers.Above us, the crowd is going wild, assuming the contest has reached its final phases.Even I’m confident, because I can’t see how Selene can deal with so many attacking creatures at once.
Perhaps, if she didn’t have the additional power of the stones set in the arena, she couldn’t.As it is, though, I feel something like a great indrawn breath of magic.Then the shield around Selene bursts in a wave of force that tears through the animals around her, destroying them or flinging them away from her.I barely throw myself out of the way in time to avoid the power, landing in the shadow of one of the buildings.
“Did you think that would be enough to stop me?”Selene demands.“But I think that you’ve shown it’s time to bring this to an end.Come here, Lyra.”
I find my body obeying without conscious thought, and too late, I realize that she’s used a burst of psychomancy on me.The insidious power is running through my mind, telling me that I just need to obey Selene.I realize that she could have done this to me at any point, but that she wanted to give the crowd a good show before she killed me.
Now, as I move to stand in front of her, it seems that she’s done playing with me.Selene Ravenscroft is going to kill me and I...it seems I’m going to stand here and let her.
CHAPTER TWENTY THREE
I can’t move.Selene is advancing on me, a blade in her hand, and I can only stand perfectly still, waiting for the moment when she’ll kill me.
“Control is everything,” Selene says, her voice carrying around the colosseum.“It’s vital to have power as well, but without control, it’s nothing.Take Lyra here.”
She moves to me casually, knocking the spear from my hand.
“She has as much power as any beast whisperer who’s lived, but she’s still little better than a wild animal.She can’t even control herself now.Drop your shield, Lyra.”
As Selene commands it, I unbuckle my shield and let it fall to the ground.Selene moves to me, tracing the point of her sword over my skin almost casually.
“I want those of you watching to remember what happens here today,” Selene says.“Whenever you’re thinking of disobeying, whenever you think of rebellion, I want you to remember how easy this was for me.”
She increases the pressure on her blade just slightly, making agony flare through me.I can’t even cry out as she does it.
“Let me tell you what’s going to happen next, Lyra,” Selene says, holding up her sword so that a bead of blood can drip down from it.“I’m going to crown myself empress.At the same time, my people will take control of the city to prevent any meddling by the resistance.They’re already out in the streets.Oh, there will be violence, but that violence will merely be the excuse to restore order.The guards will be on my side by then, and we’ll sweep through Aetheria, rounding up all those who might cause trouble.Some of them, we’ll execute.Others, I’ll allow to live, so long as they learn to do it in chains.”
I struggle against the magic holding me.Selene smiles, obviously knowing the effect her words are having on me.
“Don’t worry,” Selene says.“You won’t be around to see Marcus or Alaric on their knees.”
Selene pulls back her sword, ready to inflict the killing blow.As she does so, a single voice rings out over the colosseum.Alaric’s voice.
“Fight back, Lyra.For Aetheria.For me!”
His words are enough to spark something in me.Selene is controlling me with psychomancy, but I'm not someone like Olivia, who's easily controlled.I'm a beast whisperer, with control over the animal instincts that drive people, even as Selene can control a mind.I have plenty of reasons to fight back, too, and Alaric is foremost among them.
I take everything I feel for him, all the desire, all the joy, all the times he’s hurt me.All the love.I throw it at Selene’s magic.I can’t break her grip on my mind directly, but I can bring up something far more primal to overwhelm her magic.
I snarl like an animal as I duck under the swing of her sword.I slam a fist into Selene's stomach, fueled by rage even as the crowd roars its approval at the renewal of the fight.I've dropped my weapons, but there are still at least a few animals left among the buildings that punctuate the arena floor.My fingers lengthen into claws as I borrow from them, and I slash at Selene, opening up lines of blood that match the one she inflicted on me.
Selene cries out and tries to blast me with magic, but I’m already twisting aside.Her burst of power slams into a miniature building, reducing it to rubble, and she swings her sword at me again.I dodge once more, diving to the side and into the buildings as she continues to attack.
“You can’t beat me!”Selene says, although to me, it sounds as though she’s trying to convince herself as much as me.“Yield now and I’ll at least make it quick.”
“You yield,” I snarl back, and itisa snarl.I leap at her, slashing Selene as I go by, but her armor deflects the worst of the attack and she throws more of her deadly, violet magic at me.It crumbles another of the buildings as I run to safety once again.
“There’s only so long you can last with the borrowed power of rats and birds,” Selene says.She punctuates her words by blasting another bird from the sky.
She's right.By making sure there were no dangerous beasts in the colosseum, Selene has deprived me of their abilities and made it so that I can't summon them from below to aid me.But am I really limited to what I can feel in and around the colosseum?This situation is desperate, and that means I'm willing to try more than I normally ever would.
I spread my magical awareness beyond the colosseum, stretching it out over the city, feeling every animal within it.I can feel beetles down in the lowest depths of the catacombs beneath Aetheria and birds flying high above it.I can feel every creature being kept in noble homes or waiting to be sold at market.I can feel the emperor’s old menagerie, bursting now with animals, because Selene’s supporters had to put the creatures from beneath the colosseumsomewhere.I can feel them as surely as if they’re an extension of my own flesh, and I can take what I need now.
Selene comes into view, lining up another blast of her magic, and I borrow the gift of a shadow cat to disappear as I step from one shadow to another.I appear just long enough to slash my clawed hands across her shoulder, then disappear again as Selene blasts the spot where I’m standing.I reappear halfway across the colosseum as Selene reduces another of the buildings to rubble.
I borrow the powers of the thunderhooves next, those horse-like creatures that can generate thunderclaps with each stride.I run past Selene, the impact of my feet on the ground enough to send her reeling.I reinforce myself with the armor of an ironhide rhinoceros as Selene sends a blast of magic at my back, absorbing enough of it that I’m only sent tumbling, not killed.
I take and discard powers from animals at a speed I couldn’t have imagined just a short while ago.I’m sure the power stones around the colosseum are helping, but more of it is just that I’m not holding back, not being careful to preserve myself when I know that the fate of the whole city is on the line.I take illusions from the peacocks in the palace gardens to throw blinding colors into Selene’s face, then strength from a gorilla to grab a chunk of wall and throw it at her.
