“Enough!” a booming voice commanded.
I didn’t let go. The beast was still swinging around violently, still fighting me with everything it had, and now it’s teeth were finally tearing through the leather. I heard a loud rip and then I was holding two separate pieces of a jacket, falling backwards and off of the beast as my own momentum threw me from its back.
I dropped the leather the second I hit the sand. Scrambling backward as fast as I could toward the open doorway of the cage, I kept my gaze on the beast as it roared in fury and whirled toward me. I could see the hatred in its gaze, the rage at having lost even an ounce of ground against me, and, for a moment, I thought it would lunge and that would be it. I would die here, bleeding out on this coarse sand while that acidic venom burned me from the inside out. After everything, I would fall to a giant cat.
But then two guards stepped into the cage beside me, grunting and growling back at the beast as they each brandished one long golden staff toward it. The beast eyed them, then their staffs,and backed away. But it growled again, a sound of pure rage and, when it snapped its jaws at the nearest staff, the other guard plunged his against that white leathery hide. A crack of light illuminated the cage and the beast howled in agony before slumping to the floor, unconscious but still breathing, its enormous chest rising and falling with each measured breath.
The men with the staffs simply turned away and strode from the cage.
I scrambled to my feet and followed quickly after them, wanting to put as much distance between myself and the Zver as possible. I'd done it. I'd lived. I'd survived the encounter with a monster they claimed even gods feared, agodkiller. I should have been proud. But when I emerged from the cage and looked up to findValinwatching me, disappointed frown etched clearly onto his lips, I knew that, somehow, I'd failed.
So, as I always did, I stood, panting, and waited for my scolding.
“Are you a Champion or not?”Valinasked, his voice low and clipped.
“What?” I replied, blinking.
Instead of answering,Valinsimply walked toward the cage, phased out of existence, and appeared on the other side. He phased again and reappeared outside the cage, only a foot in front of me.
“You could have phased,” he told me. “At any point, you could have phased right through those bars and been out of that cage.”
I frowned, peering behind him at the sleeping beast that had almost killed me. I resisted the urge to rub my burned neck.
“TheGeistgave you Blessings, Dante,”Valinsnapped, obviously irritated by my lack of competency in this first test. “Have you not used them at all?”
“I have,” I explained. “I—we trained with strength and speed and the other Blessings given to us in the early Trials but, with the later ones…there wasn’t time.”
Valin’sbrow furrowed and, for a moment, I thought he might ask why we hadn’t had the time. I thought he might actually express some curiosity about what was happening in his former homeland. But he didn’t. Instead, he simply shook his head and strode away. I dared one last glance at the sleeping beast before hurrying after him.
“You need more training than I thought,”Valinmuttered under his breath as I reached him and we began to stroll back through the training grounds toward the city together. “Deimos will not be pleased to hear of this.”
I frowned, fists clenching at my sides. My first day inPavosand I’d already managed to displease my mentor and piss off the lord of the gods.
“Are you going to tell me anything about that thing that almost killed me just now?” I asked after a few minutes of walking in silence, unable to keep the irritation from my tone. "Other than what it's called and how many ways it can kill me?"
Valincut a glance my way but then turned back to face forward as we passed between alleys.
"Do you deserve the knowledge, Viper?" he grumbled. "Or do you simply feel entitled to it by nature of your birth?"
My jaw clenched and I opened my mouth to snap back at him, but he suddenly stopped walking and turned to face me.
"A piece of advice, son of Sanctuary, your ancestry means nothing here," he spat, his tone low and filled with derision that grated against me. "It doesn't matter who your father is or your grandfather or whoever else held your hand and raised you to be the thoughtless welp you are today. It doesn't matter what you had or who you were or which silver spoon was in your mouth at birth. No one here cares. No one here will bow down to you foryour blood or worship the ground you walk on for your name. If you want respect here, you earn it. Andthat," he gestured back toward the Zver cage we'd left behind, "certainly did you no favors. So don't ask me for knowledge when you never learned to utilize that which you were already given."
I'd been scolded before, more often than any other way I'd been spoken to, in truth. I was no stranger to a firm tongue-lashing or even to a physical beating if the occasion warranted it. But Valin's reprimand was not the same as Cosmo's. It wasn't given by a man filled with ambitious hatred, but by one filled with disappointment. This world wasn't what he'd believed it to be either. Someone had held his hand once, raised him for the gods to take, lost him to the Trials which had claimed the other half of his soul and filled him with resentful regret. Valin's anger was different from Cosmo's because heknew.He knew exactly what I'd done, what I'd become, and what I was capable of because ours was the same story even if the details were different.
So, as he shook his head and turned away once more, resuming his striding through the city, I followed with a frown. Somehow, this legendary hero's disappointment hurt far worse than my grandfather's.
“I'll tell you because you need to know, not because you deserve to. And because Deimos will have my ass if something happens and you're unprepared,” he muttered as he walked ahead. “TheZver are the main threat to theGeist’skingdom. They’re the only creature we know of that can kill them.”
I shivered, looking back to where we'd left the cage far behind us.
Godkiller.
“How?” I asked in a whisper. “How can they kill a god?”
“I don’t know,”Valinreplied. “None of us soldiers do. I imagine command has the answer to that question but we aren’tprivy to it. Regardless, they’re the reason the wall was created. They’re the reason theGeistseek to fill their ranks with soldiers, particularly very GiftedVerdunn. But we don’t train brutes here, Dante. That trick with your jacket might have been impressive for a moment but theZverwould have torn the leather away and your hands with it eventually. And after you’ve been bitten…well, don’t get bitten.”
I frowned, reaching up to rub my neck. I'd surmised as much.
