This was the shifter friend? He looked ancient.
We made our way inside and joined up with my friends.
“It’s us seven against Saldrea’s friends and… how many guards?” the angel asked me.
“Ten dragons.”
“Fucking hell,” the shifter swore.
“Heavens!” the angel said at the same time. “And Myel?”
“The shifter? He’s in there too, well-guarded by Golana, behind all the rest.”
More swearing.
Yeah, I didn’t like this either.
“I hope you’re ready for the fight of your life,” I said, heading deeper into the bowels of the arena.
The old man squared his jaw. “If I die so that Izzy can live, so be it!”
Ah… a fanatic. Great. Though perhaps that was what we needed right now. Someone willing to face death head on, because we didn’t stand a chance. Still, I’d promised the others I’d fight to free their friends if they liberated my sister and they had. So, the seven of us marched into the well-guarded marshalling area in the arena.
I had to give credit to that angel and the ancient shifter. The angel instantly blinded our foes, then rose up on his wings and began a barrage of light rays so intense it seemed to fill the room. The shifter surprised a dragon and nearly took the big man down with one attack, his half-tiger form quick and agile as he slashed with claws and tore with teeth.
One on one, titan versus dragon wasn’t much of a contest, but two dragons each was a challenge. We all fought with everything we had, but I didn’t think it would be enough.
Cheers erupted from outside, in the arena proper.
I didn’t know how long Izzy — bound by a collar — could last against Saldrea going all out on her. And if Izzy died, my life was forfeit. Izzy’s grandmother had been clear about that. I didn’t fear the nymph on her own, but given how savagely those around me fought, I had a feeling Izzy’s allies would indeed tear me apart if I didn’t save her now.
And a part of me didn’t want to let that strange, intoxicating woman perish either. I wanted to know more about her. She defied Saldrea at every turn, even while being tortured. Her strength and determination was unlike anything I’d ever seen.
I had to hope those qualities would keep her alive now, because the foes before us, despite outnumbering us, were digging in to fortify their position. All they had to do was wait. They had the luxury of time. We didn’t. We’d taken down three dragons, but that still left seven, not to mention a powerful dwarf, a fiendish sylph, and a nasty undine.
We fought with stone and light, and shifter’s claws, but they matched us move for move with ice and wind, mental attacks, and swirling pools around our heads to drown us, all while dragons blasted fire, safe behind walls of stone.
We titans should have been able to tear down those walls, with five of us earth-wielders to Golana’s one, but with the other attacks on us, it was everything we could do to defend and attack at the same time, distracted enough that Golana could rebuild their defenses quick enough if one of us did manage to tear them down.
And trying to reach past them with my earth magic was useless, the arena floor was protected by a powerful binding to ensure no one outside could help those within.
Izzy was on her own.
IZZY
I flewbackward through the air, landing hard and rolling, sending up a cloud of dirt from the arena floor. It was a good thing I was tougher now. The collar around my neck didn’t seem to have diminished my natural durability as an elf, at least not much. I’d taken several full-strength hits from Saldrea, which would have killed me before my mother’s binding had been removed.
Still, I wasn’t in good shape. Cuts marred most of my skin, though few of them were serious. No, it was the massive welts from where Saldrea had hit me which really hurt. They seemed to be everywhere, radiating a throbbing pain.
I’d taken several hits while distracted, focused on breaking the binding on my collar. Having had a decent sleep last night, thanks to my grandmother healing me, I’d woken early this morning, before Saldrea had come to get me, and worked on freeing myself. But I had no idea how close I might be to breaking the binding. There was no lessening of resistance, the collar was an all or nothing thing, full strength until broken. But that meant I had no gauge tomark my progress. I hoped I was close. Every moment since I’d woken — through being moved, then held in the prisons below the arena, then finally dragged by my hair out to fight — I’d kept working on the collar. Even as the fight had started, I’d focused on breaking the binding on me instead of defense. I’d thought I’d been close. But it had cost me… in the form of these welts.
Then I’d figured something out, after Saldrea had hit me so hard I’d flown into the wall of the arena and crumpled to the ground. As the insane princess had sauntered leisurely over to me, I’d remembered the trick Grandma Oli had taught me, about how to lock my form when changing shapes as a nymph. I’d initially assumed it only worked on shape-changing, but perhaps it didn’t. Maybe I could “lock in” my work on the collar, so I didn’t have to focus on it constantly and it would continue on its own. It had taken a couple tries, but it had worked! That had left my mind free to focus on this fight. Since then, I’d led Saldrea on a merry little dance around the arena, evading her strikes, mostly…
It helped that she was toying with me. And if it meant prolonging this fight, then I was happy to play into her superiority fantasy. Every time I groaned louder, got up a little slower, she smiled all the wider, getting off on my suffering.
As an elf, she could have enhanced her speed, been much faster, nearly impossible for me to avoid without greater enhancements myself, but she’d only done that a few times, when she’d gotten frustrated at not hitting me. That’s how I knew she was playing with me. Which I found odd, given that she’d rushed into this fight.
She’d dragged me out here, saying, “I don’t know who your friends freed from my secret prison, or what they hoped to gain by it, but it means you’ll die all the sooner.”
