New Olympus Saga (Book 4): The Ragnarok Alternative (12 page)

That’s one question. The other one is, how do I do it? In Dreamland, it just sort of happened
.

Meditate, visualize, wish really hard. Eat pray love. Use the Force, Lucia
.

She tried. As the janitors removed the last bits of the second-place winner from the area, she did all those things. The only thing she didn’t try was her Codex Words. She was too scared doing so would alert her darkest counterpart, which would kind of defeat the purpose and screw the pooch.

Of course, chances are she’ll spot me as soon as I walk out there.

Never mind that. Worry about not ending up as biological detritus
.

Nothing had clicked yet when the portcullis started rolling up.

“AND, MAKING HER ARENA DEBUT AFTER COMMITTING MURDER MOST FOUL, PUT YOUR HANDS TOGETHER AND WELCOME… NELLIE GOMEZ!”

She went out.

The circle of dirt was about a hundred feet wide, big enough to make her feel like a bug on a plate, not to mention very exposed with only the effing chainmail bikini standing between her and the world. The surrounding crowd looked down on her and cheered or catcalled, depending on their mood. And, on the nice boxed seats, sitting on a by-god throne, was the Goddess her own darn self.

Dark Christine was wearing a tight-fitting black gown, clearly from the Maleficent Collection, extra-slutty edition. Two naked slaves, male and female respectively, knelt at her feet. Sitting on a lesser throne was her consort, faceless and wearing a leather gimp outfit, also black. Christine’s heart lurched at the sight: that was Mark’s body, inhabited by Mister Night. She’d had nightmares about her brief encounter with that power couple, and now she was back in their presence. Life sucked sometimes.

They didn’t recognize her. They didn’t stand up and go all Donald Southerland at the end of
Invasion of the Body Snatchers
. Didn’t have her arrested, or blasted her into cinders. She almost fainted with relief.

Okay. Give them a good show, the Party Planner had said. The other two contestants were walking around the edge of the circle, swaggering and shouting back at the audience. Reluctantly, Christine followed them. She didn’t have it in her to swagger or strut or do much beyond putting one foot in front of the other. Just as she’d feared, her outfit started rubbing her in all the wrong places. The humiliation at being put on display against her will was worse. So were the calls from the crowd:

“Shake your ass, baby!”

“Show us your tits!”

Whistles, howls, the whole nine yards. She guessed she should count herself lucky they weren’t throwing crap at her.

Christine kept her gaze on the two other women. The one directly ahead of her was African-American, tall and wiry, her muscular arms and legs left bare by a spiked leather suit that must chafe almost as badly as the chainmail bikini. She was being loudly defiant, cursing the spectators as she walked.

“What the fuck y’all looking at? Motherfuckers! You so brave, come to watch us die!”

Some of the people in the crowd fell silent at that, but the rest reacted to her words like sharks smelling blood in the water. The lowest level of the stands was separated from the arena by a ten foot wire fence. People flailed against it as they screamed back at her. The N-word got used a lot. The audience ratio of d-bags to regular folk was depressingly high.

The third gladiatrix was short and bronze-skinned, with a voluptuous figure and raven-black hair. Hispanic or Native-American, maybe. She was prancing like a little girl, laughing and making faces at the crowd. At one point, she opened her skimpy leather top and flashed the stands, to the delight of many.

At least her fellow fighters looked pretty tough. They’d survived this kind of thing, which meant it wasn’t a certain death sentence. Maybe the three of them would dogpile whatever d-bag they sent in after them, and live another day. Another day for Christine to get her powers back and figure out a way to escape this Kansas edition of
Beyond Thunderdome
.

A few moments later, she found herself walking right past her evil twin, and her thoughts were washed away by sheer terror. She hadn’t been recognized so far, but this was her closest approach to her dark half.

Avoid eye contact
. Christine looked down and kept walking.
If I can’t see her, she can’t see me
. Childish pseudo-logic, but that was all she had left. You can’t hide from an empath. Any second now, the Goddess would have the guards seize her and bring her up to the throne. The best that she could hope for was a quick – if not painless – death.

Nothing happened. She walked past the VIP section without incident. Holy crap. And mega-phew. And weird. Had her empathy really atrophied after turning evil? Maybe it was too hard to murder and torture people if you could feel their feelings. It was bad enough when she’d had to hurt people because all other choices were worse. Maybe the evil bitch version had been forced to shut off those senses.

Analyze all you want after the show is over
, her brain suggested.
How about concentrating on summoning Snipe for now?

Good advice, only it still wasn’t happening. For a second, as she followed her two partners in misery towards the center of the circle, she had a brief flashback of fighting as Snipe, but it was gone an eye blink later. Meanwhile, the Goddess rose to her feet to address them and the crowd.

“Little girls!” she said, and her voice carried without the need of a microphone and sound system. “You are all guilty of something or other. Frankly, I don’t really care. The point is, you have a chance to redeem yourselves. Fight well, and live! Entertain the crowd, and maybe live! Suck ass, and die horribly and at great length! That is all.”

The crowd cheered wildly. Talk about easily amused.

Christine turned to her colleagues. “Hi, I’m…”

‘Don’t give a fuck who you are,” the black woman said. “You survive this, you get a name. Right now, you’re just some fresh meat.”

Without another word, she turned her back to Christine and headed towards the weapon racks lined up against the walls. The short woman paused only long enough to point and laugh at Christine before doing the same.

Oh, kay
. A d-bag ex-boyfriend of hers had once pointed out that most casualties in a combat unit came from the new recruits, who didn’t know what they were doing and ended up stepping on a land mine or catching a bullet with their teeth. Given that, not getting attached to the newbies made sense. Still not very friendly of them.

Weapons time. Christine rushed to the nearest wooden stands, which held all kinds of nifty cutlery, from halberds to icepicks. Christine settled on a couple of long knives, or maybe short swords, straight double-edged blades a good ten or eleven inches long, which reminded her of Snipe’s favorite epic weapons. Hyena-girl was wielding a trident and a small buckler. The cusser had a two-handed sword, a
Highlander
special, held like a baseball bat.

Christine tried to do a swinging flourish with her daggers and almost cut herself. The short woman laughed at her again.

Yeah, this is going to be pure awesome
.

Once the trio of
morutori
had armed themselves, they went back to the center of the circle to wait for their opponent. He showed up soon enough.

Oh, God
. Her knees got a bit wobbly as soon as she saw him.
What an asshole bitch!

Three on one, even one who knew what he was doing, wasn’t terrible odds – for the three. But that only worked when you were fighting normal humans.

It – he, he was very, very male – stood close to seven feet tall and almost equally wide. His green skin, outthrust jaw, lower fangs projecting well past his lips, and grotesquely-muscled, hunched over physique showed that he might have been human once, but not anymore.

Orc. Effing orc
.

At least it appeared that the chainmail bikini rules applied to both genders. The orc was only wearing a loincloth, a spiked plate over one shoulder, and a big Samurai-style metal helmet. He had an eight foot long spear with a leaf-shaped blade on one end and a blunt metal butt on the other; a long curved sword was belted at his waist. He looked at them with dark beady eyes and snorted, clearly not impressed.

“This ain’t fair, man,” the black woman muttered. “Motherfucking Green-Go.” She caught Christine looking at her. “Don’t let him take you alive, chicklet. He’ll do you either way, but dead it won’t hurt.”

“Thanks.”

“You’re fucking welcome.”

That girl and Mark should play Words with Friends sometime.

The two women started shuffling sideways, spreading out – and leaving Christine in the middle, facing the giant orc alone. No solidarity in the trenches, apparently. Their plan clearly was to wait till the orc moved in on Christine and then hit him on the sides and back while he was busy dismembering her.

Her knives suddenly seemed like a rather suboptimal choice. The orc had like five feet of reach on her, maybe more.

Okay, I can do this. You know how to do fancy footwork. Dodge around, close in, and then slash the back of his legs, hamstring him. And…

The orc charged with a deafening roar. He was thirty, forty feet away when he started, but he closed the distance before Christine fully knew what was happening. Sheer reflex got her to pivot on one foot, and the spear thrust that would have gutted her like a fish only drew a deep gash on her midsection as it not-quite missed her. She backpedaled away, barely avoiding an upswing with the butt of the spear that swished an inch past her chin, and leaped away when the orc brought down the spear’s head like an axe. The green mean machine pressed on, his head swinging side to side as he moved, as if he was shaking it in a ‘No’ motion. Not that the headshakes were slowing him down any. All Christine could do was stay a fraction of a second ahead of the spear thrusts and swings.

He was huge and he was fast and she was effed.

Desperately dodging around for dear life, Christine barely noticed the black woman coming up from behind the orc, sword held high for a chopping blow. The Horde bastard either had eyes on the back of his head or the headshakes were letting him check his six, however. As soon as the woman got close enough, the orc thrust back with the spear, catching her in the stomach with the blunt metal butt.

Blunt end or not, he drove the spear right through her.

Christine heard skin and flesh give way with a hard slapping sound, followed by a scream of primal agony. The orc thrust at Christine with the other end, forcing her to keep her distance, and swung around in one fluid motion.

The black woman was doubled over, sword on the ground, squeezing the terrible wound with her hands. She looked up just in time to see the spear point flashing towards her face.

Christine looked away as she retreated. She still saw too much.

Laughing woman had started to charge, but she’d been too far away to reach the orc in time, and as soon as she saw the black woman go down, she checked herself and kept her distance, obviously hoping the orc would pick Christine first.

Zee knives, zey do nothing!
The crazy riff on
The Simpsons
line flitted through her mind and almost drove her into hysterical laughter. The orc turned towards her, and the incipient laughter was replaced with the urge to let her bladder run free. She almost threw the knives away and fell to her knees, begging for mercy.

He’ll do you either way, but dead it won’t hurt.

Yeah, I guess surrender’s not an option
.

Another vision flashed past her eyes. Snipe, fighting those mean orcs that prowled the area just outside Lakeshire. Those had been tough encounters back when she’d been a mere Level Sixteen. If only…

The spear point darted towards her, impossibly, unavoidably fast. She leaned back, just far enough to let the leaf-shaped blade pass harmlessly over her, and reached out with the knife on her left hand, the edge connecting with a solid
chunk!
She somersaulted away as the orc lost his grip on his spear and looked unbelievingly at the bloody stump where his thumb used to be, before it was neatly severed between the first and second knuckles.

Christine’s acrobatics ended twenty feet away, knives held at the ready. Snipe was there, somewhere in the back of her head, and her first impulse was to vanish out of sight and then sneak behind the orc.

Except if she did that, they’d know she wasn’t just a normal human being. Even what she’d just done was pushing it.

No special powers. Just old-fashioned hack and slash
.

The orc came at her, bellowing like a rabid boar. He held the spear in the hand that still had a full complement of fingers, ready for an overhand stab, or maybe a throw. The weapon wasn’t balanced for throwing, but with his strength it’d probably fly straight and punch all the way through her.

I got this
, Christine/Snipe thought.

He did throw it, the massive weapon flying as if shot from a ballista, but she rolled under it and came to a stop on his right side, daggers flashing, snicker-snack, opening the big arteries on his thigh and groin with malice aforethought. A back flip got her away before he could react, not that he was interested in much other than the brutal injuries she’d inflicted.