They look up.
I stalk toward them, fists curling. I’ve been in enough street fights to hold my own. Maybe not against swords, but that’s the beauty of fury—it blinds the senses and makes one feel invincible. The idea of pain even sounds appealing. As long as I can get one solid strike in on these monsters.
But they don’t stick around for a fight. They take one look at me and flee, dragging Erik with them. I give chase, but Stench’s sword yanks itself free from the wood and blocks my way. I duck and roll as it nearly takes off my head.
A black shadow swoops across the sky. The Spores glance up. The child-size one screams, “Go!” It’s the first sound I’ve heard from any of them, and it affirms my suspicion: it’s a kid. Girl by the sounds of it.
Another woman—taller than the one who killed James—hurries to James’s body. She starts to pull him by his sandal strap. Cannibals. They must be cannibals. Why else would they want James’s body. And Erik?
A spear strikes her in the chest, pinning her to the cobbled ground and freeing James’s corpse. No, not a spear. Something jagged and crackling with static. Black when it should be blinding white.
A lightning bolt.
Her cloak falls back, revealing a simple woman’s face, frozen in shock. I’m not sure what I expected, but she looks eerily normal. Human. The shadowed lightning bolt dissipates.
“No!” Stench finds his feet and stumbles toward her. His sword flies away from me toward its master.
Erik still grapples with the other two Spores, who hesitate.
Stench waves at them from over the speared woman’s body. “She’s dead. Just go!”
Another swooping shadow. Another bolt of black lightning. A disembodied sword slices the bolt from the sky before sheathing itself at Stench’s belt. I look up, whether to embrace the lightning spear coming for me or to catch a glimpse of this mysterious defender who can fly, I’m not sure.
But it isn’t a person soaring through the air. It’s a beast with enormous wings that don’t belong in a sky. Nor should it be the size of a B-2 Bomber, but it is. Blacker than night, catching air currents as though in a sea skimming the clouds.
A stingray.
Long tail whipping after its mighty swoops, it glides past me, mere yards above the rooftops, and that’s when I see a form on its back, balanced in a wide stance with a crackling black lightning shard strapped to its back like a quiver, holding reins in the left hand and a thick coil of rope in the right. The figure guides the stingray in a low, stomach-dropping dive and hurls the rope in a giant loop. It lassos the smallest Spore around her neck and shoulder, then tightens with a pinch and jerks her into the air. She screams.
Another Spore female also screams and stumbles after her. “Olivia!”
But the child is hoisted skyward too fast, dangling like a carrot on a string. The stingray, the hero, and the Spore child disappear over the flaming walls of the coliseum.
Stench abandons his dead comrade and sprints after the others. He drags the screaming female Spore back into the shadows, and then they’re gone.
Erik is gone. James is dead. I stand—the last survivor—on a foreign battlefield of burning stone.
Hands grab my shoulders. I pivot to fight, but a tall stranger shoves me toward the coliseum. He wears a thick leather breastplate with a red cape, secured at his throat. The first word that comes to mind when I see him is centurion, though I’ve no idea if that title is accurate. He holds James’s key ring.
“Get inside. Get safe. More are coming.”
The enormous gate is now open. I didn’t hear or see it move during the attack. Get inside? Get safe?
“It’s on fire.” Is he blind?
“I know.” The centurion turns and walks into the fire as though it doesn’t exist. Like soldiers in salute, the flames part for him and hold their position, creating a small path straight into the coliseum.
Depleted as I am from the crash and the battle, I argue no further. If there’s one thing I know about this place . . . it’s that I’m new here. And if someone’s offering me sanctuary, I’d better take it.
I run after him. The flames don’t part for me. In fact, they lean forward, trying to get a taste of my flesh. They singe my arms and crackle the sweat off my skin, but after a brief flare of heat, I’m through the open gates.
I stumble to a halt inside, standing in the open maw of an entryway, the fire at my back. The gates start to close at a mere nod from the Roman centurion, creaking with chains and bolts like I expected. He stops and waits for me to catch up. To commit. To fully enter this new and dangerous game.
And I, like an indentured gladiator, enter of my own free will. Whatever awaits me in here has to be better than what I’m leaving behind.
The coliseum gates slam closed behind me.
There is no blazing fire inside. No sounds of crackling or scorched stones. The interior is strong and stable. I don’t have the energy to make sense of it all, so I suspend my disbelief and accept the oddity. The best I can gather, the fire is some sort of defense mechanism—not actually a mishap.
With the doors shut, an odd—almost echoing—silence descends. It feels out of place after the battle and deaths. Three other survivors—two men and a woman from the Tunnels—stand inside the gates. I try not to imagine the families of the dead, trapped above in the Real World, clinging to the unmoving bodies of their loved ones . . . never to know what happened to them.
Like I had to.
I force my focus forward. The coliseum is straight out of a time machine. With a fantasy twist. Tall, arched hallways made of gargantuan slices of stone mark the pathways toward its heart. No electricity, but plenty of torches with the scent of smoke and burning oil.
The Roman centurion claps heavy irons around our necks before I have a chance to resist. Each iron is connected by a short chain to the captive in front. The metal pushes down on my shoulders, pinching my clavicle. I try to shrug it into a better position, but he gives a tug, and we have no other choice than to move.
To march.
We are led through a long tunnel, up some stairs, and over a barred walkway that passes above a wide street. People occupy the street below, all in togas of various muted shades or tunics and sandals. Some look up as we pass overhead. A few point and cheer.
It’s not a happy cheer, it’s more . . . hungry.
We enter a new tunnel and descend again. There is no turn, no alleyway, no alternative but to follow.
I run my fingers along the walls. My skin picks up dust mites, runs over small pockets and dents of stone. The intricacies in this dreamscape are delivered at a level of expertise I never encountered in my years of studying dream design. Can this still be a mutation? The Nightmare? Everything seems too intentional. Too detailed. And definitely too Roman.
