NOVEL NEXT The Final Battle of Lycundar's Arena I
“Lycundar’s Teeth! Look, Sacred Alpha!” Berard pointed.
Crack!
Milos snapped the neck of a dire boar he had dragged down, then rose up as a tide of captives - armed and raging - poured into the arena. They fell upon the cult in a fit of wrath, and their weapons washed red with grisly vengeance. At the head of the mob shrieked a familiar rat-woman.
A familiar, very living rat-woman.
A rat-woman that should be consumed in his tiger’s belly.
“What in Lycundar’s teeth…” he murmured. “How did-”
He paused.
Her sword glittered as it pierced through the mask of a surprised acolyte, drawing forth a fountain of crimson to drench the sand. That sword had hung from the belt of his beast-man when last he had seen it. Now it was reclaimed - held in the grip of the rat-thief’s hand – and leaving him with a bitter conclusion as to the fate of his poor pet.
This loss would have stoked him to blinding wrath, but he spied another figure whose presence confused him so thoroughly that his anger slipped away. His prized sabre-toothed tiger - his ultimate effort to surpass the Olubrian Lion he had faced in his youth - now roared and tore into Lycundar’s own with the fury of a Skjernan berserker.
Dagger-length claws ripped through his black robed followers like a scythe through dry wheat. The sheer mass and swiftness of its paws shattered bone and saw them falling in heaps.
The Sacred Alpha took in his surroundings. The cult had finished half the beasts - with the blessed pack-brothers carrying that fight - but the addition of these enraged slaves was a grim tiding. He did not doubt that the cult would claim victory in the end, but it would indeed be a hollow one. Few of Lycundar’s chosen would remain by the time their last opponents fell.
Losses needed to be mitigated. Quickly.
“Berard!” he bellowed.
“Sacred Alpha!” The giant of a man ushered a group of acolytes toward a knot of ferocious fighting. “What is your command?”
“You have led the acolytes well, but I need your strength! Transform and go to Lycundar’s Sacred sculpture!” He thrust his finger up toward the statue of the wolf god. “Knock away the supports at its base and let it slide down upon its track! Then-”
He pointed down to The Rat.
“-kill her!”
The bear-like lycanthrope drew up to his full height. “As you will it, Sacred Alpha!” his cry deepened into a bestial roar. His form shifted to that of a giant, black-coated beast that tore free its robe before bounding toward the statue of Lycundar.
Milos turned and rushed down the steps toward the arena floor.
His eyes fixed on his hunting cat.
Discipline was needed.
“Rat!” a hated voice bellowed.
A long slash from Wurhi’s sword split the belly of an acolyte and she risked looking toward the source of the call. Milos of Crotonia pushed through throngs of his followers, his face scarlet in wrath. “You took my beasts!
She bared her teeth at him in a rodent’s bitter smile. ‘Do not play so sullen with me. What did you expect? I am a thief.’ She threw his own words back at him in her mind.
Whether she merely imagined it or whether her bile emanated through animalistic body language, the cult leader bristled and his countenance washed to a deep, wrathful purple.
“Grooooooaar!”
A great roar shook the arena floor.
The titanic sabre-toothed tiger spied his tormentor and, baring his sword-like fangs, gathered his powerful bulk.
Crash!
He charged through the acolytes - trampling them like twigs - and leapt for Milos’ throat.
Crash!
Gigantic hunting cat and towering cult leader collided in a mixture of fury, primal strength, chagrin and hatred. Man and beast struck the sand, grappling and straining against each other. Milos’ strength and technique strove against the cat’s raw power and experience. Cultists, escapees and beasts alike fled in the face of awesome struggle as sand and bone debris flew in the air.
“Bloody piss!” Merrick swore, sliding back from a cultist’s strike before impaling the screaming fanatic on his spear. “They’re really fighting back now!”
The horde of zealots had begun to turn and resist, throwing themselves on the rebelling captives. Despite grappling with berserk beasts above and wrathful captives on the sands below, they fought with a fervour born of zealotry. More beasts fell, and the remaining werewolves would soon bring their savagery down upon their disloyal slaves.
Yet, it was not these that caught Wurhi’s eye.
A hulking wolf-man loped toward the statue of Lycundar - black-coated and familiar – with a purpose the Zabyallan did not trust. Berard. The one that had captured her. The same one who had proved a terrifying force in the attack on Paradise. Why would he flee unless he was going to do something very bad?
Chittering, she pointed toward the fleeing lycanthrope.
“What th-“ Merrick followed her outstretched finger. “The big one? Where’s he going…wait where’re you going?”
Wurhi the Rat slipped from the ranks of the slaves and raced around the throng to follow the werewolf. The more she thought about it, the more she became convinced she could not leave him be. As she crossed half of the arena, he had already reached the foot of Lycundar’s image. Merrick followed her, cursing all the while. “What’re you doing…wait what’s he doing?”
Berard came to a sudden halt at the foot of Lycundar’s statue and bent down by its stone base. A pair of granite brackets stood at the front corners securing it to the slope of the arena. When he rose, the werewolf bore a massive bronze maul in his clawed grip.
He snarled, bracing his feet wide.
Whoosh!
Crack!
He struck a mighty blow, carving a fissure deep into the bracket. Wurhi chittered in dread. Closing in on the statue, she detected a faint, ominous scent seeping up from below its base. The shapeshifter redoubled her speed, recalling Milos’ mention of three pets. His first had shattered her hand. His second could have slain her had it not turned on its hated master.
She did not fancy taking her chances with a third.
Gripping her sword between her teeth, she rushed the arena wall and sprang at it, letting the claws of her good hand bite into the rough stone. The Rat scaled it quickly, but-
Whoosh!
Crack!
Crnch!
-heard the sharp sound of splitting rock. She cursed inwardly.
The wolf-man had destroyed one of the statue’s supports.
Grrrnd.
His claws clicked over the stone as he rushed to shatter the other.
Whoosh!
Crack!
Grrrnd!
The statue’s base groaned as Wurhi mounted the wall. Lycundar’s image swayed ominously, as though it were a giant shifting its weight before taking an impossibly large step. Cracks spiderwebbed through the second bracket, and Berard raised the maul to shatter it completely.
‘No!’ Wurhi thought, snatching her sword from her teeth and diving for the towering lycanthrope.
Sniff.
His nostrils flared. Pointed ears twitched.
Whooosh!
He spun, sweeping the maul in an arc of bronze and death. With a chitter of alarm, Wurhi dived to the side.
Whoosh!
The brutal head passed over her, buffeting her fur, and she dodged death by mere finger lengths. She came down to the stone, rolled and sprang to her feet in a single, fluid motion as Berard pursued her with maul held high. A beast’s roar exploded from his throat and his fur bristled in fury, swelling the already titanic werewolf greater still.
She yelped and skittered back.
Whoosh!
The hammer-head rushed by her snout, halted, and drove back.
Whoosh! Whoosh! Whoosh!
Driven by lupine speed and supernatural strength, the maul chased Wurhi in a flurry of thunderous strikes.
Crash! Crash! Crash!
Each strike shattered the backs of stone benches or splintered the floor. Berard’s eyes burned in rage and his sour breath hissed between fangs; his dressing had sloughed off, baring the ugly wound across his jaw and cheek. The Zabyallan thief scampered backward, leaping onto the seats above her and vaulting over their backs. She ducked low.
Whoosh! Crash!
The maul obliterated the back of a seat, showering her in sharp debris, but the swift shapechanger darted behind other seats, using them as cover to circle her hunter.
Crash! Crash! Crash!
The maul smote the stone with the massive shapechanger in pursuit, but Wurhi quickly increased the distance between them. When his blows paused, she snarled, leaping onto the back of the seats to drive her sword into the black-coated beast’s eye.
Wurhi raised her blade and-
‘Shit! Shit!’ her mind screamed.
Whoosh.
-jumped over the maul as it nearly swept her knees. Landing on the back of the stone seat as though she were on a tightrope, she jabbed a push cut at the werewolf.
Scchcnk!
He howled as it drew a line of crimson across his brow. The beast stumbled back and Wurhi pounced after him.
Crack!
Berard swept a claw into her side mid-leap. The bronze shirt saved her from evisceration, but the sheer weight of the blow blasted the breath from her lungs.
She careened through the air like a lead ball and crashed hard on the stone, narrowly avoiding impalement on her own sword. The wolfman leapt, with maul raised and blood trailing from his brow. His fangs gleamed in the light of the full moon as it shone through the hollow in the ceiling.
The maul came down.
Crash!
Wurhi rolled as it obliterated the stone where her head had been. The Zabyallan fought to regain her breath as Berard raised his maul to crush her.
Schnk!
The wolfman yelped as a bronze spear dug into his side.
“Get up, Rat!” Merrick twisted his spear in the wound. “We’ll do him like the manticore! Take him together!”
Berard ignored the Hawk - the bronze of his spear could not slay him – and focused on the silver-wielding thief but, in his moment’s pause, Wurhi had skittered from his reach.
Gasping for breath, the rat shapeshifter rose to her feet.
Merrick’s grey eyes went wide as he glanced to her back. “Shit! Rat look out!”
Someone rushed her from behind.
With a yelp, she whirled, her sword striking out by reflex.
Grrrrrnd!
Crack!
In the same breath, the remaining bracket splintered beneath the effigy of Lycundar.
The statue of the wolf god began a slow slide down the arena’s slope.