Everyone seemed to be taking a deep breath, but Areon was waiting. The spider web had taken a rather large bite out of their numbers, but the Overlord’s appetite was great.
If he really pulls a giant spider out of somewhere, I’d be impressed
, he thought glumly.
He looked at the
calayas
again. Maige was shaking visibly, her hands pressed against her chest as she barely blinked. Ronay had to have been in trouble. Marelle looked horrified, as could be expected.
And Violet – Violet had barely moved. She was still standing where she had from the moment of the reveal. Her eyes were bright and alive, focused on him. Areon would have gladly given a few years of his life, if needed, to know what she was thinking in that moment.
A new tremor stopped him from making imaginary deals with demons. He looked around and saw others do the same. They were all standing on such shaky ground – literally – that every movement could send them tumbling down to the chasm.
Then he heard a chain snap. Grom had pulled his sword out and cut through the chain he was hanging on. Holding on to it, he sailed through the air to crash against the chasm wall with a heavy thud. From there, he holstered the blade and started climbing up.
Not bad. I have to have a word with a certain someone who said your brain was mush.
Actually, what Grom had done didn’t seem such a bad idea at all. Whatever was to come, it didn’t seem like a good idea to sit on a large pole over a deadly fall. Just as Areon started to stand up and climb hand-over-hand to the edge, the pole beneath him started to shake. When he looked up, the edges didn’t seem so safe either. The ledges the champions had stood on were slowly retracting into the walls.
Areon looked up to the Overlord. The man was smiling now, in the way he imagined personified death would.
You have got to be kidding me. So much for withdrawing then…
He didn’t have much time to send insults in the man’s way. The shaking pole situation was getting pretty urgent, but there seemed to be no way out that he could see.
Hey, what was that about not murdering everyone?
It wasn’t that Areon was afraid that he’d die – with his luck of demons, that was a minor possibility. It was just that he had planned to have more fun, and now someone was ruining it.
Oh well. Nothing to be done about that. Time to see what his charade was good for.
CHAPTER SEVEN
The spider web was collapsing.
It seemed to do so in slow motion, but then again, it might have been just her. The point was, it was bloody
collapsing
. This wasn’t a tournament, this was a massacre!
The other
calayas
seemed as shocked as she was. Sure, they’d known their tournament would be special, but they’d expected something... different. More competitors – sure. Flashier arenas – maybe. A bit more danger? But not
that
.
Violet found herself halfway there before she realized she had moved. The Overlord gave her a quizzical look.
“You should stay on your stage,” he said.
“What are you doing?” she demanded. In her fury, she had forgotten all rules they had about situations like that. Out of the corner of her eye, she could see Areon hold on to a wildly swinging pole. His arms and limbs were flailing around. It would have been comical had it not been so terrible.
“I’m conducting the first trial,” her father said. “What’s wrong?”
“A trial is supposed to be a
trial
,” Violet snapped. “You know, something you could come out of. Survive, like you said. That…” she pointed, “is just very slow dying.”
“They’re doing fine,” the Overlord said.
Violet looked to the arena. Grom was the only one who really seemed fine. His huge sword was out again and he’d managed to actually
jam
it into the chasm wall. There he hung, watching the death unfold around him almost passively. Violet shuddered from head to toe at the prospect of
that
being the winner.
“Grom is doing fine enough for now,” she said, “because he’s
insane
. Father, this is madness. You can’t kill them all. What are you doing?”
“They have to prove themselves, Violet.”
“How?” she demanded, hearing another falling scream. She could no longer look Areon’s way, not when she wasn’t sure whether she could handle what she saw.
Speaking of levels of tolerance, where was Irmela? Where was the woman who hated the bloodshed of the tournaments? Why did she let the Overlord do that? Violet had been certain she’d seen her mother at the revealing, but she was gone now.
So they were alone. Violet gritted her teeth in helpless despair.
“Father, stop!” she demanded, but it seemed like she was talking to someone else. The Overlord had always been kind to his daughters, but suddenly he appeared to be a wholly different person. Violet had no idea what was going on. He was a champion himself – he couldn’t hate the warriors so badly as to want them all dead. Was this because of the Raider Prince and his silly proxy?
“Stop!” she said, but the Overlord had turned away from her, watching the arena without any mercy in his eyes.
Even the audience was shocked into silence. Did the Overlord mean to reduce the warriors to seven with the first trial? Leaving only
seven alive
?
Violet ran back to the others. Tears threatened to blur her vision, but she shook her head. No crying for a
calaya
. It was all unfair! What in the name of god was going on? Had the Overlord gone mad?
Her beautiful day was ruined. She’d dreamed of it since she was a child. Standing there, all pretty and neat, for the adoring eyes of all that saw her. A true prize. This was their day, this was... their day!
Violet was a
calaya
. The plan formed in her mind so quickly it almost made her dizzy. Areon was now hanging on the chain, moving to the edge of the arena faster than she would have thought him capable. Only, she had no time to watch him go. Everyone was going to die soon if they didn’t do something. Considering how few were still left hanging, the Raider Prince was probably dead already.
“Maige,” she said, shaking the other girl. “
Maige
.”
The
calaya
was almost hysterical, but Violet knew she’d be the easiest to convince – she had the most to lose. She had to shake her hard enough to mess up the jewels in her dark black hair to get her attention, but finally Maige seemed lucid again.
“Ronay...” she whispered. “He…”
“Is going to die, yes,” Violet said. “
Don’t cry
! I don’t know what the Overlord’s thinking, but this is wrong. Right?
Right
?”
“Yes,” a quiet voice said.
It was Marelle, the only one who still seemed calm but also looked close enough to fainting.
“We have to save them,” Violet said.
Sure, she would have preferred some of them to go out of the competition, but not like
that
. Not pointlessly, helplessly. Not
dead
.
“How?” Maige asked.
It seemed the possibility of doing something had woken her up. Her eyes were wide, wet with tears, but alive again.
“We have to make the Overlord stop this,” Violet said. “He can let the champions die, but he can’t let
us
die.”
“What?” Lavie asked, shocked, but Maige and Marelle seemed to understand.
“Yes,” Marelle said.
“Hurry,” said Maige.
Violet nodded. “Don’t worry. They wouldn’t let anything happen to us. They can’t. We just have to be brave.”
The stage was almost at the arena’s edge. It took a considerable amount of will to force herself to look at Areon – he was still alive somehow. The man was a miracle, he really was. He’d
fallen –
Violet refused to think of that – but his jacket had caught on something and now he was just dangling there, on the chasm wall, alive by a thread. Maige had her eyes closed.
“He’s still alive,” Violet told her as they rushed down from the stage, checking to see Ronay still hanging on. That gave Maige courage again.
She raised her voice when they got to the arena’s edge. “Father!” she yelled. “Stop this! You’re going too far!”
The Overlord looked at them. “Go back to the stage, Violet.”
Violet shuddered. That was
not
the man she’d known all her life. She peeked over the arena’s edge, safe behind a ledge – safe so far.
God it’s deep. And dark. I can’t see a thing. That can’t be my end.
She looked at Marelle and Maige, the most likely to join in on her madness. They nodded, although her fear reflected in their eyes.
“You’ve lost your mind,” Pearl said as Violet propped herself up on the ledge.
“Don’t you think this is going all wrong?” she asked in return, hands gripping the edge so hard that her knuckles were turning white.
“Of course,” Pearl said doubtfully, “but there has to be another way.”
“Do you see any?” Maige asked.
She climbed to join Violet on the edge. The crowd around them was already howling in fear. Two
calayas
perched on the edge of certain death – that was outrageous! Atreens were trying to break through the Overlord’s guards to come to their rescue, but the warriors kept them away. Violet had to wonder why. No one came to stop them either. Did her father call their bluff?
Marelle and Pearl joined them one after the other and now four of them sat on the ledge, feet dangling above a drop so deep they couldn’t see the bottom. The audience was also demanding for the trial to be stopped now. The Overlord still seemed deaf to both them and the
calayas
.
“He doesn’t believe us,” Violet said.
She was shaking so hard she could barely hold her balance. On any other day, she would have been sure that the Overlord had some kind of safety measure in place – that would explain his terrible calmness in the face of losing two of his daughters and four
calayas
in all – but everything she’d seen had made Violet doubt whether she’d truly ever known her father at all.
Areon was watching them, his jacket torn. Beside her, she heard Maige whimper – Ronay’s handhold was beginning to crumble.
“I’m with you,” Maige said.
Violet nodded again. The Overlord was leaving them no choice... Slowly, terribly slowly she left her last bit of safety and lowered herself to a narrow ledge just below them. It was so tiny she could barely stand on her tiptoes on it. Lavie and Halley gripped her arms, but the fear seized her throat nonetheless. Violet didn’t know whether they would be able to hold onto her if she fell. Possibly she’d pull them with her. Maybe they’d let go. She couldn’t blame them. It wasn’t like she wanted to die. She just wanted
someone
to live after her tournament’s first trial was done.
It was a farce, that’s what it was.
She could no longer speak nor shout. No way for her to tell her father to stop
now
or she and the others would fall. The other girls were slowly climbing over the edge too, but all four of them were shaking like leaves. Would they really let them fall? Were they worth nothing in the end?
Not to the crowd at least. They
roared
, truly roared their voices hoarse. That was the most scandalous tournament in history. And where was Irmela? Where was her mother, the voice of reason? Turning a blind eye? Impossible.
It seemed even the champions had stopped their struggles to survive to look at them. There weren’t many left now. A mere twenty or so of the Atreens’s best, and Areon – all staring at them as they put their lives on the line for theirs. It was like they were the ones on trial.
…That
evil, scheming bastard
.
Violet didn’t know how or why, but she was suddenly filled with the confidence of knowing, knowing what was going on at least. She’d find out
why
later.
“It’s a trick,” she said.
She had to force the words over her clattering teeth, because it all looked so
real
. The others didn’t seem to hear her, so she had to repeat herself.
“A trick?” Pearl asked. “What kind of trick?”
“I don’t know,” Violet admitted. “But nothing’s right here – the Overlord isn’t really mad, Irmela isn’t here, even though she wouldn’t miss this. They really wouldn’t let so many champions die. I don’t know why, but this is all fake.”
She didn’t know if they believed her. Maige probably did, mostly because she needed to believe her.
Violet looked down to the pitch-black darkness. What was there really? She couldn’t see the bottom of the chasm, but she
had
seen warriors fall with a scream. How deep did it really go?
The Overlord was still doing nothing, but it was clear their grips weren’t as strong as the warriors’. They’d fall long before the champions did. So it had to be safe.
Somehow.
“I’m going to jump,” Violet said, knowing exactly how ridiculous that sounded.
To the choir of their protests, she had to reconsider. A week ago she’d barely dared to move herself out of fear of not being proper. Now she was running around, putting her life in danger and doing something that was clearly insane.
A depressing idea crossed her mind – she was turning into Irmela.
Her sisters were protesting the hardest, of course.
“Don’t worry,” Violet said, trying to comfort them. “Do
you
believe they’d let us die? That
he’d
let anything bad happen to us?”
The others didn’t know what to say to that. Only that morning, they probably would have, but things had gone wrong so fast they no longer knew what to believe. Another falling scream pierced the air, but it didn’t have the same effect anymore, not when Violet believed they didn’t really die. So where did they all go?
The chasm was incredibly dark, shadowed and gloomy. The light coming from their stage only added to the mystery, but Violet was starting to think it was all part of the trick. If the Overlord wanted it so, it would probably be so. She unhooked her fingers, feeling the sudden tug of Lavie and Halley, both trying to hold onto her. She was very light, but then again, so were they.