Book 2 - Chapter 34

Book 2 - Chapter 34
Chapter 34 – The Queen’s First Opponent


A low, monotonous sound of one wind instrument stopped the noise of the audience. It reverberated all over the renovated arena, riding with the chill of the wind... Riding with the wind of death.

There could never be a more fitting sound to herald the massacre they soon would witness, Solene thought. It mocked her ears, making her feel as if the tone was also playing her death.

Once the sound stopped, it was followed by the same rhythmic thumping of drums she heard during the first round. The lower land in Solene’s front raised and leveled with her footing. It instantly created a pathway for her towards a megalithic wall entrance. With no doors to cover it, the opening boasted a chasm that flipped Solene’s stomach and threatened to spill her dinner.

Another sound of trumpets filled the air, and the audience growled and cheered in unison. This was Solene’s cue. This was the time she’d enter the maze of doom.

She fisted her hands that were wrapped in the same gauntlet she wore on her first match, hauled in a breath, and started moving forward.

‘Always advance with caution,’ the faceless woman in her past stated.

She was a firm instructor, with raven black hair and calculating eyes that told Solene to never give up. She remembered how she was thrown out into the field many times during their sparring match. She remembered how this woman brought her down again and again, but encouraged her to always stand back up. This woman had been a great mentor for Solene’s fighting skills and she will give her teachings justice now.

As she stepped inside the gaping portal, an eerie silence took hold. Gone was the noise of the audience. It was as if Solene was in another dimension or in another part of Gehenna away from the arena. She couldn’t see the benches anymore from behind her or even when she cranes her neck. The roof was a solid black, and the only source of light came from the volcano’s glowing lava.

A rush of wind caught her attention; its sound echoic...thrumming. It was from the hallway on her right side; boasting the same glaring red walls but a darkened path.

Then she heard screeching noises of tiny feet. Hopefully insects, she thought. This one was heard up ahead, where the hallway had proper illumination from the neon green flowers of the vines.

Solene glanced at the third option: her left side. It had the same flora as the second and well-lit too, but the pathway sure was precarious. Instead of cobblestones, she could see toadstools surrounded by murky water.

Water. Not the best option if she wanted to stay dry while climbing that volcano.

The three intersecting hallways were of the same width and height, sticking true to its maze theme. They had the same wide pathway too: about two flagpoles away from each other, enough to accommodate Solene’s bigger opponents. However, out of the three hallways, the second promised more safety, so she chose it, and hoped that the sound she picked up earlier were truly from the critters of this abomination of a place, and not something more sinister.

Pressed up against the wall, she advanced ahead, slowly walking and ensuring she got her senses tuned in to all angles of her body. Even the ground she threaded on wasn’t exempted. Her opponents were monsters and demons. They could have burrowing abilities or land-bending powers, and she’d be helpless then if she didn’t pay particular attention to this blind spot.

It took her almost an hour to navigate this long hallway. She was in a hurry to get her scythe, but she wanted to stay low key too, not attract attention to any of her opponents or worse, Zaraat himself. But Solene wasn’t able to maintain this further when suddenly, she heard an explosion on the other side of the wall.

The vines were caught on fire and the green glow of the area was quickly replaced with an angry bright orange hue. The concrete crumbled into pieces; rocks of different shapes and sizes rolled down towards Solene’s sabaton.

A monster with a deformed body emerged. It had no arms or feet, but it had several tentacles for mobility. Each tentacle was as inky as its sister, wriggling and undulating in the air. On one of its tentacles was a first-round winner. She noticed this hooded man in the party. He was known to create deadly bombs using just the moistness in the air.

At first look, it seemed as though he was in trouble, until he created two saucer-shaped glowing orbs and directed one towards Solene and one to the monster.

‘Shit!’

She gathered herself from her dazed state and started running, trying her best to avoid the bomb intended for her. She arrived at an intersection, dashed head on to the front wall until, in the last minute, she pivoted to the left. The saucer orb clashed with the wall instead, breaking it to smithereens.

Solene watched as she semi-crouched on the ground. She made a fist and redirected her sights on the man. He was still battling the monster, good. He was too occupied to send another bomb on her way.

Taking advantage of this, she ran to the hallway where it led to a dense forest. As usual, the glow of the lava and the neon flowers lit up the pathway. This aided Solene’s vision at least as she went deeper and deeper into the path, and this helped her as she spotted something glinting in the distance, flying towards her.

‘A sword!’

Her mind cried out as her reflexes kicked in and dodged it just in time. The blade got burrowed into the trunk, its curved handle jutting out for Solene to stare. The fact that it could have sliced her head clean brought her chills. Her opponent really meant business, and she would be damned not to return it.

A maniacal laughing was heard some yards away from her. She couldn’t detail if it came from a man or a woman because it also had an echoic element to it, but she was sure the voice meant not to establish rapport at all. It meant to kill. She moved her attention back to the pathway and saw a demon with three sets of heads lined on top of each other, wrapped in linen like a mummy, and a body covered in a black robe.

She saw this demon at the party too. It wasn’t drinking, and it wasn’t flocked by concubines. Instead, servants entertained it in the form of an Egyptian hookah. Different colors floated around it as each head inhaled through the pipes. Solene didn’t expect her ass to run into this creature, but with what was happening now, she clearly expected wrong.

“What luck I have. Lord Caym’s prized jewel,” the demon stated surprisingly in English, its three heads speaking all at once.

Solene cringed at the title bestowed on her. ‘Jewel?’ she thought. Yes, maybe she could be called that, but a jewel not owned by Caym. Not by him, ever.

She side-stepped, reached for the lodged sword behind her and pulled it with ease. In reply, the demon summoned three more swords from inside its robe. It didn’t use its hand to pull it out. The swords just floated in front, just waiting for its command.

Solene knew better than to attack it face to face, so she ran behind the trees hoping to distract it enough for her to deliver fatal blows.

‘Use your senses, milady. They are your weapon! When fighting a demon which you don’t yet know its weakness, give yourself time. Study its movements. Look at its build; its physical strengths and limitations.’

Solene couldn’t study its movements as taught by her mentor, that’s for sure, but she could definitely check out its physical attributes.

It had no feet, so it meant it was floating. It had three heads, but it looked like it was stuck to one angle. This meant its blind spot was its back. It could produce weapons through summons—quite a hard opponent to match since it basically had unlimited ammo—but each summons had a lag time. Solene could use this lag time to her advantage.

‘Yes!’ She cried out, knowing what to do now.

“Hiding is futile!” the demon shouted just as the three swords flew straight through the tree Solene hid.

The trunk was cut into three logs. She was able to sprint away before her hips could be sliced too. Then in what looked like a fast-motion scene in a movie, Solene jumped through trees again and again just as the swords tailed behind her, hitting the massive trunks and turning it into splinters and logs.

This happened in less than a minute, and it would have been more if not for her surprise attack.

Solene’s sword, the very sword that attacked her earlier, thrust through the demon’s chest and exited the second head’s forehead. All three coughed up blood that instant. With it distracted, Solene leaped behind it and grabbed the handle of the sword.

She twisted the blade and dragged it upward so that it would also slice the first head of the demon. It immediately made a guttural, pained sound.

The head. Demons were always weak in the head. That’s what her mentor always told her.

“Im—imp—ressi—ve, bi—tch. Yo—u used the trees a—round yo—u to cre—ate a di—versi—on,” the demon dragged out the words with the little breath the third head had.

Its red eyes fell on the horseshoe-shaped damage of the trees and ground, and chuckled in disbelief. Dust, splinters, leaves and soil rained down all over the demon’s surroundings earlier that it wasn’t able to catch the moment when Solene threw the sword.

‘Use your surroundings to your advantage,’ that was also one of the lessons Solene remembered, and it helped with her fight now. It really helped.

‘Die,’ she stated in her mind as she delivered the final blow to the remaining head. ‘I hate to do this to you but I have to live!’

The blade sliced the head in half, finally ending the demon’s Gehennian life. Solene stepped back as the robe and heads started to evaporate, letting off black steam that was so pungent she gagged.

Once the robe disappeared, it showed the body of the demon and it was exactly what Solene thought it to be: an Egyptian priest with its full body wrapped in decaying bandage.

Soon, this body too evaporated, leaving Solene sniffing under her helmet. This first match was a fast one. Luck was on her side, and she hoped it would stay this way until she meets her real opponent.