chapter 255
The Sacrifice slowly walks into the arena.
He stops and stands at the edge of the arena floor, on the first row.
Fifty thousand students fill the stands above him.
A boy in the third row grips his armrest so hard his knuckles are white. A girl near the eastern stairs has her hand on someone's shoulder and her lips are moving.
The Sacrifice briefly scans the crowd.
He finds her. Fourth row, western stands, near the aisle. Her wooden leg is braced against the bench in front of her. Her one good eye is on...
On him.
He almost laughs at that.
It feels ironic that she managed to find him so fast among so many people.
***
Jacob and Vyrrak are waiting on the first row of seats, on the opposite side of the arena from The Sacrifice.
The audience is trying not to look scared, and they are doing a poor job of it.
Jacob breathes. The arena floor is vast. It's mostly pale stone baked by sun, cracked in places from a hundred years of students throwing everything they have at each other.
Vyrrak stands to his left. The Dragonkin's arms are crossed and his tail is perfectly still.
"Stop adjusting your gauntlets," Jacob whispers quietly. "Everyone's watching us."
Vyrrak's hands freeze.
"I wasn't."
"You were."
The Dragonkin exhales through his nose. "Fine. How do you want to do this?"
"Exactly as we discussed."
"I know that. I mean the standing. The standing is awful, Jacob. We've been out here for fifteen minutes and nothing has happened yet."
The corner of Jacob's mouth twitches. "Would you prefer they attacked while we were still getting dressed?"
"I would prefer they attack at all. This theatrical build-up is..."
"Strategic," Jacob says. "They want the crowd scared before the first blow. Let them. Nimirea is not a fool. But it doesn't change anything for us."
Vyrrak does not respond. His tail twitches once at the tip, then goes still again.
At the far edge of the arena floor, standing apart from everyone, is the Sacrifice.
Jacob clocks him without turning his head.
But something is wrong with him.
Yet, before Jacob can activate the Grimoire and check, there's an explosion.
A bolt of black thunder strikes the center of the arena.
It hits the stone and cracks outward in fracture lines of darkness that seal themselves shut as quickly as they open. A figure stands where the bolt landed, hooded and wrapped in robes that seem to drink the light.
The second bolt hits four paces to the left. A third. A fourth.
They come in rapid sequence. Eleven bolts of corrupted lightning punching into the arena floor, each one landing with a sound that shudders through the stone and into the bones of everyone sitting in the stands. Eleven figures, hooded, with wild auras that pour off them in waves.
The crowd recoils.
Jacob watches the eleven figures take their positions. They form a loose semicircle facing the stands and do not speak, their hoods up, the auras rolling off them deliberately uncontained.
Well, at least I was right on how strong they were.
Jacob finds this pretty stupid.
Nimirea knows about his Rainbow Skill. She knows that he's a strategist. And he can read all of them at the same time. This is...
She really thinks I have no chance against her, Jacob thinks, a smile blooming on his face, but his fists tightening into balls of steel.
The two last bolts... The tenth is enormous, a brute-force aura that vibrates the stone within ten paces of its owner. The all-encompassing robe doesn't manage to cover a colossal form.
The eleventh is Nimirea.
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No hood for her.
Vyrrak shifts beside him. "Is that a Dragonkin?"
"Yep," Jacob mutters. "Let's go."
Jacob starts walking forward unhurriedly.
He walks toward the semicircle of Dark Champions with Vyrrak slightly behind. Yet, Nimirea is as tall as Jacob and the massive hooded Dragonkin beside her is taller than Vyrrak. A lot taller.
But Jacob's eyes stay on Nimirea.
Behind him, the crowd holds its breath.
He stands on the opposite side of the arena.
"I have to say, this is a much unpleasant way to meet again," Jacob starts the conversation. "After seeing your lot murder people and turning them into monsters, Nimirea, I expect some excuses today."
"Excuses?" Nimirea raises an eyebrow.
Yet, before they can continue their conversation, the air above the arena tears open.
It's not a bolt of thunder this time. The sky itself splits along a seam that was not there a moment ago, edges burning with active darkness. The tear widens. The sound it makes is not loud but it is everywhere, a bass hum that Jacob feels in his teeth.
A figure descends through the opening.
He comes alone, separate from the eleven, above them. The tear closes behind him like a door slammed shut.
The Prophet of Asmodeus lands on the arena floor.
He is tall, in dark robes finely made that move in a wind that does not exist.
His hood, however, is not up.
The Prophet stands in front of his Champions, slightly forward, slightly elevated on the uneven stone.
The arena is silent.
The Prophet looks at Jacob.
His eyes are dark and calm, and he studies Jacob for three seconds. Four.
Then he speaks.
"I see that you already know, Brother."
One word. Said clearly, said to the arena, said so that every student in the upper stands and every Champion on the floor and every dignitary in the VIP box can hear it.
The word lands in the silence and stays there.
Jacob has grown calmer since the mines, and definitely become more mature.
But he's no Blood of the Devils.
He still comes from the mines.
"Fuck you," Jacob replies.
The Prophet actually recoils at that.
Jacob amplifies his voice with Mana so that everybody can hear him.
"I am King Baalrek Drazhal's student, the keeper of his techniques, sword, and last memories. I stand in front of the son he believed dead. And I'm so glad that my master never came to know that his son is a slave to the same Evil Gods he fought so valiantly. My master killed the Mad God multiple times and was feared by the likes of the creature you serve as a lapdog."
The Prophet is so shocked by the rough way of talking, by the complete lack of theatrics that such a lowborn has that he's been completely silenced.
Jacob takes out the silvery sword of King Baalrek and points it at the Prophet of Asmodeus.
"A fucking loser like you should have died to the Mad God. That would have been more honorable. But, and I can guess without you giving me some stupid pathetic backstory, Asmodeus clearly reached and extended his filthy hand to you at some low point. And then what, you said, 'wow thank you,' and now you come here, thinking that your Dark Champions are going to, what, scare us? A bunch of crybabies that paid with their soul for a scrap of power because they couldn't get it otherwise? And you think you can walk into our home and pontificate? You think their power is that great?"
Jacob's aura blooms at full-power, standing as tall as the one of any of the present Dark Champions.
And there's something in his words, in his uncouth way of speaking that makes many students get up on their feet, grab their seat, the rails, other people. Everyone is white-knucking something or someone.
"I will take down the best of your Dark Champions, and one day, I will take your life, Maerek Drazhal, or whatever you want to be called."
The Prophet of Asmodeus, Maerek, had not offered his name. And truth to be told, he had left it behind himself, as something that not even his disciples, the Dark Champions, knew.
A terrible aura starts rising from the depth of that Infernal man who does not look like an Infernal anymore when a golden-spectacled man is suddenly a few steps behind Jacob, looking intently at the Prophet, slightly tilting his head.
Jacob does not flinch. His hands stay loose at his sides and his breathing does not change and his face gives nothing.
"Have this competition start. In fact, I know that," Jacob raises a finger to point, "that guy probably wants to challenge Vyrrak given how intently he's looking at it. Why don't we start with the first duel before I personally take down the Leader of the Dark Champions?"
***
The Prophet turns to face the stands.
He does it slowly, deliberately, his arms at his sides, his aura shifting. Not expanding, but opening. A pressure against the chest, a thinning of the air.
"My name," the Prophet says, "does not matter."
His voice carries without amplification, filling the arena the way weather fills a valley.
"I shed it years ago. Names are chains. They tie you to the people who gave them to you. To the blood that made you." A pause. "My father understood that better than anyone."
The crowd is listening now.
"My father was Baalrek--"
"I approve Jacob Cloud's message. You can either accept the duel or scram, Maerek," the Headmaster says, suddenly startling Jacob, who had not noticed his presence. "So, what are you going to do?"
Jacob watches the face of the Prophet ripple.
The Prophet's aura pulses and the stone beneath his feet cracks, a web of hairline fractures spreading outward in a circle. The students in the lower stands feel the vibration through the soles of their shoes.
"Very well, let's watch the humiliation of your Champions. Everyone is free to join the winning side once it's done. It's just sad you could only bring two Champions out."
"They're more than enough," the Headmaster says, patting Jacob's shoulder.
The Prophet holds the Headmaster's gaze for a long moment. Then he turns without a word and ascends up in the air and creates a raised platform at the northern edge of the arena.
The Dark Champions, all but one, descend from the main arena.
Meanwhile, Jacob lingers and watches the Prophet's back.
You look like him. You look like him and you tried to erase it.