Page 35 of Fighting Gravity
The disrespect. I glared at him, hearing another gate crank open behind me. It didn’t matter. I reached over and grabbed the hilt of my Sylvar, pulling it from its sheath. I looked Ket in his slimy eyes as I raised it up and pointed the tip of the blade right at him.
You’ll get your turn,I thought to myself.
His face stilled for a second before I was forced to turn away and face my next opponent.
Creature after creature emerged into the arena and I bested each one with little to no trouble. And every victory made the crowd more ravenous. I was beginning to think Ket didn’t have anything worthy to face. It was almost amusing.
From the last gate surrounding the vast arena came something I didn’t expect. Covered in the blood of half a dozen species and filled with the ferocity of a man bent on winning, I found myself face to face with a woman. A gek woman dressed in nothing but a knee-length shift. She showed her teeth, screeching at me as she lunged for a bent metal pole on the ground. Like a wild animal, she took a stance, adamant about blocking the passage from which she emerged. I stared at her, confused as I came down from my rage-filled high, and took a glimpse over her shoulder into the shadowy hall.
There in the darkness was a small child huddled against the wall with a stone chipped into a little dagger. He had just as much fierceness on his face, but he was young. Too young for an arena, even by gek standards. The woman jabbed toward me with her skewed weapon and I raised my hands, sliding my Sylvar back in my bracer.
“What is this?” I said.
“I won’t let you hurt him,” the woman barked, her accent thick. She was not from Gathea. Perhaps one of the gek’tal moons with much smaller colonies. “Stay back.”
“I would never,” I said, appalled by the implication.
The mob began chanting “kill” in multiple languages, filling the arena with an irritating garble.
“Who are you?” I said urgently as excited hoots signaled another adversary had entered the game. “Quickly!”
“Prisoners.”
“I’m not your enemy. Not in here. Why do you have a child here?”
“Ket-ram owns us. Bout us after my husband was killed. He was a criminal. No place for us among our own kind.”
A low growl shook in my lungs, making the woman react. She backed up a step, her fingers tightening around her bent pipe.
“Ket-ram cannot own gek. He has no right to you. Whether or not your husband was a criminal, you will stand trial among your own kind.”
She hesitated, her eyes softening momentarily.
“You… you can help us?’
“I can help you. I am urok Lok’rath.”
I heard the skittering steps of something speeding up behind me and spun, catching a six-legged creature with curved pincers as it flew toward me. Grabbing its legs, I ripped the creature in two with a roar of frustration, spilling its slimy, blue blood over my front. I turned back to the woman, panting.
“Protect your child,” I ordered. “This will be over soon.”
“You will protect us?” she said, backing into the open passage to join her youngling. “We have your word?”
She was distrusting and I couldn’t blame her.
“You have my word.”
I turned again as three more of the leggy fiends rushed across the blood-soaked sand in my direction. Taking a glance at Ket, I could see he was displeased that I hadn’t fought the female, but honor and duty forbade me. She had offspring. Her crimes or the crimes of her spouse were not mine to judge, either, and they certainly weren’t Ket’s. He wasn’t gek’tal and he had no right to her. None at all.
His list of offenses against me was growing.
16: Quinn
Watching Norm fight off opponent after opponent was impressive to say the least. I still despised the cruel jerk, but the way he brawled was something to behold. The valerians certainly had some tough adversaries in the gek and it was no wonder Norm didn’t appear threatened by the idea of humans and our military. Not when just one of his species could take out a plethora of mean-looking monsters all by himself.
And each time he tore one of the beasts apart, my spike-headed captor grew a little more tense. The moment he pulled me into his lap and tried to cop a feel, I knew he was getting angry. He barely even knew where to put his hands, but the fact that he was even touching me was infuriating. And, glancing down at Norm as he waltzed to the center of the arena to look up at the balcony, I could tell Spike’s taunting was getting to him. I wasn’t sure if that was a good thing or a bad thing. Maybe gek thrived on rage and it would just make him more dangerous.
But why the hell did he care about Spike touching me? As long as I was alive to help him understand my species in the end, right?
