The claw tore free of the earth and drove into the arena floor.

  A shock rippled outward. The ground heaved beneath our feet, throwing dust and bodies off balance. Clay split and peeled back. A massive maw opened across the back of the hand. Jagged stone teeth scraped together and a raw, grinding wail tore through the air.

  People clapped their hands over their ears.

  The rest of it tore its way free.

  I staggered back, pain locking tight in my chest, my eyes fixed on the thing rising in front of me.

  For a heartbeat, my mind refused to make sense of it.

  Arms fused into legs. Claws layered over twisted bone and wet clay. Faces shoved through the surface, stretched long and wrong, mouths pulled open before sinking back into the churning mass.

  The entire mass writhed as it climbed higher.

  Screams ripped through the stands. Guards thundered down the stairwells, shields raised, boots hammering stone as they charged.

  The creature kept rising. Violet sludge streamed down its sides as it straightened. Through the shifting tangle of claws and warped faces, a silhouette began to take shape.

  Hunched.

  Crooked.

  The hag from the fog.

  Dozens of guards charged down from the upper tiers.

  The ground swallowed them.

  Clay surged upward and swept them off their feet, dragging shields and spears under in a heartbeat.

  “Stay back!” the instructor shouted from somewhere to my right. “Don’t—”

  Her voice was swallowed by the flood of shifting earth.

  Pain clenched my chest. I rolled as the ground split where I had stood. Clay swelled upward, grasping for me. The table that held the box tipped and was swept away, driven toward the edge like driftwood caught in a tide.

  “Crap!”

  The ground refused to stay still.

  It heaved beneath Lumi and shoved the blade farther from me, dragging it across broken stone while the ground bucked under my boots. Each step felt like wading through a current that pushed me back.

  Around the arena, the standing stones flared white. Light raced through carved runes and snapped together overhead. A barrier locked into place, sealing the creature inside and us with it.

  Guards and assistants clawed at the churning mass, trying to drag one another free, but their movements blurred at the edge of my vision. The pressure in my chest swelled until it drowned out everything else.

  I clenched my teeth.

  A claw slammed into the ground.

  Stone split beneath the impact. The shockwave hit at full force and tore me off my feet, flinging me backward.

  The thread binding me to Lumi thinned to almost nothing, stretched tight.

  A vast shadow rolled over me as a limb blotted out the sun.

  A hand seized the back of my collar and wrenched me clear just as something smashed into the space where I’d just been.

  “Wait,” I rasped. “Don’t… I need the sword.”

  Whoever dragged me could not hear me over the chaos. I felt the thread weaken again. It trembled, then snapped.

  The curse flooded my veins.

  “No…” I breathed.

  The borrowed face tore away in an instant. Scars caught the light. My real features lay exposed. The dead memories began to fade, replaced by sharp, immediate pain.

  I looked up.

  Amelia stared down at me, shock written across her face.

  “Sean?” she said. Her grip tightened on my collar as she stared at me.

  For a heartbeat the arena fell away. She did not understand what she was looking at.

  “The sword… I need it.”

  Something in her expression shifted.

  Her gaze moved from the scars to my eyes. She took in the tightness in my jaw, the way my breath hitched in my throat. She did not need an explanation.

  She motioned toward the sword.

  “No. Stop,” I forced out, the word scraping my throat. “Don’t touch it.”

  Her eyes flicked from me to the half-buried blade.

  “Move the stone,” I said.

  She lifted her hand.

  Stone cracked around Lumi.

  The fractured slab tore loose and shot across the arena floor, dragging the sword with it.

  I lunged and caught the hilt.

  Metal met skin.

  The curse tore out of me.

  Agony ripped through my veins and vanished into the blade. The runes along Lumi’s edge ignited, white first, then bleeding into violet.

  A case of literary theft: this tale is not rightfully on Amazon; if you see it, report the violation.

  The borrowed face sealed over mine in a blink.

  Above us, many spectators had fled, but just as many remained, weapons in hand, stopped cold by the barrier.

  The aspirant tent had split open, and the woven sound-ward fell with the canvas.

  Some ran. Others forced their way down the steps, trying to reach the lower tiers.

  Amelia spotted a hand jutting from the shifting earth. She moved at once and pulled the head instructor free. The woman staggered but stayed upright, then turned to help drag others out.

  The monster lunged toward the stands.

  Claws struck an invisible wall. A crack like splitting stone echoed across the arena.

  The creature struck the barrier again.

  The impact shook the air. Fists hammered the shield. Claws raked down its surface, shrieking sparks into the sky.

  The standing stones around the arena answered. Runes flared bright along their carved faces, light surging each time the barrier was struck.

  The creature paused.

  Its many eyes shifted toward the pillars.

  It sank lower and drove several hands into the arena floor. Stone shrieked as it split. With a grinding crack, it wrenched one of the massive rune stones free, tearing it out from its base.

  Light surged violently through the barrier. The surface buckled, flared too bright, then cracked apart like shattered glass.

  The creature let out a grinding wail and swung its arm.

  The slab tore free of its grip and hurtled toward the stands.

  For one frozen heartbeat, the crowd stood still.

  The ten-tonne block spun end over end through the air, tearing dust and stone fragments in its wake.

  Amelia moved first.

  Her hand flashed to her thigh and tore Stillflow free. The sceptre struck her palm and burst blue. Dust peeled off the ground in a widening ring as she thrust her free hand toward the slab.

  The ten tonnes of stone jolted mid-flight.

  She drew in a sharp breath. Her shoulders went rigid. A tremor travelled down her arm. Sweat ran along her brow as she held it there. “Come on,” she breathed.

  She twisted her wrist.

  The slab snapped back the way it had come.

  It tore back across the arena in a blur, fragments shearing away as it spun. The slab smashed into the creature’s flank with a thunderous crack, blasting through clay and violet sludge in a violent spray.

  The lead instructor watched the slab tear through the creature’s side.

  Approval flashed across her face.

  Then the wound sealed.

  Clay pulled itself back together. The creature did not falter. It did not even slow.

  The instructor’s jaw set as she looked from the monster to us, the decision already made. Whatever suspicion she had carried through the trials was gone.

  What remained was steady and certain.

  “Behind me,” she said.

  She stepped in front of us without hesitation. For a split second, she glanced at Amelia.

  “Good work, girl,” she said quietly. “Now let the professionals handle this.”

  She stepped forward and met the creature head on.

  Light flowed along her forearms. She drove both palms into the oncoming mass. The air cracked. A section of clay split under the force, fissures racing across its surface. One of the creature’s limbs tore loose and fell away in a heavy collapse of sludge.

  It barely recoiled. Every ordinary strike seemed to feed it.

  Clay swelled along another massive arm. A smaller claw ripped free, followed by a second limb. It snapped straight toward Amelia.

  The instructor slammed her shoulder into Amelia and shoved her clear.

  The claw caught the instructor, wrapping tight around her torso and wrenching her off the ground. She did not cry out. Light flared from her hands again, searing into the limb. The clay blackened and split, but it did not release.

  The creature hurled her.

  She spun through the air and crashed into the stone steps.

  For a heartbeat, everything narrowed. The roar of the crowd dimmed. Steel on steel faded into the distance.

  She lay slumped against the stairs, one arm twisted beneath her.

  Amelia drew in a sharp breath.

  “No.”

  She took a step toward the fallen instructor.

  Boots struck stone behind us. A hand caught her wrist and held her in place.

  Rob.

  He slid in beside her, grit spraying from under his heels. His chest heaved, but his grip was steady.

  “Hey. Hey,” he said, sharp and low. “Am! Snap out of it.”

  Her jaw tightened. She swallowed hard.

  “We move,” he said. “Now.”

  She blinked once, then nodded, pulling herself back into the fight.

  Rob’s gaze flicked to me, then back to the creature without lingering. “Sean. You good?”

  I nodded.

  “Then move.”

  The creature rushed forward.

  Amelia lifted Stillflow and drove its power into the fractured ground. Stone rose in jagged walls that slowed the waves of limbs. She twisted her wrist and the earth answered, slamming into grasping hands and breaking their reach.

  I ran.

  The wooden box lay near the edge of the circle, half overturned ahead of us. I sprinted for it, Lumi carving through a lunging limb that blocked our path. I pushed all my weight into the cut. It sliced through clean, yet the clay did not reform. Violet sludge poured from the wound as the blade drank.

  Behind me, Rob moved like a blade in human form. Short bursts. Quick steps. He struck fast and withdrew faster, driving spikes of steel into joints and eyes before the claws could close around him.

  “Left!” he shouted.

  I pivoted and cut down another arm that swung for me.

  The guards were falling back. Their line thinned as more limbs tore free from the creature’s bulk. Every strike against its body seemed to feed it. It dug its hands into the arena floor again and ripped up more earth, fusing it into itself.

  It refused to stop growing.

  We gave ground with the others, forced back step by step as the mass kept expanding.

  I broke for the overturned box and tore it open. My rune pouch and dagger lay inside.

  “Sean!” Amelia shouted, pointing up.

  I grabbed them and spun just as a wall of clay slammed down where I had been standing. It burst outward in a spray of muck.

  Then more limbs tore free from it.

  They came from every direction.

  A flash of red dropped in front of me. A silver dagger set with a red gem carved through three claws in a single sweep.

  “What the hell is this thing?” Robyn snapped, blade never slowing.

  Rob’s brow lifted. He glanced at me. “Friend of yours?”

  “Something like that.”

  I stepped in with Lumi and cut low. Where my blade struck, the clay did not reform. The others were fast, precise, but their cuts sealed over and regrew in seconds.

  We pulled back together as another wave crashed toward us.

  “Up,” Robyn said, already moving higher in the stands.

  The creature’s back rose like a shifting hill of limbs. It kept digging, hauling in more stone, building itself higher.

  Amelia raised a ridge of earth to steady our footing. Robyn and Rob forged a path ahead. I held the rear, cutting down anything that tried to reform behind us.

  The guards fell back, forming a loose perimeter. I saw one of them dragging the unconscious instructor clear, hauling her up the steps and away from the reach of the creature.

  We climbed.

  Hands snapped at our heels. Clay shifted under our boots, trying to throw us off balance. Below, the creature kept tearing up the arena, ripping stone free and fusing it into itself.

  We pushed higher.

  At the peak of the shifting mass, a lone silhouette stood waiting.

  For a heartbeat I thought it was Jerald.

  It was not.

  The man stood in polished armour that caught the fractured light. He looked to be in his fifties, yet his hair was still blond, swept back from a stern face framed by a sharply trimmed beard. A silver sword was emblazoned across his chest on an azure field, and a long warhammer rested over his shoulder, its head dark and heavy against the shine of his plate.

  “Holy shit,” Robyn breathed.

  “Who’s that?” Rob asked.

  Amelia did not look away from the figure in shining armour.

  “That’s Sir Bedivere.”

  My stomach dropped.

  He studied the creature as if it were little more than an inconvenience.

  Then he raised the hammer.

  The sky dimmed.

  Light tore loose from above and narrowed into a blazing column over the arena. The hair on my arms rose.

  Then he moved.

  One step.

  He drove off the ground and the arena split beneath the force of it.

  He rose in one clean, impossible arc, armour burning in the darkened sky as he climbed high above the writhing mass below.

  The pillar of light met him midair. He caught it on the face of his hammer.

  Then he came down like a bolt of lightning.

  The strike hit the creature’s crown with a detonation that shook the city. We were thrown off our feet. Light ripped through the mass, burning from the inside out. Clay and sludge exploded in every direction as whatever force bound the creature together was torn apart in a single violent blast.

  Silence fell.

  The Knight stepped out of the settling dust, armour unmarked, not a trace of sludge on him. He moved up the broken stairs without haste.

  At the top, he turned.

  “Who,” he demanded, voice cutting clean through the arena, “is responsible for this?”