Gods of Blood and Bone (Seeds of Chaos Book 1) (10 page)

He smiled again, and looked up at the sky. A flapping sound filled the air, and I followed his gaze. Hundreds of crows flew towards us from every direction.
 

I threw myself backward into the grass and crouched down.
 

The guy gave me a surprised look and laughed. “It’s only the Examiner. Relax.”
 

The small boy smiled at me, an innocent expression that made me wonder just how old he was. Definitely too young to be playing in this Game. Just what kind of monster would do that to a child?

The crows settled around the group of Players in the small stone clearing like a shimmering black shroud over the earth. When nothing happened, I crept back out again.
 

One crow, larger than the others, landed on top of the cube and looked down at all of us with a cocked head and beady little bird eye. It opened its mouth, and a half-mechanic, half-cute voice came from it. “Hello, Players. I am this Trial’s Examiner.” Its beak stayed constantly open while the words came out, as if a speaker in the back of its throat did all the “talking.”
 

“Those are my eyes and ears.” It gestured to the other crows with its beak.
 

Their little eyes glittered, a sea of sparkles. It was unnatural, revolting, and the hair of my arms and the back of my neck prickled stiff.
 

The crow’s voice came out again. “This Trial is a special type of test. All the choices and actions you make, your every move, is measured. If you survive until the end, you will be given a Skill that matches your assessment. Please reach into the cube and retrieve your token.”

The handsome guy sunk his hand eagerly into the wall of the cube, which melted over his disappearing skin until he drew something out.
 

Nothing happened to him, so I thrust my own hand forward. I clenched my teeth when the cube didn’t stop me, instead seeming to suck and pull at my flesh. I felt something small and hard, clenched my fist around it, and yanked backward. In my hand was a small black ball.
 

I examined it for markings while the other Players took their own tokens, but it was perfectly smooth, and surprisingly heavy. I tucked it into my shirt pocket.

The crow started to speak again. “There are only two rules to win. Do not give up possession of your token. You will not be able to return without it. And do not die. You may take each other’s tokens through battle or trickery, but greater potential rewards create a harder challenge. If you are not prepared for an increased difficulty level, do not take additional tokens.” It cocked its head as if listening to something in the distance. “Let the Trial begin.” And with that, all the crows flapped into chaos, rising into the sky like a cloud of darkness.
 

* * *

I covered my face with my hands to protect it from the crows’ beating wings and claws, and when I lifted them, I saw everyone had burst into motion. I saw some running through the field for the trees in the distance, some fighting over each other’s tokens already, and some going for the strange buildings. The small boy and the guy who’d known what was happening were both gone already.
 

I hesitated for a moment, and then ran down the lined stone path toward the buildings. Protective walls around me and a small place to hide sounded perfect.
 

The path split in three directions, and I turned to the right. The path split again, and I took the right again, which led to an oval building that looked like a gargantuan, half-sunken egg. Vines sprung from the ground and curled up its surface as if anchoring it to the earth.
 

A shriek, like that from a bird of prey, cut through the air behind me like a high-pitched razor. Someone shouted, and then the shouting changed to screaming. I could tell the difference, because the screams were desperate and filled with fear.
 

I shuddered and didn’t look back as I entered a small doorway cut through the side of the vine-covered building. That was stupid, because the floor dropped away beneath my feet as soon as I touched it, and I fell, screaming.
 

My scream cut off abruptly as my landing knocked the air out of my lungs. I rolled to my hands and knees and sucked desperately for the dust-filled air. Something
snicked
above me, and every last drop of light cut out. When I could once again breathe, I patted at the ground, sweeping my arms around to get my bearings. Heavy dust and…sticks. I followed the sticks to other, attached sticks, and came to a horrible realization. “Not sticks…” I snatched my hands back, coughed, and gagged.
 

I fumbled with my link sheath, and its screen lit up the small compartment I sat in. A large skeleton lay beside me, and I scuttled back only to rattle another stack of old bones. I turned in a circle, and saw that I was in a seamless square box, about three meters in every direction. Three large skeletons and one normal-sized one kept me company.
 

I saw a small black ball amongst the half-inch layer of dust made of their decayed bodies. I brushed it off, and realized it was a token, just like the one I had. I dropped it immediately. The crow had said having more than one made the Trial even harder, and I didn’t want the walls to suddenly start pouring water down on me and filling up the room, or some other equally deadly twist. I only needed my own token to get out alive.

I stood up and put my hand on one of the walls, hoping to feel some seam or crack I could get at, but it slid away at the touch of my hand, meshing into the adjacent wall. A corridor stretched out in front of me, lit with warm light. Beautiful pale blue flowers with large, droopy petals stretched out over the floor and walls.
 

I stared out, and then back to the four skeletons lying inside the room. “Unless they were moved here after dying, there’s a reason why they didn’t escape,” I muttered.
 

I turned back to the bones and noticed something on the normal-sized skeleton’s arm. I slid it off and held it up. “Damn.” It was an old ID link, completely out of power. My heart beat even faster, and the hair on the back of my neck stood up in warning.
 

I turned in a circle, searching for danger, but nothing had changed. I tried to fold the link to tuck it into my waistband and take it home, but it was as brittle as if it had been lying there for decades, and crumbled in my hands. I clenched my jaw and went to examine the other three, larger skeletons.
 

All wore armor of some sort; one had a larger hammer, and the other a short, wide sword. I couldn’t lift either of them. But there were two bands crossing the empty chest cavity of one, and I dragged them off, shifting the heavy chest, arm, and skull until I had pulled them free.
 

The bands seemed to be made from hundreds of pieces of metal, stuck together into straps. I examined them quickly as the feeling of danger grew, and the sweet scent of the flowers from the hall floated toward me. I looked around again, and knew that I couldn’t wait any longer. I slipped the bands over my head and positioned them across my chest in an X, like the corpse had.
 

I stepped cautiously into the corridor, droopy petals crushing beneath my feet and releasing their perfume. Adrenaline flowed into my veins with a burn. Danger. Death was coming, I knew.
 

I breathed heavier and started to run. The faster and farther I went, the more the sweet scent filled my lungs, and the more I shuddered with irrational fear. I bit the inside of my cheek while running, since my bottom lip was still healing. The blossom of pain and taste of blood distracted me from the danger for a moment, and I realized something was wrong. The panic was raging out of control, for no apparent reason. The farther I went, the worse it got. I knew something bad was ahead. I could feel myself getting closer to it as the instinctual sense of danger increased.
 

I stumbled over a branching vine and fell to my hands and knees. The blue flowers puffed up their cloying scent, right into my face, and my heart squeezed so fast and hard I became quite literally lightheaded from fear.
 

“The flowers.” I took another breath, and thought back to the safety of that small room with the skeletons. I knew I should go back. I’d be safe there. “Damn.” I stood up, grabbed my shirt’s sleeve, and ripped it off, then rapped it twice around my head, covering my mouth and nose like a mask.
 

The flowers were messing with my head. Something in their scent made my brain think of death and torment. And as I went further, they grew thicker and thicker, and the fear grew worse.
 

I started running again, gasping for air through the thick filter. It helped somewhat, and I was able to continue until the corridor grew so thick with flowers I had trouble moving. Finally, the hallway ended abruptly, and I stumbled into a large room with steps leading down from the outside to the center, like a coliseum, or a small version of a football stadium.
 

I looked around and shuddered. The room was filled with new monsters, and they were all looking my direction. For a few awkward seconds, we all just stared.
 

The corpses of strange animals littered the floor, some newer, and some old enough that the bones had been picked clean already. There were a few human skeletons.
 

The monsters were short, close to the ground. The bigger ones had six stubby legs, three on either side of their grub-like bodies. Their heads resembled a retarded pug dog’s.
 
Their eyes bulged out on either side of their skull, and their mouths dripped thick green slime.
 

They had been slurping up the liquefied flesh of the bodies. Smaller monsters with no legs, the babies, wormed around like maggots, blindly sucking up the fleshy slush beneath them. I realized then that some of the carcasses were their own species, being cannibalized.
 

One of them sniffled loudly, lifting its head as if to scent the air. Then it ran toward me, moving surprisingly fast on its six stubbly little legs. The other adults followed, mouths hanging open like happy dogs. Most of them were on the lower levels of the room, and seemed to struggle moving up the large steps.
 

I didn’t wait for them to reach me and see what they would do. That much was obvious by the contents of the room. I turned and ran, heading sideways around the outside of the stadium, close to the wall and on the highest level.
 

I heard the snuffling behind me from a grub-pug that must have already been on the top level, and ran faster, barely keeping ahead of it. I looked frantically around for an escape, and saw a door at the other end of the room.
 

I felt something warm on the back of my calf and snapped from fear, just a bit. I took a huge leap out over the abnormally large steps leading down to the middle. Things seemed to slow down for a moment as I hung in the air, falling forward onto the steps far below. Then I was plummeting at full speed.
 

I landed on my feet, but my legs couldn’t handle the pressure or the forward momentum, and I tumbled over. I came down on my back and flung out my arms to keep from rolling any more. I had probably hurt myself quite a bit with that little stunt, but there was so much adrenaline pumping through my veins that I didn’t notice.
 

I’d put some distance between myself and the one on the top level, but conversely put myself closer to the ones still struggling to climb up from the bottom. I stood and ran forward, careful to maintain my footing on the vines and small plants that grew everywhere at this lower level.
 

When I reached the far end of the room near the second doorway, I started up the stairs again, my thighs burning from the exertion of moving my weight upward at such a fast pace. When I reached the top, I used some of my precious air on a chuckle.
 

The grub-pug on top had followed me down and across, but was now struggling along with the others to move up the steps below me. Its short legs scrabbled desperately before finally heaving it over the edge of a step.
 

I pointed at it and spit. “Screw you! I’m not that easy to kill.”
 

Of course, fate took that moment to show me the consequence of hubris. A sniffling sound came from the doorway behind me, and I jumped out of the way just in time to avoid the huge grub-pug lunging for me. It sniffed and came for me at full speed.
 

I turned and ran all the way back to the blue-flower doorway, then down and back up again, avoiding decaying bodies along the way.
 

Some of the grub-pugs were thrown off, but more came through the doorway, and others seemed to catch on to my trick and ignore my descent, waiting for me at the top level. Soon, I found myself trapped on three sides, with my back to the outside wall. I was caught, too far away from either of the doorways to escape into them. Helpless rage took hold of me at the unfairness of my situation. I hadn’t asked for any of this, had done nothing to deserve it. My whole life I’d gone about silently, invisibly, never standing out or voicing the anger, irritation, and derision that filled my head.
 

Now, I screamed at the monsters, a wordless shriek of challenge. Let them try and fight me, eat me, if they could. I wouldn’t hold back my rage at Death’s attempt to take me any longer.
 

So I put my back to the curve of the wall and braced myself for the first one to come close. I was ready when it did. I kicked it in its drooling face as hard as I could.
 

Its pug-nose squished in a little bit, and it fell back, dazed. Another came, and I did the same to it. But they were big creatures, and my kicks weren’t having much effect other than to keep them off.
 

So I kicked harder. I slid my back farther down the wall, so that my legs could push outward rather than just down.