The bull was already running toward her again. Wood splinters freckled the emerald waves of magic pulsing across its body. Then, between one step and the next, fiery plumes split across the bull’s skin, swallowing the creature. The splinters dissolved, pouring down to the broken ground like ash tears.
Sera tossed the thick banner over the bull’s head. An angry, panicked growl pierced the fabric, and the creature veered blindly to the side. The sudden jerk tossed the gasoline-drenched banner off its head. The flame-licked fabric landed in the big golden puddle, setting it ablaze. A moment later, the dazed bull sloshed in too. Fire crackled and hissed, pouring down the bull’s body and across the pond of fire.
A frigid breeze tickled Sera’s ear, the precursor to the next elemental jump. Blue magic slid across the bull’s body and flooded the puddle. The war cries of fire and ice hissed and crackled, the wicked song echoing through the arena. The bull thrashed and sloshed and kicked. Chunks of ice broke off of its body, freezing the gasoline puddle upon impact. Its flames crystalized, the fire had been defeated. But so had the bull. Its legs were frozen to the ground. Sera ran at it, delivering a spinning kick to its side. Ice groaned, and the frozen bull hit the ground, shattering into a million pieces.
The crowd went wild.
Sera glared up at the cameras—and the television screens showing a closeup of her face, smeared with sweat and dirt. And rage. There was a lot of that too. The audience didn’t seem to care. They pounded their fists against the seats and cheered her name. Cutler was there, in one of the front rows. Smirking, he threw her a salacious wink. She was considering returning an obscene gesture of her own when a thick tube rose from the ground, and the pit spit out its next delight.
A swarm of hornets shot into the air, their gold and obsidian bodies shimmering like metal. Poisonous magic hornets. Awesome. As Sera watched them swerve and loop overhead, the metal mushrooms behind her began to gurgle.
She stole a quick glance back at them, just long enough to see that they were squirting up globs of dubious purple magic. The globs bounced out one after the other—like an army of suicidal ants diving to their deaths—and splattered the floor. A few drops sprinkled Sera’s pants, scorching tiny holes into the fabric and sizzling her skin. She bit back the pain burning across her legs and kept her eyes on the swarm.
They’d turned their final loop downward into a dive headed straight for her. A sting from one of those hornets was enough to knock a mage unconscious. A whole swarm of stings would kill her. What was the Game Architect playing at?
But she didn’t have time to think, only to act. The swarm was almost upon her, their fat stingers sparking with magic. She ran straight into the middle of the metal mushrooms, ignoring the bubbling, burning goo that splattered her arms and legs. Their collective buzz drowning inside her ears, the hornets followed her into the mine field. The goo geysers continued to gurgle and spew, smacking the swarm with thick, sticky globs, eating away at its numbers. Sera just kept running. Behind her, hornets and goo smacked against the ground.
The deafening buzz had died down to a murmur. She pivoted around to look down a path of mushy purple goo. What few hornets had survived the goo bombing were stuck inside the translucent purple jelly, wiggling their wings in a futile attempt to escape. She glared down at them and stomped them into the ground.
The crowd roared in appreciation. Sera scraped the purple goo off her boot before it ate through her sole, then shot the sick bastards in the audience a feral sneer. They pumped their fists in the air and cheered louder.
A soft, feathery melody resonated against the barrier surrounding the fighting pit, filling the arena with its sweet song. The crowd’s cheers melted into awed whispers. Sera looked up—right into the eyes of her final opponents.
A pair of gigantic magic dragonflies, each as large as a house cat, hovered above. Their wings, silken and sparkling, hummed out the magical song that had so captivated the audience. Giant dragonflies were beautiful, especially as far as monsters went, but despite their pleasing appearance, they were about as nasty a creature as they came. If you let them get close enough, they’d bite a big chunk out of you.
As the two dragonflies swayed and danced in fluid, graceful loops, Sera reached down her legs. The guards had taken her sword from her, but she still had some knives hidden inside her boots. She slid them out and launched them at the monsters. The blades sank in, but it wasn’t enough. The knives were way too small to do real damage to creatures like them.
The dragonflies fluttered past each other, making circles around Sera. She turned, trying to keep them both in her sight, but they’d coordinated their movements perfectly. The soft melody deepened—darkened—as they sped up. One of them head-butted her from behind, the force of its blow knocking her across the pit. She hit the ground, rolling away from the purple puddle she’d nearly smacked face-first into. She hopped to her feet, brushing off the magic-charged sand. Her legs were freckled with burns, she had a singe mark on the front of her shirt, and one of her sleeves had burned clear off. In other words, she was completely pissed off.
Sera reached down and grabbed one of the cylinders that the elemental bull’s tremors had unearthed. It was long, awkward, and heavy—but it would have to do. She swung it at one of the dragonflies buzzing around her, knocking the creature at the cluster of electrically-charged metal mushrooms. It smacked against the little lightning rods, its body convulsing amidst screeches and smoke as it sizzled atop the mushroom caps.
Sera turned her back on the dragonfly, walking away from the dying scent of sugar and vanilla icing. The second monster roared and spun around to smack her with its tail. She stumbled back, but before she could retaliate, it bit a chunk out of her arm. It performed a graceful backward loop, trailing the scent of chocolate chip cookies with a helping of delighted chortles.