Page 46 of Blightfall

Dayan was tall and thin, with short black hair streaked with blue and purple, some of which matched Sadie’s. Sadie’s was natural, while Dayan’s looked bleached and dyed. It was longer on top, similar to many of the haircuts I’d noticed in the crowd.

I noted the ungendered pronoun in their announcement. I’d known some kids in school who preferred terms like that, but our teachers had sometimes refused to use them. The DDF wasn’t incredibly accepting about that sort of stuff. My mom said that our relatively small population numbers, combined with the constant Krell attacks, meant we needed to focus on procreation and the survival of the species at the expense of personal expression. These humans might have an even smaller population than Detritus—it was hard to tell without knowing how many lived out in the forest—but apparently they’d dealt with it differently than we had, so maybe those two priorities weren’t as opposed to each other as I’d been raised to believe.

“Do you think this is staged?” Nedd asked.

“The match?” Alanik asked across me. “Why would they stage it?”

“Like a play,” Nedd suggested. “Like Sadie said. Maybe the winners are already decided.”

Alanik looked offended by this concept.

I hadn’t considered that, but it made as much sense as anything. If there was no army, no war, no fight against humanity, then maybe this was all a ploy to keep the humans here occupied so they didn’t try to escape from the planet. The whole thing did seem overblown. Unless their society was more warlike than I supposed, the fighters weren’t using their real last names.

“All the contestants have nearly accrued enough points to ascend to Elysium!” Ivy said, her voice growing more intense, sending a shiver down my spine. The crowd cheered even louder, so much that I worried they were going to damage our hearing. “One or more may very well ascend today—but only if they give the performances of their lives! The remaining fighters will join the other gladiators in championship games tomorrow and the day after. Three games. Three battles. Three chances to prove themselves and join the last stand for humanity’s future! Let the games begin!”

The roar of the crowd was deafening. Alanik said something to me, but I couldn’t hear it over the screaming. The rest of our team was cheering along with the crowd, which was good for our cover, but I wasn’t sure I wanted to cheer when I didn’t know what I was cheering for.

What the scud was Elysium?

The three fighters ran a loop around the rim following the flag bearer, waving their arms to the stands, their images broadcast on the screens above. Dayan stopped about a third of the way around, Timon after two-thirds, while Kalia ran the full lap and stopped at the edge of the arena where they’d begun.

The woman with the flags did another lap, handing weapons to each of the competitors. Kalia’s was an electric shock spear, a larger model of the replica I’d seen at the shop. She turned the spear on, and the tip of it glowed blue, bright enough to be visible even from the stands.

The flag bearer brought Timon a sword nearly as tall as he was, which he held aloft to the cheers of the crowd, and something small, barely longer than his forearm, which he held at his side. Enlarged on the screen, it looked like a weapon handle, not the weapon itself. I wasn’t entirely sure how that would be useful, but the crowd was excited about the sword.

To Dayan, the flag bearer handed only a staff no longer than my arm.

“What is that?” Alanik asked.

“I don’t know,” I said. “I hope for Dayan’s sake it’s more dangerous than it looks.”

The crowd continued to cheer as all three competitors held their weapons up, facing the scion, which had settled in the center of the stadium, whipping its branches around angrily like giant wooden fan blades. Kalia and Timon both appeared to relish the crowd’s attention, while Dayan seemed quieter, more focused, less expressive—though it was hard to tell anything truly meaningful about their personalities from this distance.

“Competitors, enter the arena!” Ivy shouted.

All together, the three fighters dropped to the sandy floor, surrounding the scion.

Fourteen

Sadie

It seemed unfair to me to give one fighter a big sword and another a tiny staff, while the third had a shock weapon. I wondered if the fighters had chosen those, or if they were drawn at random, or assigned by some league leader who liked to play favorites. When I thought about it, I wasn’t sure what these tournament skills were for. The DDF had never fought a land war—all our combat was performed by pilots in starfighters.

Were these people preparing for some epic battle between humans and scions? And if so…why was Ivy in the middle of it?

The three fighters moved toward the center of the arena. I didn’t like the idea of them attacking the scion—and cutting off its branches? Was that where the worker trees came from?—but the energy of the crowd was contagious. If humanity really was at war with the trees, maybe I shouldn’t feel bad for it. For all I knew, it had a habit of butchering human children and eating them for breakfast.

“You’re rooting for Kalia to win?” I asked Nedd.

“Sure,” Nedd said. “She has the best weapon.”

“I don’t know,” Arturo said. “I wouldn’t mind getting my hands on that sword.”

“Yeah, but Kalia’s the hottest,” Nedd said.

Oh. I watched Kalia stalk toward the scion with her shock spear out in front of her. Her physique was that of a warrior woman—tall with slim muscle, basically the opposite of me in every way.

“I don’t think the scion discriminates based on attractiveness,” Arturo said.