Page 53 of Labyrinthine
Darian sees it. His hand slices left in signal. “Unit Two, peel wide—take its flank. Center, hold. Shields high. Spears low.” The second unit slides out, skirting the arc to cut behind it.
They’re readying to strike—when a fourth daemon explodes into the arena.
The crowd screams, ecstatic.
My stomach drops.
It’s grotesque. Bloated with muscle, its legs are bent backward, as though broken and reset wrong, but it moves with horrifying speed. Horns curl from its skull, slick with gore. One eye is missing. In its place, a cavernous socket weeps black ichor.
It tears into the second unit before they can react.
Steel scrapes bone. A man screams as claws punch through his chest, lifting him clean off the ground before hurling him like a ragdoll. He slams against the arena wall with a crunch.
Nine men remain. Two daemons.
This isn’t a fight. It’s a slaughter.
Darian roars—as violent and visceral as it is wordless—and his men charge to reinforce, coming at the daemons from behind.
They crash together in a storm of steel and teeth.
The air explodes with noise. Screams. Howls. Bones breaking. One daemon lashes out, carving its claws across a man’s face. His helmet splits. Blood sprays. He crumples, gurgling.
Darian ducks under a swing of jagged claws, rolling into a thrust that punches his sword deep into a daemon’s side. It howls. Its tail snaps like a whip, catching a soldier and flinging him into another.
A soldier in a battered breastplate cleaves through the daemon’s front leg with a two-handed strike, spraying blood in a dark geyser. The creature collapses with a deafening thud.
They converge. Darian presses the open wound, driving forward with sheer fury. The daemon twists, snapping its jaws, and Darian hits the sand hard, teeth gritted as he rolls to avoid being shredded.
He’s not fast enough.
The creature’s claws rake across his side—the plate deflects, then fails, and the points get under and open him up. He grunts, blood christening his chest. A soldier lunges to cover him.
Too slow.
A claw rips across the soldier’s back, shredding leather and flesh in one devastating swipe. He falls screaming, blood pooling beneath him as he twitches in the dirt.
The daemon rounds again. The other is charging.
They’re going to die.
They’re going todie.
And still Darian rises, sword in hand, face pale and blood-soaked, lips pulled into a snarl. Not backing down. Not breaking.
Gods help us.
Blood bursts across the arena floor. Darian drags the wounded man beneath him, shielding him with his own body as he lunges forward. Around them, the others attack with savage determination, flanking the daemon like wolves.
It bellows and whips around, but Darian’s already inside its guard. His sword punches past its gaping jaws and into the roof of its skull. The daemon screams—a raw, bone-splitting sound—but it doesn’t fall.
It thrashes. Flails. Claws rake the air, nearly catching one of the men in the throat. The men from Larksbind duck, their movements sharpened by exhaustion and desperation. Blades flash. Limbs are severed. One soldier gets in close enough to hack at the neck, again and again, as hot blood spurts in violent jets.
The head doesn’t come off clean. It takes several brutal blows, each one sickening, each one splashing the sand with black blood. Finally the thing collapses, shuddering, twitching. Dead.
But there’s no time to rest.
They sprint toward the final daemon.
