Chapter 5

ARTHUR F.

The smelly hood whipped off my face and I coughed, spat, and glared at the man who had kidnapped me. Or, more accurately, at the snarly mask he wore. Masque Macabre, thus far, was living up to the name. This mask was a special kind of ugly: Red and scowling, with a down turned mouth and a wild explosion of beard hinted at the fringe with carved stone. It had a sloped forehead and no hair carved on the top. The eye-holes looked like shadowy pits. The man wearing it was dressed in a set of clothes so fancy I didn’t even words to describe the floofs, the poofs, the buttons and the shinies.

His gloved hand cupped my cheek and his fingers were cold as ice.

“Ah. Perfection,” he said. “My name is Arthur F, my delightful savage. Welcome to the Hippodromic Gladiatorium. It will be the last place you will ever see.”

I bit his hand as hard as I could.

THE HIPPOWHATEVER

So, while Arthur F – which I was pretty sure stood for fucking asshole – rubbed his hand and simpered about how I was positively delightful and an utter smashing hit and oh how excited he was – I took a glance around and got a sense for the place I was actually in. It wasn’t any white room. The walls were made of a rough gray-black stone, shaded with darker hues of reds and browns in splotchy discolorations, like mold growing on a food. The ceiling was high and vaulted, and there were circular drains on the walls that dribbled moisture down in thin streams. Decorative flourishes here and there gave the whole place a sense of rotting finery, like silk being used by maggots: Statuary held up the ceiling on the corners of the room. An old fountain sat in the center of the chamber – long dried and crusted over, but it was clearly made to pump out water. Benches were built here and there, next to long dead and desiccated trees, like this was some kind of olden time ... park.

That was the word.

Right now, though, the Hippo was filled with people. Most of them were lounging in knots, chatting, muttering, throwing dice, snapping and sniping. They were all the kind of sullen and bitter that I knew: People who’d been kicked, licked, and left to rot. They stayed a good distance away from Arthur F, who was done wringing out his hand and cooing.

“Now, for that bit of impertinence,” Arthur said. “I shall provide not a whit, not a moment of explication. For that, I shall leave that to these brutals.” He flipped his wrist at me. “Ta.”

And with that, he just...

Blurred.

One second, he was there, looking normal. The next, he was not. My brow furrowed and my temples throbbed. In my eyes, I could see three different Arthur F’s, each one molding into the other, shifting over one another, buzzing and crackling in interference patterns. One was Arthur F exploding into a cloud of exigenic critters with wings and really cute noses. They flew off in each direction. The next was Arthur F vanishing into nothingness. He winked back into place a second later, then winked off, then winked back on. And the third Arthur F swept himself around, snapped out his cape dramatically, then shot towards the far wall of the place. There, a chunk of wall opened as smooth as oil and he ducked into a darkened corridor and the wall shut down. With the wall shutting, my eyes could focus and see that Arthur F, no matter how he had gone, had gotten.

My arms weren’t bound. I patted myself down and felt a big gusting relief explode through me as my hand gripped the hilt of my threshold blade. I had no idea how it’d gotten missed, but I wasn’t about to ask questions. I scrambled to my feet – and tried to turn it on. Nothing happened. I focused and felt only the same throbbing that had whacked me earlier.

“It won’t work, lassie. Whatever it is.”

I turned and met my first fellow captive of the mysterious Arthur F.

OMEGA

“I’m Omega,” the man said. He was tall and well built, though not as muscle-perfect as either Mal or Rossk or Thale. His face had an extremely weird bit of fuzz that clung to his lip like a caterpillar that had given up and died. His chest was covered with thick thatches of hair, short and black and snarled enough to climb. He was dressed in a red thong and red boots, both sporting sleek looking rings that didn’t quite touch the fabric. It made him look fast and nimble and rangy, like a well bread shankmare. He held his hand out to me. I holstered my blade and took his hand. We shook, like proper scrappers.

“Stumble, right?” he asked.

I blushed. All my dots had to be real obvious. “That duh, huh?”

“You shake like a Stumbleman,” he said, nodding.

“I-” I blinked. “I’m a girl!”

“Heh, man as in human, lassie,” Omega said, his voice wry. “So, how did he nab you? Separate you from your crew?”

I nodded. “Yah.”

Omega shook his head. “My crew’s long gone – I’ve been in this damned place for five cycles now, if I counted right, and I hope they’ve replaced my berth with an astro who isn’t so damn foolish he gets into a drinking contest with a bloody vampire.”

I bit my lip. “My crew won’t leave without me,” I said.

Omega shrugged. “I hope that’s the case. But, between you and me lassie? If they’re going to rescue you, they’ll need to work fast. There’s gonna be a race soon. And new fish don’t make it through races nine times out of ten.”

I gulped.

US DOOMED TO DIE

“So, Omega,” I said, trying to feel less nervous. “What kind of race are we talking about here?”

He sighed. “These vampire buggers have been alive for longer than some planets. They can’t die.” At my look, he nodded a bit more emphatically. “I’m not fooling you. I’ve seen some of them get impaled through the heart, some decapitated, some lit aflame. All of them come back, eventually – not sure how, not sure why, but they do. Do you know what being alive for a few thousand years does to a brain?”

I shrugged. “They...” I looked over at the others in the baroque cell. “Start ... running murder races?”

Omega nodded, his hand going to his fuzzapiller and stroking it down to lay flat against his lips. “At least one of them does. And enough come to watch to cure their jaded eunii.”

“Their whosawhat?” I asked.

A knot of other slaves started to get up. They moved to surround us – but it wasn’t aggressive. They weren’t looking at Omega. They were looking at me. Sizing me up. Each one was a different brand of human. I saw a girl with green skin and red eyes, a guy who had an arm growing out of where his face should have been and eyes on his chest. I saw a real big spider, with a harness of tanks and tubes hung around his furred belly and attached to dozens of puckered mouths on his backside. That one creeped me out the fucking most, but I tried to look tough and not scared. Like Techne. Or Thale.

Besides, I’d faced down Lord Drak, right? I’d managed to not look scared to him. Course, I’d had a face concealing helmet that time. I stuck out my jaw anyway. “What do you want?” I asked.

“Feisty,” the spider hissed.

“You want her for a lancer, Omega?” the green girl asked.

“No way,” Mr. Face Arm said, his arm flexing up as I saw that he had a mouth where my throat would be. It made his whole head flop around. But I was beginning to think it wasn’t actually a head. “Omega’s got Oz and Consuella as his lancers. And you can’t fit another on that junker you fly.”

“My junker’s won the last two races, Forearm,” Omega said.

“Forearm, seriously?” I whispered to Omega. He bumped my shoulder with his and flashed me a grin, while Forearm flipped us off with his face-hand.

“Do you even know how the race works?” the spider asked – his voice coming from the edges of his body, where thin seams in the chitin that cladded him opened up. “You’re an offworlder. But have you ever seen any of the races before you got nabbed?”

I shook my head.

So, the Spider got to explaining.

ON THE BENEFITS OF HAVING A LANCER

The explanations took us all the way from the ante-chamber to where our chariots were located, but the chariots were so arresting, I’d have to describe them first. Picture about twelve or so constructs, each one looking unique like they were made of scrap, but rather than scrap, they were made of nightmares and daydreams and half remembered fables from before the collapse, before the skies burned, and before plastic choked the seas. There were coffins on sleds, chained to restive, red eyed horses whose fur shone like midnight sky. There were bat-winged halfmoon shapes that hovered on a cushion of rippling air and had a pair of control sticks that thrust into the air before them – not actually connected to any surface, just hovering there. There were twin wheeled, blade-spoked chariots that were lashed to honest to god jet engines. And, lastly, there was what seemed to be a matte black box of about six feet in height and three feet in width, which was leaned against the wall and covered with dust.

“The race,” the Spider said. “Is simple: A driver and a team of lancers rides the course, which is the entire undercity hive-sprawl and sewers. Everyone who gets through the endline wins. The driver’s job is to keep the chariot from crashing. The Lancer’s job is to fight off other chariots.”

“Why?” I asked. “Like, you said anyone who gets through wins, right? Why fight?”

“It’s not us you got to worry about, lassie,” Omega said.

But a great big gong rang out – and Omega lifted his head, hissing. “Bugger.”

The chariots began to whirr and groan to life. Slaves, including those around me, started to rush over. Some scrambled into the driver perches of their chariot. Others lashed themselves onto the sides, gripping onto any handhold they can find. The lashes were flimsy things – cloth and scrap, basically, looped through any bit of metal in a roughly ring-ish shape that wasn’t spinning, whirring, grinding, or crackling with magic. Once lashed, the drivers started to hand out their lances. And just like the chariots, everyone had a different style of weapon. Some lancers uncoiled huge whips of barbed chain. Others held swords that were tipped with weeping blades – red fluid perpetually dribbling along them. Others held guns. Not sleek guns like I’d see in the hands of the Hegemony.

Scrap guns.

Zip guns.

The kind of guns that would fair blow your own hand right off.

“All right, lassie,” Omega said. “You’ve gotta pick who you’re going to lance with.”

He looked so sad as he said it. Like he could already see me splattering or flying off the side of a chariot, my head split off by some hideous barbed whip. I looked back at the chariots, biting my lip. So many had two, three Lancers on them. A few Lancers looked just as young, just as uncertain as me. They were shouted over by drivers, grinning ghoulish drivers, eager for fresh meat to adorn their deathtraps. I felt a cold pit settling in my stomach. My threshold blade wasn’t doing anything here ... if it could, I’d fair be the best lancer out here.

Then my eyes fell on the rectangle with dust on. No one was even glancing its way.

“Is that a chariot?” I asked.

“Old Rec?” Omega asked. “Aye. Driver legend is that it is, at least. But no one has gotten Rec to fly in centuries. Lassie!” He cried out after me, reaching out as I slipped away from him and fair sprinted to Rec. I knelt beside the blocky thing as Omega called out: “Lass! If Arthur sees you without a Lancer, he’ll just throw you into the Pit!”

My eyes closed.

I had an idea.

BUGGY

My eyes closed tighter. My palms pressed to the side of Rec. I leaned in, breathing slow. Breathing careful. I reached out with my feelings and tried to touch that same voiceless voice that had murmured to me during the escape from the Hegemonic shocktroopers. It had told me exactly how to ride something before. But maybe Rec here was just another bike, huh? I grinned – then cried out in pain as the code smashed into me. It was just a series of ones and zeroes, endlessly repeating, laying out blocks of knowing and thinking and feeling ... but it was also something else. Something sicker and twisted. A part of Rec talked to another – and that other responded with inane gibberish. The altitude agrav generators were trying to sing in purple, while the ionic thruster was screaming its head off about codecs and DRMs.

The whole thing was a pile of madness and nonsense.

-buggy code, lack of firmware updates, planned obsolescence, this Ryder Racer Kiddy Scooter is entirely unfit for-

I gritted my teeth. I ignored the voiceless voice. Instead, I grabbed onto the code, my physical hands tightening, twisting. I screamed out, the pain burning through my brain brighter and brighter, and shoved. The code lifted up, then unkinked in a swirling, twisting spray of bits and bytes. I was the only one who could see the flash of data, but when it faded, I was trembling and surrounded by pale blue fireflies, dancing in the augmented reality vision of a Liminal Knight. The firefies faded and I let out a slow, shaky grin.

“Girl!” Omega shouted. He was standing in his bat-wing chariot.

I looked back and I saw that Arthur F was striding towards us. His cape snapped behind him. His red mask glinted in the strange light that filled this baroque cell. He was spreading his arms wide, the dark color of his sleeves contrasting with the brilliant white of his gloves. He walked with a spring, a lightness, as if the whole world was his to conquer as he pleased. “My darling children,” he said, his voice full of cooing happiness. “I see everyone has picked their- ah. Ah. Ahhh! The feisty one ... you don’t have a lancer’s spot?”

I stood up, my fingers dragging along the dust of Rec. My chin lifted.

“My name is Venn of Stumble,” I said, trying to sound imperious and like I had two names. Like whole systems spun to the snap of my thumbs and I hadn’t just been born on a planet so garbage that humans thought breathing sharp plastic their whole life was normal. My eyes fixed on the empty pits that were Arthur F’s eyes were hidden by the mask he wore. “And I am going to drive Old Rec for this race.”

You could have heard food drop in that silence.

And, obligingly, Old Rec came through for me.

GLORY IN DISGUISE

The sound and motion was so blur-fast that it was more of a subconscious realization that Old Rec had transformed – to my blinking eyes, it looked more like one second, Rec had just been a rectangle of black material. The next, it was a cockpit with twin, forward fluted blade-wings thrusting off the sides, and a quartet of pale blue engines glowing on the back. The cockpit was smooth and sleek and had a single glass pane that wrapped around the front, to bank wind away, and there were a few small controls, almost identical to the bike I’d ridden on Stumble, but newer and made of the same black material as the rest of it. It hovered beside me, and one of the blade-wings bumped against my shin. Like it was a exigenic that someone had fed food too until ti was tame and loyal as ten men.

My palm rested on the side of the engine casing and I felt the purring thrum of raw power inside. I looked back at Arthur F and gave him my biggest, cockiest grin.

“Very well, Driver Venn...” Arthur F crooned. And his croon held a dozen thoughts underneath it – and all of them drawing angles on me.

I repressed a gulp and slid into the cockpit. The seat adjusted to fit me and a glowing set of dials and numbers appeared on the inside of the wind-shield. They showed a pair of lines that looked like they matched up with the ground perfectly, and a tiny little dot that, a bit of peeping proved, was aligned with my glorious Rec’s nose. Except calling it Rec was all wrong. My palm slid along the inside and I whispered. “You ready, my...” I paused. “My Glory?”

Glory rumbled under me and I purred right back, pressing my thighs together.

“Don’t get cocky, lassie!” Omega called over to me. I grinned at him.

“No offense, Omega,” I called over. “But I’m going to whip your butt in this sucker.”

Omega, looking past the rangy body of one of his lancers – the girl, so Consuella, I think – and shook his head. “We’re not racing each other. We’re racing...” He shut up as the music began to play. But his head jerked back behind us.

I looked back.

And the music hit a crescendo as a femme voice filled the air and the ground under our feet lifted upwards. The ceiling parted and before I knew it, we were in the middle of a pair of huge, curved stadium rows. Hundreds of masked Em and Em residents were watching us, and hundreds of Sundiver crews who had decided to watch the local bloodsport were mixed in. A disk shaped platform hovered over it all, and a skinny as a reed vampire girl who wore a domino mask and held a microphone in her left hand, leaned over to oggle us as she spoke.

“Come one, come all, to see the ninety eight thousandth, four hundred and sixty seventh weekly Hippodromic races!” she said. “Today, we have five new drivers and a half dozen new lances – raise your arms and be saluted, you who are soon to be blessed with the glorious peace of death itself!”

The crowds cheered and clapped. I lifted my arm as sullen as I could – and swore, I heard Techne herself say: “Holy fuck, is that Venn?”

I looked. And holy fuck.

That was Techne!

She was seated near the front row with Mal and Rossk. They were all gaping at me. I opened my mouth to speak – but the music became fast. Tribal.

“And now, give it up, for today’s Hunters!” The femme vampire crooned. “The brave. The unstoppable. The terrible ... Aristoooooooooooos!”

Behind us, lights exploded and smoke roiled as three chariots appeared from nowhere. Each one looked bigger and meaner and more heavily armored than any of ours. One was a sphere covered in spikes, the only clear part being the center window, showing that a heavily scarred vampire stood within, his face covered by a stone white mask with several large, sharp claw-arms that kept it affixed to his head. His sphere was chained to a quartet of jet engines, each chained in place by a set of six agrav engines each.

“Coultan!” The femme said. The sphere-guy lifted his hand in a wave.

The middle guy was on a traditional chariot chained to huge, black, red eyed horses. But he was the most muscular vampire I had ever seen, in a purple body suit, with gold trim, a golden mask carved in a gay smile. Like, he was so fucking happy to be looming over us, a hammer in his hands and rested on his shoulder. He rolled his other shoulder, then lifted his arm and flexed. The crowd was going absolutely bugfuck.

“Williams!”

More cheers.

The third and final guy was seated on a forward slung bike that looked, for all intents and purposes, a lot like mine. But rather than having a cockpit and a seat you could lean back in, he was bent forward over a set of controls. Where Coultan was all scars and Williams was huge, this guy was like a corded whip and ugly as sin behind his nearly transparent half-moon mask. His hair was tied into a quartet of ponytails, and he had a huge, weird looking weapon attached to his back: A curved C with a string drawn between each end point.

“Tyler!” The femme screamed into the microphone.

“They’re the ones we need to beat, lassie,” Omega hissed to me – I hadn’t noticed it, but he had sidled his chariot over to be nice and close. His hands gripped the reigns and I wasn’t sure how he had gone sideways with wheels and a horse. But he’d done it and subtly enough I hadn’t noticed it while I had been looking at the three hunters.

“Goodie,” I whispered.

“And now, to drop the flag, none other than the trivid sensation and primogeniture supreme of the entire eastern seaboard ... Glorious Stellar Cartography!” The femme shouted, then pointed down. The huge track we were on had a small platform near the middle, and on it stood the most jaw-dropping, mouth watering girl I’d ever seen. She was dressed in a red, flilmy dress that clung to her every curve like a second skin, and she took great pride in showing off her fangy smile – her face concealed behind only a half-beak crest, leaving her jaw and mouth free to show off.

She was also holding up a small red cloth.

I glanced and saw Techne and crew were gone.

I looked back.

Williams was spinning his huge hammer in one hand, grinning wickedly. Coultan’s sphere was already spinning up, the spikes glittering as they swished through the air. Tyler was revving the engine of his bike.

I gripped my bars.

“Come on Glory,” I whispered. “Lets show them what a fucking Liminal Knight can do.”

GO

The red cloth dropped.

I slammed on full and was kicked in the chest by six elephantines at once. Despite the ouch, I still managed to whoop as I shot past the podium that GSC was standing on, so fast that when my wing clipped it, it left behind a glowing mark and nearly sheered the podium off entirely. She screamed at me, but then I banked left and felt Glory respond – shooting up and off the ground. I laughed like a loon and then saw why going fast was not the best idea.

Immediately around the bend was a cliff-face. Four dozen tubes, each about the width of a single chariot, were set into the side of the stone and concrete, and liquid dribbled from many of them. Sewer grates. I slammed on the air brake – instinct roaring through me. I had no idea what an air-brake even was. But then I saw: The wings on my Glory flared outwards and fanned out and the air screamed as I was dragged near fair to a complete stop.

Omega shot past me, his horses kicking their legs, flames exploding from their hooves as they ran through the air, dragging him behind. “Duck!” Omega shouted to me.

I ducked.

And a sledgehammer, swung by Williams, smashed through my wind shield, Williams himself laughing as his chariot thundered by. I smashed down the throttle and banked to the left, nearly impacting into the moon-shape of one of the other drivers. Their lancer threw a harpoon at me and it struck a glancing blow off my wing. The explosion sent me into a twisting spin and I screamed – then hit one of the tubes at an angle. The belly of Glory screeched along the metal, spraying up sparks.

“Venn!?” Techne’s voice boomed from all around me. I kicked an altitude peddle and then twisted – swinging around the interior of the tube until I was flying straight and level and not about to scrape my entire belly off.

“Techne!” I said. “Some Liminal fuckery must have blinded you and blanked your memory.”

“Bastard,” Techne snarled. “Mal and Rossk asked, I ... I thought you were back on the ship, I-”

“No time for-” I looked back. Behind me, I could hear the roaring of jet turbines. Coultan was tearing up the tube behind me, his sphere rolling and spiking everything in his path. “-no time for any of that!”

“Well, I’m scanning the area with the Tiamat’s sensors,” Techne said – I could hear clittering and clacking. “And ... shit. You got a lot of hungry critters on your route, Venn.”

“What?” I asked.

“They bred exigenics to-”

“Of course they do!” I kicked the throttle up another notch, glaring at head of myself, glaring into the wind as I banked left, right, down, left. The tube kept twisting and behind me, Coultan kept gaining and gaining.

Then we were out of the tunnel, busting out into a circular chamber roughly the size of the whole Tiamat. The floor was covered in what looked like a whole lake of water, though the water wasn’t clear or anything. It was more of a grayish-blue. The entire diameter of the circular chamber was spanned by a massive wall of gridded metal, which was slowly spinning on its axis, stirring the water up into frothing waves. I could see the other chariots that had gotten here too. Omega was swinging around to give his lancers a chance to whip at Tyler, who was trying to get close enough to stick the side of the horses with the bladed tip of his bike.

Spider, though, was in trouble. He was trying to rush straight towards the exit, but Williams was rushing closer and closer. One of Spider’s lancers stood and threw a harpoon. Williams took his hand off the reigns, caught the harpoon with his free hand, then threw it right back – and it struck the side of Spider’s chariot. Smoke and bits of metal exploded into the air and I could see Spider desperately pulling up.

He hit the wall.

“You mother-” I hit on the throttle, but before I could shoot at Williams, Coultan roared over me. He did something to his jets that made them stop dead and swing backwards, so his ball wasn’t being dragged behind them. Now, it was swinging at me and the spikes were rushing right at me. I hit the altitude peddle and twisted – so rather than going up, I was going sideways. The spikes clipped a wing and I started spinning and spinning.

SPIN

Spin.

Blood. Rushing to my head.

Red hazed my vision.

Shooting at the water.

I didn’t touch the controls.

Glory flipped around. Burned hard, skidded up the wall, arced around, leveled out and I felt the blood sliding back out of my head. I gasped out and saw I was shooting right for Coultan.

Fuck this guy.

ANNOUNCING MYSELF.

I didn’t have time to think. I just leaped out of my chair, planting one foot on the wing, gripping onto the engine casing with my free hand. I could hear gasps and cries of shock from distant crowds – and then the announcer: “What is Driver Venn doing!?”

Glory kept flying me nice and straight.

I grabbed my threshold blade, snapping it out.

This time?

This time it roared to life. The red holographic field shimmered to life around the monomolecular core and I grinned, fierce and eager, as Glory twisted, so that I was right above the cable connecting Coultan. I swept my sword up in a curving arc and drew a line of red right through the cable.

The entire world was dead silent.

Coultan’s jet engines smashed into the wall of the chamber. And his sphere plunged into the water, missed, and hit the metal axis of the stirring sweeper. The explosion was nearly as bright and Glory straightened out and slowed down. I stood on the wing, my hair trailing behind me, my sword in my hand.

The other charioteers were gaping at me. Even Omega, his fuzzy caterpillar bushing up.

“She’s...” the femme announcer paused. “Driver Venn ... is a Liminal Knight!”

BOUNTY

“The first driver, lancer or hunter to bring me Venn,” Arthur F’s voice filled the chamber. “Will be given four thousand units of mana and a free ticket to Atom!”

“Fuckery,” I hissed, then shouted, louder. “Arthur, you dick!”

Somehow, I knew that my voice was being picked up and boomed out of speakers. I didn’t matter. Every chariot was swinging around, save for Omega’s. Omega was staying back. I hopped back into Glory, snapping my Threshold Blade to my belt, then kicked on the engines again. There was only one exit out of this place – a huge, maw-like tunnel that was half full of the filtered water that was pushed out of the circular chamber. I skimmed right over the water and spared a glance back to see that two other chariots were right on my ass.

One of them was a coffin shaped box strapped to two jet engines. Thanks to the driver flying by laying on his back and manipulating controls inside of the lid, there were a goddamn total of six lancers on it. Each one had whips, spears, and twirling weights on the end of metal sticks.

The other was Williams. He was dragging his hammer along the wall, sending up a spray of tiles and sparks behind him. His eyes glowed behind his golden comedy mask. I looked up ahead as Techne’s voice spoke in my ear. “Okay, you’re about to come to a street. But there are some serious lasturrets set up to make sure that you’re not going into civilian airspace.”

“I got an idea,” I said, grinning.

The coffin chariot came close enough for the lancers to start doing their job. Two of them with whips started cracking them at me. A whip scored along the edge of my cockpit. Another smashed into the engine housing, sending up a spray of sparks. I lifted my arm to make sure none got near my face – and one wrapped around my wrist. The barbs bit into my skin. Blood flowed. I hissed. “Fuckery!” I grabbed my blade and sliced the whip off with a quick twist – not even needing to extrude the whole sword properly.

That still left me with a nasty bracelet.

The space ahead of me suddenly filled – gray, muscular tentacles reached up into the air, unfurling and reaching. These had to be the hungry critters that Techne had mentioned. I banked to the left, nearly hit another that reached upwards, cut out my speed, then dove forward. Water swept along my fuselage, nearly skimming into the cockpit proper, but the streamlined design meant that all the water instead went past, rather than in. That meant that William’s swing at my head missed by a good five feet. But now, he was able to fly over me, taking advantage of the slowdown.