Steven Montano - Crown of Ash

I should have known it would end like this, she told herself. It’s no less than I deserve.

She tried not to think about the crimes she’d commit ted as a Revenger. It was just too much. She’s spent the past two years having nightmares about murders and executions and condemning people to die by fire or starvation. Some nights she woke up screaming.

Danica would never forgive herself. Not ever. She could never wash that much blood from he r hands.

I’m sorry, Lara. I’m sorry, Eric.

Th e hallway seemed to go on forever. She heard muffled shouts in the distance, the call s of the other prisoners who’d been assembled as a captive audience. They didn’t cheer so much out of excitement, she thought, as they did for the fact that at that moment they weren’t the ones suffering.

D oors covered with the grim visages of gargoyles peeled open ahead of her. Th e y weren’t the true entrance to the Gauntlet, not yet — there was one more hall to pass through, where she’d be given the equipment she needed for the competition.

Danica had helped test t he Gauntlet when Rake had first come up with the idea a few years back. Rather than traditional gladiator games like those held in the Ebon Cities, t he Gauntlet was a sort of elite sporting event, a survival challenge that pitted high-profile or exotic prisoners against one another for the amusement of the Wardens, the prison population, and occasionally even outside spectators, dignitaries or ambassadors or other high-paying clients who wanted to see inmates they’d had interred in the prison suffer a dramatically gruesome fate.

There was never more than one survivor from any given event, and often there were none. The contests were never the same. In the past she’d seen monsters hunt down prisoners fleeing for the exit, or air ships filled with Revenger snipers who tried to shoot the inmates as they fled across a trap-riddled floor. Rake personally redesigned the course every few weeks, and work crews were pushed to the brink of death to make the necessary modifications.

Danica didn’t worry about what she’d face. She’d resolved herself to the fact that she wasn’t going to survive. She was far more worried about Cole, and Cross. S he’d failed Lara as a lover, and she’d failed Cross as a friend.

I betrayed them both while trying to save them.

Her blood ran cold. E very breath went down hard. S he tried to comfort herself thin king about the good times she’d ha d with Cole. She remembered Cross and Kane, how those two had saved her, how she’d felt alive again with the team, a part of something, needed and wanted by others.

T h ose memories were what she ’d take with her into t he Gauntlet, and they ’ d give her strength. She knew she was going to die, but there was no way she was going down without a fight.

Danica held her head high. Her boots clacked loudly in the stone hall. The iron cuffs around her wrists seemed to grow lighter. She took deep and calming breaths.

It’s going to be okay.

She kept telling herself that. It didn’t matter that she knew it wasn’t true.

Danica walked through the open door s and into a hall of the dead.

The corridor was pale stone covered with blood stains, claw marks and sharp metal debris. Blazing white torches set in high wall sconces lit the way. T he charnel stench was thick.

Two rows of animate d corpses stood at attention on either side of the hall. They were Scarecrows, gaunt and preposterously tall. Their dead black skin was pulled taut over misshape n and elo ngated bones. They turned and regarded her with dull white eyes and grinning skelet al mouths. Revenger armor covered their emaciated bodies. Each Scarecrow was identical to the next. Their c orpse eyes watched as she was pushed into the hall.

Parker and Creel left her there. T he doors sealed shut behind her, barring the way back.

Danica walked the length of the corridor, between the rows of undead. She stepped through sticky clumps of drying blood and old bones and kept her head low. T he Scarecrows watched her pass. S he heard the creak of leather and dead flesh. Her breaths echoed against the cold stone.

Danica expected one of the heavy blade s to come crashing down on her back, or for one of those ridiculously long arms to reach out and grab her. Their height was terrifying. She felt as if she walk ed through a forest of rotting flesh.

Nothing happened. She made it to the end of the hall. She felt her spirit in the distance, a murmuring echo, a sad memory. He was still restrained. She hadn’t thought Fades were so powerful.

They must have given me Narcosm, after all.

A door made of brass and copper stood at the end of the corridor. H er hand cuffs opened on their own accord and clattered to the floor. A simple steel helmet and a pair of black gloves had been left on a short stone pedestal by the door. Bleeding vines wrapped their way up the walls. Danica smelled blood and sap.

She gathe red up the equipment. A crowd roared on the other side of the door. She could only guess that her opponents had already started to fil e in to the arena.

Danica stood at the door and waited. She was sh a k ing all over, and she felt like a piece of metal had caught in her chest. She didn’t want to see what waited for her on the other side.

It’s going to be okay.

“Screw it.”

She opened the door. Floodlights nearly blinded her. P risoners atop the walls roared with approval as Danica walked through the door. She smelled fuel and felt the burn of vehicular fumes. The roar of engines rattled the ground.

The underground arena housed a massive racetrack made of scorched earth and sharp granite. Bridges, canyons and dark pillars stood in the distance. The track sat in a giant bowl of black rock with a low wall around the rim. The staging area was elevated above the track itself, which dipped down to a shallow valley filled with smoke, flame s and jagged stone s. The behemoth cavern of Black Scar prison hung overhead, a permanent underground night.

“You like it?” Rake asked.

He, Burke and Raven stood on a large iron platform that hover ed some twenty feet above the floor. Steam and smoke billowed from its turbine engine s. A number of small land vehicles had been spread out across the staging area directly ahead of Danica.

“It’s real f ancy,” she told Rake.

“Burke thought you’d like it, s ince you were at a race when we nabbed your cute little ass.”

“Is there a point to this conversation?” Danica shouted up to him. “Aside from you getting to act like a dick?”

“We have time to kill,” Rake said off-handedly. He spoke quietly, but she heard his voice clear ly in spite of the noise. Sometimes i t was easy to forget that he was a warlock. He held such utter control over his spirit that it never so much as shifted or even made its presence known without his approval. Danica could only barely detect her now, a slithering whisper lost in the din of background noise. “I’m real ly disappointed in you, Danica,” he said. “ You’re a whore. Did y ou know that? ”

“Am I?” she laughed. “And how is that?”

“Because you had to go and sleep with the enemy,” he said coldly. “You had to put your chips in with the Southern Claw…and with that warlock.” The platform lowered till it nearly touched the ground. The exhaust blew dark dust everywhere. Danica stood firm.

The platform hovered closer. It could have knocked her down had they wanted it to. Rake stood with his arms crossed; he was just a few feet away. Danica pictured herself using her helmet as a weapon and bashing in his skull, but she knew he and Raven were just waiting for her to try something.

“You know you’re going to die, right, Dani? ” he said. “ I just want you to know that your friends are all going to die, too. I’ll see to it myself. ”