The Rise of Fortune and Fury (Chronicles of the Stone Veil 5)

His face is greenish and warty, as are the exposed parts of its legs and arms under raggedly frayed pants, a short-sleeved shirt, and well-worn boots. He has no hair, muddied orange-brown eyes, and a lipless mouth, which I’m going to have to assume are filled with fangs. His body is otherwise humanoid, tall of stature with thick arms and legs denoting great strength. The chains are at the creature’s ankles and wrists and attached to spikes in the cave wall.

I relax slightly, seeing the creature chained up, and I wonder if I’m supposed to free it. Perhaps it’s morally good and I have to make that determination to show I can look at more than just the species.

“Why are you here?” I ask it.

He growls low again, and I think he might not understand me, but when he speaks, I’m surprised at how deep, mellow, and articulate his voice is. Like he could seriously be a narrator for audiobooks.

“I eat children,” he says. Based on that admission, I’ve determined he’s a Dark Fae and quite evil, deserving of the chains. “Annihilators caught me a few days ago and I’ve been locked up here since.”

I frown, keeping my whip hanging loosely at my side. Am I supposed to just kill him while he’s chained up? I know annihilators destroy evil creatures, and eating children puts you right up at the top of the list alongside Kymaris as far as I’m concerned.

But… there are no rules here.

Nothing says I can’t just walk right out of here and see what awaits me next.

I actually start to pivot on my foot, intending to do just that, when an ominous sound rings through the cave.

The sound of heavy, thick chains falling to the ground.

My head whips back around, and I see that the creature is no longer secured. He rubs at his wrists, gives me a smile that does indeed reveal fangs. “I was told a champion would be coming through.” He takes a step toward me, tosses his head left and right as if working out some kinks. “I was told… if I defeat the champion, I can have my freedom.”

“Guess I’m that champion,” I mutter, moving several feet backward so I’m in the middle of the room and have more space to maneuver.

The creature stalks slowly toward me. “Normally, I like killing slow, but I want to do this fast. There’s an orphanage down in Venezuela that I hear has the tastiest, fattest babies you can imagine.”

I whirl my whip in a circle over my head before slicing downward, not coming anywhere near him but also knowing I wouldn’t. It’s a warning shot to stay back, and he stops in his tracks.

This appears to be a battle to the death and since he readily admits to eating babies, I find my conscience squeaky clean on that front.

A rumbling sound echoes around the cavern, and the ground starts shaking like it did when I was crossing the log. The creature and I glance around, but I manage to keep an eye on him as I try to figure out what’s happening.

It becomes abundantly clear what’s happening when the ground along the perimeter of the cave starts crumbling and then dropping away. It keeps falling away until the creature and I are left standing on a piece of cave floor that’s perfectly circular and about twenty-five feet in diameter. There’s a good ten feet of nothing between the edge of the circular ground we stand on and the edge of the cave wall. There is no ledge bordering the cave wall, so there is nothing to leap onto, assuming I could make the ten-foot leap, which I doubt I could.

As it stands, I’m trapped within this circle with a Dark Fae who wants to kill me, which means I’m going to have to defeat him here and now.

My gaze connects with the creature, who seems as stunned by this development as I am. I take a few steps back from him, trying to put a little distance between us. My movement gets his attention, and his head swivels my way.

“Let’s do this,” he rumbles.

“Let’s,” I reply confidently, but truly feeling like I might vomit. He’s not the first Dark Fae I’ve battled. That would have been the incubus in my backyard.

I’ve faced off against hell beasts in Deandra’s coliseum set up to help me tap my magic.

I even pulled my whip on the prince of the Light Fae and faced off.

But being in this dismal cave, on a slice of real estate barely twenty-five feet across; not knowing what awaits me if I defeat this Dark Fae and knowing even if I make it out of this gauntlet I still have to save the world, I’m suddenly feeling a bit tired.

The fae takes one step my way but before he can even lift his other leg, the ground rumbles again and then the circular cave floor slowly starts rotating. Not enough to throw us off balance, but enough both of us freeze to see what will happen.