In the City of Demons by Matt Dinniman

Author:Matt Dinniman [Dinniman, Matt]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Dandy House
Published: 2020-02-27T22:00:00+00:00

12

Ungeo

The very first move was as Ungeo expected. The scourge stepped forward and to the left, facing her forward piece, a slight human woman.

“I want you to fight,” Ungeo told her emotionless slave over the radio. “Jump on his leg and start biting him or something.”

But when the order came, the whip struck like a snake, popping like a thunderclap right under the slave's chin before she could even move. As the head sailed into the air, Ungeo understood why there were bloodstains on the glass ceiling.

A pair of acolytes rushed out and dragged the headless body away, leaving a streak of blood across the board. A young Dahhak boy retrieved the head, holding it over his own like a trophy as he rushed out to the crowd's approval.

This was already not going well. The Daityas was obviously trained with a whip. The bastards had stacked the slave pool.

Anger churned within Ungeo. She clicked her beak, cracked her talons.

Alli and Plehka moved a few of their human pieces forward, but they left most of the valuable ones stationary, content to allow the scourge to do their work. Each also made the mandatory move themselves, both stepping to the side like cowards, not forward.

It was her turn. The scourge was flanked by several triangles. She had placed her human in hopes to lure the scourge in, and it had worked. Now she moved four of her pieces forward to adjoining spaces: the Gorgon and three humans, one of which had the spear. The scourge was going to have to fight four against one. She also moved all her other pieces, including herself, forward to carefully thought-out spaces.

Above, the spectators bristled.

She quickly screeched out orders to each of the fighters. The Daityas was more than three times as bulky as the tallest of her bunch, the human male with the spear, but thankfully they would follow her orders implicitly and without fear. She generally frowned upon denuding slaves, as it made their meat tough and taste bland, but now she was glad for it.

The fight order came, and her pieces sprang. The whip stung out, impossibly fast at her spear-wielding human. The other two humans hurdled themselves like tree cats onto the arms of the arch-demon, biting and tearing. The large human, as ordered, tossed the spear right at the old Gorgon. Before the weapon was even in the Gorgon's hands, the human's chest was rendered open by the savage barbs of the whip. The Daityas struggled with the humans on his arms, and it bit at one with its massive mouth.

The human female screamed as the teeth ripped at her back. The sound of a human scream, utterly devoid of any emotion other than raw instinct, was surprisingly chilling. Normally Ungeo savored the sound of any suffering, but this was different. Every scream, every death brought her closer to her own.

The Gorgon caught the spear, and she pulled her arm back and thrust the weapon hard through the air, using more strength than Ungeo thought she had.

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