Chapter 417: Buried Predator

Akrab charged again, its legs moving with the speed and precision of a scorpion despite the enormous body they carried. Calling it a skitter felt almost insulting. The creature crossed the arena like a freight train, and Kael barely had time to lower his stance before the first claw snapped shut.

He ducked beneath it, then rolled as the second pincer swept toward him. It closed where his torso had been with a deafening crack. Kael came out of the roll already moving, only to catch the shadow of a tail stretching across the ground ahead.

One stinger had been waiting above him. It descended toward his forehead, forcing him to kick backward against the dirt and throw his body clear. The needle missed his face, but the second tail followed before he could recover his footing.

Kael barely avoided it by throwing himself backward again. He had escaped both claws and two stingers, yet the creature had already brought its first tail around for another strike. There was no room left to dodge properly, no footing, and no time to reset. He pulled his right fist back as the point descended.

"If I can’t dodge it..."

His fist struck the side of the stinger. Heft and Stone reinforced the blow, adding weight and strength to a punch that should have been enough to destroy steel. The impact rang through his arm, and Kael expected the black needle to crack, snap, or at least lose a piece of its edge.

It merely changed direction. The stinger slammed into the ground beside him and buried itself nearly halfway down, pouring venom into the puncture. Kael shoved himself away as the dirt hissed and began dissolving beneath a rising cloud of fumes.

Akrab ripped its tail free while Kael backed away several meters. His arm hurt enough that he noticed, though he could still move it normally. He flexed his fingers, examined the gauntlet, and looked back at the unmarked stinger.

"This shit is hard. And I don’t just mean difficult."

That blow should have accomplished considerably more than redirecting an attack. Kael studied the creature again, looking over claws covered in the same black shell, a back protected by even thicker plates, and tails armored from base to tip. The legs were narrower but still protected. Its eyes might be vulnerable, perhaps the joints too, but striking anywhere else would require far more power than he had hoped.

"How the fuck am I supposed to deal with this?"

Akrab rattled and spread its claws, both tails curling above its body again. Kael briefly looked toward the sky, or at least toward wherever the being responsible might be watching from. He gestured at the creature waiting in front of him.

"The original challenge was one man. That is not one man."

No divine notification appeared. There was no amused response or explanation from the One Who Stands Where Others Flee, though Kael waited half a second anyway. Apparently, spending Causality entitled a Patron to interfere without answering questions afterward.

"Don’t you think this is a little excessive?"

The sky remained silent. Kael looked back at Akrab and brought both fists together, letting metal strike metal before he separated them again.

"Right. Fine."

Fire bloomed across his right gauntlet, and Akrab immediately shifted its stance. Kael noticed the movement and watched more carefully as the creature spread its legs, raised its claws, and pulled both tails slightly backward. It probably knew nothing about Runes, but it recognized flame.

Kael remembered ordinary scorpions having no particular love for being burned. That hardly established a magical weakness in something this large, but the reaction gave him a reason to test it. He fed more energy into the Rune, thickening the fire around his hand.

"You guys don’t like fire."

He almost stepped forward before stopping himself. He never needed to go in melee range. He opened his right hand and gathered energy in front of his palm.

The fire formed into a small sphere. Kael compressed it and fed more power into the structure, holding the flames together as they tried to spread. He wanted an impact strong enough to get through that shell, which meant flame alone would not be enough.

Heft joined the combination, followed by Excise. The fireball condensed further, growing dense as pressure accumulated within it. Heat twisted around a core of compressed force while Kael steadied his arm and aimed at the creature.

"Just because I wear gauntlets doesn’t mean I’m obligated to solve everything from three feet away."

He released the fireball, and it shot from his palm like artillery. The blast kicked dust away from his boots as the projectile crossed the arena in less than a second. Akrab saw it coming and crossed both claws over its front.

The explosion engulfed the pincers, rolled across its head, and spread between the plates along its back. For an instant, the creature disappeared behind smoke and burning air. The crowd screamed, and one of the young gladiators behind Kael said something in a quiet, hopeful voice.

The oldest immediately smacked him across the back of the head. Kael did not understand their language, but he had no difficulty guessing what the younger man had asked.

It had almost certainly been some variation of ’Is it dead?’

The smoke shifted as Akrab emerged. Fire still clung to portions of its shell, but a single shake scattered most of it. Beneath the flames, the black exoskeleton looked barely scorched. Kael clicked his tongue as the creature raised one tail.

"Of course not."

The stinger flicked forward, launching something green from its tip. Kael moved on instinct, throwing himself aside as the glob of venom passed him and splashed against the arena floor. The dirt immediately began dissolving, spreading the same bubbling damage the direct stings had caused.

He backed farther away as Akrab fired again, then again. Apparently, the poison was not limited to whatever the creature managed to stab. Kael glanced toward the young gladiators still gathered behind him.

"Get back!"

They stared at him for a moment, and he waved both hands toward the far side of the arena. Another twitch of Akrab’s tail forced him to move before he could make certain they understood.

"Back away! All of you!"

They understood the urgency even if the words meant nothing. The oldest began shouting commands, sending the group farther from Kael and the scorpion. The Trial had not said he needed to keep them alive, but that hardly meant he intended to let twelve people die because they happened to be standing nearby. None of them could help against this thing, and keeping them close would only give him more to worry about.

Akrab fired toward him again. Kael moved sideways, leaving the venom to strike where he had been, then raised his palm and formed another fireball. Fire, Excise, and Heft combined before he sent the projectile across the arena.

The creature crossed its claws to receive the impact. The explosion staggered it half a step and sent fire spilling around its armored front, but it remained standing. Kael was already moving when another stream of venom came toward him.

For almost a minute, the fight became an exchange neither seemed capable of winning. Green venom traveled one way, compressed fire the other, and Kael constantly changed position to avoid the expanding patches of damaged ground. Akrab barely moved. It had very little reason to.

The fireballs struck hard enough that Kael could see the weight behind each impact. Its claws were forced backward whenever they caught a direct hit, and one projectile struck a leg hard enough to tilt the creature’s body. The damage remained disappointingly small. Its shell blackened, and a few thin cracks appeared, but nothing justified the amount of energy he was spending.

Kael checked his reserves and tightened his jaw. The Fire Rune itself was manageable. Heft was considerably more expensive, and adding Excise increased the cost again. Every projectile consumed internal energy to produce an attack that looked spectacular and accomplished almost nothing.

Akrab, meanwhile, appeared perfectly comfortable. Whatever supplied those tails with venom had yet to show any sign of running short. Kael slowed his breathing as he moved away from another dissolving patch of dirt.

"I need more firepower."

The fact that he meant it literally irritated him. Before he could decide how to produce it, Akrab stopped firing and lowered its body. Kael watched the change in posture, noting that it looked different from the stance it used before charging.

Both claws touched the ground. The tails drew closer to its back, and its legs braced around the armored body. Kael frowned as one pincer struck the dirt.

"What are you doing now?"

The second claw followed, and the creature began digging. Its pincers tore through the arena floor like shovels through loose soil, throwing entire sections of earth behind it. Kael stared as the front of its body began disappearing.

"..."

The middle followed, then the tails. Within seconds, the gigantic scorpion was gone, leaving a wide hole in the arena floor. The audience grew strangely quiet while Kael began walking backward.

"You gotta be shitting me..."