Mantle of the Gods

My face hurt.

So did my hands.

And my side.

As I took inventory of my pain, I decided it was easier to conclude that everything hurt.

It was dark when I came too. Rix and Aelin were both tied up next to me. Aelin was still out, but Rix was awake. She must have been mouthy because someone had gagged her. I was finding the concept of her being mouthy to be new considering that I’d heard her say more in the last two hours than the almost four days I’d known her.

I blinked away the dark spots in my vision and tried to focus on what the other party was talking about, but they were too far away, or maybe my senses were still messed up.

It looked like they had made camp on the trail, but I couldn’t see any trees, it was all short grass. I didn’t know how far we were from the woods, but the dungeon in Zeb had only one biome and one monster per floor. I hoped we hadn’t gone to a different floor, but that would have meant that they’d carried us through the boss room, which would have meant that we would’ve gotten extra experience. I doubted it’d be enough for us to level up, but I found myself hoping that it had.

The swordsman walked over. He kicked Rix before he sat down in front of me.

“Your friend here did a number on me.” He jabbed his thumb over at the redhead.

“She has that effect on people.” I tried to straighten up. "Why did you attack us?”

He laughed. "Attack you? She was the one with the blades.”

“Only after you broke a stick across my back.” I fired back.

“Oh, yeah.” He shrugged. "This was only supposed to be some hazing, but after she decided to raise the stakes, the rest of my party has come up with a nice challenge.”

“You really think you can kidnap us like this and then we’ll do whatever you want?”

He sighed. "I thought you might say that, so here’s the deal. We don’t like our new teacher. She’s a complete softy and is having us go back over the basics that we finished under Mister Vowler months ago. We want him back. But the only way that might happen is if you all drop out.”

“You want us to quit?” I shook my head. "You’re crazy. And you can’t keep us here for long. Once Trent…”

His laughter cut me off. "You don’t get it.” He kept going for a bit before wiping his eyes. "Mister Vowler does this to all of his classes. During the first week while the other teachers are giving their ‘introduction lectures’.” He made air quotes. "He locks his new class on the first floor for survival training. That’s how we knew you all would be here. He did it to us last year.” He laughed again. "Mister Vowler won’t be opening that door for five more days.”

My last hope at rescue vanished. We weren’t strong enough to win on our own and it was going to take way too long before someone noticed we were gone.

“Now, if you all died, then Mister Vowler would be free to take our class back over, but if we kill you here, then it’d be pretty hard to convince the Priests that it was a coincidence that we were on the same floor when it happened.” He slapped my shoulder, which made me wince as pain shot down to my toes. “So we thought up a little game. If you all can beat the floor one boss before Mister Vowler comes to collect you, then we’ll acknowledge that your class is more worthy of his talent. But if you can’t, then you all have to drop out.”

“Why would we take that deal?” I tried to ignore the eye-roll Rix made. "We just have to wait out the week and then we don’t have to worry about you guys harassing us.”

“If you were smart, you would have just taken the deal.” He clicked his tongue. "But it doesn’t matter, we were going to take blondie here as an incentive.” He patted Aelin on the shoulder. "You seem like the kind of guy who rushes to save the damsel in distress.”

"You can't!" I strained against my bonds.

“Challenges and bets happen between teams all the time.” Wrye twirled Rix’s knife in his hands. “All I need is for you to take the deal. Prove you are worthy of Mister Vowler, or I’m throwing blondie here into the boss room by herself at the end of the week.”