The Manticore Ascension: A Short Story in the Arena Mode Universe

BOOK: The Manticore Ascension: A Short Story in the Arena Mode Universe
12.89Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
ads
The Manticore Ascension: A Short Story in the Arena Mode Universe
Blake Northcott
Noösphere Publishing (2014)

The Arena Mode Saga
By Blake Northcott

Arena Mode
USA
/
UK
/
Canada

 

Assault or Attrition
(Book Two in the Arena Mode Saga)
USA
/
UK
/
Canada

 

PRE-ORDER

 

Final Empire
(The Conclusion of the Arena Mode Saga)

USA
/
UK
/
Canada

 

NOVELLAS

 

The Manticore Ascension

(A Short Story in the Arena Mode Saga)

USA
/
UK
/
Canada

 

 

 

The Manticore Ascension

A Brynja Guðmundsdóttir Story

 

October, 2014

Arena Mode Logo by Dennis Salvatier

 

Arena Mode is Copyright © and Trademark 2013-2015
Blake Northcott, Digital Vanguard Inc. and Noösphere Publishing

ArenaMode.com

 

 

All characters appearing in this work are fictitious (except the people who specifically asked to be in the book – you know who you are). Any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

 

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the publisher or author, except in the case of a reviewer, who may quote brief passages embodied in critical articles or in a review.

Written By

Blake Northcott
  

 

Editors

Jeff Geddes

J.D. Hunter

& J.E. Smith

 

 

Very Special Thanks To

David, Drake and Dawson

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

This story takes place between the events
of ‘Arena Mode’ and ‘Assault or Attrition’.

Chapter One

Being zapped with a few million volts of electricity isn’t as bad as it sounds. Yes, it hurts like a kick in the ass with a frozen boot – that kind of goes without saying – but after the initial shock everything goes numb. It’s like you’ve been given anesthetic and the doctor just asked you to start counting backwards from a hundred; by the time you hit ninety–five you’re already flirting with unconsciousness, peacefully drifting towards a warm, silent void.

Recovering
from the electrical shock? Not nearly as serene.

Peeling my face off the icy floor, I felt as if I was waking from a night of binge drinking, or as if a cinder block had been dropped on my skull from a height of about nine feet. I massaged my throbbing temples, turning slowly and painfully to check my surroundings; if this was supposed to be a hospital, it wasn’t like any I’d seen before.

I couldn’t recall most of what had happened leading up to being electrocuted, but the contract that Cameron Frost’s assistant had asked me to sign was still fresh in my mind. The terms of the agreement were simple: anyone eliminated from the Arena Mode tournament was to be immediately air–lifted to the nearest hospital, where their treatment was to be paid for by the Frost Corporation. In a sporting event where death and dismemberment were a distinct possibility, a free trip to the emergency room was the least they could offer.

After a couple of false starts I staggered to my feet, and found myself standing in a cavernous hall with towering ceilings, all fashioned from grey stone and wooden pillars. Flickering torches lined each wall that bathed the room in a hazy orange glow. The ceiling was so high that the torchlight had trouble reaching it, but as my eyes adjusted to the dim light, I could vaguely make out the details of the fresco that loomed above. I studied the Italian renaissance–style painting that covered the entire ceiling, and the detail was mind–blowing. It depicted a story – from what I could tell, a series of battles – that raged across a vista of snow–capped mountains: knights in shining armor hacking away at mythological beasts, superhumans in capes being shot at by military aircraft, and in the midst of all this carnage was a man sitting atop a throne; a handsome, bearded gentleman who appeared bored and distracted, as if unconcerned by the chaos that surrounded him.

Mesmerized by the artwork above, I heard a whoosh followed by a metallic clank. The doors at the far end of the room had slid open. They appeared to be made of time–worn oak, held together by bands of iron, but they retracted into the walls like a modern entranceway.

A lanky teenage boy danced into the room, his ears engulfed by a pair of silver headphones. Completely oblivious to my presence, he spun and broke into what looked like a ‘moonwalk’ – a backwards sliding motion I once saw in a vintage Michael Jackson video. A mess of blond hair flopped across his face, blanketing his eyes as he popped, locked, and shuffled across the floor, occasionally kicking out his foot or hollering in tune with whatever song was filling his ears.

The dance was hilarious, though funnier was the kid’s attire: a shimmering suit of medieval armor. It wasn’t a clunky iron suit, as I imagined an authentic suit of armor would be; it was sleek and streamlined with a glowing crest emblazoned on the breastplate: a pair of flaming dragons – one red and one blue – nipping at each other’s tails in a circular pattern. Whatever this armor was designed for, it definitely wasn’t medieval.

I attempted to flag down the moon-walking knight, but my efforts were futile. “Hey!” I shouted, my voice nearly cracking into a giggle. “Yo, King of Pop, I need to ask you a question.”

No response.

He continued to dance towards me; head bobbing, eyes closed, until I reached out and grabbed his shoulders, stopping him mid–spin.

“What the holy heck!” he screamed, eyes snapping open. He scrambled back a few steps and tore the earphones from his head, tossing them to the floor. “Where did you come from?” His eyes trailed disapprovingly from my long blue hair down to my torn crop top, and continued further south to my ripped jeans and spiked combat boots. “And what are you
wearing
?”

I blurted out a laugh, studying his ridiculous costume with the same disapproving glare. “Okay Sir Galahad – you’re giving
me
fashion advice?”

His brushed his golden bangs aside and furrowed his brow. “Sir who?”

“Forget it,” I groaned. “Can you just tell me where the doctors are?”

“Doctors?” he replied, increasingly perplexed.

“Oh for the love of...” I trailed off for a moment, exhaling loudly. I squinted and pinched the bridge of my nose, sensing the onset of yet another killer migraine. “You
do
know what a doctor is, right?”

“Of course,” he said with a small nod, “but I’m not sure why you’re looking for one.”

“I was just electrocuted,” I said sharply. “During Arena Mode. You know, that thing that’s on
every
single simulcast all over the world right...like
right
now?”

The boy didn’t respond. He just stood perfectly still, scanning my face as if he were attempting to solve a puzzle. Then he burst into a fit of laughter. “Oh man, did Drake put you up to this? You had me going there for a minute.”

“Look,” I shouted, jamming a finger into the kid’s breastplate, “I don’t give a fudge who you are, or how you...” I paused, suddenly unable to control the words as they rolled from my tongue. “Wait – why the fudge did I just say ‘fudge’? This is fudging weird...”

“If you were trying to swear,” the kid said matter–of–factly, “the word was caught by the PMD units installed throughout the castle. They’re
everywhere
.” There was something about the way he enunciated the word ‘everywhere’; slow and condescending, as if I should have already known the answer.

“The what?” I asked, gazing around the room.

“The Profanity Modulation Devices – the units that translate inappropriate words into...” he stopped mid–sentence, narrowing his eyes. “Why don’t you know this?” he asked suspiciously. “
Everyone
in the Kingdom knows this. Something strange is going on here.”

The doors at the far end of the room slid open once more. Another knight entered; a kid who bore a striking resemblance to the one who had danced in just a few moments before. But this knight appeared slightly older, had shorter hair, and seemed quite a bit angrier.

“Dawson!” the knight shouted as he stomped towards us, the soles of his metallic boots clanking across the stone. “Where the heck have you been? Didn’t you hear about the shields?”

“Hey Drake,” the younger knight replied. “No, I didn’t hear anything. I was getting my groove on.”

“You and your 80s pop hits,” Drake grumbled. “Sometimes I can’t believe we’re even related. We have an emergency: there was a power surge five minutes ago and all the shields died.”

“All?” Dawson asked.


All
,” Drake repeated, eyes bulging from their sockets. “As in,
every
single fudging shield in the fudging Kingdom. We’re completely exposed, and we have no fudging idea what caused it.”

Dawson clapped a hand over his mouth. “Watch your language, bro! What if dad heard you speaking like that?”

“I’m sorry,” Drake replied, visibly reining himself in with a trace of embarrassment, “but I’m more than a little vexed, here. We need to find the source of this anomaly. Could someone have hit us with an EMP?”

“If someone did hit us with an electro–magnetic pulse,” Dawson said, scratching at his mop of hair, “this blue–haired commoner might know something about it.”

I was annoyed before –
now
I was ready to kick someone in the face. “Commoner?” I shouted. “I don’t have to stand here and listen to this sugar.”

“Is this blue-haired wench with you?” Drake asked, jamming a thumb in my direction.

“I thought
you
sent her,” Dawson replied with a shrug. “One of your jokes...I figured you dressed up a commoner in strange rags and sent her here to trick me – ?”

“How on Earth would
that
be a joke?” Drake shouted. “I don’t even make jokes – and if I did, how would
this
be one of them?”

“Yeah, it was kind of a head–scratcher,” Dawson replied. “I figured you were trying to be funny and this was just a really bad first attempt.”

Drake produced something from his hip: it looked like the hilt of a medieval sword, but there was no blade. “She’s the intruder,” he announced, his words dripping with venom. He leveled the hilt towards me as a series of metallic links telescoped from the cross-guard, solidifying into a shimmering amber blade.

“We don’t know that for sure,” Dawson said, “Why don’t we just – ”

“Move!” Drake interrupted. In once swift motion the knight swiped his younger sibling aside and raised his sword, swinging it towards me.

BOOK: The Manticore Ascension: A Short Story in the Arena Mode Universe
12.89Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
ads

Other books

Zipped by Laura McNeal
El origen de las especies by Charles Darwin
Sunny Daze by R.J. Ross
Codename Prague by D. Harlan Wilson
5 Big Bunny Bump Off by Kathi Daley
Love on Assignment by Cara Lynn James
A Woman on the Edge of Time by Gavron, Jeremy;
Eternal by Glass, Debra