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“He cheated,” I choked out, covering my face with my sleeve. “He’s fucking cheating.”
Trace growled, glaring up at him. “He smuggled in charms. He’s using them to try to beat us because he’s not strong enough to beat us himself.”
Lachlan cracked his knuckles as he drew himself up to his feet. The glass shards had settled by now, and I wanted to mock Wesley for sneaking in such a lame charm, but I was too fucking pissed to even come up with a good insult.
“He’s not gonna know what beatin’ is until I’m done with him,” Lach grunted. “He won’t even make it two steps into the desert. Do you hear that, Wesley? Ye’re a fuckin’ coward, and ye’ve no skill in magic at all. Ye have to cheat in order to try to beat us. But I can promise ye that by the end of this competition, I will break ye in half with my own hands.”
I jumped to my feet too, glancing around quickly. Several of the other contestants had already scattered, and the last few were bolting off in other directions. But not Wesley. That fuckwad barely even seemed to care about the men who stood with me. His gaze pierced through me as if his only intent was to take me down—and probably hoping to take the guys down too if he was lucky enough.
Does he even care about winning the Gods’ Challenge? Or is he here for another reason?
Maybe he had been sent here by someone inside the school to kill us before we even had a chance to compete.
Well, good fucking luck with that, asshole.
My men and I all began sending out magic toward him, slashing him and pushing him backward. His face trembled with fear, and he grunted, each stroke of energy whipping him hard and fast. I stepped forward, letting my anger begin to take over. I grabbed him with a strand of my energy and began to shake him back and forth as hard as I could.
But as I took another step, the ground beneath my feet roared and cracked.
I had been so obsessed with stopping Wesley in his tracks that I had completely forgotten there was a real threat at hand. The gods hadn’t forgotten that we were in their territory.
All around us, the ground opened up, breaking into what looked like small fissures. Through each one, a giant fist smashed up and grabbed the ground, large stone fingers latching onto the edges of the cracks.
A second later, large stone monsters began pulling themselves up through the crust. Some of the monsters had several heads, while others were enormous giants carrying large heavy mallets. They left caverns in their wake, and heat billowed out from beneath the sand. Merrick, Trace, Lachlan, and I clustered together, not even caring about Wesley in that moment.
He was trying to get his footing, his arms flailing. The look on his face was one of complete terror as he watched the beasts rise up around him.
Merrick’s eyebrows rose, and he glanced over at me. “Fuck. This is already more intense than last time.”
I nodded, magic bursting between my fingertips as I surveyed the oncoming threat. “Yeah. You can say that again.”
This is bad.
Chapter Thirteen
Looking up, I could see the sky begin to change color, morphing from purple to blue to orange.
Large bolts of lightning cracked across the fluttering, translucent clouds, seemingly just above the giant stone monsters’ heads. I turned to my right, watching as one of the fleeing competitors tripped. Before he could regain his feet, a hand smashed up through the ground and grabbed him.
He screamed out as the giant yanked its arm back down, taking him to whatever depths it had come from. My stomach lurched in horror, and I turned away. I couldn’t save him now. But I could make sure a similar fate didn’t befall any of my men.
We’d barely been here five minutes, and the gods already seemed to be making a concerted effort to kill us.
Once the monsters pulled themselves fully out of the fissures around us, they began to move toward us, shaking the ground with each step.
Dammit. This sucks balls.
We were in a fucking standoff with Wesley, but we were going to have to fight the monsters off at the same time. We all gathered into a tight cluster, putting our backs together.
“Lachlan,” I muttered, “you start attacking Wesley with everything you have. I’ve got your back. Merrick and Trace, you guys keep the monsters away from us the best you can.”
Merrick’s face set in grim determination as he flexed his fingers, spinning magic from his hands. “I’ve got this. These big ass motherfuckers are going down.”
Lachlan sneered, glaring at Wesley. “This little weaselly fucker is goin’ to get what he deserves.”
Trace didn’t say a word. He just began sending out large swaths of magic. The first one twisted and contorted into a large net, spinning toward the three-headed stone beast. The net wrapped around the massive monster and took it down to the ground, pinning it to the sand.
I turned toward Wesley, my eyes narrowing as my anger boiled over.
