The Dark Symphony

back against his chest, and worked his lips to rid them of a cramped sensation. Proudly, he turned toward the section of the tiers where his father would be seated with his entourage. As he did so, turning his back only fractionally on the arena, the crowd screamed…
    Guil whirled, his mouth open, choked, and started to run. Then he remembered that he was in an arena and that running could take him to no place of safety and could only tire him instead. He stopped and turned to stare at what had frightened him. The body of the dragon was shredding along the spine, disfigured now with seven and eight foot slashes as if it were a Chinese paper construction. The skin flapped open and rustled, curled back and showed dark holes boring away into the body. There was something innately sinister about those dark tunnels, something ugly and disgusting. He was reminded of worm burrows in rancid meat Then, from these holes came the devils.
    That was the only fitting term he could find for them: devils. They stood four feet tall, were two-legged, had triple-elbowed arms that dragged on the floor. They were extremely hairy, their heads warty, greasy, four-eyed monstrosities slashed by wide mouths that had been cram-jammed full of razor-honed yellow teeth that splayed over green lips and dripped drool. Their chests were barrels under thick, short necks, and they were powerful runners if their overly-muscled legs were any indication. Guil thought he could have laughed had the situation not been so perilous. These were creatures out of some test master's nightmares, not things that could possibly ever exist on their own. He stifled his laughter with little trouble, however, for he knew these things could kill—laughable or not.
    He counted ten.
    He stuffed the whistle back in his mouth and blew hard.
    Absolutely nothing.
    The devils did not cease in their exit from the dragon's body, did not blink their eyes, did not show a single sign of weariness.
    Of course
, he thought,
they aren't going to throw one test at me that is essentially like the last, even if I am battling for a mere Class IV
.
    The test masters were shrewd. What would come next would not be anything like what had gone before. The whistle would not work here. He drew his sonic knife, pointed it at the devils climbing down the dragon's skull, and made the motion of cutting. One of the devils screamed. The invisible keen edge of the sonic blade had caught him, sliced him. His stomach suddenly split wide, dumping entrails and blood over the dragon's chin. The devil twirled slightly as if unable to believe what was happening, as if wanting to turn away from the scene and collect its senses. Then it fell, twisting its neck on the floor.
    Guil was disgusted with the thousands in the tiers who wanted blood and who demanded it in the ceremonies, even if it was not real They cheered and gibbered and waved their arms. Vampires, they were, thirsting after the forbidden liquor.
    Another roar of approval. Louder. Deep. Guttural.
    He swung the tip of the blade toward another of the animals, sawed off its left hand. The member fell wetly to the floor, and the fingers convulsed wildly for a few seconds before admitting defeat. Then the hand disappeared. The engineers had no use for it, no reason to maintain its existence.
    He approached the other eight devils, swinging the blade menacingly. But, of course, he could not drive them away. They were not real with a fear of their own, could not experience pain, and had been especially constructed to kill him. Viciously, he swung the tip of the blade, not really touching them, but arcing it across two devils. One, cut nearly in half, wobbled a single step, jerked epileptically, and bounced to the floor in a shower of red that—despite its unreal source—spattered Guil's face. He wiped it off as best he could when he realized the engineers were going to keep it intact. A bubble of it caught in his nose, and he blew it free. The second devil, his head split, slid gently to the floor.
    Vomit tickled the back of Guil's throat with its acid fingers. The test masters were a little too careful with the detail, a little too generous with the sadism for the spectators. They splashed gore and pain around like children with water and sand. Guil wondered whether the real reason they did not want to see sound rifles used except as a last resort was because sound rifles were clean and left no blood or mangled remains when aimed correctly. Was the