The lamashu stirs, flex­ing its mas­sive paws and stretch­ing its feath­ered wings. Its eyes, now open, col­lect the light from the explo­sions into a ghostly glow­ing patina. Then it opens its huge mouth into a half-yawn, half-disgruntled roar, wrin­kling its long nose and show­cas­ing its long omni­vore teeth.

Kiddu waves at the beast.

Gil turns around.

Three impe­r­ial hoplites, decked out in pearl­stone breast­plates, hel­mets, long spears, and huge round shields, stare up at him. Two of them hold up their spears over­hand, flexed to throw. The third takes out a wand tipped with a bright blue gem and points it.

Instinc­tively, Gil holds up his hands in a sur­ren­der­ing gesture—including the hand hold­ing the pouch of flame­craft.

The lamashu roars again, which does not put the Akka­dian sol­diers at ease.

Before Gil can com­ply, Kiddu grabs his arm and pulls him tum­bling down the other side of the wall, back into the lamashu pen. The sandy ground knocks the wind out of him.

A thin bolt of light­ning angles up above them—the hoplite with the wand must have dis­charged and missed. Beyond the wall, Gil can hear the hoplites curs­ing.

Kiddu has already bounced to her feet. She helps Gil up.

Through the roars of thun­der, Gil can hear the hoplites run­ning around to the back door. The Empire also has mas­ter cards for open­ing gravitic doors, and he imag­ines they work much faster than the one he used.

Oppo­site the back door, down the open-air hall­way, the lamashu has appar­ently just real­ized it is no longer chained. It rears up on its hind legs and spreads out its wings, as tall as Gil and half again, with a wingspan twice that height. Then it slams its front paws down, kick­ing up a shock­wave of dust.

The beast stands between the big wooden gates to the main arena—the only other way out of the Cir­cus.

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