Princess of Chaos

Princess of Chaos by Bryce Walton

Moljar, a seven-foot Terran-Martian half-breed, is the champion of the Red Moon Games, the bi-monthly gladiatorial slaughter staged in the Colosseum at Venus Port under the order of Princess Alhone, the grey-furred alien ruler of Venus. After surviving a giant saurian, a saber-toothed beast, and a swarm of poisonous kristons, only three fighters remain alive: Moljar; Mahra, a silver-haired Terran mutant girl who fights alongside him; and Gasdon, a Martian pirate. Moljar privately vows he has pledged to kill Alhone and bring her pelt to his people, the persecuted half-breed tribesmen. A mysterious heat ray from the roof destroys the kristons before they finish the fighters off, and a loudspeaker announces that the Mistmen, Venus's scourge of pirate raiders, are attacking and sacking Venus Port. In the panic, Alhone offers Moljar freedom and a position as a Guard of Anghore, her hidden citadel across the Sea of Mort, if he can slip through the Mistmen's detectors and carry word to Anghore for reinforcements. She gives him a yellow ring-key that operates a gyro-scout and the gates of Anghore, and he accepts, intending eventually to use the position to kill her. Before he can act on his rage, an energy field knocks him out, and Alhone and her retinue vanish. Reviving amid the fleeing crowds, Moljar finds Gasdon has stolen the ring-key and is holding Mahra. Moljar kills Gasdon in a bar fight, reclaims the ring, and flees with Mahra in the gyro-scout, which flies automatically toward Anghore across the Sea of Mort. Mahra reveals she is a mutant scholar who fled Terran persecution; she and Moljar spar over his fixed hatred of Alhone. A giant flying gruoon (crocodile-like creature) destroys their gyro, and they crash into the sea. Swimming for survival, they fight off a sea-serpent and take refuge on the living raft of a giant snail-like ianthina. Moljar kills an attacking giant bat and uses its wing as a sail, steering by compass toward Anghore. A monstrous storm wave wrecks the raft and sweeps them unconscious to the shore beneath Anghore's granite sea wall. Using the ring-key, they enter Anghore's gates and are confronted by armored catman Anghorians. Moljar kills one and wounds another (Akare) to protect Mahra, only to hear Alhone's disembodied voice: she has never left Anghore, and the "games" outside were merely projections used to test and select the best warriors, including for the ranks of the Mistmen. Alhone offers to spare Moljar if he abandons Mahra, who has been condemned to the "seventh plain," but he refuses. A Mistman's ray petrifies Mahra; Moljar attacks and is knocked unconscious. He wakes drugged and pampered in Alhone's decadent chamber, dressed as an Anghorian Guard. Alhone explains that Anghore and its people came from another coexistent dimensional "plain," that a device called the Matrix can transmute matter between these worlds, and that she has bred and selected the Solar System's greatest warriors, via the Games and the Mistmen, to help her conquer the universe, with Moljar as her chosen consort. He refuses and attacks her, but she evades him and reveals Mahra trapped in the Matrix's field, threatened with banishment to the deadly seventh plain. Moljar bargains for time, and Alhone summons wave after wave of Anghorian and enslaved warriors to fight him in single combat with swords; he kills them one by one, though badly wounded. As the fighting drags on, Alhone becomes strangely paralyzed and incoherent — Mahra, unfrozen, is silently seizing control of Alhone's mind. Moljar begins to strangle Alhone, but Mahra's telepathic voice stops him, urging him to let her live because she alone can operate the Matrix. Alhone frees Mahra from the device, then, seizing the chance, activates the Matrix to flee to another plain of existence. Moljar hurls his sword into the Matrix's mechanism, triggering a catastrophic explosion that destroys Anghore in a spreading conflagration. Moljar and Mahra escape the collapsing citadel to the beach, watching Anghore become a burning crater. Mahra confirms that mutants like her do possess real telepathic power, which is why Normals fear them. Reconciled as fellow outcasts, half-breed and mutant, they embrace as the story ends.

By Bryce Walton · First published 1985 · Genre: Science Fiction, Fantasy, Adventure · 5 chapters · 12,922 words

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Moljar planted his columnar legs wide apart beside the dying saurian and blinked blood and sweat from his eyes. Only slightly strained after three hours of the Red Moon Games, his seven foot height of Terran-Martian muscles gleamed damply in the blazing arc lights of the Colosseum. His lungs sucked hungrily at the dense Venusian air as he waited for whatever would next be sent against him, the champion of them all.

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fantasy · adventure · magic · royalty · female protagonist · coming of age · conflict · friendship · betrayal · mythical creatures · sword fighting · quest

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