One seat on the intergalactic Sakien Empire’s supreme ruling body, the Council of Seven, remains unfilled: that of the Empress Apparent. The seat isn’t won by votes or marriage. It’s won in a tournament of ritualized combat. Now the tournament, the Empress Game, has been called and the women of the empire will stop at nothing to secure political domination for their homeworlds. Kayla Reunimon, a supreme fighter, is called by a mysterious stranger to battle it out in the arena.
The battle for political power isn’t contained by the tournament’s ring, however. The empire’s elite gather to forge, strengthen or betray alliances in a dance that will determine the fate of the empire for a generation. With the empire wracked by a rising nano virus plague and stretched thin by an ill-advised planet-wide occupation of Ordoch in enemy territory, everything rests on the woman who rises to the top."
CHAPTER ONE:
Shadow Panthe.
Power, grace, deadliness defined. Always cunning, never merciful, and endlessly, infinitely, victorious.
She, Kayla Reinumon, was Shadow Panthe.
And she was tired of it.
Tired of fighting, of hiding.
Perhaps her foe would end it. Kayla gripped a kris dagger in each hand and eyed the fellow occupant of the Blood Pit. This one would not kill her. Could not, had she a wish to, which she most likely did.
Every woman who earned the dubious glamour of fighting in the Blood Pit wished to vanquish Shadow Panthe and claim her throne. Well, this one would not.
The girl—who possessed the ridiculous stage name Angelic Assassin—came at Kayla with knives flashing. She had technique, at least. Flawless footwork brought Angelic close, her blade descending at the perfect angle to slice a hamstring. It might have succeeded if Kayla hadn’t spent her twenty-five Ordochian years training for moments such as this.
She lashed out with her booted foot and sent one of the girl’s knives spinning, arcing toward the crowd that sat above the Blood Pit. It struck one of the spectators, judging by the scream that rang out and was followed by a chorus of cheers. Kayla smiled. Hopefully, the man had been killed, or at least seriously maimed.
She hated them, the men who came to this planet on the edge of Imperial Space to watch her fight. They fed off the violence, swore, sweated and screamed her name all night. She hated them, but not more than she hated herself for being Shadow Panthe. For giving them exactly what they wanted.
Angelic rolled and recovered quickly. Impressive. Kayla glanced at the wavy edge of her own kris daggers before tossing the left one away. It skittered to the limit of the pit, out of reach.
“You’ll wish you had that back,” Angelic called. A round of boos met her declaration—the crowd didn’t believe it any more than Kayla did.
“We’ll see.” Kayla twirled her remaining kris. “Come.”
Angelic lunged again, grabbing at Kayla’s knife hand even as she stabbed at her with her long, thin blade. Clever girl. Not a worthy opponent for Shadow Panthe, but clever nonetheless.
The fight ranged across the pit floor, as Lumar liked it to. Despite her disgust for the owner of the Blood Pit, she knew who paid her prize money and how he liked things done. Lumar wanted a show. If Kayla and her brother, Corinth, didn’t depend on the credits the Blood Pit fights brought in she would have ended the fight in a heartbeat, spat at the spectators and told Lumar exactly where to shove his “show.”
But they did need the credits, so Kayla ignored the self-loathing and toyed with the blonde girl. If inflicting half-a-dozen minor cuts and bruises could be considered toying. Kayla herself had almost as many injuries. The fight had to look good, after all. The crowd wanted their sport.
Kayla closed with the girl again. Her sleek, cat-like movements and micro-fine reflexes had earned Kayla the moniker Shadow Panthe long before her nights in the Blood Pit. It had taken fighting like a caged animal in front of a crowd to make her hate the title and all the skill it implied. They chanted it now, the syllables elongated, the sound drawn out. SHA-DOE-PANTH. SHA-DOE-PANTH.
The crowd’s mood turned. They’d seen enough sport, now they wanted blood—Angelic’s blood, never Shadow Panthe’s. Not their infamous champion wench.
Screw ‘em.
She’d given them enough already, and she still had a final match tonight.
Kayla sidestepped, affecting a miscalculation that appeared to put her off balance. Angelic lunged to take advantage, as many fighters would have. Of course, a better fighter would have been more cautious. The best, like Kayla’s mentor, would simply have laughed at such an obvious move. Not Angelic. She dove right in.
Kayla shifted her weight, spun past the charging girl and brought the hilt of her kris down hard on Angelic’s temple. The girl crumpled without a sound to the stained organoplastic floor of the pit.
The crowd roared above them, and bile stung the back of Kayla’s throat. She glared at them, her adoring fans. She knew they sensed her enmity and cherished her all the more for it. What better champion had they ever seen? Who more flawless, more coldhearted than she?
None.
Nights like this made her almost thankful for her mentor’s murder. If she were ever to have seen Kayla thus, fighting for money, for the pleasure of men in a pit of filth on the slum side of Altair Tri. . .
An oddity in the crowd caught her eye. Had he moved, she would never have noticed him. That he didn’t stand wasn’t in and of itself strange. Many men couldn’t be bothered to rise for her though they applauded and shouted as loud as any.
This man, though, didn’t clap. He didn’t wave his arms about, say something to his neighbor or point at the unconscious body of her latest victim. He held himself as rigid as the trinium decking and stared at her. She wanted to hate him, group him with the others. He sat in the arena, had paid to watch her fight another woman, hadn’t he? One look at him and her mind refused. Different.
In his eyes, she saw none of the admiration, none of the lust or possessiveness that shone in the others’. What she saw instead disturbed her: calculation. As if he saw past the façade, past the paint that covered her, the stage-name that shielded her.
She touched her fingers to the black ashk that wound around the lower half of her face, afraid she’d been unmasked. The cloth was still in place, revealing only her eyes.
The whoosh of pressure locks releasing tore through the crowd noise, offering her an escape. A battered section of the pit wall opened toward her, all the invitation she needed. She scooped up the dagger she’d tossed aside and fled the pit.
Brooks, who serves as an executive producer, appeared on the panel along with the cast of “The Shannara Chronicles” in its first-ever public appearance – Ivana Baquero, Manu Bennett, Austin Butler, Poppy Drayton and John Rhys-Davies – as well as series Executive Producers Al Gough and Miles Millar. The Q&A session was moderated by TV Guide Magazine Senior Writer, Damian Holbrook.
Fans can stop by MTV’s booth (#3729) on the convention center all weekend to pick up a special, limited edition of “The Elfstones of Shannara,” complete with a one-of-a-kind Comic-Con book jacket.
For more ways to connect with “The Shannara Chronicles,” check out our newly launched Tumblr (theshannarachroniclestumblr.com) filled with exclusive behind the scenes photos, videos, and concept artwork, like us on Facebook at Facebook.com/theshannarachronicles and follow the show on Twitter at Twitter.com/Shannara.
Al Gough (“Spider-Man 2,” “Smallville”) and Miles Millar (“Spider-Man 2,” “Smallville”) are executive producers and the show runners of “The Shannara Chronicles.” Jon Favreau (“Iron Man” Franchise), Jonathan Liebesman (“Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles”), Terry Brooks, Dan Farah and Gene Stein also serve as executive producers. Additionally, Jonathan Liebesman directed the first two episodes. MTV is producing with Sonar Entertainment."
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