Chapter 16
Sage
D ust sputtered out from the ceiling, plummeting around me each time the roaring crowd above cheered in victory. The building shook so violently, I wondered if it all might come crashing down.
I sat on the sandy ground, my wrists in shackles, chained to the wall behind me.
Directly across from me was a looming iron gate, stained with blood and ichor. To my right, there were more prisoners, each one of them shackled, their faces covered.
Metal screeched against metal as the iron gate in front of me swung open.
Two armor-clad guards stepped inside—their gauntlets clasped around a man’s wrists as they dragged his corpse behind them.
Matted, brown hair, stained with ichor and pebbled with sand, hung over his downturned head.
His legs, full of lacerations and vicious, deep wounds, dragged behind him, a gilded river of his life’s essence trailing after him, marring the sands.
My eyes widened at the corners—a grotesque, fist-sized hole was in the center of his back, going all the way through to the other side. The flesh was tattered, gaping. Gory.
“Always start the pile back here. By the end of the day, there will be hundreds of bodies, so it’s important to give yourself enough room for them all,” directed the shorter guard, her voice authoritative.
Confident. “Also, always remove face coverings from the corpses. We use them for the other prisoners. As this one’s face covering didn’t make it through the fight, we don’t have to worry about it, but for the ones that do, we’ll create a separate pile. ”
“Understood,” the other one answered swiftly as they discarded the body. She seemed eager to please. A new trainee, no doubt.
“When the event is over, the vuleeries will come for the corpses.” The shorter guard’s tone became grave. “Ensure you do not get in their way. Some do not differentiate between living and dead.”
“I’ve heard quite a few . . . unpleasant stories about them. I will make sure to keep my distance.”
“Good.” The guard grinned at her. “You are going to do just fine here.”
Cheering erupted and another plume of dust fell from the floor above. I closed my eyes, waiting for it to be over. The hairs on the back of my neck bristled, as I heard hundreds, if not thousands, of voices begin to chant one word over and over again—
Crush. Crush. Crush.
The guards made their way back to the iron gate, peering outside.
The intense chanting halted.
A moment of silence, followed by a painful cry and a mighty roar.
Then, chaos erupted, and the audience began to scream and yell in victory, stirring the floorboards to cough out another round of dirt and dust. The entire place rumbled, the people’s combined voices louder than thunder.
“We don’t collect this body, right?” asked the trainee.
“Correct,” replied the other guard. “There are three other collection rooms. We alternate with them.”
“Alright.” The trainee turned around, her gaze falling on me. She leaned into the other guard and whispered, “Umm, boss, there is a female here.”
“Yes, there is. I know it’s a bit uncommon to see, but it does happen every once in a while. You’ll get used to it,” the guard answered as she, too, turned to face me. “This one has come with a special request from Empress Avena.”
The trainee gaped. “Truly, Her Majesty?”
“Indeed. I would not lie about such a thing.”
“For the empress to send her . . . well, she must be of great importance,” the trainee remarked.
“Perhaps at one point. But considering she is here, sentenced to have her soul crushed, I’d say that she has lost her favor with the empress.”
A guard emerged on the other side of the gate. She jerked her chin toward me. “She’s up next. ”
“We’ll bring her out,” the higher-ranking guard replied.
The female on the outside tapped the gate then walked away.
Both guards made their way over to me, the trainee a bit more hesitant, her pace slightly slower.
Attached to the higher-ranking guard’s belt was a ring full of silver keys.
She fiddled with them, looking for the right one.
When she found it, she picked up my wrist, slid the key into the lock, and turned it to the side.
The shackle landed on the ground with a heavy thump .
She did the same with the other shackle.
Her eyes fell to mine, and she spoke with the smallest hint of compassion, “A word of advice—it will be less painful and over much quicker if you don’t fight. ”
Then, she and the trainee yanked me up onto my feet.
Wait , a small voice whispered inside of me, beseeching me to say the word out loud, but I could not. My tongue was as useless as the rest of me.
They started to drag me toward the gate. I didn’t fight them.
Please wait , that inner voice said again.
But why ? I asked it.
I had no child. No mate. No home.
I had nothing .
So why should I fight?
Bright, blinding light bored holes into my eyes as I was thrown out onto the scalding-hot, bloodstained sands. The iron gate screeched as it swung closed, locking me in the arena .
Drums began to beat, followed by the powerful blast of horns, so strong they courted shivers down the length of my spine. All around me, people began to cheer, their combined voices deafening.
I looked up at the vast crowd, my gaze sliding from one female face to the next. Most of the audience was made up of women, but every once in a while, I’d spot someone who had their face completely covered—just like the prisoners down below.
The audience grew quiet, their attention shifting.
I followed their lead.
Hoisted up high, in a private balcony, was a group of women, all dressed in expensive-looking clothes. The one in the middle, a blonde, stood up from her chair. She straightened her slinky, silk garb before she strode up to the front of the balcony.
She raised her slender arms, adorned in gold bangles.
“Good citizens of Lorphiah. The female you see before you has been condemned to have her soul crushed.” She pulled her hand down, clenching her fist closed, her theatrics stirring more cheering from the crowd.
“It is my honor to present a soul crusher from my house, the noble and revered House of Cinphius, the greatest ludus in Lorphiah, to carry out this execution. In honor of the empress, I give you Norvenia, the scourge of the bloody south. Behold, your soul crusher—” She gestured to a gate, six times the size of the one I had been shoved out of.
Metal groaned, and slowly, it began to lift.
Boom. Boom. Boom.
The ground trembled beneath me as a horned giant stepped out from the gate, dressed in armor.
A skeleton of some monstrous beast curved around her shoulders, its sharp spikes sticking straight up.
Its skull hung over her breastplate—empty eye sockets forever keeping watch.
She thrust her gauntlet into the air, and the crowd exploded with excitement.
The gauntlet looked like it was made of massive scales, the fingers tipped with sharp, deadly claws.
Whatever creature it had come from had to be huge.
Immediately, I knew that was the soulius Avriel had spoken of.
The giant pointed her brutal ax at me and let out a bloodcurdling roar.
If a cave that feasted on horror could scream, that was exactly what it would have sounded like.
And although it made the hairs on the back of my neck stand, the instincts that kept me alive, those natural fight-or-flight responses, were drowned out by my grief.
I would do as the guard suggested . . . I wouldn’t fight.
And maybe, just maybe, when I reached the shores of oblivion, I would be reunited with my child.