Chapter 2 #3
I shake my head, dispersing the thoughts that spill across my mind like an overturned bucket.
I need to be focused so that I can triumph over Maldred…
an opponent three times my size. I will win.
The masters will have to be entertained by that alone because I will not be letting this fighter stick his prick in me.
There was a time when I would have left it up to Fate.
In The Barrack, I would have let someone like him hurt me first and hope that his comeuppance would be swift and harsh.
But that doesn’t work in the pits. No one cares about more pain and suffering.
I can hope he’ll get knocked out, but it’s not enough of a certainty to be relied upon.
I just hope that I’ve learned enough in the training pits over the days and nights that I’ve been here.
I make my turbulent head be quiet, as I have when I’ve fought with the other humans in the practice fights.
They were mostly women, though, the traitorous thing unhelpfully supplies, and this man is enormous. A seasoned fighter. All I can hope is that he will underestimate me, and that I can get a good kick in on that bad knee.
At least my new master has given me a chance.
‘Shall we begin?’
The two fae give enthusiastic whoops, and Kobeth grins nastily at me.
‘Do not fail me, slave. Send her in.’
I’m taken by the back of the neck and thrust through a very narrow door that closes tightly as soon as I’m through. I find myself in the room with the huge human male.
I see now that it’s bare and about the size of a fighting ring. There’s blood staining the walls and a crude circle is painted into the stone floor in blue. It’s weathered and faded.
The fighter in front of me grins. Some of his teeth are missing. He looks even bigger now that I’m in front of him.
He advances slowly. I hear the spectators shouting from beyond the window. I glance and see a third fae just for a moment. Behind the others. I hadn’t noticed him when I was in the main room.
Survive.
I’m pulled back into the moment as the drying sheet is pulled away from me and I realize my opponent is no more than a step away.
Focus!
He grins again, looking his fill of me. I vaguely hear the orcs and the fae shouting and laughing at my back.
Maldred casts a look at them and doesn’t go in for the kill despite my proximity. He’s playing with me, I realize. Making it a show for his masters, just as they ordered.
Anger rises in me, taking the bile’s place.
I strike at him, catching him in the face, raking my sharpened nails across his cheek and leaving deep gouges. He seems surprised as he touches his flesh below his eye and his finger comes away red.
He looks…embarrassed but it quickly gives way to fury. His eyes flash and his bellow is deafening as he tries to grab me. I only just evade his meaty fingers and run to the other side of the room.
He pounds after me. He’s slower than me, but he’s well fed and strong while I’ve been living off scraps for weeks. I don’t have his stamina.
My eyes find the window. The third fae is still there. He’s chained to the wall, I see now. He’s bruised and bloody. He’s staring at me and I feel as if I know him too…
But it’s different than it was with the other fae. I know him…well.
Don’t I?
LOCKE
It’s been more than a few weeks, I think.
But I can’t be sure how much time has passed in the First Circle.
It moves differently here. Faster. That’s why they chose these old mines as the practice grounds.
They’re able to train a fighter for months here, but in the First Circle, only weeks have passed.
They churn out fighters quicker that way, make more money.
I watch her out of my good eye. The other’s still swollen from the last beating Bere and Warrior gave me.
They let Kobeth join them. Fucking orc just likes to watch suffering; he doesn’t care who it is.
It won’t be long now, though. Bere’s time here is almost finished. They’ll end me before they leave.
Bryn’s face is gaunt. She’s lost the roundness her body was beginning to get while she was with us for those weeks. She has cuts and scrapes, gashes in various states of healing. But she’s alive. Against all odds, she’s survived the pits.
Her eyes alight on me and something about me takes her out of the fight for a moment.
A moment too long.
I want to shout at her not to take her eyes off the fighter. His eyes flash out at the room beyond him, and I see his lips upturning slightly.
This is as much a game to him as it is to the cunts who are watching from out here, I realize, and this fight is just a prelude to what the human male is actually getting out of it.
This is his reward for his wins. Bryn is his entertainment, as they’re both the entertainment of the others watching.
They’ll let him do what he wants to her so long as he doesn’t kill her.
Focus on the fight!
Gods, she’s tiny compared to him.
Her eyes shift away from me, blank and unknowing.
She doesn’t recognize me. I suppose I knew she wouldn’t.
My conjure on her was very strong. I didn’t want her to remember me while she was down there, to recall what I’ve done despite guaranteeing, as much as I was able, that she wouldn’t die in this place.
I ensured that survival became the single most important thought in her mind and I don’t regret it, though she looks vacant and confused. It may well be the reason she isn’t dead.
The iron chain around my wrists clanks a little.
Yet all of it was for naught. The awful things I’ve done in the name of protecting the Light, and the Underhill.
The conjures I worked on Jak and Morgan to make them leave, just so that I could bring Bryn here freely, hoping that I would be able to glean something about Fiana’s plans, her whereabouts.
The changes I made in Bryn’s mind so that she’d be pliable.
I’ve sold my soul for nothing. I have nothing and now we’re both captured and there’s no way out of the pits. Not for me. Not for her.
I close my eyes for a moment. I was so close to finishing this.
At least Morgan and Jak are long gone, safe in the Light Realm. If they were here, no doubt they’d be chained alongside me, perhaps dead already.
Warrior guffaws loudly next to Bere as the human male grabs Bryn, turns her toward the row of males watching and grabs her between her legs for their pleasure.
Her pained squeal and her futile struggle make me wish with everything in me that I could do something to help her. But I’m covered in iron chains. There’s no reaching my magick like this.
My good eye narrows at Warrior. How the fuck did that cunt survive Morgan snapping his neck?
I’ve wondered about it constantly, every time he and Bere tortured me, and I’m still not sure what exactly he is other than fae, except that he must be partly Dark Realm.
Has to be. No full fae would have been able to survive that.
Morgan twisted his head like a cork out of a bottle in Dead City.
I heard his bones snap and he was most assuredly dead.
Yet here he is. Though there are now pink scars on the left side of his face from where he began to burn. He must have woken in the fire not long after we’d left.
He already knew where we were going, didn’t even need to follow us.
I wonder why he waited until after we’d arrived at the pits before he appeared and told Bere that I’d saved the human slave as well as ordered Morgan to kill him.
It took him mere moments to destroy the trust I’d built with the flesh-trader, just as all of these many months of lies and spying in the Dark Realms were about to come to fruition.
I’ve heard my captors talking when they thought I was insensible.
But all I know for sure is that these monstrous orc cunts know who Fiana is, and that they do business with her.
I was right, much good as it does me now.
They know how the evil bitch is stealing humans from the Light Realm.
Perhaps they even know the schedule she keeps, and what Circle her fortress is in.
Gods, we were so close. I was so close to finding her, stopping her.
And now I’m in chains and Bryn…
I focus on her even though it’s hopeless, and I see that the male is bleeding freely from a deep gash in his shoulder.
She’s running from him, but she’s getting tired.
As I watch, she crouches down and flicks up the bath sheet she was wearing, the one that he ripped off and threw to the floor.
It covers his face, blinding him for but a moment, but it forces him to stop his pursuit of her while he struggles to rip it away.
She rebounds off the wall, and, while he’s still pulling at the sheet, she aims a swift and hard kick to his leg.
I straighten in my chains, paying more attention, my heart leaping.
He gives a pained roar, and his knee gives out under him, hitting the floor with a crack that makes him squeal like a beast. He finally gets the sheet away, giving her a look that promises all the injury he can mete out without breaking the rules and killing her.
Staggering to his feet, he launches himself at her, catching her finally and pulling the sheet around her neck.
He uses it to subdue her, pulling her up so that she’s on her toes and can’t breathe.
A small stalactite falls from the cavern ceiling, striking him in the head.
He frowns and looks up in confusion, but he’s not hurt enough for it to matter.
Bere and the orcs all peer up into the cavern ceiling to see where it came from. I notice that Warrior is the only one who doesn’t and my brow furrows a little as I turn my eyes back to the fight.
Maldred lets her dangle, touching her roughly while the orcs and the fae throw pouches of coins into each other’s laps and laugh.
I let out a defeated breath.
It’s over. I’m going to have to watch him defile her. It’s what they wanted me to see. And then they’ll probably kill me.