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While Jan got on with his ‘training’, Aura sat under her bunk in their cell and fretted. The fact that they’d taken him away likely meant that they’d come for her, later, and the longer she waited the more unsettled she grew…
Two sligs eventually turned up at the cell door some time later – she guessed it was about mid-morning, from the activity she could see outside the cell. One stood guard by the open door while the other strode in; she hoped vainly that if he couldn’t see her he’d think he’d got the wrong cell and go elsewhere, but no. Being a slig himself he knew the tricks, and under the bunk was the first place he looked; she flinched away from the stream of light from his oil-lamp – it wasn’t bright, but after being in the dark it felt as bright as any magnesium flare.
“Yeah, got her,” he said, idly, ducking to stare at her, calmly. “Come on, out from under there,” he told her, sternly.
Light from the lantern threw weird patterns off the copper in her eyes; she gave a soft snarl of fear and retreated a little way further back. “No.”
The sharp face scowled. “Either yer come out of there under yer our steam,” the guard threatened. “Else we get yer out from under there wi’ force.”
Aura just huddled into her corner and snarled, softly.
The guard straightened, with a grunt of disgust, and called his colleague in. After a few brief seconds speech that she couldn’t catch, the second guard bent down and reached under the bunk for her.
She couldn’t help it – it was almost a reflex, a hangover from her carnivorous ancestors… she’d closed her teeth on the reaching arm and clenched her jaw before her brain had time to shriek it’s a trap, stupid! The “arm” was a prosthetic, doused in some sort of anaesthetic; she felt the world swim before her eyes, then go out altogether.
“Works every time,” the first guard commented, as his colleague dragged her insensate form out from its meagre shelter, and they both hooted with ugly laughter.
“All right, let’s break for a while…”
Jan let his arms droop with a tired sigh, the quarterstaff dropping from his exhausted fingers to the cold stone flagging of the floor. The older mudokon – the one that had spoken – handed him a water skin; with a cough, Jan took a draught from it and splashed his face. He’d learned both their names now; Arrun was the older of the two, his younger colleague being Lek. He’d also learned who to avoid, Yax and Yaaren – whoever he was – were the primary two, especially when they were together, although apparently they were pretty civil to each other when they didn’t have an audience.
“Hey, kid – c’mere,” Lek beckoned to him. “You want to know how to fight, you come watch old Gorgeous out there –he’s on in three…”
“Gorgeous?” Jan echoed, limping over to the barred doorway.
“Yeah,” the older mud followed him, and chuckled. “Just don’t you call him that, certainly not to his face. He’s ‘Yaaren’ or ‘sir’ to you – or else yer use his stage name, Nexus…” He threw the outer door open.
Immediately the dull roar of the crowd outside met Jan’s ears. He looked outside, worriedly; the well-lit Arena floor was only a metre or so below – a good twenty-five metres in diameter, a forbidding wall all the way round, at least four metres high and studded with doorways. Above that, the tiers of seats, seemingly full to bursting with patrons, stretched up into darkness.
Somewhere below there came the low thunk of a doorway opening, and the hybrid Jan remembered seeing earlier strode out onto the sandy floor; ah, so that’s who he is… The braying of the crowd suddenly increased dramatically in pitch.
“They must like him,” Jan commented, over the crowd’s roar.
“You better believe it,” Arrun agreed. “He’s the best we have.”
“Although Yax would probably tell you different,” Lek added. “That the crowd just like him because he’s ‘pretty’.”
Jan gazed out into the main arena, and watched. The hybrid was tall – eight feet tall, and slender, with a crest of scarlet and maroon feathers streaming across his head and down his back to just below his shoulderblades. He looked to be a combination of predominantly slig and mudokon – his face was obviously a slig’s, although he’d lost three tentacles during the course of his career. His back was straighter and his poise more upright, though, and his arms less fragile-looking than those of the average slig. His legs were straight and powerful, elum-like, the toe-claws replaced with surgical steel replicas – bet he can kick like a mule, too… Jan mused, vaguely. His tail was long and prehensile, two wickedly sharp surgical steel barbs implanted at the tip. He wore plain Arena armour – chest plate, simple copper greaves, a sort of chain-mail and sable-leather loin-cloth, artificial spurs on his hocks – although the colours marked him out as the best, and his rejection of the rest of the outfit said he knew his skills. He carried a simple naginata, at the moment, but there was a dagger thrust into his belt.
The Gladiator raised his arms in response to the crowd, as though acknowledging them, and they roared back, excitedly. One of the staff sprinted out into the ring, just then – a slig, looking proud in his silver and black livery – and, in what looked like a carefully orchestrated ceremony of a sort, the Gladiator thrust out an arm, and the guard gave him a healthy dose of something directly into a vein.
“They’ve obviously got important guests, tonight,” Arrun commented. “They only go through that ritual if there’s someone important enough to warrant it, as that stuff’s expensive…”
“What was it?” Jan asked, watching the ring.
“A cocktail of drugs. Stimulants, usually a hypnotic of some sort… important guests usually like to see a lot of gore, it’s why they come, and he’s usually too ‘clinical’ if they don’t psyche him up beforehand, kills things too cleanly for their liking.”
“Uh, clinical…?”
“Yep. Wi’ that stuff, he ‘plays’ with his prey. Y’don’t die unless he wants yer to…”
To Jan it felt as though the room had cooled by a good few degrees.
The first challenger was a wild creature, of some sort, standing roughly nine feet tall. It sniffed at the air, its eyes small and likely short-sighted, covered from tip to tail in horny keratin plates, then opened a mouth full of teeth and bellowed a challenge.
Yaaren dropped to a fighting stance and matched the creature’s challenge with a hideous wail of his own.
For a while the Gladiator danced rings round the ugly brute. It would charge at him, he’d dance gracefully out of the way; it’d strike at him with one massive clawed foot, he’d just leap over the blow, perhaps strike at it with his blade and open up a cut in its arm. Then his manner subtly changed; instead of the cool expression on his face, his features broke into a leering grin, the long fang in his mouth gleaming dully.
“I though you said-” Jan started, but the younger of the two Gladiators cut in.
“He was just getting warmed up. You watch him now…”
Ten minutes later and Yaaren stood uninjured on the back of the felled beast; both its massive arms were broken and its sightless eyes trailed ichor – it was hideously injured but still very alive… With a great flourish, the elegant Gladiator gave a bellow of triumph and in one clean, graceful move smashed the blade of his weapon through the creature’s skull, and the crowd erupted in unison with a thunderous roar of approval. The great beast convulsed once more, then lay still.
Jan turned away from the doorway, and felt a chill go down his spine.
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