Ahrick
I saw her the moment they brought her out.
The cage hung above Persico's box like a trophy, and inside it stood a human female dressed in strips of fabric that barely qualified as clothing. Chains held the sheer material together, leaving almost nothing to the imagination—her legs, her stomach, the curve of her spine all exposed to thousands of hungry eyes.
Rage hit me first. Hot and immediate.
They'd dressed her like a whore. Like something to be used and discarded. The fabric was so thin it might as well have been nonexistent, and the way it moved with each trembling breath she took made my jaw clench hard enough to hurt.
But beneath the anger, something else stirred.
She was beautiful.
Even terrified, even dressed like that, even standing in a cage waiting to be won by whatever monster proved strongest—she was stunning. Dark hair that caught the harsh arena lights. Skin that looked too pale, too fragile for this place. And a face that held something I hadn't expected to see.
Defiance.
Her head was high. Shoulders back. She stood like a warrior even though I noticed how badly she trembled. She was terrified—anyone with eyes saw that—but she wasn't broken.
Not yet.
Her eyes swept over the crowd of fighters and I saw the moment she found me. Something flickered across her face—hope, maybe, or desperation—but we were too far apart to tell for sure. The distance between the pit floor and Persico's elevated box was too great for real connection, too great for her to read the promise I was trying to send with my gaze.
I'll protect you. I'll win. You're safe.
I didn't know if she understood. Didn't know if she saw past the monsters surrounding me, all of them staring at her like she was their next meal.
Persico rose from his chair, and the crowd's roar intensified until it was a physical thing, a wall of sound that pressed against my eardrums and made my teeth ache.
"Beings of Fange City!" His voice boomed through the arena, amplified by speakers that crackled with age and poor maintenance. "Tonight we have a special prize!"
The crowd screamed louder.
"A human female!" Persico gestured toward the cage, and the lights focused on her, making her pale skin glow, and the chains on her dress glitter. "Fresh from an Alliance ship. Untouched. Unclaimed."
"Thirty fighters will compete!" Persico's grin was all fangs. "Six rounds of combat. The last one standing wins the prize!"
The fighters around me shifted, muscles tensing, claws extending. I could smell their anticipation, their hunger. Saw it in their eyes as they looked up at her.
They wanted to hurt her. Wanted to break her. Wanted to take everything she was and destroy it.
I was going to kill every single one of them if I had to.
The horn sounded.
My fights blurred together in a haze of blood and violence.
Around me, the arena descended into chaos. Thirty fighters became a writhing mass of teeth and claws and desperate violence. The weaker ones—the ones who'd been thrown in to pad the numbers, to make the spectacle last longer—they went down fast.
A Krevathi with scales like rusted metal took down two fighters in the span of a breath. The first he gutted with a casual swipe of his claws, spilling intestines onto the arena floor. The second tried to run, but the Krevathi caught him by the throat and squeezed until something crunched. He held the body up for the crowd to see, shaking it like a trophy while they screamed their approval. The sound of breaking bone echoed through the arena, wet and final.
He was grinning. Actually grinning, his forked tongue flicking out to taste the blood in the air.
Across the arena, a massive Thurok female was making her own path of destruction. She moved with brutal efficiency, crushing skulls between her hands like they were overripe fruit. Three fighters lay at her feet in various states of consciousness—one still twitching, another making a wet gurgling sound that meant his lungs were filling with blood. She stepped on his chest as she moved past, and the gurgling stopped.
The crowd ate it up. Every crack of bone, every spray of blood, every scream cut short—they roared for it, demanded more of it.
But none of them came for me.
