This city built itself on the bones of the weak.
I came to understand this truth after I escaped and am witness to it now, as I perch on the crumbling ledge of a tenement roof, watching the display of suffering unfold in the alley below. I wonder if the architecture here is deliberate in its cruelty. The tall buildings block the sun from ever reaching these narrow streets, the stone drains carved to funnel the rain into rushing torrents sweep away whatever scraps might have been dropped that the desperate enough dream of finding.
Yes, they built this place to crush. Every brick, every beam, every carefully calculated angle is designed to remind those at the bottom exactly where they belong. The wealthy districts tower above, their light spilling down just far enough to illuminate the misery beneath, but never to warm it, only to ensure it remains visible, a constant reminder of the natural order.
And there, in the heart of this architectural malice, seven boys circle another like carrion birds.
The prey is small, maybe nine years old, with the kind of thinness that speaks of chronic hunger rather than natural build. Dark hair falls in greasy tangles around a face that bears the bronze skin and sharp features that mark him as one of the nomads. Back at the circus, only his kind were fed to me, obviously seen as expendable. It seems that here, outside, they are also considered as lesser. Even from my perch, I can smell the fear rolling off the boy in waves.
His tormentors are all pale, still malnourished but all better fed, all drunk on the intoxicating power of having found someone weaker than themselves. I know this dance well. When the ringmaster was shouted at by his boss, he took it out on me. The weak devour the weaker, and the circle continues, each rung pressing down on the one below until someone breaks.
Usually, I wouldn't linger. The boy would make good prey later when he was already wounded, already forgotten. But something in his stance catches my attention. He's not cowering. Small hands clenched into useless fists, spine straight despite the trembling in his limbs. He knows he can't win. Has to know. Without a miracle, victory is impossible. Yet he stands ready to fight seven boys who could each probably best him alone.
There's something beautiful in that kind of futile defiance. Something that reminds me of myself, trapped in that cage, night after night, refusing to perform until the whip convinced me otherwise. The crowd would cheer when I finally submitted, not because they enjoyed my tricks, but because they had witnessed the breaking of something wild.
"Look at the little thief," one of the boys sneers, his voice carrying up through the cold air. "Think you can steal food from our territory?"
The nomad boy says nothing, but his jaw tightens. The nomads were famous for being thieves, even I knew that. Though, then again, when the world builds itself to starve you, stealing becomes surviving.
"Should've stayed in whatever hole you crawled out of," another boy spits, and suddenly they're moving, seven bodies converging on one with the practiced efficiency of a pack hunt.
The nomad boy fights.
God help him, he actually fights. Throws himself at the biggest one with a wordless snarl that speaks of desperation and rage and the particular fury of someone who has lost everything except the right to swing his fists. He lands one solid punch to a pale boy's nose that sends blood streaming before the others swarm him.
What follows is barely a fight. They pin his arms, take turns with their boots and fists, and beat him all over with methodical precision making it obvious they have done this many times before. And through it all, he doesn't beg. Doesn't cry out for help. Just absorbs their violence with a grim endurance that speaks of lessons already learned about the futility of mercy in a merciless world.
I should leave. This is none of my concern. The strong prey upon the weak–it's the most fundamental law of nature, the first truth I learned in my cage. I am a predator. He is prey. I should leave and come back to finish him off under the cover of darkness like I have been hunting for the past month.
But as I watch him curl around himself, trying to protect vital organs while seven sets of boots thunder down, something twists in my chest. That something is recognition.
I have been where he is. Surrounded, outnumbered, beaten by those who found pleasure in breaking others. I remember the feeling of bones creaking under impact, the metallic taste of my own blood, the way consciousness grays at the edges when pain becomes too much for the mind to process. I remember the particular despair of knowing no one would come. That the world would just keep on going regardless of whether I lived or died in that moment.
The boy's resistance starts weakening. His movements become sluggish, defensive rather than defiant. Soon he'll stop moving altogether. And then what? These boys have the look of those who won't stop at unconsciousness. Not when they're high on power and righteousness and the heady thrill of having absolute dominion over another living thing.
My wings twitch against my back, catching the wind that howls between these narrow walls. My claws dig into the stone ledge, leaving scratches in the weathered granite. Below, one of the boys pulls out a crude knife, probably stolen from some kitchen. The others cheer as he raises it, their voices echoing off the walls like the howls of a hungry pack of wolves.
Perfect prey, I repeat to myself. Weak. Isolated. Already wounded.
But prey doesn't fight seven-to-one odds with useless fists and hopeless courage.
Prey doesn't stand when standing means certain destruction.
Prey doesn't look into the face of inevitable defeat and snarl defiance anyway.
The knife descends, and I move.
Darkness swallows the alley as my wings spread wide, blocking what little light filters down from above. The sudden shadow falls on their faces, I can smell their fear spike. These boys know, on some primitive level, that something powerful and terrible has turned its attention to them.
I drop into their midst like the angel of death.
The first boy doesn't even have time to scream. My claws find his throat and sever his arteries and windpipe in a single swipe. Hot blood paints the brick walls as he crumples, already dead but not yet aware of it. The knife clatters from nerveless fingers.
The others scatter like startled crows, all their pack bravery evaporating the instant they realize they've now become the prey. But the alley is narrow, and I am fast. Wings carry me after the slowest runner, claws raking across his back, sending him sprawling face-first into the grimy stone. He tries to crawl away, whimpering. I end his suffering with a swift bite to the base of his skull.
The remaining five reach the mouth of the alley and burst onto the main street, screaming about demons and monsters. I let them run. I doubt a couple of street rats being scared would make the authorities come to the slums to try and hunt me down. Even if they would hear them out, they will just think the poor kids are making up stories again. Anyone else the boys they could tell, I can handle.
I turn back to survey my work. Two bodies cooling in spreading pools of blood. The nomad boy lying motionless in a heap, whether unconscious or dead I cannot yet tell. The alley reeks of blood and fear and the particular emptiness that follows sudden violence.
This is what I am. What I have always been. A creature of darkness and hunger, existing in the spaces between the humans' carefully constructed civilization. I do not save people. I consume them.
So why does the boy's shallow breathing fill me with something that tastes almost like relief?
I approach him carefully, claws clicking against stone. His pulse beats rabbit-quick beneath skin gone pale with shock and blood loss. Alive, then. Unconscious but alive.
He's even thinner than I thought, curled on his side like a child seeking comfort in sleep. The bronze of his skin is mottled with bruises, and there's blood at the corner of his mouth. His too-small clothes are torn and dirty, and overall he looks even worse than the majority in these spaces this city doesn't want to acknowledge.
I should kill him. It would be a mercy, really. Quicker and cleaner than whatever slow death awaits him on these streets.
Instead, I find myself crouching beside him, studying the sharp angles of his face. Even unconscious, there's something stubborn in the set of his jaw. Something that speaks to an inner fire not yet extinguished by the world's attempts to snuff it out.
My stomach chooses that moment to remind me why I came hunting tonight. The smell of fresh blood is intoxicating, calling to the beastly hunger that lives in my bones, that is the distinction between me, an animal, and these humans. I haven't fed in three days, and the running battle with the boys has awakened every predatory instinct I possess.
The corpses are already cooling, their blood thickening as life abandons them. But blood is blood, and I am desperately, painfully hungry.
I drag the first body deeper into shadows and feast.