Soren was no longer entirely certain he was conscious
The pain had transcended into something abstract, something that existed outside of his body. He was laughing still, though the sound had taken on a hollow quality, as if it was coming from somewhere far away. His hands were numb. His face was something that existed only in sensation, a landscape of fire and wreckage that belonged to someone else
The darkness of the cage had become familiar
He did not know how long he had been kneeling there. Time had lost meaning. There was only the cold stone beneath him and the endless drone of the crowd above and the nun's voice, still praying, still unceasing, still utterly indifferent to the ruin beside her
Then the cage door opened
The sound of metal scraping against stone cut through everything. Soren's fractured mind seized on it as something real, something happening now, something that required attention. Hands grabbed him. Rough. Armoured. Guards. They first undid the chain binding his waist and then were dragging him forward, his legs not quite cooperating with the movement, dragging across the floor. There was light now, brightness that had not existed in the chamber before. The guards were retreating, pulling the three of them toward an opening
The announcer's voice boomed through everything, so loud it seemed to reverberate through his broken skull
"-and NOW, we welcome our BRAVE fighters to the arena!"
The roar of the crowd was deafening
Soren stumbled into the arena pit
Space. Vast, impossible space. The arena opened up before him, a massive circular depression carved into the mountain itself. Thousands of faces lined the stone tiers above, layer upon layer of spectators screaming, cheering, their features blurred and distorted in his fragmentary vision
Light. So much light
His one functional eye watered at the sudden brightness. The world swam
And then he saw the announcer
The man stood surprisingly on thin air overlooking the arena, his presence commanding despite the distance. His black hair was slicked back with precision, not a strand out of place, his tanned skin practically glowing under the arena lights. Piercing amber eyes surveyed the pit below with an expression of pure amusement, as if he were watching the most delightful performance unfold. He wore an elegant black suit that had no place in a colosseum, no place anywhere near combat or blood or violence. It was the suit of a businessman. A showman. A predator dressed as a gentleman
In his right hand he held a polished black cane, tapping it idly against the where in stood. A tall black top hat sat upon his head, adding to the theatrical presentation. Every finger on both his hands bore a gold ring, intricately designed, each one unique, catching the light as his hands moved. He was dressed for a performance, and the arena was his stage
Behind Soren, the bald man was breathing hard, his massive frame tense with the kind of survival instinct that only came from actual combat. His tattooed skin rippled as he moved, the intricate dark patterns covering his scalp and neck disappearing beneath his torn clothing. He was an imposing figure, muscles corded and scarred from years of violence
"Listen," the bald man hissed, grabbing the nun's arm. His voice was urgent, sharp. "Hurry up, you crazy bitch. This other one-" he gestured toward Soren's ruined form, "he's lost his mind. We need to work together. We need to kill that thing if we want to survive"
The nun's face contorted
Not gradually. Not slowly. In an instant, her expression transformed from serene devotion into something consumed by rage. Her eyes went wide, her jaw clenched, and the hand still clasping her pendant began to tremble violently
"How DARE you," she hissed
Her voice was not the voice of a praying woman anymore. It was something else entirely. Something that came from depths that prayer could not reach
She moved
Not walked. Moved. A flash of white and gold armour, her body launching forward with speed that seemed to defy her human frame. Her hand wound up, pulling back for a punch while the very air around her seemed to respond to her intent. The space around her grew heavy. Thick. The stone beneath her feet cracked slightly with the force of her movement
The bald man did not even have time to react
The air itself seemed to pull him toward her. Not a collision. An attraction. The world bent inward, gravity warping around the trajectory of her fist. The bald man's massive body, all his muscle and scar tissue and hard-won survival, was drawn forward as though pulled by invisible chains
His head met her hand
What happened next was not a punch. It was a convergence. An implosion. His skull simply ceased to be a unified structure. It collapsed inward, fragments of bone and matter and blood exploding outward in a spray that made several spectators shriek. His body followed a moment later, dropping like a puppet with its strings cut, hitting the arena floor with a wet finality that left no question of survival
The nun stood over the corpse
Her breath was ragged. Her eyes were still blazing with divine fury. She looked down at the ruins of what had been a man and spat directly onto the broken remnants, her voice sharp and cutting as a blade
"You will not disrespect the goddess in my presence," she said to the dead flesh at her feet. "You will not mock the sacred. You will not-"
She stomped on the corpse. Once. Twice. Her white and gold armour splattered with blood that was not hers
"question the divine will"
Then, as suddenly as the rage had consumed her, something shifted. Her shoulders sagged slightly. She closed her eyes. Her hands came back together around her pendant
And she resumed her prayers
"...and may your divine light illuminate the path before me..."
Her voice was serene again. Almost dreamy. As if she had simply paused for a moment, as if nothing of consequence had occurred, as if the man at her feet had never existed at all
Soren was no longer laughing
The shock of it, the sudden, absolute violence of it, the transformation of the nun from devotional to lethal, snapped something in him. Not consciousness exactly. Something more fundamental. A recalibration. His fractured mind registered the reality of what he had just witnessed and held onto it like an anchor, something concrete in the whirlwind of pain and delirium
The crowd above was roaring now, not in moral outrage but in excitement. They had seen a man die. They wanted more
A massive gate at the far end of the arena began to rise
Soldiers were dragging something through it, something that strained against heavy chains, something that moved with an uneasy gait. The beast emerged slowly, its massive form filling the pit with a presence that was almost physical
The Umbrax
It was as large as a small house, its body covered in glossy black fur that seemed to absorb light rather than reflect it. Its eyes were enormous, glowing with an unnatural purple luminescence that hurt to look at directly. And its tail, God, its tail was wrong. Too long. Too segmented. It moved like a scorpion's tail, arching and bending in ways that flesh and bone should not permit, the barbed tip dripping with venom that hissed against the stone
The soldiers released it and retreated
The announcer raised his cane, tapping it once against the platform. His amber eyes were gleaming with amusement, that expression of someone watching a performance reach its crescendo
Soren's fractured consciousness registered the scale of it all at once. The pit beneath him was vast, flat expanse of pale sand that stretched at least fifty meters in diameter. The sand was unmarked except for old stains that might have been blood or might have been shadow. In the centre of this arena, surrounded by nothing but open space, he and the nun stood utterly exposed
The stone walls rose up like the sides of a tomb
Massive barriers of grey rock, smooth-faced and imposing, separated the fighters from the spectators above. They were easily thirty feet high, maybe more, angled slightly outward so that escape was not merely difficult but structurally impossible. There was no climbing them. There was no getting around them. There was only the pit and the walls and the sky above
And everywhere where thousands of people
Tier upon tier of them, arranged in concentric circles that surrounded the arena in a complete 360-degree spiral. Thousands of faces, thousands of voices, all of them looking down into the pit from every angle. Row after row rose upward until they disappeared into the upper reaches of the colosseum, vanishing into shadow and distance. They filled every available space, pressed against stone railings, standing where there were no seats, creating a living wall of humanity that ringed the arena entirely
There was no blind spot
No angle from which they could escape notice. No direction to run where a spectator did not have a clear view of the movement. The arena was designed with surgical precision to maximize visibility, to ensure that every death, every moment of violence, every drop of blood was witnessed by as many eyes as possible
The announcer's voice echoed across it all, bouncing off stone and amplified by the curved architecture until it seemed to come from everywhere at once
"BEGIN!"