Starlit Embers in Her Eyes - Draft3 Sample

The air was so hot and thick with sand it burned and shredded my nose and throat with every breath, and stank of blood, shit, and rotting carnage.

What were my lungs going to look like when this was over? 

The man before me bellowed out another monstrous cry and charged, his feet slamming so hard into the rough, sizzling sand that I could feel the vibration of each impact. The air whistled around the cleave hefted in his hands, and I could hear the wood of the handle creak beneath his hands as he tightened his grip, preparing to swing the heavy weapon down at my head.

Down, because this man was at least a meter taller than me, and I wasn’t exactly small to begin with. 

Inhumanly tall. 

Inhumanly built. 

Inhumanly hot. 

This was a very bizarre dream for my brain to come up with. Or maybe it was a hallucination.

Maybe I’d run into the bedroom doorframe again and knocked myself out this time. 

I ducked beneath the whomp of his swing and brought the rusty, machete-feeling weapon I’d been given up to slash across his upper thigh. He might have been built like a monster out of a fiction novel, but monsters still had femoral arteries, right? 

His skin was thick and leathery, and tore like rough paper beneath the jagged, chipped blade. Blood as hot as the sand burning my feet immediately spurted out and hit me in the face, and he let out a pain-filled bellow that wasn’t even remotely human and swung down at me again. 

I ducked around him, sliding along the rough ground as that cleave barely missed my head and pushed myself to my feet behind him quickly enough to drive my shitty machete up into his back, theoretically through the kidney, but he was so tall it was hard to know if I was hitting the right spot. 

It didn’t matter, though, because I felt the blade slide through his back and ribs, and I shoved it up harder until it was buried to the hilt. His cry turned into a gurgle, and he fell forward, his weight pulling the blade from his body because I kept a tight grip on the handle.

All around, the cheers and cries of hundreds, maybe thousands of people filled the air, but beneath the onslaught of noise, I listened to the man’s heartbeat as it slowed, to the blood spurting from the wound in his leg, to the gurgle in his throat as he tried to breathe because I must have ripped through his lung. 

I listened to him die, and wondered again why my subconscious would make up such a fucked up scenario, and how long would it last?

This was the fourth time today I’d stood in this sandy arena with insane sounding people, or monsters, all around me, and been forced to fight—my lungs and muscles burned with exhaustion and exertion. Everything burned and hurt. I could feel cuts, bruises, abrasions, and probably hairline fractures all over my body. 

I wasn’t going to make it through another one. Maybe if I were a little younger and still in shape, and whole, I could live out this fucked up dream until my alarm went off. 

Maybe if I let the next one win, I’d wake up? 

But what if it was one of those scenarios where if you died in your dream, you died in real life?

No, that was fiction. This was just a… very lucid dream. 

Vibrations tickled my feet, and I could hear, and feel, more men moving around me, but this was different. They weren’t opponents, like the last four were; they were the guards. 

I think. 

These were the guys who had put me in a cage, then pulled me out of the cage and put me in the sandy arena thing, and now they were back. 

Five in total, and they all barked and shouted in a language I didn’t understand. It sounded like… well, barking like a dog barking with syllables. 

One of them, the one to the far right, dragged something behind him, and I could only assume it was a net of some kind. 

The logical part of my brain said that if I let them put me back in the cage, I’d wake up because this was the end of the mental simulation, but the instinctual part of my brain… the fight or flight… the beast, said that wasn’t the case.

The beast said to fight them. I could feel her rage and fear coursing through my body as prominently as I could feel the sun burning my skin. 

It felt like holding your hand too close to the campfire, except everywhere. I was cooking in real time, because the clothes I was wearing were barely more than a torn-up, skintight shirt, and pants that were barely pants anymore. They’d been so brutalised they were more like short-shorts by now, with a few tatters hanging in there.

No wonder so many of the weird people around me seemed to have leathery skin. 

It was to survive this blistering sun. 

This would make for an exciting fantasy book. Maybe even a romantasy if the leather-skinned folks were handsome. 

I turned slowly in place, but had to shift back and forth on my feet to keep them from touching the sand too long, because they fucking sizzled. 

It was a good thing I couldn’t actually see anything, because no doubt I looked like a roasted sausage, and I didn’t want to see it. 

The five men fanned out around me in a circle, and I was suddenly very aware of the weird collar thing around my neck because it made a sharp noise, like electricity. 

The thing was laced with iron, which stamped down almost everything about my beast and made it nearly impossible to pull on that part of my nature, let alone shift. If I tried, I’d probably be decapitated, but the iron felt so strong and dampening that I couldn’t even try or pull on her power enough to see lights and shapes. 

It wasn’t much, but it was better than the pure black I had been subjected to after I’d lost my eyesight. Unfortunately, the injury had passed onto her as well… well. She was me. I was her. It was just me… 

Again, a really weird scenario for my brain to cook up. 

I listened hard to each step, to each breath, to each grunt. It was difficult, with the roar of people all around us, but I’d spent the last few years learning to isolate sounds. It was definitely harder to do with the iron collar on, though. 

Which meant my uncle had been right: I had relied too heavily on my shifter senses to navigate since my accident and needed to learn to move around without my beast. 

Maybe this situation was my brain’s way of saying he was right. 

Well played. 

The one at my seven o’clock darted forward, and I quickly stepped out of the way, which put me closer to the one at my three o’clock. Then, I tossed the machete into my left hand and brought it around across the back of his knee. 

Look, it was all fine and dandy to try and go for a killing blow all of the time, but in my experience, your enemy was always anticipating every blow to be a death blow. They forgot about all of the other essential parts of the body that you needed to keep going. 

Like the femoral artery, one of my favourites to go for. The joints and tendons, especially around the knees and ankles, were equally important, which the strange man had now learned the hard way.

He crumpled down in a heap, wailing, but there were still four more, and my muscles were shaking with the exertion. I felt like my body was going to drop of its own accord at any moment.

I’d never felt so tired in a dream before, and I’d had plenty of fucked up hallucinations and dreams in my time in and out of the hospital. 

Drugs tended to do that to you. Well, to me at least, I couldn’t speak for others.

But I wasn’t in the hospital… not as far as I was aware. 

I’d gone to bed with Evelyn, and now I was here. 

The collar shrieked again, the frequency so high it made my ears crackle painfully and was quickly followed by a shocking jolt that ripped through my body from my neck. 

If my eyes weren’t already completely fucked, I imagine everything would have gone black. 

Maybe now I would wake up. 

 ***

I did wake up… but not in my bed. Not with my wife. Not with her and her fat, geriatric cat snoring in my ear.

I woke up in a cage, with the creak and rattle of other cages all around me. The ambient sound of clanking chains, groaning and huffing bodies was nearly as overwhelming as the stench. It was reminiscent of the arena but far worse in the enclosed space. Blood, vomit, and waste were so prominent that it felt like drowning in a putrid cloud. 

Taking a full breath was nearly impossible… but unfortunately necessary.

I shifted slightly to try to ease the pressure on my knees without adding too much weight to my shoulders. I’d woken up with my hands chained behind my back and shackled to the roof of my little cage. It was a painfully precarious position to wake up in. How I hadn’t torn and dislocated my shoulders while unconscious in this position was beyond me, but now that I was awake, it felt like every moment was a balancing act between trying to save my knees and my shoulders. So long in the position had cut circulation to my feet, making them go numb, to pain-filled, to numb, to now more pain-filled.

Wake up. 

Wake up, wake up, wake up. 

I couldn’t remember ever feeling so much pain in a dream, or even a hallucination. Not like this. Not so vivid, so lucid, so…

Real. 

Real. 

No. This wasn’t real. People weren’t ten feet tall with leather skin like an elephant. They didn’t have multiple arms and legs, or make the noises I could hear in the neighbouring cages. They didn’t scuttle, slosh, or chitter.

My mind had taken me to strange places when isolated, desperate, or drugged in the past. 

But it was so lucid. 

It was hard to figure out what was what in the cavernous room. I’d gotten very good at figuring out spaces and mapping out my surroundings in my head based on the sounds and smells. So well, in fact, that I’d reached a point where I could explore new places all alone and make it home just fine. I built the image in my head of my surroundings, and then I moved through it. It was like seeing, but without seeing. 

I missed seeing. 

Mapping this place out was difficult. Visualising it in my head even more so.

The languages spoken in hushed whispers through the multitude of cages to either side of me, and across the rocky cavern from me, were all in languages entirely foreign to me. 

I spoke seven languages and could get around some basics in a handful of others, but nothing I’d heard in this place came even remotely close to any language I had ever heard before, and I’d been all around the planet.

Seconds passed, minutes, hours. Days? No, not days. Not yet. Food came around twice a day, and I’d spent breakfast in the sandpit being almost murdered by monster-men. Or had it been dinner? 

It had been blistering hot with the sun, though, so breakfast. Definitely breakfast. And lunch. 

The man, or creature, in the cage to the left of me grunted and bumped the iron bars between us. He spoke, and it was yet another language with no discernible dialect I recognised, but it was definitely a language. He said a few words in a harsh, guttural voice that held its own cadence and mixture of syllables… just nothing I’d ever heard on Earth. 

On Earth. 

The word swirled in my head while the guy muttered a few more words and bumped the iron bars between us with his fist again.

Iron. 

The collar around my neck felt heavier and heavier the longer I hung there, until I realised my head had fallen entirely forward, which only added to the pain in my neck. 

Fuck’s sake. 

How much longer until I woke up?

Focus on something else.

Focus on what, exactly? The fact that what I had discerned thus far was that this room was a tall, rocky cave structure? That there was a line of cages against this wall, and an identical one on the opposite wall, with a large walkway down the centre that everyone was dragged in and out through? That there was a large set of heavy double doors to the far left, and to the right was the ramp that led up into the arena? 

Or maybe focus on the fact that the cages were filled with males. Whatever they were, they were male. I’d met one female in the arena a few days prior… I was here, and she wasn’t, so that was that. How did I know they were male? Scent. Some laws of nature didn’t change, it seemed. They all smelled like musky males wrought with fear and adrenaline. 

It was there, beneath the shit and blood—pure fear. Hopelessness. Despair. Anger. Lust. 

They also yelled through the bars at me specifically, and nobody else. I didn’t need to know their languages to understand those connotations. 

I also didn’t need any physiological anatomy lessons on the various creatures around me to figure out the rhythmic flaps, grunts, and groans emanating randomly from different cages. 

That, it seemed, was universal. 

Sweat slid down my trembling thighs as I struggled to hold myself up. My stomach rumbled from hunger, and my throat was beyond parched. It felt raw and destroyed. 

Water. I needed water. 

Someone would wake me up from this nightmare to give me water, surely. Or I’d suddenly not feel thirsty anymore, which would mean someone gave me an IV and got me hydrated enough that my subconscious would stop torturing me.

To my right, a man shuffled around in his cage as well as he was able. It sounded like he was too large to move around freely, but he wasn’t chained up like I was, so at least he was comfortable in comparison. 

Maybe too comfortable.

It was a good thing he was stuck in his own cage and couldn’t fit his arms through the bars, because he’d tried, I think. The rhythmic motions were as unmistakable as the others, but this one was focused on me, based on his body language, which was becoming more and more confusing. 

One hand between his legs, one on the bars between us, but I could hear his hand also clamped around the bars over his head… so three arms—or four, logically, but with four fingers each instead of five.

Every sound was precise and painted a picture. 

Including the angry grunts that were eerily similar to an angry stallion. 

I suppose I was lucky I was in this cage, and he was locked in that one, and not jamming himself through the bars. His movements sounded like Alfredo pasta being stirred around he pot.

The man to the left, who had tried to speak to me before, was now snoring away in a moment of peace. 

Were they men? 

They were males, but were they men?

Had I read one too many sci-fi novels over the years? 

Mr Alfredo slammed his hand against the bars between us, rattling both of our cages and sending a jolt of pain through my shoulders at the jostle. The noise echoed in the cavern, and a series of angry grunts responded from around the room. It could be closer to night, if everyone was sleeping. 

The air did feel a bit cooler now, so the sun had at least started to set. 

Time meant nothing. 

But it also meant everything. 

A few wheezing chuckles came from the onlookers as the guy grew more aggressive with himself.

Good. The sooner he finished, the sooner I could think about something else. 

Like the scuttling creature that had quietly clicked across the room to where we were, this one was one of the guards. 

If we were prisoners, he was a guard, and he had a lot of bug-like legs that clicked on the ground as he walked, sending shivers up my spine with each individual sound. 

He dragged something with him, something long that slithered on the ground behind him. 

It had to be the hose. I’d listened to him spray people with water after they were put into their cages. 

The water stank of hot sulphur and dirt, but water was water. 

I focused on the scenario unfolding before me. Mr Alfredo was going harder, and there was pure glee emanating from the clicking-guard’s aura as he slowly crept closer to our two cages. Now I could picture the hose nozzle in his hands, at the ready, and the guy to my left stopped snoring and rolled over in his cage, clued in to the newest entertainment. 

A few more chuckles rose in the air as Mr Alfredo slammed, two hands against the bars… Two. While one was still between his legs and another gripped the bars above him. 

So, four. 

Four. 

A small squeak preluded the blast of foul-smelling, borderline boiling water he unleashed on the guy, who howled a high-pitched screech of shock at the interruption. Full-blown laughter erupted around the room, and the guard shut off the water and chittered something in a high-pitched voice that garnered another round of laughter and cage-rattling from the other captives. 

The poor guy slammed all four of his fists against the door of the cage and bellowed wordlessly, then kicked the bars between us as if this were my fault, which, once again, tore at my shoulders.

The guard chittered again and dropped the hose with a heavy thunk before scuttling closer to my cage and jostling something above my head. 

A moment later, the chain holding my arms back was released, and I fell hard on my side with a gasp. 

He scuttled away again, picked up the hose, and blasted me with it before I could even begin to get myself rolled over and righted. 

It was hot, disgusting, and mildly refreshing, and he didn’t hold the skin-tearing blast on me nearly as long as he did the other guy. He cut it off the spray, dropped the nozzle with a clunk to the ground, and scuttled to the open doors at the left end of the room and slammed them shut. The force sent a hard vibration through the floor and the cages that were all connected. 

With a huff, I pushed myself up and got my legs under me enough to get into a sitting position with my wrists still shackled behind my back. Mr Alfredo said something in a monotone, bumbling and buzzing stream of syllables that I couldn’t derive a meaning from. Ignoring him, I weaselled around until my back was straight and my legs out in front of me so I could just slide my shackled wrists under my butt, then under my legs until my hands were shackled in front of me. 

Flexibility was important.

The man to the left chuckled, then rolled to face the other direction and went to sleep. Everyone else quietened down after a time as well, and I bent and stretched my legs, trying to get the pain and cramps in my knees and calves to let go.

Mr Alfredo made a very enunciated show of turning around and putting his back to me, as if that was a punishment. 

You can wake up anytime, now. Come on, chop chop. 

I didn’t wake up. I was just in this cage, barely able to breathe or move, unable to see a fucking thing and scarcely able to picture what was around me because it was just not right. None of this was right. 

Fuck it.

If I couldn’t wake up on my own, I’d get someone else to do it for me. 

Surely Luddy could wake me up. We’d accidentally interrupted each other’s sleep before. He’d woken me up by sleep-talking in my head. He claimed more than once that I did it to him far more often, but I was sure it was bullshit. 

Twins by birth, we came out with more than just a shared birthday. We’d come into the world with a shared mental connection that let us speak to one another telepathically, a gift dampened only by distance.

But he was only in the next room. 

We were living in the same house in Nevada; there was no distance to overcome. Hell, he could be on the other side of the state and we’d still have a connection. 

But when I reached out to that familiar path in my mind… that space where Luddy was supposed to be… There was nothing. 

Nothing?

How could there be nothing?

I suddenly realised I’d tried this before. I tried it when I first woke up in the cage, and when they dragged me out into the sandy arena, I’d been reaching for that lifeline we shared only to find it gone. Devoid. Absent. 

How had I already forgotten that I’d already tried?

You’re exhausted, stupid. 

Of course I was, I could barely sit up straight.

I went to sleep in bed with Evelyn and woke up dazed in this cage with new clothes and a collar around my neck. 

My rings were gone, my bracelet, earrings… 

Bug people aren’t real, neither are ten-foot-tall people, four-armed people, leather people, or tentacle people. You’re dreaming, stupid.

Yes. Dreaming. 

The unpeaceful quiet was disturbed by the doors that were thrown open once again with a crash and an echoing bang.

Two people came through, neither one in chains, both bipedal. One of them I’d heard before. He was one of those guys pushing ten feet tall, with huge, hulking feet that smacked thickly on the floor. The sounds he made as he moved made me think his skin had a scaly texture, like a crocodile’s. 

He had been through here a few times, and his language had human-like syllables in a deep, grusky voice. 

The other figure, however, immediately piqued my interest. 

This one was human. 

I could tell by the smell, the frame, and the sound of each step he took beside the big crocodile man.

My nostrils flared as I tried to take in the man’s scent. He smelled like fresh water, and soap, and linen. Like human. 

Like Earth. 

He was an older guy, maybe in his fifties, with a slight limp in his left knee that creaked as he walked. He was average weight, average height, average build. The picture formed in my head as he perused the line of cages on the other side of the cavern beside the big guy. 

He spoke the same guttural language as his guide as they moved from cage to cage, stopping at each. The crocodile would say something about each person they stopped before, and the human would respond. It felt like a car salesman taking his new client around the lot. 

When they came to the last cage on that side, the occupant let out a series of wolf-like snarls and barks. The rest had all been silent, but this one snapped and snarled and attacked the door of his cage. I could hear the spittle and slime leaking from his greasy, sharp-toothed jowls. His? It? They? 

She?

The snarling growl turned to a high-pitched shriek that was cut short, with the zap of his collar.

The crocodile let out a low laugh, but the human didn’t; he just moved on to the first cage on this side of the room, and they continued their pitch. 

When they came to Mr Alfredo, he turned and gave them his back indignantly and crossed all four of his arms across his chest and hunkered down. 

He didn’t want to be bought, because a sale was the only thing that made sense. 

Their conversation about him lasted less than a minute before the human let out a small ‘huh’ and squatted down in front of my cage so we were eye to eye. 

I was still sitting, knees up and chained hands in front of them. 

The guy started rattling off in the guide’s language, but his face never turned from mine. 

I kept my eyes downcast. He didn’t need to see the obvious blindness in them. One of them had turned pale grey, while the other stayed green, but my inability to look at anything directly enough was a dead giveaway. At least that’s what those around me had told me. 

If he was looking to buy something, then that meant someone here was leaving this shit hole, and if this was a dream, why not move on to the next stage? I was sick of this one. 

They argued a bit, I think, and the crocodile sounded… dismissive? Was he waving me off as waste? 

The human stood up, and I heard a small rattle as he pulled what I could only describe as a coin purse from his belt. They began to argue in fervour. 

No, not argue. 

Haggle. 

The guy to my left leaned over and said something, but all I could do was shrug, because what the fuck was he saying? 

“Gough’k,” the human said harshly. 

“Rouk’le,” the crocodile responded. 

“Gough’k le!” The human retorted. 

The crocodile hmm’d and haa’d a bit before letting out a hefty sigh and waving his hand. 

“Egh’t,” he said, and the two clasped hands. The human’s five-fingered, normal hand smacked into a much larger, much thicker, tougher hide. 

He then turned to me. 

“Well, well, well,” he said in English… No. Not just the English language, but an English accent. 

This mother-fucker was British?

No, of course he was British. I was British, so, of course, my brain would cook up a British man for me to talk to.

Duh. 

The revelation was still startling after so many strange noises and gibberish sounds. 

“Qui audet adipisctur,” he said. 

It was Latin for ‘who dares, wins,’ and it was tattooed on the outside of my right wrist. I’d gotten it when I was forced to retire from the SAS. 

“Isn’t that interesting?” He asked, just as I heard the sharp whine of the collar and felt the electric sizzle before it went off.

The small shuttle took a deep, shuddering breath beneath me and banked hard to the side, making my stomach lurch uncomfortably and bile rise in my throat. The beastly thing was an abomination to nature. I had been put into a sleep stasis for most of the ship rides I had been on in my life, but this new master had not bothered with such things, nor did he live on a planet as was typical. 

No, he lived on a ship, not this one, thankfully, but a ship nonetheless. 

No other master I had ever served had done such a thing, but this one was proving to be different on many fronts.

No other master I had ever met had been from Earth, either. All of the humans 

Despite the drastic changes, I could not complain about my new circumstances. Thus far, he had kept every aspect of his ship impeccably clean, including our sleeping cells and training rings. The showers had hot water, and the toilets had doors that allowed for privacy, the likes of which I had never experienced in all my years… 

It was all a far cry from the arena pits, cramped cages, and rotten cells I’d spent most of my life in. 

He was strange, yes, but this was luxury. 

Of the few gladiators the Master now owned, I was the only one he chose to bring with him on his travels away from the main cruiser. Despite this, he never let me out of the bowels of the mechanical monstrosity. 

Why bring me at all? Why not leave me aboard The Avalon to continue training with the others? Though I had been the property of a handful of masters, I had never been more than a training opponent for the gladiators slated for the arena. I had spent most of my adult life with the late Master Baranth, who had refused to let me honour him in the arena, despite training me for it every day… 

But he was dead, and it was not my business to ask questions. Not my place.

But still… 

I knew this planet. As soon as we hit the atmosphere, the putrid stench wafted through the air systems into the cargo hold where I sat in a cell too short for me to stand in. It was a sandy, foul, poignant smell that brought with it death, decay, and heat. This planet was all desert with little rain and many, many slaves. 

The shuttle shuddered and set down hard on the landing pad. I listened quietly to the various mechanisms of the little ship as it settled in place and powered down. 

It was also where Master Ee-lie had bought me months before. When he passed, Master Baranth’s children had wanted nothing to do with any of the gladiators he had kept, and we had all woken up here, on Old Trov12. 

All of the men I had trained with, some for years and some for mere weeks, were led up into the arena one by one, but before I could step out into that sandy field, Master Ee-lie had bought me. 

Had he decided to bring me back? 

My question was answered by the fact that he once again left me in the hold. I hoped. The food was good, and the showers were hot. 

Maybe I would even get to fight in the arena.

The real arena, not the hovel of this planet. My old master had brought me here a fair few times to fight slaves in the pit to see if they would be worthy to train as gladiators for the great games, but that had been the extent of it. 

I had always looked forward to these times because they allowed me to fight, but also because I was given more food leading up to the event. 

This new master didn’t seem to hold that view; from the day I had stepped onto his ship, he had fed us all and trained us all fully. Daily. 

My ribs had become far less pronounced these last few weeks, and it was the first time in a long time that my stomach did not pang or growl with hunger. 

Many master preferred their fighters to be half-starved, believing it made them fight harder and more desperately for their rewards. Others fed their fighters meals that made them heavy, which was a double-edged sword. They were strong in the ring, but slow, and too slow to rise up against their masters. 

Not that anyone would do so, that was a death sentence, and our title of gladiator was an honour. 

Nonetheless, I had heard of it happening and had witnessed a fair amount of executions as a result. 

I preferred this new master’s approach. My mind felt clear and sharp for the first time in a long time. 

Good for killing. 

Good for winning. 

The shuttle rumbled to life beneath me and quickly lifted and tilted hard to the side. My stomach dropped, and I swallowed hard, trying to keep my morning rations in my stomach. We were leaving, quickly. 

We hadn’t been here long… But just as well. I did not like the smell here, or the memories it brought to the forefront of my mind that I did not want to dwell upon. 

He wasn’t selling me off; that was the important part. 

I held on as the shuttle banked and tilted upwards. It rumbled and gargled until, suddenly, it stilled and became quiet. 

I’d learned that that meant we’d hit the upper atmosphere of the planet and were now entering space.

Everything was quiet until a series of bangs, crashes, and animalistic snarls echoed from the main hold above me, followed closely by the zing of a collar. 

It was unmistakable. I could hear that sound rooms away, and it sent a shudder down my spine every time. 

Even after all of these years and the thousands of times I had gotten the shock myself, the very prospect of it made me react poorly. 

Weakness.

I listened as feet pounded around upstairs, then came down the stairs, and the cargo hold doors were flung open with a crash, and a gleam of false light illuminated the dark room. 

The two elders who trained us entered. 

Bifur and Kimul. 

These two were gladiators who had grown too old to fight, a rare and honourable feat. Both had spent their lives in the blood and sand of the arena and had earned fame across the games. 

Gladiators who achieved what they had were typically awarded their freedom and riches to live out the rest of their lives, but for whatever reason, these two had decided to board a space cruiser with a human master and train us. 

It was an honour, of course, but also strange. 

Why? 

Why not go back to your home planet? Or go live in riches? Or build your own training house?

Bifur and Kimul came through the doors, dragging a body between them. Both were large and tall, though not as tall as I, and built broad and strong with many scars telling the story of hundreds of battles. I knew they could hold their own in the ring to this day, because I’d been sparring against them both almost daily and had yet to come close to besting either, while I had bested most of the fighters my last master had pitted me against, and they had gone on to fight, and win, in the grand arenas. 

Bifur was the colour of wet sand with a thick pelt of fur across his body and a face reminiscent of the mountain cats I vaguely remembered from my childhood. I found him to be a good teacher. He was strict and impatient, quick to anger, but strong and wise in his form. 

The other, Kimul, I liked less. He was similar in stature but near the opposite in appearance. His skin was a slick, smooth texture that was the green colour of the great salt waters of my late master’s planet. His odd face was wide with great, glossy black eyes that lacked whites or coloured rings like mine. 

Neither of them had horns atop their heads as I did, and neither of them had the bright glowing eyes as I did either. Nor did either of them have the glow of a heart-fire in their chests or heads. 

Mine lay quiet, but of the few memories I had of my home-planet, I remember the glowing heart-fires of my parents. 

Orange, bright, and warm against their blue skin. 

There was very little I remembered, but those fires… I remembered those. 

Bifur did have a tail at least, though it was different to mine. It was covered entirely in his pelt, but he did have a tuft at the end, as I did.

That was where the similarities ended.

I had yet to meet another who looked as I did. I knew that Bifur’s kind were called Pravassi, but I did not know Kimul’s kind.

I had found The Reach and its many planets to be full of many kinds of people, but had yet to come across one who looked like me. I wanted to ask others many times if they had met someone like me, or what their kind was called, or what their home planets were like, but refrained. I learned very early that such questions were rude, and you could end up knocked about harshly for them. 

But I’d always been curious…

They all had their own language, and there was rarely enough time to learn their words before they were sent off to the arena.

It didn’t matter. The masters were the only ones I needed to understand, and they made their desires clear one way or another. I did not need to speak. I only needed to obey. 

The man Bifur and Kimul dragged between them was different from us. He was much smaller and covered in many layers of filth. 

He wasn’t even close to the size and bulk of we three, nor the others. 

He lay limp and small between them as they both grasped an arm and dragged him to the cage beside mine. I didn’t miss the long scratches on Bifur’s chest running red with blood, however. 

They were deep, clean slices. 

Bifur yanked open the door, and they threw the unconscious figure in with a growl and a kick before slamming and locking it. Master Ee-lie hovered in the doorway, watching, with his shock-staff in his hand.

This held the controls for the collars, and even now, his fingers played near the glowing blue orb that activated the shock. 

I didn’t move, unwilling to draw his attention when he was so obviously perturbed. Despite all of the niceties, I’d found that once he delivered one shock to someone, he tended to keep doing it for every perceived slight until something distracted him. 

He was still a Master, even if he fed us more. 

He wrote long, elegant robes over neat trousers made of materials I had no names for. The master usually wore strange garments, while we typically wore very little so that they could see us. However, Master Ee-lie had provided us with full clothing to wear. Long pants that were strange but comfortable, and a tunic that was long-sleeved and warm, with a hood to go over the head, but it didn’t fit around my horns.

It was still very comfortable and warm, and I found it much preferable to being nearly nude all of the time. Usually, the only time one was fully clothed was before entering the arena, and then we wore leathers and armour designed by our masters for both practicality in battle and style. 

A testament to them, to us, and to the spectators.

The man they threw in the cage beside me was nearly nude and had barely a scrap of leather around his hips and chest. It seemed like quite a lot considering where he’d just come from. I tried not to fault him for the smell that cloaked him, as it couldn’t be helped, and the thought made me realise how accustomed I had become to being clean. 

Bifur kicked the cage again and snarled down at the small man. 

“Enough, Bifur,” Master Ee-lie said and waved his hand. “Be gone, both of you. Clean yourselves up. She can’t cause any more trouble at the moment.”

She?

They both nodded and left, but Bifur sent one last angry glare at the scrawny figure before stomping away. Kimul didn’t seem to care either way.

This one was female? 

I had only seen a few females in the arena before, and they had all been significantly larger and more fearsome than the men. Angry and brutal. 

Aside from Doctor Ken-see back and the Mistress on the cruiser, I had not been so close to a female before. Surely he did not get this one to be a gladiator? She was too small. Too weak. It was obvious with a single glance. 

She had no claws on her hands or talons on her feet. She had no scales, thick hide, or armour plates to protect the vulnerable parts of her body. There were no sharp teeth that I could see. No tusks or horns. 

Nothing. 

She looked… well, she looked like the master. Beneath the mess, her skin peeked out with the same lightish pink as his, and her face held the same smooth design and structure, though very different at the same time. 

This was… an Earth woman?

Even worse.

Aside from the master, all of the Earthlings, Terrans, and Humaani I had seen had all been slaves and servants. 

Never had one been used in the arena, except for fodder. 

I was beginning to think I had seen very little of the world I was a part of… unless this was, of course, a servant. 

It seemed strange to come to Old Trov12 for a servant, though; there were markets aplenty where such people could be found. Trov was for fighters. 

I had recently learned from Doctor Ken-see that it was actually illegal for Earthlings to be taken from their planet, so perhaps this one was Terran or Humaani. That would make sense.

But then, Doctor Ken-see had been taken from Earth… She had told me that once taken, they were not allowed to return. It was against the laws of The Governance for anyone to go near the Earth system, but that did not stop slavers from exploiting the primitive planet. 

I wondered if perhaps my home planet was a primitive planet such as Earth, and that was why I saw none like me. It simply wasn’t allowed. 

But if that was the case, then would the same laws apply? If I became like Bifur and Kimul, would I not be allowed to return to my home planet? 

Too many questions were raised in this new ludus.

One thing was for sure, however. Whether they be Earthlings, Terrans, or Humaani, humans were notoriously weak. 

And yet… Bifur did not wound himself. She did. 

“This one is feisty,” Master Ee-lie said, interrupting my thoughts. I looked at him and found him watching me, not her. He spoke in his Earth-tongue, and the implant he had given me changed his words in my head so that I could understand them in Barathan Common. 

My language. Well, the one I had been taught as a child once taken into the fold of the gladiator way. The language of my home world was long lost to my mind.

“When we return to The Avalon, I want her taken to Doctor Kenzie and cleaned up,” he said. “I’m fairly certain she speaks English, my language, but we’ll get her a neural implant as we did for you and the others. I’m putting you in charge of making sure she learns her place and stays cooperative. If she causes a fuss, you’ll both get the shock. Understood?”

My responsibility? 

I was supposed to be a gladiator, not a mother chasing after a cub, but Master Ee-lie was staring down his pointed nose expectantly, so I nodded quickly. 

Fine. 

I would play this ridiculous game. She would not survive training, let alone the arena. 

Bah. 

“Oh, don’t look so dejected, Vor,” he said cheerily. “I think this one will surprise us all, and she was practically free. You know how I love a good deal.” He did look rather pleased with himself. He was practically preening beneath his face-hair. 

“Never mind the smell,” he said and waved his hand over her limp body. “You know how filthy that place is. Disgusting cesspools. I’m very curious to see what we’re dealing with beneath all of that crud.”

He tapped the bars with his staff, but she did not stir. “She’s had at least two shocks in the last hour, and she did battle in the arena before that. Evidently, she didn’t like leaving her cage, nor did she like being put back into it, so she caused quite a fuss for the guards. They were keen to be rid of her. So she might be out for a while.” 

Two shocks? Even I lay unconscious for a long time after one shock. 

“Anyhow,” he continued. “Buckle down. We’ll be home soon.” He walked back to the doors but turned back. “By the way,” he said. “Keep your cock to yourself, and make sure the others do the same. This one is for fighting, not breeding.” 

He waved his staff at me as if I were a naughty cub stealing a treat before turning on his heel and slamming the doors closed behind him. 

***

Flying back to The Avalon would take many hours, as I had learned Master Ee-lie did not like to bring his main cruiser anywhere near planets. I had heard my old master talk about such things here and there, that if you come too close, you’re in danger of attack from the planet’s surface. 

So they kept their huge ships far away, and only travelled in small shuttles. 

I may not know much about space travel, but I knew that pirates were notoriously common out here in the fringe planets of the Reach. They stole slaves and gladiators alike for their own profit. 

Despicable. 

It wasn’t until I felt we were around halfway back that the female began to rouse. She took a great, raspy breath and coughed before rolling over in the other direction. Probably for the best, for my gaze had fallen to her teats peaking out of her tunic. Even through the muck, I could see the swell of them—unmistakably female. My gaze slid down her body to the junction between her legs, and her trousers that were so shredded and destroyed there was barely a slip of leather to cover her hips. 

I looked away quickly. 

She piqued my curiosity too much, but it was only because I had not been so close to a female of any sapient species. But then, Doctor Ken-see did not rouse my curiosity as much as this one had in the last few quiet hours, and she had spent much time poking and prodding me. Studying me like an animal and asking too many questions. 

She, too, was a human from Earth, just like the Master, and now this one, but this one was different. 

Taller than them both, and wider. 

Beneath the mud, she looked far stronger than both of them, but still small compared to we four gladiators aboard The Avalon.  

The female let out another barking cough, her breath ragged and her whole torso heaving with the effort. Her movements made the stench of the slaver planet waft in the air, and my tail flicked involuntarily with annoyance. 

It barely brushed the floor, but evidently that small sound was enough to startle the new female so much that she flung herself to the other side of the cage away from me. 

Her eyes were wide, and she stared at something above me. I looked back, but there was nothing but metal and mechanical things. Her breathing remained ragged, and she turned away from me, her hand sliding up to the bars and feeling each one before she snapped her fingers with her other hand.

Strange creature…

Insane, obviously. 

She crawled on her knees around the entire cage, one feeling each bar, the other snapping ahead of her. She never acknowledged me during her strange ritual, and once she’d circled the whole cage, she pulled herself to her feet and reached up to the bars over her head. 

She was much taller than the master and Doctor Ken-see. 

I’d never seen an Earthling with such height. They were tiny creatures, and this one probably came up to my chest.

She dropped to her knees, swept her hands across the floor, and knocked on it here and there.

This was a ridiculous custom. Was it an Earth thing? I had never seen the master nor Doctor Ken-see do anything remotely similar. Finally, she tucked herself into the corner farthest from me and gave me her back while she drummed her fingers against the bars. 

Constantly. 

It was annoying. 

“You will behave yourself, female,” I said in common. She flinched but otherwise did not acknowledge me. I had started learning words of the Earth tongue, at Mater Ee-lie’s insistence, but I did not like it. Their language had strange sounds that did not sit well on my lips, but I tried, since she did not yet have a translator. 

“You must do as they say, woman,” I said, the words all wrong in my mouth. She turned her head a little bit at that, but then settled back into her position. 

“I will not be punished for your nonsense,” I snapped, but she continued to ignore me. 

She wasn’t so big. Maybe Bifur and Kimul were just too old, or caught off guard. I could tuck this one under my arm and make sure she went where she needed to go. 

I had no intention of suffering a shock or having my rations taken.