The referee released Ortho’s wrist. He beat his chest once more, then the stage lights dimmed and the music started pumping. The fights were done for the night, so it was time to resume the underground fight club’s other purpose: sleaze.

The hoshing pit looked like it had been dug out of the cheap carpets. A standing area surrounded it where an intoxicated crowd shot Ortho some dirty looks before milling up the stairs out. Sofas and tables dotted the upper section of the club which were gradually being filled back up, and the bar pressed against one side was scrambling to organise drinks for the dissatisfied crowd. They were going to be more disappointed: even from this distance, Ortho could sniff out how cheap the Slap Pit’s alcohol was.

Ripper’s team rushed in through the hoshing pit’s cage and checked on him. Ortho had no such crew himself. He didn’t need one. He didn’t want one. It was better to fight alone. There were less problems to worry about that way.

Ortho huffed before squeezing through a gap in the cage, and into the angry crowd. He barged between sofas, brushing shoulders with people packed too tightly together for his liking. Enclosed, dense spaces like this frustrated him as the smells amplified without a breeze to carry them.

The sting of alcohol, stale perspiration—not his own—grimy upholstery, and the sickly-salty funk of lustful desperation. There was no way to block it out other than to hold his nose, and he wasn’t planning to let a crappy club make him, a warrior, stoop so low. He’d smelled worse in his time. Enhanced smell had its benefits, but it definitely had its drawbacks.

A man stumbled up to him, reeking of cheap beer. Ortho didn’t intend to stop, but the stumbling figure reached out for him, shouting, “Hey, hey, hey,” over the din.

Ortho slowly levelled a gaze on him. Still panting heavily from the fight and his bare chest glistening with sweat, he was sure he made an intimidating figure. The other guy was too drunk to care.

The man stabbed a finger at his chest. “Hey, you’re the guy from the dungeon country, huh?”

Ortho said nothing, but his enma was already flowing into the bangles on his wrists.

The man poked him harder. “You cheated, didn’t you?” He poked again. “You owe me money.”

“Do that one more time,” Ortho growled.

The drunk man did. Ortho grabbed him by the shirt and flung him sideways with ease. The drunk man landed on a sofa where two rough-looking men were sitting with their gold-digger dates. There was enough screaming and chaos for Ortho to slip away. For their sake, not his.

When he reached the table at the back, a man was waiting for him with a grin that Ortho wanted to slap off his face. He was wearing a pinstripe suit, black collared shirt—with the collar popped up, because of course it was—and a black glove with a multifaceted crystal embedded on the back. On his gloveless hand was a tattoo of a black vulture that he showed off without concern. As Ortho approached, he clapped slowly, sarcastically.

“Ortho of Nubah Kilebhi,” he said in a voice that was oily yet had the tone of a growling dog. Ortho was certain he’d butchered his tribe name’s pronunciation intentionally. “You did well. Morder thought he was going to keep your gear as collateral, but…”

The man, Morder, held up an azure helmet shaped like the top of a dog’s head. It cut off at the bottom half of the muzzle so that, when worn, Ortho’s jaw would be exposed. Twin golden aftocores were fasted where its eyes ought to have been. They were the same colour as Ortho’s, and had been plucked from the corpse of a kalbeyu that Ortho himself had slain.

Morder scrunched up his hooked nose at the helmet. “Not really Morder’s style.”

He tossed the helmet at Ortho, who caught it one-handed. Ortho inspected it for scratches—an unlikely event given that it was forged from fuchite. Then he brought it close to his nose and sniffed it. The scent of honey and gold filled him, bringing him comfort.

Ortho scoffed loudly. “Yeah, you’re right. It wouldn’t go with the whole…” he waved his helmet about, “oversized grupp thing you’ve got going on, wouldn’t it, Moh-der?” He brandished his helmet at Morder like he would a knife. “But if you did take my helmet, if you so much as left a fingerprint on it, I’d have hunted you down and rammed it down your throat, along with the rest of my fist.”

“Oh, come, Orr-tho,” Morder said, enunciating his name incorrectly. “Why so hostile? Even if you have the teeth to mess with a buitre of the Black Talon Cartel, you’d be foolish to bite.”

Morder flashed his teeth. Three of them had been replaced with sivs, multifaceted crystals worth between ninety and two hundred thousand kin each, depending on how they refracted light. They’d each been carved out to fit the shape of his mouth, rendering them worthless. That didn’t stop them from dancing speckles of light across the room.

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“Because Morder may bite back!” Morder hissed.

Ortho really considered knocking those teeth out. “Just give me my stuff back. And give me my share of the winnings, too. Ten percent, remember?”

“Of course!” Morder said.

He snapped his bony fingers and one of his soldiers dropped a small bag on the table. Ortho snatched it up and stuffed it into his shorts. He hadn’t brought a change of clothes, but he didn’t plan to stay long enough to use the provided locker rooms, so it had to do.

Morder’s soldiers then started passing pieces of Ortho’s armour over. Ortho dropped down into a sofa next to one of the soldiers, ignored the glares he received. He placed his helmet carefully on the table in front of him, ripped off the weight bands from his arms, then slapped pieces of his armour on.

Though there were straps on every armour piece that helped them stay on his broad form, to properly seal the armour around his body he needed to put some enma into them. He wasn’t currently bound to the armour, however, as he’d had to free up all of his levels for the hoshing equipment, so that wasn’t going to happen. Ortho just needed them in a place where they wouldn’t get away from him.

Morder settled back on his sofa. He pulled out a cigar and lit it. As soon as he did, a bouncer by the door, who’d been eyeing Morder’s group suspiciously, scowled then marched over. Morder’s soldiers stopped him before he could get close.

Not taking the hint, the bouncer shouted over their shoulders. “Hey, put that cigar out!”

Morder ignored him. No, that didn’t seem right to Ortho. He seemed to take longer to puff out smoke. He was definitely being vindictive.

Puffing out smoke, Morder said, “That was a close match. For a moment, Morder thought you were the wrong man to bet on.”

“Well, if you keep getting on my nerves,” Ortho said, buckling up his shin guards, “I might just throw the next match.”

“Hey!” the bouncer called. “Are you trying to set half the Shanties on fire?”

He tried to push past Morder’s soldiers but they didn’t budge. So, he then put a hand on one of their chests. That was a huge mistake.

In a flash, the soldier he’d touched whipped out a baton and clubbed his knees. Though the hit didn’t look too hard, the bouncer crumpled to the floor. He was quickly lifted by the shoulders by two soldiers and dragged him out to the lone on the corner that led to the surface, where he’d likely get the rest of his beating. None of the other bouncers dared to stop them. It seemed like nobody had told the new guy who he could and couldn’t mess with.

Remembering that he was trapped in a confined basement, Ortho’s breath quickened and a cold sweat beaded down his back. To distract himself, he tugged extra hard on the straps of his arm guard with his teeth, then buckling it up tight with his free hand. The pain was a good distraction.

The armour piece had thin, segmented layers of fuchite covering its outer forearm. The inner arm was made of leather, fitted to his arm tightly, and didn’t offer. It didn’t need to once it was bound.

“But Ortho is such a good business partner,” Morder said, apparently not noticing the commotion that had occurred just a few steps from him. “Morder wants to see you do well in the hoshing.”

“Uh huh,” Ortho said.

He slipped an arm through the lone armhole on the right of his cuirass and swung the open side up so that the front and back plates rested on his shoulders. Then he got to work on the straps at his side. He was bare chested, but the armour’s inside was fitted with a padded lining of grupp wool to make it comfortable and shock absorbent. When bound, it would have felt like he was naked.

“You’ve got dreams of moving up in the world from a thief to a manager, huh?” Ortho jabbed at the Buitre. “Not much of a difference, if you ask me.”

Morder raised his hands wide in exasperation. “Morder is just trying to help another foreigner settle into the city. Why so hostile?”

Anypaxians were usually tanned, but Ortho’s skin was still a noticeable few shades browner. Add that to his wide jaw, hooked nose, and golden eyes, and it was pretty easy to tell he was from the monster-laden plains of Huhl Hadem.

“Brother, I’ve been living in this stinking city for a year,” Ortho said. “I’ve smelled enough steel and oil to last me a lifetime. The last thing I need is to get another whiff of your cheap hair oil.”

Ortho held out a hand to one of the soldiers, who held a large oval-shaped shield in his hands. It was simple in design: unpainted azure fuchite with the visage of a yellow, snarling dog fused into the front of it. The soldier passed it to Ortho slowly. Snarling, Ortho reached out and snatched it from him.

He rested the shield against his knee. Its top rose up well past Ortho’s head. “Once I’m done paying off your debt, I never want to smell you again.”

Morder was about to counter with his own witty retort when a group of people approached from behind Ortho. He didn’t see them so much as he could smell them. A stench like rotten flesh and green sand—Ortho had no way to explain the imagery, but that’s what his mind registered the scent as. He figured that smell had previously been covered up by everything else in the room, but as the group approached, he got the full brunt of it, and it made the hairs on the back of his neck stand on end.

There was only one thing in this world that had a scent so foul yet unplaceable, and that was a monster.

“Mr. New-bar Kileh-bi,” the man said.

Ortho’s upper lip twitched at hearing his name get butchered by the man’s rolling Logosi accent. He turned slowly and found the source of the smell: a fat, green lizard that sat perfectly rigid on a suited-up man’s shoulder. On first glance it looked like a small monitor, but then Ortho’s gaze shifted slightly, and the creature’s scales blended almost perfectly into the surrounding dim chaos. A kakaliz. If not for its reek, Ortho wouldn’t have even realised it was there.

“What?” Ortho growled at the suited man with the kakaliz on his shoulder.

The suited man stared down his nose at Ortho with the hollowed eyes of someone who worked too hard. He didn’t smile as he greeted Ortho, an act which Ortho had come to learn was considered rude in Anypaxia unless done by someone of higher social status. Not that he cared. It wasn’t his social status.

The suited man took a card out of his pocket and presented it to Ortho. “Do you mind if we have a talk about your performance in the ring?” he said. “I’m curious to know how you so handily defeated my client.”