"What do you think is down here?" Dion asked.

"Nothing Turnus wants found out, I can tell you that much."

The entrance was near the gallery of alcohol bottles, most of them stiff and glued onto the counter. It was a door masquerading as a moving shelf, and it pushed to the right.

Apollo looked straight into the entrance, his eyes peering into the nothingness.

Dion punched the door frame, locking the mechanism in place. It’d never close, not anymore.

"Just in case, you know," Dion said.

They walked down the darkness. The steps below made loud, metallic noises. The air was cold, and it smelled of…sweat.

"You’d think they’d trip with how many fucking steps there are," Apollo mumbled. His eyes flashed red, though, even flared they didn’t so much as see past his hands. No. He took out his flashlight and beamed it across the room.

"Where are we?" Dion's voice echoed.

"Somewhere big," He said and looked around. There were stands around them and next to the wall, a fuse box with a giant switch. They pressed it down and watched it all light up. It was blinding at first, Apollo covered his eyes. He looked down at an angle and brought his face up. Around them was the stadium, quite literally. The large benches looking down, coming down at levels towards the center where there stood the round ring. There was blood in the sand. There were teeth too.

And bones.

"Bloodsports, probably," Apollo said.

"Who'd kill themselves for money?"

"There’s too many answers to that question," Apollo said. "Anyone willing to kill for money isn’t right of mind, or right of circumstance."

"I wonder what this says about us, you know," Dion said. "You and me. The people watching. We can’t be that much better."

“You finally said something smart,” Apollo said. Dion rolled his eyes.

They looked at the stands, bottles of champagne and the exoskeletons of crabs and lobsters. Panties too and plenty of masks discarded. Condoms. Alcohol, tons of it. And even more intense smell of war and violence; sweat and blood and decomposing flesh.

"People pay big money for this kind of stuff, I’m guessing,” Apollo said. “Probably funds whatever crazy shit Turnus has without having to put the money on tax reports. After all, these are all revenue streams for his ‘bar.’”

He looked up to the giant television on the ceiling of the roof and the lights that came down at a harsh angle towards them. There were festival lights and around the perimeter were small torches where tiny flames rose from their gas pipes. A glass box above seemed to be the point of interest.

"I have a feeling we interrupted something that was going to happen," Dion said.

He looked down towards the Colosseum, another thing grabbing his attention, a giant metal door within the arena.

"Or just came after one was done." Apollo walked down the steps.

They went down to the pit at the center, the coarse sand was rough in their shoes.

“There’s an entrance here.” Apollo looked to one end of the circular arena where a giant grate stood, with the holes on its metal face appearing like a pout. “Or an exit.”

Dion kicked the metal door inwards. Inside was dark, the few rays of light illuminated only the entrance. Dust followed them into the room like a slow-moving phantom.

“There’s a bad taste in the air,” Apollo said.

“It’s all those cigarettes of yours. They’ve burned a hole in your tongue.”

He had to turn on his flashlight just to see, it seemed like a small hold for contesters. There were racks on the walls for weapons, lockers too. Boxing gloves, swords, guns even, filled the crooked racks hanging off the walls. There was a small fountain, with no running water but a wet pool still inside and placid. Apollo dipped his fingers in and rubbed them together.

“Oil.” He said. “For greasing yourself…or your weapon.”

Beyond it, chalk. Wraps, belts. So on.

A door closed at the end of the room.

They looked at each other in the you-go-check-it-out-first kind of way.

“We’ll both go,” Apollo said.

“As long as you’re ahead,” Dion said.

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Walking should have been easy, it wasn’t that far of a distance, but the noise of something squirming and the noise of doors closing was enough to make them cautious. Apollo took a stone wall with how rusty and stubborn the hinges were. And the door whined. And he stepped through with the most gentle, careful step ever. As if the floor below him would crack if even the slightest strength was put against it.

He scanned the room with his flashlight.

It went eastward to westward -

Stop!

Something reflected back, a gleaning eye. He realigned the light toward the eye. The person seemed to move, running along to the corner.

“Stand the fuck still,” Apollo said. Dion took out his gun and prepped the hammer. The light shined down on the eye. Orange? One of them was at least. It gleaned and captured light like a singular cats eye. He closed the distance, hitting several things that in the darkness could have been anything. He put the flashlight back in his pocket, Dion was shining a light anyways. And when he put a hand on the person (what Apollo grabbed, he did not know), he was met with a small sting across his shoulder.

He waved his arm. Fuck off. He hit whatever hit him, throwing it against the wall. And the person, in that darkness, yelped.

Dion turned on a switch. The lights came on, bright and hot against them.

“What the fuck?” Apollo looked down. “It’s a boy.”

It was a small boy with nothing to him but some stained, beige rags. Bony, dark bags around his eyes. He looked like he was wearing a potato sack. And next to him, a small bird, almost raven-like, paralyzed from the throw.

“Who is he?” Dion asked.

Apollo looked back and forth to where the bird was struck, to where the boy was hurt. The back of their heads were both bleeding, the blood trickling down the boy. And the blood coming down on the bird's beak.

“That’s his familiar.” Apollo shook the boy's shoulder. “Isn’t it? You’re a Walker, aren’t you?”

“Walker? Those guys that summon demons?”

“Not summon, manifest them. He’s a familiar.” He pointed to the bird, the bird who rose up and started hopping along and clawing at Apollo’s feet.

It didn’t hurt, not compared to the other kind of trouble. Just some scratches, and the ripping of his shoe-leather. He grabbed the bird, a strong grip that contained the wings and only allowed the bird to twist his head and move his legs.

And the boy was in pain.

“What’s he doing down here?” Dion asked.

“What do you think?” Apollo let the bird go into a flutter, his eyes keen on the observations of the creature. The bird had two eyes on each side, and they all looked crookedly at each direction before focusing on Apollo’s face. He stood up. “A familiar, who can invoke himself a personal spirit to life. What would someone with that kind of power be doing in a bloodsport arena? ”

“Are you saying he’s a fighter here? This kid?” Dion asked. “Like…it’s like dogfighting…That’s disgusting.”

Apollo looked at the boy, dark-skinned with buzz cut approaching near-baldness. No older than fourteen, with dried blood on his mouth. He grabbed the boy by the chin. The crow kept flapping its wings and trying to defend its master, pecking at Apollo’s hand. He waved it away.

Apollo opened the boy's mouth, prying it. No tongue. There was nothing but scar tissue and cauterized flesh across the wound where his tongue should have been.

“It looks like he didn’t want to fight. Or he was disobedient, or just said something stupid at the wrong time.” Apollo put him down. The crow flew across, perching itself on the boy's shoulder with a glare aping the boy's same glare.

“So you’ve got no mouth to speak with, huh?” Apollo said. “Do you understand English?”

The boy nodded his head, no. But given his frustration, the way he kept his glare and the look of utter contempt, he could have said no to anything.

“I’m not the man who cut your tongue off, kid,” Apollo said.

“Let me handle this,” Dion came behind Apollo. “Your bedside manners are god awful.”

“Alright. If that bird pecks your eye off, don’t bitch at me.”

Apollo put both hands on his shoulders. Dion knelt. He started to put his hand on the kid's shoulder, which only made him swerve away. The crow chirped.

“We’re not here to hurt you,” Dion said. The kid pointed his glare at Apollo. Apollo glared back, with squinted eyes. “He’s not here to hurt you either…he’s just rough.”

The boy’s look came back down to Dion.

“I take it you understand a little English, right?”

He nodded yes. The features on his face softened, softened to a grimace. Then a frown. Rage turned to steep depression. As if anger was the only thing maintaining that masquerade of courage and grit. The boy’s face turned to sullen frown. His head declined, his shoulder eased.

“You’re not from here though, are you? You’re very far from home. Right?” Dion asked.

The boy nodded yes.

“Kidnapped?”

Yes.

“Kidnapped because of that bird, right?”

Absolutely, yes. The only reason, yes.

“Do you have family?”

No.

“You’ll be fine. Okay? My name is Dion, what’s yours?” He offered a pen and notepad to write. But the crow spoke, in broken speech.

“U-U-U-U” It looked like it was vomiting the words, its head jerking up and down. “Uriel! Uriel! Cawww! Uriel!”

“Tucan Sam, over here.” Apollo clapped once.

The bird swooped up and pecked him in the side of the head, before returning to the boy.

“Goddamnit-” Apollo rubbed his scalp.

“You deserved that.” Dion turned his face to the boy. “We’re going to get you out, okay? We have friends who can take care of you.”

“They might. Walkers and Familiars are something of a grey case for the church, we can try to take him in.”

“He’s scared out of his mind, and you’re telling him this?” Dion asked. “How mean can you be, really?”

He turned to the boy. “Don’t mind him. Trust me. We can find you a place, something better than this arena. Somewhere where you won’t get hurt.”

He tried to grab the boys arm, who although softer, still struggled.

“My friends, they’re not like the people here, I promise.”

“Really? They tried cutting our heads off-”

Dion shot him a glare. The don’t-open-your-mouth glare.

Dion withdrew his arm, instead, offering his hand to be grabbed. “If you want me to help, you have to trust me, okay?”

The boy’s trepidation did not allow him to so much as even look at the hand. Not at first, at least. The bird extended its wings, shielding or perhaps feigning some kind of might. But after another inspection. After glancing back and forth, the boy's resistance faded. It took minutes. It took a while, really for him to warm up. For his cheeks to return some color.

But kind tenacity is the stuff that weathers people, that kills that walls around them. Kind tenacity alone.

The boy looked up, he took Dion’s hand.

“I hate babysitting,” Apollo said. He looked to the rest of the small space, the cages and the blood and the ‘tools’ (because he couldn’t come up with another name for them, torture devices was also something that came up). Pliers, syringes, scalpels; it was all here.

“But I guess it’s better than leaving him here.” And Apollo looked down another door, through the small gaps in the metal door. The prison bars, as they looked. He looked down, and his eyes saddened. He turned around to Dion, his face translating all the despair beyond that door in ways words could never. “There’s no one left. Trust me. Let’s go.”