The Fighting place
The heat literally slapped Runt in the face as he sat on a bench at the Fighting place. The tracks wound down and around the cavern, past the hive, and led them to the very bottom of the chamber. The lava lapped at the shore here, against a beach of crushed rock.
The Fighting place was arranged like an amphitheatre. The gorgons had carved a semi-circle of bench seating into the rockface that watched over the lake and the gravel beach in front of it. A giant slab of granite sat in the middle of the beach. This was the stage. The slab stood taller than a full-grown gorgon and the top of it formed a square six yards on either side.
Anyone standing on the stage commanded the full view of the creatures in the amphitheatre. The stage, then, was the rallying place for the gorgon bosses. They delivered speeches here. It was also the place for gorgons to fight. Arguments were solved by violence here, once a week, in full view of the gorgon horde. Any gorgon claiming to be the strongest in its group got to test out the claim during the weekly brawls.
The seating was crowded with gorgons, now, and their mood was dark. They grunted and grumbled. Occasionally a gorgon would stand and yell down towards the platform, shaking a fist. Others spat and swore. Runt squinted through the orange smog. The air here was so hot that it wavered and blurred but he could just make out, on the platform, a series of small furry blobs.
“Recognise anyone?” Brain asked grimly. “I suppose those are your friends?”
Before Runt could answer a chorus of deafening cheers erupted. Gorgons shouted and pointed. Down below, marching across the beach, a stern looking group approached the platform. It was the big boss and the pack of gorgons that followed the boss around.
Runt looked back to the harpies on the stage. None of them stirred or showed any signs of life. He felt a pang of guilt. This whole time, in the caverns, he had only focused on his own survival. Runt tried to tell himself there hadn’t been a chance to help them, but was that true? In the rest times, when the joeys slept, could he have sneaked out? Could he have pretended to be on an errand and tried to find them?
It was too late, anyhow. The big boss slowly approached the platform as the crowd continued to cheer. One of the boss’s followers crouched down and, with others on either side, the boss was carefully lifted onto the platform. Hunched over, and leaning heavily on its walking stick, the boss looked down briefly at the small piles of fur by its feet and then up to the assembled gorgons.
“Gorgons! We work hard this week. For good reason. Look!” the leader shouted, before reaching down and grabbing one of the harpies by the neck and lifting it up. The tiny creature hung limp in its grasp.
“These harpy attack us. But we gorgon strong. Attack fail. Look at harpy. So frail. So weak. Harpy sleep, now. Bright light of lake too much for the weakling.”
The gorgon crowd laughed and jeered. The boss thumped its stick for quiet. Runt breathed a tiny sigh of relief. They weren’t dead, but the harpies couldn’t stay awake in the light. Not without magic.
“Harpy attack a good sign. It mean plan working! Harpy are desperate. Gorgon are winning. Soon, the war is over. Soon, the hard work done. Soon, gorgon leave cavern and join demon in big city. Then: booze, fire, and fun time forever!”
This announcement was met with roars of approval. The boss slowly looked over the crowd, nodding. Then, without warning, it dropped the harpy off the front of the stage and down into the shadows cast by the enormous slab of granite. The other harpies followed, nudged off the platform by the gorgon’s hairy foot, one by one.
“Wake them up!” The boss roared. Several gorgons carrying buckets of water scurried over and splashed the harpies until they sat up groggily.
“Let us remember the harpy betrayal. Bring torch! Show us gorgon memory pictures.”
Another gorgon advanced, holding a flaming staff filled with coal, and walked to the base of the stage. It stood on the left and held the torch underneath. A familiar yellow glow glittered into view.
“Painted with yellowcake, gorgon see for all time the betrayal remembered onto stone. The first! See the harpy. It use magic to control the gorgon.”
The crowd fell silent as the picture sparkled into view. It showed a crude diagram of a harpy standing above a gorgon, sprinkling dust down onto the gorgon’s head. Instead of circles, the gorgon’s eyes were drawn as two large Xs.
“Gorgon beware! Harpy magic powerful. Harpy use magic to make gorgon slave. Always remember! Never forget!”
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The gorgon crowd echoed this final statement. A cry of “Always remember, never forget!” echoed across the cavern. The boss nodded, then continued.
“The second! See the harpy. It use magic to become terrible beast.”
The gorgon carrying the flaming torch moved across to stand at the middle section of the stage. A second picture glittered into life. This one showed a harpy, but giant, with spikes across its back, and a gorgon running away from it in terror.
“Gorgon beware! Harpy magic powerful. Harpy use magic to change into terrible beast and fight gorgon. Always remember! Never forget!”
Again, the chamber echoed with the crowd repeating “Always remember, never forget!” The torchbearer moved to the final section of the stage. This last image showed a harpy sprinkling dust again but this time, onto a group of joeys. The crowd hissed and grumbled.
“The third! It show the great betrayal. Harpy break ancient agreement. Harpy want gorgon extinct. Harpy use magic to poison baby joey. Me, big boss,” the gorgon roared, slapping its chest, ”I seen this crime and make this picture. Always remember! Never forget!”
The crowd roared this time, and shook their fists, and stomped their feet. The ground shook with their fury.
“See, Runt?” Brain said, looking across sadly. “The harpies tried to kill the joeys. We moved down here where they couldn’t get to us. And now you’re here, trying to help them finish the job.”
Runt’s mouth fell open to protest, but Brain stood and moved to sit by the other joeys. The big boss continued to speak.
“Today we do extra special fight time. We show harpy the true strength of gorgon. No more is gorgon afraid of harpy magic. Gorgon got magic, too! Powerful magic of yellowcake. But first, I ask all gorgon to thank the harpy. Come thank them for helping gorgon grow strong.”
The guards that followed the boss walked to the front of the stage and formed a line in front of the harpies. Gorgons from the crowd began scrambling down and rushing towards the stage. They yelled, spat, and swore at the harpies sitting in the shadows but none of them dared cross the line of guards or try to hurt the prisoners.
Runt raced down, ducking and weaving between the legs of the large creatures, till he was close enough to make eye contact with the teacher. The harpy’s eyes widened in recognition.
“Wolf-ghost! How did you come to be in this place?”
“Never mind that now! You need to get out of here before they kill you.”
The teacher shook its head.
“They won’t. But you’re right. We need to get out. Can you help us get loose?” The teacher held up its hands to show Runt they were tied together with rope.
Runt looked up and around. None of the adults took any notice of him. The din from hundreds of gorgons all yelling at once meant no one heard their conversation. The guards, though, stared out into the crowd grimly. It would be impossible to stay hidden from them.
“It’s no good, teacher, I’d be spotted. They took my cloak,” Runt said, sadly, holding out his bare arms, “I can’t turn invisible anymore.”
“Wolf-ghost, listen,” the teacher said desperately, “you don’t need the cloak. I can’t explain why right now, but you can turn invisible. You always could. You just didn’t know you were doing it. The cloak and the stardust were simply a trick to help you learn to do it properly. To give you confidence. It wasn’t my magic, it was yours.”
Runt found himself being buffeted by the crowd which, as a group, turned and began cheering and chanting. What the teacher said didn’t make sense and yet, at the same time, it made perfect sense. He’d always been good at hiding, almost too good. Sometimes, as a young lad, huddled in a shadowy corner of the kennels, he felt that coolness wash over him without knowing what it was. Tyron would storm past and look right through him. Runt thought back to the first time he left the kennels with a pot-sized helmet on his head. The guard saw him run into the bushes and hide in the shadows but never found him. Now Runt knew why. Except, of course, that didn’t tell him anything about how. But the how would have to wait.
Even the guards were distracted now. The entire crowd was looking up and away. The chanting continued. One word, repeated over and over.
“Tyrant! Tyrant! Tyrant! Tyrant!”
Runt seized his chance and ducked and rolled between the legs of the few gorgons standing between him and the harpies. He felt the coolness wash over him. From the corner of its eye, one of the guards saw a flash of skin and hair flit past but, when it turned to look, there was nothing. Just shadows and miserable harpies. It shrugged, turned back, and joined in the chant with the other gorgons.
“It’s me, Runt.” He whispered to the teacher, while pulling the sharp sliver of rock out of his pouch. “I’m going to cut the ropes on your wrists and feet now, but you need to wait for the right moment to run. We’re going to need some kind of distraction, or they’ll just catch you again.”
The glassy sliver of rock easily sliced through the rope. Runt repeated his message to every harpy down the line. The harpies kept their hands together as though still bound. Patch smiled as the ropes were cut from the small harpy’s wrist and whispered “I knew you’d come for us, Wolf-ghost. The trees were right.”
Runt dashed back to the start of the line.
“That was the last one, teacher. Now you just need to wait for a distraction and we’ll run out of here.”
“You have our thanks, Wolf-ghost, but this is all the distraction we need.” the teacher replied, looking up at the boss still standing on the stage. “You should leave. Things are about to get messy.”
The teacher hissed an instruction down the line of harpies. Runt saw several harpy’s hands dip into their pouches and extract a handful of pollen. This time, though, they quickly ate it. Runt’s heart sank. They didn’t mean to escape. They never had. They were here to fight.