“What do you want?” a man barks from where he’s guarding the back entrance to The Pits.

“What’s in there?” I ask with an accent of heavy consonants and slurred word ends. It sounds like a back-country peasant from the coast.

The man hacks and spits, then leans in. “Creatures great and small. Where ya from?”

“A little city near the coast. Da brought me here for the first time. Said I were old enough for the city.” I puff out my chest, the cloak covering my face, but my voice and posture resembling a young lad not quite into his deeper voice.

“Ahh, I see. Don’t let the guards catch you hanging round this place. They’ll think you wish to create some chaos, see, and we have no need of a good lad getting in trouble, you understand?” He is genuine, trying to keep a young lad out of trouble.

I nod, mumble a thanks, and stumble off into the darkened streets.

Now… I will not do what I was, not with this man. I won’t cost him his job. I’ll wait until next shift, loath as I am to do so.

Waiting for the shift change is not near as nerve-wracking as expected, seeing as I'm able to plant a few things in drinks and add a few ale jars to the upper tiers behind the men's weapons' rack. I stay busy planting a few more items, then duck out of sight when the guards rotate back around.

The shift change occurs a little before early dawn, near the darkest part of the night. I take another moment to pour out some ale and whiskey in the guard towers after the men imbibed an untraceable drug into drunken unconsciousness. It might've helped that I dropped off a few bottles of a priceless mead for the guards to find—it just had a few powdered extras added to the drink.

Done with the men above, I stumble my way to the man guarding the gate. He jeers as I ask questions, his face turning in a scowl the longer I talk. He leans in to poke me with his baton, and I prick his hand quicker than a viper’s bite. He looks from me to his stinging hand in confusion, his eyes growing hooded and heavy. “Wha—?”

I catch him as he falls. The sky grows darker as the moon descends into the distance.

The body gets stashed on his stool beside the door, his head propped on his hand and snores with rancid breath emerging from his open mouth. I pour a good dose of mead on his tunic and around his stool.

The next part is going to be trickier. The locks here are mage locks… only able to be opened with a word or finger from specific, authorized individuals. Hence why I brought my own specific individual.

The noble I first saw at The Pits is the son of a significant person deep in the folds of The Pit itself. The husband of that individual was surprisingly easy to kidnap when his son invited me to a party.

I haul the skinny man forward, toting him on my shoulder into this back entrance into The Pits. This place is used to haul the basic necessities for the animals and creatures within. Most don’t even realize it’s here, it’s a plain channel inset into the ground, much like a ditch in the city itself with the top open to the sky but a kill zone should anyone try to breech the walls into the actual Pit itself. But the men on top of the walls are as drunk as this man here. It would seem the men above had quite the party the previous evening, and all drunk themselves into a stupor.

The man hanging with slack jaw and glazed eyes from my shoulder doesn’t even respond as I take his clammy hand and press it against the lock. The man won’t remember a bit of this. Wolfsbane mixed with Sixth's Breath is actually quite useful on humans, but I gave him the antidote before it killed him. His incoherent mumbling and dilated pupils is exactly what I need.

The first hallway we take is long and travels at a steady downward slope, leading us deeper underground. The walls are the pure rock of the original Pit. All this underneath the actual arena is part of the original building material.

A second guard station is coming up, and this is where I shove off my coat and flash my stolen chain mail and tunic from a barrack in the upper levels of the back entrance. The noble beside me grumbles something unintelligible, drool dripping out the side of his mouth as he giggles.

There are four guards stationed behind the poles of thick metal thicker than my arm. They could stop a rampaging dragon. The men watch me with varying degrees of humor and confusion. One looks suspicious.

“Ho there! This man passed out in the street. Said somethin’ bout checking on his dragon before slumping to the ground. I think he’s drunk, but he said somethin’ somethin’ about Madame Hamilta. Numra up front said to bring him here.” I shrug my shoulders, as if this is all above me. I keep a slightly wry tilt to my lips, as if this is all great, if confusing, fun.

“You new here, boy?” one of the amused men asks, dropping his hand from his sword.

I shrug sheepishly. “First night. Was told to expect a boring, rot your eyes out night, but turns out it’s been anything but.”

Another man barks a laugh. “Just you wait. You got lucky. Most of us never seen hide nor hair of these nobles and their pets, just the stinking waist generated by the massive creatures and all the food needed to sustain them. In one way, out the other… am I right?” The man beside him slaps his head and he winces, throwing his companion a glare.

I’m close enough.

I put a dart to my lips, taking down Suspicious Eyes first, and Amused second. The last two make it less than two steps before they also hit the ground.

I put my slobbering noble’s hand on the lock, opening it and setting him with the others. If my memory serves, this is the last I will need of him. The rest of the locks are boring, hand made steel creations I can pick.

I jog down the passageway, my eyes noting the side passages and large cages on either side. Most of the places here have snoring creatures, but some… some watch me through eyes of hostility and death. Creatures I have no name for glance out at me, snarling, snorting, and hissing.

I turn down a side passage, just dodging a patrol behind me, and then duck into a smaller tunnel where I see men and women on either side. Most sleep on cots, but some are up and watch me slink down the passageway through dead eyes. They have been on the drugs the longest… and most of their minds are gone. Their gazes are blank. All they have left is the basic animalistic drive for food and shelter and protecting territory or fighting for food. It breaks my heart and tugs at my anger within… but the anger does not test the bonds of The Beast. Not any longer. The Beast is under my control now, as is my anger. And the anger roiling in my gut? It’s a normal anger, not the unexplainable and uncontrollable rage of before.

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A wail stops me in my tracks. I need to be gone before the sun completes it's rise and I've much to do. A second wail comes, and I almost curse, something not sitting right with me at the sound.

I look down the passage I need to go down, then down the long, dark tunnel the wail came from.

A large barrel sits in front of the cage at my left, and it's filled with the something my nose doesn't like. At all.

I snort, trying to blow the smell that's somewhat peppermint mixed with pepper and days old rotting refuse all at the same time. Something large and dark looms within the cage, and I suppress a shiver as two silver pinpricks of light blink open.

The creature within hardly bats an eye when I draw a knife. Another cry has me trotting down the dark passage, despite how my instincts are calling me all sorts of idiotic for turning my back on an apex predator. I slow when I see light, and I blink to let my eyes adjust.

When I do, anger thrums through my veins.

A creature with red and gold plumage is pinned beneath another with black and silver. Three men stand around the make-shift pit in the stand, cheering on the creature on top that tears another chunk from the little thing's wing with a caw of triumph.

The first man is knocked out on the floor before I even realized I moved. The other two gape at me, and I shrug.

Somehow that only makes them wary, and one backs up three or four steps, putting his companion between me and him.

Humor shoots through me when the middle man looks back at his friend. "What the Sixth, dude?"

He made the mistake of turning his eyes away from me. When he turns back around, I'm inches from his face and it takes a mere prick on his neck and he slumps to the ground.

The last holds up his hands. "Please, whatever you want, take it. I've got a wife and children. Please, don't do this."

I grin under my hood. He smells of two different women who both wore perfumes enough to linger long after he drowned himself in ale and then came down here. No smells of home-baked bread or the genuine love of a woman. He's a liar and a fraud, and he bets on the fighitng of innocent creatures.

The wild is dangerous. It's an eat or be ate world where apex predators rule and the others are there for the cycle of life. But rarely does one come across animals who enjoy killing... cats excluded, which makes me wonder why my best friend is a cat. The fulfillment for animals is in the full bellies for themselves and their pups or cubs. It's the provision, the way for them to move forward with life. Live, eat, die. That is the way of the creatures of the wild.

But these two creatures being pitted against each other for the enjoyment of another creature? That is not what happens in the wild and is abhorrent. It is wrong.

Instead of smoothly taking the last down, I punch him in the sternum hard enough to feel bone crack beneath my fist. Before he can gasp from the blow or fall to the floor in pain, I clock him in the temple with my dagger.

His eyes roll into the back of his head and he falls. I sidestep, watching as he splats face-first into the hard dirt. Something crunches on impact.

I step up to the cage, opening the door and watching as the little black creature sinks back into a corner and hisses at me, its teeth-filled beak coated in blood.

I grab the second little creature, the first trying to take a bite out of me, but I flick it with a finger and it retreats with a low grummble in its throat.

The little gold and red thing in my hands is about the size of my arm, shaped like a chicken but with a long tail that ends in a barb. It's covered in feather from head to toe, and I imagine it'd be quite cute if not for the blood matting it's feathers and the gaping holes where the other creature tore pieces from its wings and chest.

It barely breathes in my hands, and I know I'm too late for the little guy.

I makes my heart hurt to see such needless violence and pain.

I set it down, pillowing his head on my knee, and stroke his feathers, trying to give him some comfort before he passes on.

He opens an eye a hair, and the way his gaze is the pure black of my own gives me chill bumps. He has the eyes of a Shifter.

He keens softly, a little moan that touches my heart. "Hi there, little guy. It's alright now, you're free. Free to fly in the skies of Fifth and chase after the wind. Free to sail across the last divide and breach the gates of the Allfather. Free to breath and live without the pain of this life and the torment you had here. Be free, little guy."

He shutters, gives one last little breath of air, then goes still.

I stand before the convulsions of death begin.

I happen to glance over at the cage, finding the black and silver bird has come closer, it's red eyes watching me intently and with something more than mere animal intelligence. It makes my skin crawl.

I turn to leave, but a small sound like the chuff of a cat draws my eyes back to the cage. The little thing looks at the latch of the cage door, then looks back at me, it's barbed tail swishing along the blood-stained dirt.

A sigh escapes me. I can't leave the little thing like that, even if he did kill the other.

I begrudgingly turn back around, unlatching the cage door. The creature bounces on it's feathered feet, then it pauses and cocks it's head at me when I don't open the cage right away.

"Don't make me regret this," I say, giving it a stern glare. But when it merely cocks it's head the other way and gives another chuff, I sigh again. "Now I'm talking to a chicken mixed with a wyvern. Wonderful."

I open the cage.

The thing darts out, grazing me with its wings, intent on the passageway where I came from.

"How's that for thanks?" I grumble, touching my cheek and feeling something wet and sticky where the sharp wing sliced my cheek.

I trot back down the passageway after the little thing, but when I get back to the fork where I need to go, there is not hide nor feather of the little creature.

Good enough for me.

I need to get back on track, and the scent I'm tracing takes me deeper into the depths of The Pit.

I duck behind the sacks of grain, my nose filled with the stench of sweat, blood, silver, death, and the emotions of broken wills, anger, pain and fear.

Lingering beneath is a scent I am tracking through these dark tunnels braced with wood. It smells of an odd mixture of bitter herb and sickly sweet powder that curdles my stomach. The one thing about the drug no one has been able to get around?

It’s highly flammable. Much like the black explosive powder some of the nations have tampered with over the centuries; this powder is extremely hard to make and a match tossed into such a thing would cause quite a stir.

The man guarding the drug is almost asleep on his stool. A quick dart to his neck makes his eyes completely close and his rest becomes a deep sleep. This is a lesser drug than those I gave the others. This man will be up and about in an hour with none the knowledge that his moment of rest was anything but.

This door opens only by the handprint of very few. They guard this place with the expertise of a vault… the drug is worth its weight in glass gold, after all.

But I have no need to get within to steal the stuff. A piece of paper is all it takes. Bought from a fire mage of exceptional talent, the piece of paper packs quite the punch.

I jog down the hallway, grinning when I hear a concussive blast of one barrel after another lighting up, the rock door shaking its steel hinges with each conclusive blast. Of course, they have a system in place to stop such things from happening, and the next moment I hear the hiss and patter of water as the barrels of powder are doused.

But the explosions keep coming, one after another, until the entire underground is shaking with the blasts. The water may stop a few barrels… but the explosions are even greater than I expected. My jog turns into a run.

I hope I didn’t just bring this entire stadium down on our heads as the lamps flicker in their holders and dirt rains down from above. I jog back the direction I came from, looking in each cell for Jed. But where I follow his trail… it leads to a door leading out of the Pits. Did Purple come through and get him out?

Either way, I am done here.