Her name was Starshine.
Her master gave it to her because he had said that she smiled like the sun and her eyes twinkled like stars in the night sky.
Her real name was Tabitha.
Her parents had given her that.
She remembered everything from before. Remembered the smell of fire in the air on the night the men had come to her small community. Remembered the screams, the gunshots, the explosions of magic. Remembered the men killing her father as he fought to keep them from entering their home. Remembered being torn from her mother’s arms. Remembered the long journey to her new home. The auction. The collar. The master.
She remembered it all without emotion.
Intellectually, she knew what had happened to her, what had been done to her.
The facts of her past were just that.
Facts.
She saw it as simple things to take for granted.
Like the sky being blue or rain making you wet.
Nothing to care about.
She was a girl back then.
She was still a girl today.
The master had changed.
Two, three, four months ago.
She wasn’t good with time.
Days moved on in a blissful haze of happiness.
Vague, unless she interacted with the master, then it was all-consuming.
Whatever the master wanted, she was never happier then when she was doing his will.
She had been happy when the master called her to her chambers on certain nights. She was happy that he had plenty of other girls and women. She felt not an ounce of jealousy.
She had been happy when the master had told her to entertain his fighters.
Whatever the master said filled her with joy, with purpose.
Her only purpose.
The change didn’t matter.
Her happiness remained the same.
The master never called her to his chambers anymore.
Never called anyone.
He never so much as laid a hand on her and the others.
The fighters weren’t allowed in the house.
They stayed outside on guard or out at the pubs and brothels. The master was a lot freer with his wealth these days.
His spending was marked by the increase in the number of people like her joining the household.
So many small and weak people, just like her.
Unlike her, they were ugly or injured or sick.
She remembered.
The master used to only ever buy beautiful and young girls and boys, cute at a minimum, as he often called her when he squeezed her cheeks.
He hadn’t done that in a while.
He hadn’t touched her. Hadn’t touched anybody.
She didn’t care about any of that.
She was just happy to be owned by the master.
“Tabitha?”
“Yes, Master!” she beamed as she stood by the front door.
The master and his old, tottering husk of a manservant approached.
“Uh… is everything okay,” the master said.
“Yes, Master! How may I be of service today?”
The old manservant’s gnarled hand twitched as though to reach out toward her neck.
“Bitterman… patience,” the master raised a hand. “Tabitha, please follow your schedule.”
“I’m happy to do as you command, Master,” she skipped away as the master and the old man exited the mansion.
----------------------------------------
Two men exited the mansion’s front gates and entered the street.
It was a short walk to the car service that served this wealthy enclave.
Even then, upon seeing a withered old man and a fat, middle-aged man one might’ve questioned their capability to walk those few blocks.
And yet, none that saw them thought anything of the pair at all.
The two slipped through their notice like gossamer strands of spider’s silk.
“I’m going to kill them all… all that hold chains,” Bitterman seethed.
“Remember the priority, free the enslaved with their lives and minds intact.”
“You’re a contemptible person for not at least allowing me to break the collars of those poor children and people you’ve bought,” Bitterman spat.
“I’ve explained this to you, like, a hundred times,” the man within a man sighed. “You do that and they’ll know.”
“The storm can’t be kept at bay forever, not even you can do so.”
“Two months. Maybe even less. Let these contests consume all attention. Let our agents get into the places they need to. Let me find the central control unit and—”
The old manservant cursed.
“Have a good one!” a passerby said with a tip of his cowboy hat.
“I’d be more at ease if you explained how you are making them see us as different people. You!” Bitterman barked at another passerby. “I find you oily and repulsive.”
“Yeah, it’s great that the heat and humidity have died down! I hope you fellas have a good day!” the passerby waved.
“What are they hearing?”
“Relax, Bitterman. They hear what they need.”
“And what is this name you call me?”
“I thought about it last night. Seemed fitting, Bitterman.”
“You’re mocking me,” narrowed eyes.
“Fair is foul and foul is fair,” the man in the guise of a wealthy noble lord, a slavemaster, shrugged.
A car took the pair to the auction site.
This one was for the dregs.
People with defects according to the N.A.R.’s written standards.
“They assess their fellow humans like livestock,” Bitterman’s face twisted.
“If you can’t keep it together, then I’ll have to send you back. I warned you what this place was like.”
“I don’t understand how you sit here and watch this happen when you have the power to kill all this filth and free the innocents.”
“I told you—”
The old manservant waved him away with a disgruntled snort.
“Some of those old memories coming back?”
“I— I don’t know. Something about this,” he gestured at the crowd in their raised seats and the stage down below where the slavers were getting ready to bring out the goods, “seems familiar.”
“Maybe you were a rancher or farmer back in the old days, before…”
“Before I was enslaved, like these people will be shortly.”
The false slavemaster nodded at that.
He regarded the crowd.
Many of the same faces and thoughts.
A few new ones.
He noted a young man with two enslaved girls on either side of him, clutching his arms.
The sight brought on revulsion.
The young man listened intently to the older man whispering in his ear from the row above him.
That man, he recognized.
Silvio, one of the main procurement agents of a mid to high tier noble family.
Which meant that the young man was…
A light touch on thoughts, followed by knowledge.
Adal Jefferson, middle son of Davis and Laura Jefferson.
‘Good’ slave owners by the region’s standards.
He scoffed at that.
There were no good slave owners.
It was simple.
Good people didn’t own other people.
Good people didn’t desire to own other people.
“Kill them all,” Bitterman muttered.
He was inclined to agree.
“Ladies and gentlemen!” the auctioneer intoned. “Welcome! You all know how this works. Bit of bad news. We only have 32 essential employees up for sale today. As you know with the 1st Freedom Championships about to begin our king has been buying up as many jobbers and feeders as he can for the events. Luckily for you, our rightful sovereign is an understanding and generous man. He knows that his citizens have a need and so he left some for us. One other thing. There is now a five purchase maximum.”
The auctioneer and the crowd turned their eyes up toward the false slavemaster.
“I’m sorry Lord Wynn, but you have to share! Words straight from the king!”
Laughter.
He gave them a false laugh.
“Alright, let’s get this show started!” the auctioneer banged his gavel on the podium. “Our first subject is…”
He stretched with his mind.
Scanned the scared and despondent people in the back awaiting their collars, awaiting their enslavement.
How could he pick just five to save from the abuse?
“You must save the children. The youngest. And then women. In that order, do you understand?” Bitterman hissed.
He nodded.
Two months. Maybe even less.
Cal needed patience.
----------------------------------------
Hanna kept an impassive look on her face while a collection of ragged men, women and children were roughly man-handled into the locker room by the staff of this arena.
What was once home to a professional baseball team, some kind of fish, judging by the battered and faded signs and banners outside and in the interior, was now a place of blood and death where men, women and children, willingly and not fought each other and monsters for the entertainment of the crowd.
She had found employment through her connections with the mercenary company that Cal had inserted her into many months ago. It had been a trying struggle to keep her cover surrounded by such brutality and she realized that she was about to be sorely tested.
“What a shitty group,” Jayden, the head trainer spat at the closest man. “What do you think, Hanabi? You’re supposed to be an expert. Think you can turn these feeders into jobbers.”
Laughter rang out through the locker room.
Ugly, mocking.
Hanna regarded the man without expression.
Jayden reminded her of the old days. Of the high school jocks that peaked at 18 and never grew past that point.
They had either become high school coaches or cops. At least in her high school.
“I’ll do my best to make them something,” she said.
“Eh, good luck with that.”
“Hey, Jay?” Chad, a brutish guard, said.
Reading on this site? This novel is published elsewhere. Support the author by seeking out the original.
“What?”
“Can I get a few minutes with this one?” Chad grabbed a rail-thin arm and yanked roughly.
The girl had a scarred face.
One eye was missing.
Hanna knew the blade.
She knew that those cuts were deliberate work.
“Ugly,” Jayden said.
“Not if I bend her over,” Chad shrugged.
“Sure—”
“That is girl,” Hanna said flatly.
“No shit,” Chad smirked. “I ain’t into boys like Blake over there.”
“One time! And I was drunk! Fuck! I stopped as soon as I realized!” Blake said.
Laughter.
“That. Is. A. Girl.”
“Get off it, Hanabi,” Jayden warned.
“A girl. A child.”
“Feeders don’t count,” Chad smirked.
“Get your hands off her.”
The half dozen men sensed something in the air.
Like a razor-sharp blade laid against their throats.
“You’re new here, Hanabi,” Jayden said. “Chad’s right. It’s an actual law. Feeders don’t count for anything. You can do whatever you want with them.”
Did she really want to risk the Quest before it had even begun?
For a girl that looked dead inside that one good eye?
“Last warning.”
“Fuck off, bitch!” Chad snapped. “You’re lucky we ain’t bending you over. So you best shut your mouth like a good girl and do your job like you’re supposed to.”
Out came Hanna’s longsword.
The blade carved a line in a flash.
Chad and the girl were a dozen feet away.
Too far for the blade.
Not for her Skill.
I Cut What I See.
Chad blinked.
He screamed right after the blood from his severed wrist began to spurt.
The other guards roared into action.
They drew truncheons and came for Hanna.
She moved and cut them down with ease.
Her skill and technique trumped their Skills and brutality.
“What the fuck!” Jayden stared at her with wide eyes. He had failed to draw his weapon.
“They’ll live. I only cut tendons, ligaments, that sort of thing,” she said lightly.
“Why? For a feeder? You’ll get the collar for this, you stupid whore!”
Jayden turned to run for the door only to slam face first into a muscled chest as hard as iron. He fell on his butt clutching a busted nose.
The newcomer clapped. “Wow! That was great! Not gonna lie. Even I couldn’t have done something like that. So graceful, such an economy of movement.”
Hanna regarded the unarmed man warily.
He was tall, muscular with an easy smile that seemed genuine.
Cocky.
Hanna was reminded of the star athlete, like she was a long time ago.
Mixed race from the looks of him. One Black parent, the other probably white or a light-skinned Hispanic. He could pass as the saying went.
“I’m ‘Malcolm King’, newly appointed King’s Champion after that unfortunate business with the old one. Gladiator by trade and training. Though my actual class is Undefeated Champion of the Hard Rock.”
“That’s a mouthful,” Hanna said.
The big man shrugged. “I didn’t really choose it. Sorta fell into it.”
“What are you doing here?”
“If you could maybe not point that sword at me. I kinda saw what you did, bit hard to follow to be honest, and it’s making me a little nervous.”
“Champion! Kill the bitch! She attacked us!” Jayden managed to burble out through the blood running down the back of his throat.
“You should get that nose fixed before it stays that way. Unless you like that look? Some people do go for that ‘I get into bar fights’ aesthetic. Not me, but you know…” he shrugged. “Well, miss, uh?”
“‘Hanabi’,” Hanna said. Truth. She had three names on her birth certificate after all, wherever it was these days.
“Well, Miss Hanabi, I heard news about this high level swordmaster that for some reason applied to just train jobbers and feeders,” his grimaced, “instead of using those obviously great abilities at more… profitable ventures, so to speak.”
“I don’t care about all that.”
“Why carve these chuds up?”
“Rapists.”
“Why not kill them?”
“I taught a lesson. If this one didn’t sink in. Then that’ll be the next one.”
Malcolm mulled that over for a little bit. “You must be alone. No one relying on you. I think I’d be like that if it was the same for me. Alas, I have family and friends. For them, I fight, I inspire, I put on a show. Good to meet you,” Malcolm bowed. “Maybe one day we can spar or something. Or an arena match. I think that’d be dynamite! The greatest show!” he turned to leave.
“Wait! Aren’t you going to do something about this!” Jayden clutched at Malcolm's pant leg.
The big man made a face like he just stepped in pile of crap. He lifted up Jayden like a man lifting up a toddler in the midst of a tantrum. “Look, Jaime, I’m going to do something about it. I’m going to go up to your boss and tell him that he needs to get some healers or first aid down here before your morons bleed out. Then I’m going to tell him that Miss Hanabi is a singular talent and more valuable than the rest of you combined. I can’t beat her with a sword in her hands. I might have a chance if you gave her a different weapon. So, stay out of her way or she’ll probably kill you. And best leave her students alone,” he ruffled Jayden’s hair before leaving.
Hanna regarded the feeders and jobbers.
No.
Her students.
She ignored the moaning of the badly injured guards.
“Listen up. I’m not going to lie to you. These people only want one thing from you… death.”
21 men, women and children.
Ages 13 to 60 from the looks of them.
They stared at her with incomprehension.
Most of them had already accepted their fates.
None dared to hope despite the brief respite she had just provided.
She regarded her students.
The bruises on their bodies.
The disfiguring injuries that marred each of them in some fashion.
A map of the evil done to them by the slavers on every link in their depraved chain as they turned a human being into a thing to be owned.
Yes, their journeys had been set.
Could she change their destination?
21 lives didn’t equate to thousands.
Would she sacrifice them for the Quest?
She couldn’t do the opposite.
Too soon to act.
Not enough time.
“We have one week before it begins. Follow me.”
Hanna led them out to the field.
To the racks of battered armor, shields and blunt weaponry.
No guns of course.
Guns gave feeders and jobbers the wrong kinds of ideas.
“I am a swordmaster. If you have a fighter class I can turn you into a swordfighter within days. Up to level ten if you have a modicum of talent and if you really apply yourself. However, with our limited time frame I intend to train most of you in the spear and shield. A few in polearms.”
“I don’t see any ranged weapons,” a long-limbed man with a Glasgow smile said.
“They prefer you fight in melee range unless… anyone here a mage-type?”
A few hands rose.
“Then we have ranged options.”
“You said we had a week,” the one-eyed girl with crudely cut sun-kissed hair said.
“6 days of hard training. Then 1 day of rest.”
“Oh, dear, I don’t think they’ll let us rest. Like you said, they just want our blood. I’ve heard the stories. We’re food for monsters and entertainment for the human ones,” an old woman said.
“From now on, as far as your concerned, I make the rules.”
“You’ll fight them all?” the one-eyed girl said.
“I’ll kill them all.”
“We’re dead one way or another,” a bald man with puckered burn scars on his head gave her a ghastly smile, his mouth was a checkerboard of missing or broken teeth. “Pretty lady, if doing what you tell me let’s me stick a knife up these slavers’ assholes then I’m all ears… er… ear, on account that they chopped it off,” he gestured at a missing right ear that had been crudely hacked off.
Hanna thought she saw something like a spark in the girl’s eye.
Long dead embers blown to life by a chance breeze.
----------------------------------------
December 1st, 2036.
Day 0, Opening Ceremony, Freedom Championships
The streets of Miami were filled with one giant party or multiple smaller ones depending on perspective.
To commemorate the official start of the championships the slaver kingdom didn’t hold anything back.
Live and recorded music.
Food.
Drinks.
Games and attractions for their citizens.
All culminating in the parade of champions into the old stadium that was now their most prestigious arena. Contestants marched behind performers of all kinds. Who followed a line of fearsome beasts, trained animals and barely-controlled monsters that were to play a variety of roles in the championships or were simply on display as a show of the slaver kingdom’s power.
Once all the contestants had been shown to their prime seating section and the last of the dancers, singers and sundry performers had cleared the massive field of dirt and sand the first events could begin.
“What’s up with that fish?” Drake had to shout to be heard over the roaring of the crowd.
Jayde blinked at him before a feral grin broke across her face. “You are so dumb, Sticksies!” she laughed in delight.
He shrugged off her headlock before she could mess up his hair.
“It’s not a fish,” Prim said from his other side.
“What are you talking about? It’s got fins and no legs. If it isn’t a fish, how can it walk on land. It doesn’t look like a snake, too fat.”
Jayde cackled.
Prim shook her head. “It’s a mammal that lives in the water, like wh—”
“I know what whales are,” Drake scowled.
The two bickered while Hayden tuned them out.
She kept her eyes to the field. Committing the various trained and semi-trained creatures to memory before they were led away into the bowels of the arena. It was likely that those were going to be used in the events. Whether in the events she and her team had entered into was unknown. The boss hadn’t given them the heads up on that. In fact, they hadn’t gotten anything from him.
Elsewhere in the contestant seating area another young woman, still technically a teenager, held a smartphone up above her head trying to record over the head of the tall man standing in front of her. “Jake! Can you sit down!” she barked.
“Sorry, Hillary, but I can’t see over this guy!” Jake gestured at the even taller and wider man standing in front of him.
“Then take this,” she thrust the smartphone into is meaty hands.
“What do I do with this?”
“Record the monsters and whatever else is about to happen. It’ll be good info.”
“Got it.”
“That’s okay, right, Commander?” Hillary turned to the scowling woman standing next to her.
Demi grunted assent.
Standing next to Hillary, Del twitched as he had ever since they had started the parade.
To many potential threats all around wasn’t good for someone with a well-developed sense of danger as a Skill.
“Maybe turn it off?” Max laid a hand of wood and earth on his teammate’s shoulder.
“Can’t,” Del flinched at imagined, yet real danger from somewhere behind him, “I need it as sensitive as possible.”
“There is such a thing as over-sensitive,” Amber said from Max’s other side. Her posture belied her words. One hand unconsciously kept reaching to her side and the absent sword she usually wore wherever she went.
“Guys, nothing is going to happen in the middle of their big triumphant show,” he spat. “Just like the Olympics…”
Demi’s eyes flicked to the tall, unnaturally pale man swathed in gray clothing. The hood shaded red eyes above the scarf that covered the rest of his face.
“I’m fine, Demi,” Bennett said. “It was overcast and the sun is dying over the horizon. Just a little burned.
Demi looked past Bennett to the petite, yet shapely, dusky-skinned young woman. Ginessa didn’t share the much taller man’s… allergy issues.
The Watch Commander checked each of her people and the allied folks from the California State Government seated or standing nearby.
Rino and Kare book-ended their fellow contestants seated on either side of Jake.
All too young.
Demi hadn’t taken her younger people with a few exceptions.
It was for a good cause, but now that they were in the belly of the beast, committed, she had regrets.
A lot rode on the forces they had hidden outside of the slaver kingdom’s claimed territory.
Too much really.
Alexa laid a hand on her shoulder. “I’m sure Hanna’s fine, the boss wouldn’t let anything happen to her.”
The woman had an annoying way with guessing Demi’s thoughts.
She looked back and gave Alexa a curt nod.
Trevor, standing next to Alexa, flashed a grin and a thumb-up. “No crazy ass monsters or angels here, commander! People aren’t so bad compared to those things!”
No, Trevor, you’re wrong, Demi thought.
To scan the crowd of contestants was to see a confusing, disjointed mess of thoughts. Motivation, fear, eagerness and everything else a human produced.
A pair of women with a sense of smell comparable to dogs caught a whiff of something in the air. They exchanged a glance and began to look around. They had distant and more dangerous cousins somewhere out there. An impossibility, they had thought and believed. Yet, the scents didn’t lie.
Above the masses luxury boxes contained the wealthiest of families.
That is, most of them did.
A few contained contestants that for one reason or another couldn’t be placed within the rest down near the arena floor.
For some, like the fire in the shape of a man, it was for the comfort of those that would’ve been forced to endure the heat wafting off him.
For others, it was a matter of making sure that the blood didn’t spill too soon and outside of the sanctioned event. For those that lived and died by the sacrament of the flesh being pressed close to such a gathering of high leveled power would have been nearly too much.
Another group was afforded the respect and insult befitting their claims to a legacy. One that paved the path for the rise of the New American Republic. A young man with a red, white and blue-colored skull mask propped on his head gazed down at the crowd. Vague memories returned of a father’s lap and Sunday’s spent in front of the TV as gridiron gladiators crashed against each other. Old stories told by the old-timers back at the bunker of the glorious days of yesteryear. He thought that those days were infinitely preferable to what was about to take place. This is what you want to replace us with? Nicholas thought. Right then and there he vowed that he’d dance to these slavers’ deaths.
Lastly, a middle-aged woman with sun-browned skin tucked a stray lock of hair back into her hijab. A traveler from across the ocean and what a perilous journey it had been only to end in painful and unnecessary death, imprisonment and the bloody farce below her. She stood in a luxury box surrounded by enslaved soldiers. She watched the arena floor with twelve eyes watched. Important lives were at stake. She refused to lose another one. Not for her sake.
“Betrayers! Traitors!” a disembodied voice boomed through the packed arena.
The crowd fell silent.
“Magitech,” Jake muttered as he continued to record the field.
People began to file out from one of the tunnels.
Armed and armored.
He was surprised to realize that they looked to be in good shape. No evidence of torture and the like one would expect to see on traitors being led to their deaths.
“Hillary,” he turned. The words died on his lips at her fixed gaze on the field.
Right, he thought, she’s not a kid anymore. Damn it, Ron! Don’t hate me too much for letting her come. She’s old enough now and she’s been on plenty of dangerous Quests. Besides, she’s part of the Watch. Blame the Watch Commander if you want to be mad with someone. Still, Hillary hasn’t seen an execution.
Neither had he, come to think of it.
Sure, he had seen tons of violent deaths. Came close to a few himself.
What he was about to see felt worse than all of that.
People were about to die for the entertainment of a braying crowd in the ten’s of thousands in person and probably a million more on screens and magical projections throughout the city.
“They have turned their back on us, fellow citizens of this New American Republic! They have spat in our faces! Thrown the prosperity that was given to them! It. Is. Sad. Yet, they must be punished and justly at that. And they will. Yet, our great king is not without mercy. Though traitors deserve the nothing. Our king has decreed that they will have opportunity to pull themselves up from the wretched filth that they have covered themselves in by their actions. Fight! And fight well, traitors! You may still live and join the hallowed ranks of our beloved gladiators!”
The crowd roared for excitement and blood.
“So… what’d these traitors do?” Trevor said. “I didn’t hear anything in all of that word garbage.”
“Isn’t it obvious? This is a nation of slavers. What is the worst thing you could do in a place like this?” Alexa grimaced. She didn’t want to watch this, but she would. It was important. It needed to be marked and remembered.
“Try to free slaves, er… enslaved,” Trevor nodded grimly.
A monster was led out of a gate opposite the huddle people.
It was a muscled thing of horns and gaping mouths, vaguely deer-like.
“That’s a new one,” Rino muttered
Its screeched echoed with dissonance that stung her ears.
The condemned people on the arena floor felt it differently, worse.
Several fell to the ground clutching ears that bled.
The monster charged.
The screams of the dying were drowned out by the cheers of the crowd.