Kira looked for Laila at the next Mess, but she didn’t see her. She realized that the falcon must be in a different section than Kira, Maximon, and Rogue.
“We need to find a way to contact her,” Maximon hissed quietly. “We need all the allies we can get.”
“I know,” Kira sighed. “But I don’t know how. It’s not like she’s right outside my window. It’s hard enough to talk to you, Maximon. But I fear that we may never be able to contact Laila.”
Rogue looked deep in thought. Ever since Kira’s first fight, he had been awfully quiet. He had been the one to tend to Kira’s eye wound, since she couldn’t see it. She could now look out of it and see fine, but both Rogue and Maximon had told her that she had a large scar across that eye.
“I’ll figure out a way,” Maximon said fiercely. He looked at Kira, and it took a while for the fox to realize that he was looking for her permission.
She nodded to him, looking serious. “I trust you, Maximon.”
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It took almost a week for Maximon to come up with a plan. Kira knew this because they had two messes each week, and nothing happened for both of them.
Before Deya and the massacre of her village, Kira would have gotten angry with Maximon and maybe traded some insult with him. After all, she still wanted to hurry as much as possible (despite being trapped in an inescapable arena).
She sighed, thinking of how much of Cyalia the Black Dragon might have conquered by now. Flashes of bloodstained fields littered with bodies flitted in and out of her vision, along with the sounds of screaming and the crackle of flames. A vision of her bloodstained paws came as well, covered in her own blood and Dainn’s.
Your fault, rang through her head. It’s your fault he’s dead. It’s your fault Deya’s gone.
All your fault. All your fault.
Deep breaths, Kira thought, trying to calm herself. Her heartbeat rang loudly in her ears. She was shaking all over, and when she looked down, Kira realized that she had scratched herself on the leg until she drew blood.
How did that happen? she wondered.
She tried not to think about it throughout the day as she watched the “fights” in the arena.
There was a lot of confusion nowadays. The new creatures that were captured and imprisoned were told by most of the prisoners that they had to fight, and yet watched the creatures on the actual arena not fighting. It led to a lot of awkward conversations on the arena grounds, and Kira could tell that the chaos would only build the more creatures that were caught.
They had to do something about it, and fast.
Finally, after about six days of waiting, Maximon contacted Kira.
During one of the arena fights, a swan came up to Kira’s window. “Are you Kira?” the timid bird asked.
“Um, yes,” Kira responded, confused. She’d never had anyone come up and talk to her while having a fight.
The swan glanced around nervously, but everyone’s attention was focused on her opponent—a blind mole, who was searching for her, but clearly could not see that well.
“Maximon has a message for you,” the white bird whispered.
This caught Kira’s attention. “Yes?”
“He says—” the swan broke off as the announced made another comment, but it was just about the mole. “He says, ‘I have a plan, and I will put it into action tomorrow. However, you will not see the results until the next mess. I can only hope it will be successful, but I think it is entirely foolproof.’ He wanted me to let you know not to worry.”
“Thank you,” Kira said kindly. She leaned closer to the window. “And a little bit of advice? Courage is rather easy to gather. It’s just hard to find. Once you know where to look, fear will never be a problem for you.”
The swan smiled, then went back to her fight with more bounce in her step than before. Kira didn’t witness the rest of it, as she was too busy pondering her message, but she could guess from the “boos” of the crowd that the swan was doing well.
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It turned out, Kira didn’t need to wait until next mess to receive the news—one of the top guards had been poisoned. When Kira listened to more of the rumors, she found that the guard was the head of Section 5, and also the director of Section 5’s Mess Hall visits. Luckily for them, Section 5 was going to have Mess with Section 2, who had less creatures than any of the other sections and could afford to dine with another. Surprisingly for the guards, the prisoners did not grumble or complain. In fact, many of the creatures were whispering excitedly with one another.
“We might be able to convince more creatures this way!”
“I heard Section 5 was one of the meanest sections. Maybe it’s up to us to change that!”
“What do you think will happen?”
“Whatever we do, we can’t start any fights.”
Kira grinned at these words. The prisoners were changing, all because of her! She remembered their hardened faces and tough personas at first, but they were growing stronger in their defiance against the arena and those who made it.
There were several big signs of change. The other day, Kira had tripped over a rat’s tail while in the mess line for food. The rodent had helped her up, squeaked “So sorry, ma’am!” and then let her go ahead of him. It was great.
The guards usually told off anyone who talked, but even the stallion from Kira’s first day here couldn’t have scared these prisoners into submission today. The chatter in the cellblock echoed all the way down. Through the noise, Kira and Rogue managed to discuss what had happened.
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“No doubt, this is Maximon’s doing,” Rogue stated. “This is perfect.”
“Exactly,” Kira agreed heartily.
Mess couldn’t come soon enough. Right as the guards started unlocking the cells, prisoners practically ran out of them, eager to go to the Mess Hall.
They arrived at the door, and Maximon sidled up to them.
“This is our moment,” he hissed. “Be on the lookout.”
They all complied, squinting down the hallway to see if there were any prisoners approaching.
“It appears that we got here first,” Rogue commented.
The guards opened the door, and they filed into the large chamber. There was more food than usual, which was expected.
“Line up on the right wall,” one of the guards barked, banging his spear on the ground to get them to listen. Everyone complied, and the air buzzed with the anticipation.
There was silence for a minute, and then Kira heard footsteps from down the corridor. She held her breath.
The door slammed open, and more prisoners came through. Kira craned her neck, looking for a bit of purple-grey in the crowd, but it was hard to discern between the creatures.
One thing was for sure—these captives were not at all happy to be here. In fact, it looked as if they had never been happy in their entire lives. They shot glares at everyone around them, punched one another to get in line, and hissed if a single whisker was touched on them.
Section 2 waited patiently for them to settle down, and then the guards stepped forwards.
“You all are here together because one of our leaders is…absent. Section 2 will get their food first, and then Section 5. You are allowed to combine tables. No talking, as usual. Any prisoners who don’t get any food will go hungry. Every creature for himself. No fights, and keep the yelling to a bare minimum. You may start.”
Section 2 moved forwards, each of them automatically pushing the smallest and the frailest to the front of the line. Kira found herself pushed forwards next, along with a wolf cub about her age. Each of them picked an even amount of food, then went over to their respectable tables, bunched closer together than before.
The creatures in Section 5 sniffed disdainfully, trading glances with one another.
“What a bunch of goody-two-claws.”
“Weaklings.”
“Babies.”
“Letting the smallest go first? Ha! Let them die, I say. They’re better off that way.”
A mouse less than half the size of Kira stepped forwards angrily. “What if you were one of the small and weakened? You wouldn’t be saying that then!”
The animals in Section 2 murmured their assent. The creature who made the offense, a large lion, looked surprised, then amused.
“Oh yeah? And what are you going to do about it, tiny?”
The mouse looked furious. But before things could escalate, Kira went to his side and placed a paw on his shoulder.
“Leave it be,” she said firmly. “Anger isn’t the way.”
The mouse looked up at her for a moment, then nodded and walked back to his table, hugging his lettuce leaves. Kira stared after him, then returned to her own table and greeted Rogue and Maximon.
“Section 5, you may go,” the guard commanded. The animals surged to the food, growling and snapping. Some creatures were trampled under the stampede. Others were thrown aside as the strongest got their fill. Eventually, the bin emptied, with the smaller animals staring longingly at the piles of food the bigger creatures had mustered.
Kira’s brow furrowed. This is so wrong! she thought fiercely.
Time to change things around here.
She rose out of her seat, gripping her own half-eaten chicken leg in her mouth. Then she walked over to a shivering tiger cub who looked extremely malnourished. Her ribs were prominently showing, and there were many chunks of fur missing in her body as well as scratches, as if she had been bullied and teased many times over.
“Here,” Kira whispered, dropping the rest of her chicken leg in front of her.
The kitten gasped, then gave her a nervous glance. “Really? This—this isn’t a trick?”
Kira shook her head. “No. I wouldn’t do that to you. Take it; you need it.”
“Th-thank you,” the kitten breathed. She snarfed down the leg in two big gulps, then grinned gratefully at Kira. The white fox smiled, then walked back to her table once more.
Soon, everyone in Section 2 was doing the same. By the time all of the unfed animals had some food, half of Section 5 was sitting with the Section 2 animals. Meanwhile, creatures started whispering.
“It’s her.”
“The one who won’t fight.”
“The one with magic.”
“They say it was her who sang that night.”
“Who is she?”
“Hey.” The whispers were deafened as a purple and grey falcon sat down next to Kira at their table.
“Laila!” Kira cried, smiling broadly. Laila merely stared at her, but Kira knew she was happy to be there, despite her lack of enthusiasm.
“How did you manage it?” Laila whispered. “I know it was you. There’s no way that guard was so conveniently poisoned to put your section with mine.”
“It was all Maximon.” Kira swept one caged wing towards the snake, beaming.
“A pleasure to meet you,” Maximon hissed, bowing his scaled head. “I am Maximon.”
“And that lovely leopard over there is Rogue,” Kira added, gesturing to him. He waved and grinned.
“Now, Maximon, would you care to explain how you got us here?” Rogue asked, raising an eyebrow at him. “I, for one, am extremely curious as to how you managed this feat.”
“It was easy,” he replied. “First, I read the guard rules from a newbie passing by my cell. I figured out that if one of the higher-ups above a section goes out of commission, they are to combine with another section—preferably the least hostile section. Then, on one of my fights, I saw the guard ranking wall. I learned the exact time the head of Section 5 would pass by me on my way to a fight, then I distracted my guards, bit him, and injected a small bit of my venom—enough to leave him sick for a long time but not enough to kill—into him, and here we are.”
“Brilliant.” Kira shook her head. “I had my doubts, but from now on I will trust you completely.”
Maximon looked bashful. “It was just a matter of simple spying,” he said humbly.
“Honestly, that’s impressive,” Laila said tonelessly. “I don’t think I could do something like that. But why did you do that?”
“To talk to you, Laila,” Kira said. She lowered her voice to a whisper. “We want to escape, but we haven’t come up with a plan yet. We need all the help we can get.”
“It’s impossible, right?” Laila asked. “I mean, nobody has escaped in the whole history of this place.”
“Well, we’re going to be the first,” Kira said fiercely. “We can’t just sit around here like depressed lumps—not when we’re changing things for the better. These animals deserve to see their families again.”
Laila nodded, staring at the wall for a moment. “We would need a distraction and an exit. All of the exits are locked, I think—and even if we could get a key to all of them, they’re all guarded.”
“There are fifteen exits, five on each layer of the arena,” Maximon supplied. He used his tail to draw a circle in the dust of the floor, then scribbled five archways spaced out along them. “There’s the outer layer, which is the most heavily defended.” He tapped the drawing. “Then there’s the second layer, which holds the guard’s homes, and the booths of food for the guests, as well as the weapons room.” He drew a smaller circle inside the big one, and once again spaced out five archways. “Finally, there’s the last layer, where the prisoners are kept.” He drew a tiny circle inside the previous ones, dotted with even more exits.
“How do you know all of this?” Rogue’s eyes were as wide as giraffe’s hooves as he observed the drawings in the dust.
Maximon chuckled. “I just observe very carefully. Unlike the rest of you, I was not knocked out when they brought me in—only pretending to be. They had weakened me too much, otherwise I would’ve caught them by surprise and escaped.”
He erased the drawings on the ground before the guards could see them.
“So, whatever distraction we use, it has to be big,” Laila said, tapping her claw on the dirt in thought. “This will require some advanced planning.”
“We’ll come up with one,” Kira said. “We have to.”