Thick gray matted hair covered the eight-foot body of a wolf whose back was hunched so far as to make it no taller than five and a half feet tall, though its arms did not touch the ground to provide extra support. How it had transformed into that form despite having no moon nor stars was a mystery, but it didn’t much matter to the four foot six blonde woman recruited to the class as what those above Zi-Lor would describe as Henry’s eye-candy. She wore a pink sun-dress and blue slippers.

Zi-Lor’s voice was hollow, her face expressionless, as she announced that those liberally called “fighters” could begin when ready.

Laura cowered in against the stone wall behind her as Tim the werewolf approached, foam erupting from its open maw as though rabid. He wore tiny gray shorts, and was clearly inclined to soon remove them, but Zi-Lor chastised the beast with just enough sense left in its bestial mind to obey,

“Stop. This arena is about what happens during combat, not after.”

Though disappointed, this did not stop the fight. In the next moment the werewolf’s claw tore through Laura’s eyelid, and her hands flew to cover the thin trace of blood that erupted from the wound and slowly poured down her cheek and dress in the moments after.

She did not scream until the second claw tore through her dress, but as if by magic the dress did not come apart. A red line was traced along her torso, but the fabric above was not cut. Though ultraviolence was about to occur, for whatever reason it seemed the powers that be thought the sight of her breasts was a bridge too far.

On the other hand, the werewolf’s came agonizingly close to her remaining good eye, but did not strike it. She let out the cry of an infant first born, terrorized in the primal knowledge that she could offer no resistance to what was about to happen.

“Why was she even here, much less allowed to fight?” Henry thought to himself, taking no action to intervene.

Zi-Lor offered no explanation.

Tim’s claw ripped through the air once more, inches from her face, but this time did not miss. Her left pinky-finger was severed, and blood spurted from the wound as the left hand fell, right clutching it. Her eye continued to bleed, but recency demanded she tend to the fresher wound.

There was no healing magic. There was no resistance. There was nothing she could offer to stop the next claw from tearing off her nose. Hands flew back to the face, but again the claw descended to deprive her of two more fingers. This time, she did not remove them from in front of the bleeding and unbleeding eyes.

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Next was no claw, it had instead made a fist to punch her in the stomach. Blood erupted from her mouth, but in the next moment her tongue was gripped between two massive forceps, soon prepared to tear away this next piece of flesh. She tried to scream and her tongue squirmed. She tried to punch, but found the pain of her knubby fingers too great to offer even the most basic form of resistance.

Her legs kicked, but both were soon stepped on. The left ankle was rolled over in a sickening snap, and soon after the foot was rotated such that it was clear the ankle had been broken. Tears streamed down Laura’s face so profusely that the blood of her left eye was diluted to an almost pink shade, and her face looked as though freshly removed from a bowl of water.

And yet it would have been less painful to be waterboarded.

Henry remained confused, “Surely there are women like her with combat skill and experience who could be here instead? Surely this “fight” serves no purpose?” But his hands did not so much as graze the barrier between him and those he voyeuristically enjoyed the spectacle of watching defile and be defiled.

He made no move to break the barrier, but his face did press against it to watch Laura's tongue have a third claw pressed against its side.

The movement was not clean, nor precise, nor even drew a straight line. In a jagged and slow motion that prompted screams without words louder than Andromedus’ saturation of all light was bright, Tim cut out Laura’s tongue, then gripped her hands and twisted the right arm counterclockwise as the left moved in reverse. Soon the arms were twisted out of their sockets, then removed completely.

He knew she would soon expire, and so began to inflict as much carnage as his bestial instincts would possibly allow.

Her stomach was torn open and entrails removed through a dress that showed no worse for wear. Her legs were torn off in much the same fashion as arms, and then she was beaten with them like clubs.

Within ten seconds the match ended and the cries of anguish so loud they must certainly have given the werewolf tinnitus that had lasted the whole “match” to that point finally stopped.

Laura and Tim— returned to his human form, thin as a rail and still wearing his tiny gray shorts— returned to the position of floating spectator, but it seemed Laura would never again be able to spectate combat in this way. She collapsed to the ground, sobbing, hands clutching her face. She then fell to her side and assumed the fetal position, rocking back and forth while letting out tiny sobs that lasted until Henry could no longer watch them.

Zi-Lor did not give the next competitors time to fully acknowledge her overwhelming trauma.

Henry and the purple-faced cherub strangled at birth appeared in the arena across from each other. There was no blood on the sands beneath his feet, but he could almost feel it in between his toes as he kicked up sand into open sandals.

“Begin when ready” Zi-Lor announced, and so the next fight immediately began with no room to acknowledge the last.