I ended up making the break point between this chapter and the next a little sooner.

So I went ahead and proofread it. Here you go a bit early.

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Chapter 1-8: Goddess of the Pit

--Zed's POV--

As we’re herded into the Blood Pit one day, two of Lord Hung’s goons seem to be yelling at each other up above near his dais.

I walk up to the edge of the cage so I can make out what they’re saying.

“Screw dis bitch man; les jus’ throw‘er in da pit already!”

“I’m tryin’, bu’ she keeps kickin’!”

“I’ll kill you stupid assholes! I’m a bitch!? Untie me and I’ll make you two into women like your dickless friend!”

“Jus’ get’a grip on ‘er sumewhere fer fucks sake! Toss ‘er on three. One, two, three!”

A second later someone is flying down head first from the upper level 15 meters above, along with a high pitched scream, “You sack-less cunts!”

I’m expecting to see their skull crack open on the ground of the cage and add their blood to the gutter like so many others I’ve witnessed.

But they somehow manage to spin around and land on their feet even with their hands bound behind their back by chains. Their knees buckle and they roll forward to soften the impact.

After they stand up right in the middle of the cage I look at them for a moment before I realize they’re stark naked except for their slave collar.

Sheesh, at least Hung left me with a loincloth.

Cutter’s about to start the fights for today. If they just keep standing there he’ll probably put them in the first bout.

Sigh… better get them out of there. Maybe they’ll survive long enough to get to know.

I walk up to the edge of the cage behind them and call out, “Hey you, I suggest you get out of the cage before they decide to make you fight today!”

As they turn around to look at me I realize that it’s a young woman.

I wasn’t sure of her gender from behind because of the well-toned muscles on her arms, legs, and back as well as her imposing stature; she must be at least 180 cm tall.

The entire front of her body is covered in fresh blood from her mouth down to her supple, naked thighs, which makes her look quite savage.

It doesn’t appear to be her own blood. Why is she covered in….

You know what? I don’t even want to know.

While she has numerous bruises and cuts, the wounds all look at least a week old. There’s also far too much of it. If that were her own blood she’d probably be dead. And she looks far from dead.

Her breasts are also quite adequately sized if I do say so myself, and I do. A bit off-putting when they’re covered in someone else’s blood but… well you can’t have everything.

She has dark black hair in a single long braid reaching down to her blood-soaked thighs. Her dark green eyes are sharp with an underlying fierceness to them.

This is probably not a person I want to piss off.

But aside from her stature, her most out-standing feature, or should I say features, are her two roughly 10 cm black horns jutting straight out from her temples and slightly curving backwards.

She could probably gore a man with those things as they look really sharp.

The way she carries herself gives off an intimidating and intelligent aura, not at all like the Wilders.

Overall she’s quite beautiful. But I might be biased at this point after seeing essentially nothing but hideous Wilder women down here for years.

She scowls at me for a moment staring daggers into me after I call out to her. Then she walks through the open gate and says coldly, with a commanding tone, “Give me your coat.”

“Uhhh, what?” I ask stupidly while my face is hotter than I would care to admit.

She repeats, “Give me your coat. If you haven’t noticed, I’m naked.”

“… I noticed. But why should I give you my coat? Or for that matter care if you’re naked or not?” I inquire.

Not that I really mind giving her my coat for now.

“Because if you don’t I’ll smash your skull in and take it anyway”

“…. Your arms are still bound behind your back,” I helpfully point out.

“I could crush your skull between my thighs without even trying,” She explains to me like she’s looking at a bug.

“While that sounds quite pleasant, in a way, I’ll have to pass on that. Fine, you can have my coat,” I say as I give up.

I can just get a new one.

Wait, how am I even going to hand the coat to her? And how is she going to put her arms through the coat with her hands bound?

As I take the coat off and hold it out I start asking, “How are you even going to put this on while--“ but before I can continue she moves her legs apart into a solid stance.

Her biceps, deltoids, and pectoral muscles flex powerfully. Her face has a somewhat pained expression on it, but a moment later she lets out a loud roar accompanied by the sound of breaking metal as the chains around her wrists shatter and the pieces fly off.

“GAAAAH!!!”

Guess that answers my question.

“Oh… I’m Zed by the way,” I add as I hand the coat over, noting that her wrists are bleeding.

Yup, definitely not someone I want to piss off. Ever. Those looked like forged iron chains.

She doesn’t answer me until she puts the coat on and buttons up what she can. It’s fairly big, even on her, so it covers down to her mid-thigh.

“Nyx….” She gives her name quietly while rubbing her wrists and eyeing me suspiciously.

“Okay then Nyx. Come on. Let’s get to the lower stands before they go ahead and make us fight.” Then I add, “We can’t leave until this bloodbath ends.”

She surveys the room while we walk there. She has a haughty look about her with her chin up, like she’d rather kill everyone here than be in the same room with them.

I try and start a conversation with her, “Welcome to the blood pit. Got all the amenities of home, I’m sure you’ll love it. Here, I have some rags on me we can use to wrap up your wrists.”

No point in being unfriendly down here. Enough people out for my rosebud anyway, might as well try and talk to anyone that’s not a frothing lunatic.

God… I think I understand how Cizin ended up being such a sarcastic prick now.

“You don’t seem like one of the Wilders,” She comments as she sits down.

After considering it for a moment she holds her arms out for me.

I start to wrap her wrists to help stem the bleeding

“Nor you,” I reply.

She gets this proud look on her face, and then says, “I’m from Elpis! Of course I’m not one of those putrid degenerates!”

Geez girl I’m right here. Do you have to talk so loudly?

Huh, I’ve not heard of Elpis before.

Cizin has never mentioned a place with that name. But then again his geography in regards to specific cities and such is kind of shit.

But before I ask about Elpis, “You uh, you have blood in your teeth.”

“Oh,” She pauses to spit onto the ground, “not mine.”

I didn’t ask that….

 “Anyway, Elpis? Is that a city?” I ask hopefully.

This book was originally published on Royal Road. Check it out there for the real experience.

Maybe she knows more about the world above than the rest who were thrown in here. Most of them were of no more help than Cizin.

“You don’t know of Elpis? But you’re clearly not one of the Wilders. Did you somehow come here from one of the other Continents? Perhaps Messinica?”

Oh, she does know more about the outside world. Good.

I really don’t feel like explaining where I’m from and being laughed at again though.

“Uhhh, sure why not,” I end up saying. “Will you tell me about Elpis?”

She looks at me with an eyebrow raised like she’s trying to figure me out, but ends up telling me. “Elpis is the last bastion of sanity in this godforsaken land! Me and my ancestors before me have been born and raised there.”

Huh, that sounds slightly familiar.

All of the other ones that I could talk to were too terror stricken to tell me much. And the ones that did tell me anything were all from extremely small nomadic tribes trying to live off the land despite the Wilders.

“So there ARE some sane people left that aren’t fucking Wilders after all?” I continue inquiring, need to learn as much about this place as possible.

Well, at least there seems to be some hope for me if I can ever get out of this pit.

“Of Course! Elpis has stood against Roman and the other mad gods since before the time of my forefather Horkos. They’ve always futilely tried drive us out and crush us!”

Interesting. Cizin always talks like it has always been like this. It seems like that really is the case.

“They haven’t had much luck though, I’m guessing.”

Finished wrapping her wrists up. Hopefully it doesn’t get infected now, but there isn’t much we can do to prevent it.

Before she can give me an answer that fat shithole Cutter interrupts our conversation over his loudspeakers. “AN’ TODAY, wit’ Milord Hung presidin’, IT’LL BE HURN, SURVIVOR’A 20 BOUTS, versus… sum fuckin’… I dunno. Jus’ make it good fer Milord if one of ya wanna keep yer skin.”

Too much damn noise in the blood pit to hold a conversation anymore. The two Wilders walk into the arena for the fight.

“Okay, START IT!” With a yell from Cutter the two in the cage go at each other.

Almost immediately it’s clear to me that the one he called Hurn is going to win. He’s dragging it out like Cutter wants though.

I glance over at Nyx occasionally during the fight.

She’s been glaring straight at Lord Hung the entire time with an eerie look. I don’t think she likes him very much, can’t blame her.

I’d gut the fucker myself if I could get up there.

Nothing I can do yet though. Survive, escape, and then revenge. Still working on step two.

Might as well watch the carnage for now.

But a moment later, “AAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHH!!!”

Why is someone screaming beside me?

“Nyx, what is--“

Before I can turn and finish, something goes flying out of the corner of my vision and slams against the bars of the cage. It’s… a Wilder?

The whole blood pit goes silent when they see the dude jammed there between the bars 3 meters up.

The mangled body slowly slides down towards to the floor with a constant loud squeaking sound. As it nears the floor it slips and falls, hitting the ground with a thud.

Even the two fighting in the cage are just standing there looking at it.

Oh… except for that other guy. He just gutted Hurn while he was distracted, and then backed away.

When Hurn tries to run after the other guy he slips on his intestines that spilt out onto the floor and falls flat on his face. Don’t think he’ll be getting up again.

Guess Hurn was a bit of a dipshit.

The entire blood pit erupts in laugher. Cutter looks like he’s about to piss himself. Maybe it’ll make him smell better if he does.

I’m still looking at the dude that hit the bars. Holy shit, I think he died on impact.

Wait… did Nyx….

I turn to look at her and… she’s standing up now.

Her shoulders are moving up and down and she’s breathing hard. She looks even more pissed off than earlier.

Did she?... Yeah, she did.

“The fuck you do that for?” I ask, questioning her sanity.

“He touched me,” She says in a condescending tone with her hands on her hips.

He…. Are you kidding me? Down in the deep mines is one thing, but they really don’t like it when you interrupt a fight in the blood pit.

She’s just lucky they found it funny.

Does she even realize the situation she’s in?

“Just… sit down before Cutter decides he wants to eat your liver.”

“Cutter?” She asks, still not sitting down.

“That fat fuck over there. With the microphone,” I point at his gelatinous mass over on the other side of the cage.

“Oh him. God he’s an ugly piece of shit. Even for a Wilder.”

I know, right?

She finally sits down after looking at Cutter for a moment with a disgusted grimace on her face.

“Let’s talk more about Elpis after they send us into the mines again.” I suggest.

She doesn’t respond to me, and just starts glaring at Hung again.

*  *  *

After a few more matches, and a few more liters of blood get spilt, we get herded towards the deep mines. Got a long walk ahead of us.

Nyx started striding down into the mines before I even noticed. I had to jog a bit to catch up with her.

“You were going to tell me about Elpis?”

“Maybe! I don’t know if I can trust you though!” She says as she looks over at me with her eyebrows knitted.

You seemed rather talkative earlier. Make up your mind.

“I want to get out of here, and having somewhere to go when I do would be nice.” I try explaining myself.

“You want to escape? That’s a start. I don’t plan on staying down here with these degenerates any longer than necessary,” She says that last bit like she’s spitting the words out.

She’s far more collected than anyone else I’ve met that’s been thrown down here. Well, except Cizin.

And she seems dependable and strong. Not to mention she wants to escape soon. That’s good, looks like I might have finally found a partner.

I should go for it.

“We could team up? Get out of here together. I don’t know the surface at all, so I’d probably be caught before I made it a few kilometers on my own.”

“Perhaps… but I still don’t trust you.”

“Do you have anyone else to trust? There’s no one else down here that’s sane and would help you escape.” I stick my arm out, motioning to the groups of Wilders around us.

“You have a point….” She mutters as she slows down and puts a hand to her chin, staring at the floor.

Then she suddenly looks up at me again with her fierce green eyes, “You know a way out?”

“I’ve been down here awhile. I think… I think I can get us out of the pit. The only problem is these slave collars.” I grab my collar and yank it a bit, “I still don’t know how they’re removed, and how we might get them off.”

The controls that Cutter and some of his men have down here can’t release these collars. I know that much, there must be some other way.

“That’s all? We just need the master controller, of course!”

Wait….

“What?!”