The Rusty Nail was like a bad fever dream to Victor. As the sun set and the crowd grew, he and his comrades from Yund’s stable were kept sequestered in a roped-off section of the enormous warehouse, but he could see the craziness unfold from behind the ropes, just fine. Just like when he’d been led through the streets, he noticed the wide variety of people who cohabitated in this strange world. Red, blue, white, brown, black, tall, thin, short, fat, winged, feathered, furred, hooved, clawed, horned, almost anything he could fucking imagine was represented in the crowd of jostling, drinking, laughing, cussing, and fighting people. As the night outside deepened, the air in the warehouse grew heavy with odors and smoke and heat.
Yund wasn’t the only boss that had brought a troupe of fighters. The various groups, some as large as Yund’s and others with just one or two fighters, were all kept in roped-off areas on the back periphery of the Rusty Nail. The majority of the thousands of square feet in the warehouse's interior were taken up by stands for spectators, mobile food carts, desks for bookies, and a dozen or so pits. The pits were about twenty feet in diameter, about eight feet deep, and each had a big wooden sign on a post that had a number on it. Victor surprised himself by not being a nervous wreck. He thought part of it was that the warehouse and the pits reminded him a lot of the inside of a big gym during a wrestling invitational. The pits were like different mats, and the pit fighters were like wrestling teams. He knew it was a bullshit comparison, but it was keeping him cool, so he didn’t overthink it.
“This is fucking nuts,” he said to Vullu as he watched the crowd grow and a band started playing some strange, wild music on a small stage over by the big doors leading to the festival-like yard outside the warehouse. The music reminded him kind of like some fucking weird mix of country bluegrass and mariachi, with lots of stringed instruments and a really upbeat section of horns blaring over the noise in the crowd.
“Oh, aye. People love Pit Night in this city. There are at least four other locations like this. Yund even hosts a smaller gathering at the Wagon Wheel once a month.”
“Did I hear you use my name, Cadwalli?” Yund turned from where he’d been talking to a sleazy-looking little blue guy and scowled at Vullu.
“No, boss, I think that came from just behind me. Not sure who it was.”
“Right,” Yund glowered at him for a moment, then turned back to the clipboard the little blue man was holding. After a few minutes and some grunted curses, Yund chased the guy away and then turned to his gathered troupe of fighter-slaves. “Listen up, you dogs!”
“Are there dogs here?” Victor asked Vullu quietly.
“Of course!” he said, then held a finger to his lips.
“We’re overrepresented, and that little asshole just let me know that I need to adjust our roster to make up for it. That means some of you fodder will be fighting as a group against a stronger opponent. It’s your chance for glory! You’ll get a gold-tier reward when we get back to the Wagon Wheel if you win! Get yourselves ready - you know who you are.” Then he turned and walked over to a table where a harried, white-haired woman was frantically flipping through some papers.
“That’s you, kiddo,” Yrella said from behind Victor.
“That didn’t sound like good news to me.”
“Not really. Just remember: no matter how strong, a fatal wound is a fatal wound. There are no trinkets or potions allowed in the pits. Cut through a neck, pierce a heart, smash a skull, and you can win.” Yrella rubbed the outsides of Victor’s shoulders briskly, then gave them a good slap. “Get your fire up, kid. You need to win; there’s no other option.” Victor nodded, scowling, trying to get himself pumped. He slapped his hands together and jogged in place, and then Yund was back.
“Alright, listen: Sarl, Turdwater, Asslick, Vel, and Victor, get in front of me!” Victor almost laughed when he heard some of the names, but adrenaline and nerves kept him from really enjoying it, so he ducked under the rope and stood in front of Yund. The others Yund had called jostled him as they came up from behind, pushing and shoving to stand close to Yund. Victor glanced at them and saw two blue guys, one with yellow hair and the other colored bright rust. He saw another otter-person, but he thought it must be a female because she was slight and had some curves that stood differently than he’d seen on Ponda. The fifth member of their impromptu team was a fragile-looking man with lusterless, limp dragonfly wings on his back.
“Here, Boss,” yellow-hair said.
“Right, Asslick. Follow me!” Yund turned and started to wend his way along the wooden pathway between pits, stands, and tables. He shoved people that blocked his way, and, generally, people scrambled to get out of his way. Victor followed closely, aware of all the eyes on him but still wondering if there was any fucking way at all that he might get out of this mess. Most of the pits were empty, the first fights just getting lined up, but they passed by one with some action going on. As they got close, Victor stared into the pit and almost puked his guts out when a tall, bird-headed guy tore a blue guy’s throat out with his oversized beak.
“Fuck me,” he said, and strangely, the otter-woman reached forward and squeezed his shoulder reassuringly.
“Courage,” she said in a soft, rich voice. Victor looked back into her big moist eyes, and he nodded, drawing his brows together, trying to look fierce. He looked back to Yund’s back, followed him around one more empty pit, and then they were there, standing before pit number four. A good-sized crowd was standing around the pit’s edge, but they cleared the path for Yund, and he waded up to the edge and gestured with one hand.
“In you go, runts. Good luck! Taste some glory in your miserable lives!” Victor walked up to the edge, thinking about jumping down to the sand. Before he did, he glanced over his shoulder at his “team” first. The otter-woman was right behind him, but the bright-yellow-haired blue guy had dropped to his knees in front of Yund.
“Please, Boss! I can be valuable to you in other ways; I’m not cut out for fighting!”
“C’mere, Asslick. Stand up,” Yund said in a surprisingly gentle voice. Asslick stood and walked closer to Yund, hope in his eyes, and then Yund put one meaty hand around Asslick’s neck and yanked him over the edge and into the pit. Asslick landed awkwardly on the packed sand, crying out as his knee buckled under him. “Get in the father-damned pit!” he roared. Victor didn’t wait for another invitation and hopped down, landing lightly on his feet. Otter-woman followed, stumbling as she landed, and Victor caught her arm, keeping her from falling. The other blue guy hopped down, a nasty sneer on his face, and then the tall, winged guy carefully scooted to the edge and hung down by his hands from the edge until his toes touched the sand. “My team’s ready!” Yund hollered from above Victor’s head.
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A goat-man like Vullu stood on the other side of the pit, and he nodded, gesturing to the pit. The woman who hopped down into the pit from behind the goat-man looked so much like Yrella that, at first, Victor thought Yund would make her fight them. When she straightened up, though, Victor could see the differences. She was taller, more muscular, had little horns poking through her black hair, and her eyes were like smokey orange coals. She stood on her side of the pit, watching the five members of Yund’s team coolly. A moment later, a blue guy with violet hair approached the edge of the pit with a spear in each hand.
“This fight will commence on my word. Are both teams ready?” While he listened to Yund and the goat-man answer in the affirmative, he tossed the two spears toward the far side of the pit, toward the middle. He looked at Victor’s team, then at the tall Shadeni woman, then he shouted, “Begin!”
Asslick scrambled toward one of the spears; Victor crouched down and moved to his right, keeping the Shadeni woman in view. Otter-woman followed along with Victor, but the other blue guy stumbled back, trying to get to the pit's edge, his knee buckling with each step. The thin winged guy moved toward the horned woman with his hands out in fists. Asslick made it to a spear and turned, grinning, toward the tall red woman. She hadn’t yet taken a step, but she smiled at Asslick and strode toward him. He charged with the spear, driving the point toward her stomach, but she smoothly sidestepped, then burst forward so fast that Victor thought she blurred a little, and drove the edge of her hand into Asslick’s throat with such force that he was flipped backward off his feet to land on his back with a resounding thud.
As Asslick lay writhing, choking, and scrabbling at his neck, the winged guy dove at the woman with surprising grace, dodging her kick and then landing a solid punch to the side of her head. She smoothly stepped back, assessing the winged guy anew, then began to circle him. “C’mon,” Victor said to Otter-girl. “She’ll take us apart if we fight her one by one.” Otter-girl nodded, then they started to circle the Shadeni woman, already named Big Red in Victor’s mind, making her split her attention from the winged guy. The woman hadn’t bothered to pick up the spear that Asslick had dropped, and Victor thought he could get to it pretty easily, but he wondered if he should. Would it just make him her next target? Instead, he moved over toward the spear, keeping his hands out, his center low, ready for the woman to charge him.
“Ghelli, just lay down, and I’ll end this quickly,” Big Red purred, her voice sending chills down Victor’s spine.
“I didn’t lay down when ap’Guin’s men raped my wife. I didn’t stand down when my men and I tore his household limb from limb. I didn’t stand down when the Count burned my estate. I didn’t stand down when the farcical trial sent me to the mines. I didn’t stand down when I was sold to this hell. No, you will have to finish me kicking and screaming the whole way.”
“Quite a speech! Did you rehearse that?” She glided over the sandy ground to the winged man like a rattler darting toward a mouse. They exchanged a flurry of blows and blocks that Victor couldn’t keep track of, but he didn’t care; he’d been waiting for this moment, and he flicked the spear up with the top of his old worn Adidas, grabbed the haft in his right hand and chucked it like a javelin at the woman’s back. She must have sensed his movement because she whirled around as though to strike him, but it wasn’t him ripping through the air; it was a sharp spear. Her outflung arm deflected the spear’s trajectory, but it tore a long gash along her forearm. As she hissed and grabbed at the cut with her other hand, the winged dude landed a thunderous haymaker into the back of her skull.
Victor figured that if the winged guy were stronger, it would have been lights out for Big Red, but though she stumbled forward, shaking her head, she didn’t go down. That’s when the otter-woman strode forward past Victor, hands outstretched. Victor felt the air temperature drop, and then white frost started forming around the otter-woman’s hands, and a spray of tiny shards of ice blasted out, tearing into the Shadeni woman. She screamed, holding her arms in front of her face, then she whirled away, rolling over the sand to the spear against the far wall. The spray of ice shards sputtered out, and the otter-woman leaned forward, gasping for breath. Victor ran toward the other spear, looking around to see what the fuck the rest of his team was doing. Asslick was lying still on his back, eyes open and staring. Was he fucking dead? The other blue guy was scrabbling at the pit's edge, trying to climb out.
“You fucking dick! Get down and fight!” Victor screamed as he slid into the spear like he was coming in hot to home base. He scooped up the spear, scrambled to his feet, and whirled to face the Shadeni woman. She wasn’t where he’d last seen her, though; she was standing over the otter-woman, spear buried in her furry chest. “Fuck!” Victor choked out when he saw the blood bubbling out of the woman’s sad-looking mouth and her moist eyes slowly blinking while she scratched fruitlessly at the sand with her little, webbed hands. Big Red twisted the spear a couple of times, then yanked it free, trailing an arc of bright crimson blood.
“What’s your name, Shadeni?” The winged guy asked as he circled behind her, trying, Victor thought, to get her to turn her back on him again.
“I’m Thessa-dak. Learn it well, Ghelli; my offer of a quick death has been rescinded.” She didn’t look at the winged man while she spoke; she hefted her spear and turned to the blue guy who had given up climbing out of the pit and was leaning with his back to the wall, edging sideways. Maybe the laughing, jeering spectators standing above him had something to do with his decision to stop trying to climb. A slow grin spread on Big Red’s face, then she took two steps and let the spear fly. It punched through the blue guy’s chest and pinned him to the wooden wall of the pit. A short scream tore out of his throat, but it quickly subsided to soft gurgling.
“Hey, pendeja, you think it makes you tough to fuck up some people weaker than you?” Victor didn’t really give a shit about the chickenshit guy she’d just killed, but he was fucking torn up about that otter-woman. He felt tears stinging his eyes, but they were tears of futile rage, not fear. “This fight is fucking bullshit!” He started striding toward Big Red, reason having fled his mind. He dropped low, spear out, and went through the motions as he had practiced with Yrella and Vullu. At first, a tiny voice in the back of his mind said he was committing suicide, and though he tuned it out, he knew a part of him believed he was about to die. After he’d blinked away his frustrated tears, though, the only thing left in his mind was furious rage. Rage at being tossed into this pit, rage at being summoned to this world, rage at this fucking bitch that killed that soft little Otter-woman.
She was fast and strong, but every time she started to push past Victor’s guard, the winged guy would dart forward and land a kidney punch or a snap kick, and she’d be forced to back away to regroup. She was getting visibly frustrated; she was more than a match for either of them, but now that they’d found a rhythm, they were beginning to wear her down. Suddenly she hissed loudly and screamed, turning away from Victor and leaping through the air, a move that would have made a pro baller proud, and landed on the winged guy, driving him to the ground. Victor didn’t waste a second, though; while she was bearing him to the ground, biting at his neck, Victor charged forward and drove the spear into her lower back, punching it through where he figured her kidney should be. She screamed and writhed, turning toward Victor, but the winged guy grabbed her in a bear hug, wrapping his arms and legs around her and holding her down. Victor yanked the spear out and drove it again and again, filling her back with gushing, spurting holes.
Finally, Thessa-dak stopped thrashing and lay still on top of the bloody, panting man. Victor leaned forward on his spear, lungs heaving for breath.
“I am Sarl, brother. I take it you are Victor?” the man gasped, trying to shove the woman off himself.
“Yeah, Sarl, that’s me. Good to meet you. What the fuck….” Victor cut himself off as he watched motes of golden Energy start to bead up and coalesce all around Thessa-dak’s body. A great swarm of them split into two streams and flooded into him and Sarl.
***Congratulations! You’ve achieved level 3 base human. You have 5 attribute points to allocate.***
The euphoria of the Energy flooding him filled Victor with strength, and he stood up straight, looking around the edge of the pit. For the first time, he noticed the roaring of the crowd, their cheers, and stomping feet. He felt high from the influx of Energy, and the cheers filled him with that old feeling he used to get when he pinned an opponent, so he held up his fist, screaming triumphantly into the face of the crowd.