My eyes widened at what I saw.
My nightmares were about to have a new supreme leader.
The guard bore the face of the one I loved most in the entire galaxy.
Kren.
The guards were clones of Kren.
“No…” I said as the guards scooped me up in their arms. “No!”
They strapped me into the chair and let me sink into my cold dark nightmares.
Kren
The guy was almost impossible to hit. He moved faster than anyone I’d ever met in the pit.
I swung a fist at him but by the time my fist reached him, lagging as if it the slow-motion switch were stuck, he’d dodged and smacked me in the face two, three, sometimes four times.
He wasn’t a big hitter. That was my only saving grace. If he had been, there was no way I could have beaten him.
Unable to strike him, I decided to let him tire himself out. Moving at that kind of speed must take an enormous amount of energy.
I raised my shield and gripped my sword firmly so he couldn’t take it from me.
He was armed with a pair of blades that struck at me like a python. He drew blood from my cheek, neck, and forearms.
I could have used my ability but I held back. I didn’t like to rely on it like a crutch the way other fighters did.
I ducked behind my shield as the knives stabbed at me again.
Clang, clang, clang!
I backed away and swung my sword around. It was more to keep my opponent moving than an attempt to slash him.
I felt the blade bite into something that gave way beneath it. It couldn’t be a sword or his light armor as it made no noise.
I pulled my sword back and identified the blood along its razor-sharp edge.
Yes! I’d hit him.
I rolled up onto my feet and caught sight of him to one side, holding his bleeding ankle with one hand and his blades in the other.
His face was contorted with pain. I approached him slowly and cautiously. I’d been in too many fights to think the battle might already be over.
Fighters would use any trick at their disposal when they thought they knew they were on the brink of losing.
“Yield,” I said.
The fighter shook his head.
“I can’t. I have to keep going.”
“Yield or you will die.”
“You’re Kren. You never kill unless you need to.”
“So, this time I might need to. Yield.”
He screwed up his face and began to laugh.
“Not until you face the Fury!”
I had been right to be cautious. He leaped at me and his knives clang clang clanged against my shield. I barely managed to avoid the worst of the blows.
The blades were suddenly everywhere and I received another cut to my arm—my wrist this time, and another to my shin. The shield wasn’t long enough to protect me head to foot.
He couldn’t keep attacking like this. He’d been tired when he began the assault. By now, he must be exhausted.
Another slash to my shin. And another to my forearms. These wounds were deep and almost cut to the bone.
He couldn’t keep attacking. And I couldn’t keep taking the abuse.
I focused my mind and accessed the light in the center of my chest. It flashed in my mind’s eye and suddenly, the blows weren’t raining down so fast.
I peered over my shield. My opponent’s face was screwed up in rage as he brought his arm around and hacked at me again.
Now he was the one moving in slow motion. I’d taken his strength and used it against him.
His blade struck my shield and bounced off as his other arm came in to deliver the next blow.
I witnessed what it was like to have the creature’s ability to see the world through his eyes.
To him, the world was slow and lethargic and unexciting.
I blocked his second blow and decided to end the fight right now.
I dropped my sword. I snapped my arm forward and wrapped my hand around his neck. I tensed my arm and lifted him off the floor a full foot.
His eyes widened in shock. I guessed it was because no one had ever moved faster than he could before. He swung with his blades but I easily avoided them.
I did him a favor and threw him bodily into the opposite wall. He smashed into it, dazed for a moment. He struggled to get to his feet.
“I wouldn’t get up if I were you,” I said.
He collapsed. Either of his own volition or because he just couldn’t hold himself up any longer, I couldn’t tell.
The battle was over.
The klaxon sounded and I was ushered to the exit.
I didn’t expect to see Ivy when I reached the Prize Pool, so I wasn’t disappointed she wasn’t there.
The other girls presented themselves anyway. None looked particularly interested in me. Why would they? They knew my heart already belonged to another.
Lily approached and tried to interest me in her “wares.”
“Ivy isn’t with us right now. But perhaps you would like to peruse our other girls?”
“No thanks.”
Lily stepped in the way, blocking me from leaving.
“No. I must insist.”
“And I insist, I’m not interested.”
I moved to step around Lily but she was there in an instant. She moved quickly and it surprised me. She could have done very well in the pits. She sidled up close and said:
“Even if you don’t… take action with the girls, there are other things they can… do for you,” she said, and her eyes twinkled. “Like informative conversation.”
In all my years of fighting in the pits, I had never heard a madam—this one or any other—suggest there was anything the girls could do but the one thing they’d been abducted to perform.
There was something in the way she smiled at me, the way her eyes drifted over my shoulder to the girls, that she was trying to tell me more than she was allowed to say.
Besides, what harm could it do to listen to one of the girls? It wasn’t like I
