The guards hadn’t taken me to the armory as I expected. Instead, they brought me directly to the pit. I was without armor or weapons or shield. I stank of some creature’s shit and had damp grass in my hair.
Some champion I looked.
But I raised my arms and played to the crowd anyway. Credits exchanged hands and bets were made. Probably by how many fighters it would take to take me down. The record was four.
Through the observation window above, the Supervisor stood with his hands behind his back. The monitors on either side of him blinked and flashed with their numbers and dials and details.
The Supervisor was certain everything could be broken down and rebuilt with machines and technology. Nowhere in his theories did he account for instinct and natural ability. And that was what unique skills were.
A natural ability honed over countless ions to help each species survive in their natural habitat. How could a man with so much life around him not notice the abilities for what they were?
Miracles.
The opposite cage wound up and clunked into place as my first challenger stepped into the pit.
An almanian. I should have guessed. A very strong species with arms the size of my legs. They had long tusks that made it difficult to eat. They tended to slip into a berserker rage when they suffered an injury. That was what made them so dangerous. That was why you had to finish them off quickly.
In each of his four arms he carried a chipped scimitar. They didn’t believe in shields and considered them a sign of weakness. His skin was white and they could barely speak, preferring to utter growls that made no sense to me and even the translator chip in my arm often got the meanings mixed up.
He stood on the other side of the pit and stamped his feet and bellowed up into the crowd with a loud roar. He waved his swords and swung them to and fro.
The onlookers made a few more bets—probably not in my favor—and watched the scene with excitement.
“Do you want one of my swords, little champion?” the almanian growled.
He tossed me a blade and reached back to grab another tucked in his pants.
The audience laughed and cheered him on.
I calmed my mind and focused on that blossoming golden light in the pit of my heart. That’s where Ivy resided.
I was transported to some distant and unknown location, a dream world where anything was possible. I didn’t smell like animal turds and I wasn’t in a pit with a murderous creature baying for my blood.
I thought of Ivy and what it would be like to lay beside her one day, in a bed in a house on a piece of land we owned. We would have no one to answer to or fight for. Except each other.
It was a potential future. As unlikely as it was to come true, it was still possible. And that meant I had to survive and figure a way out of here.
Easier said than done.
The almanian dug into the dry dirt with his hoof and kicked it behind him. He leaned forward, growled, and coiled his massive muscles. He bolted toward me.
Super strong and fast. A worrying combination.
I opened myself up to that golden light and let it fill me.
The almanian swung a sword toward my head.
I leaned forward and directed that light at him. I drew the strength from him and added it to my own.
I caught his arm and held it there like he was a child.
The creature was shocked. He’d never faced an opponent stronger than himself before.
I twisted his arm before he could bring his other swords down and slammed a fist into his chest.
The flesh and bone gave way beneath my knuckles. The force of the blow struck him hard. The creature grunted, winded, as he flew back and struck the wall on the other side of the pit.
The audience had turned so quiet you could have heard a pin drop.
The creature struggled to get to his feet. He struggled for breath and pressed a hand to the pit wall to steady himself.
I marched over to him and took his best scimitar from his hand. I added his helmet to the look. Although it was a little too large, it would serve for now.
“Stay down,” I said to him. “There’s no need for you to die at the edge of your own sword.”
The creature collapsed, unable to bear his own weight.
I looked up at the laboratory observation window but the Supervisor wasn’t there.
Two guards entered the pit and dragged the defeated creature away. His legs left a twin trail through the dirt.
One down.
How many more to go?
Ivy
The Supervisor placed me in the chair he’d used to run his experiments on Kren earlier. It faced the large observation window that looked out on the pit below. A wide console ran across it with various buttons, switches, and levers that looked dizzyingly complicated.
The other scientists milled about the lab, keeping to themselves and their work. How they could just stand there and do what they were doing while someone like me, an innocent victim in all of this, was strapped to a chair and forced to watch as the alien she loved was about to fight for his life… I had no idea.
The guards towered over me. Their hands weren’t gripping their shock rifles as the Supervisor had instructed them not to use them on me.
It wasn’t through caring about my health and wellbeing that he said that. It was because of the cargo I was carrying. He didn’t want the baby harmed.
The Supervisor crouched beside my ear.
“You know. You’ve still got me stumped on how you managed to short circuit the security wall earlier.”
The crowd watching the fight roared with excitement.
I found it difficult not
