by Rosie Scott
“Well, when you do, send me a message, ey?” Jayce gave me a pat on the back, as if we were old friends. I found myself pleasantly amused by her. “Are we done here, then?” She asked her brother, next. “I'd like to take Kai down to the pit.”
Vallen sighed. “Again, sister, they are not here on vacation, but business. You can't—”
“There are plenty of beastmen in the pit who will agree to join them,” Jayce retorted. “We can ask while we're there.”
“This pit...” Anto spoke up from his couch, his voice still heavy with fatigue. “Is it anything like the coliseum in T'ahal?”
“Kind of,” Jayce replied. “But everyone is equal here, friend. T'ahal forces slaves to fight in their city. The beastmen are all clamoring to fight in ours.” She looked over the orc for a moment, as if wondering why he would ask. “Were you a gladiator, by any chance?”
“For a few years, yes,” Anto replied.
“Oh, you have to tell me stories!” She exclaimed.
Anto chuckled softly. “I doubt I have stories you'd want to hear. I took little pride in my time there.”
“But if you lasted years, surely you were fantastic!”
With flared nostrils, Vallen abruptly took his sister by the arm, leading her toward the hallway, ignoring her protests along the way. The siblings closed the door behind them. Seconds later, I heard Vallen hissing words toward his sister, as I watched Calder rub at his temples with two fingers.
“Part of me wishes Jayce had still been on a hunting mission,” he admitted with a mutter.
Cerin chuckled from his own couch, and pulled a hand through his long black hair, letting his fingers work through tangles which had knotted up the locks from sleep. “Is she always like this?” He questioned.
“No, thank the gods,” Calder promised, annoyed. “Jayce has always been insane, but ferris makes her hyperactive. Like Vallen said, she is practically immune to pain, but she smokes anyway.” He motioned a hand to the door, where we could hear the two arguing. “This is the result.”
“We could pull a Chairel and ban ferris on the trip,” I mused.
Calder laughed at the jest. “As much as that would be nice, it is needed for the rest of us, if you and Jakan don't want to spend all day clearing our minds.” He nodded toward Anto. “Jayce is simply careless, friend. She meant no harm, I promise you.”
Anto waved away his concern. “She has a right to be curious.”
The door opened once more, and Vallen walked back in, without his sister this time. He announced to the room, “I'm going to give my sister a few hours to wear down. Then, she wants to take you all down to the pit, because she insists you all see it before you leave Tenesea.”
“Well, that's just the least we could do,” Anto commented aloud.
Vallen laughed softly. “It is not a fight to the death, gladiator. You might find yourself enjoying it.”
*
The pit was a large arena built out of the last segment of Tenesea's tree trunk before it turned into the moist soil which fed its roots. Because it was below ground, the heavy smell of damp bark and minerals from the surrounding ground filled the air, and the various shouts and cries from the beastmen and their audience were muffled, keeping the fights from inconveniencing the rest of the populace in the levels above.
Even before I saw the pit, I could hear animalistic snarls and the yelping of sudden pain, the noises bouncing off of the wooden walls and reverberating into echoes. In order to reach the pit, we had to move through the preparation areas, where beastmen were preparing to transform, and some were dressing wounds after their fight. Though Vallen had promised these fights weren't to the death, it was clear based on seeing the various bruises and wounds that the battles could get fairly violent. Even when wounded, however, most of the beastmen looked jovial and energetic.
There was a line of booths we passed on the floor just above the pit, made out of stacked crates and supplies. Each booth held two chairs, and each chair had an occupant. The healer in me was overcome with intrigue when I noticed that the subjects of each tiny room were being injected with a syringe. I must have slowed to watch, for Calder moved closer to me to explain what I was seeing.
“Most dangerous part of being a shapeshifter right here,” he said, swooping a finger toward the booths.
“Is this their first time?” I asked, my eyes on an Alderi man currently being injected in the nearest stall. His grayish-blue skin was beaded with the sweat of anxiety, and his bare chest rose and fell with quickened breaths. A much calmer Alderi finished injecting him, before getting up and moving to the side of the small room with his supplies and utensils.
“Yes. First and only,” Calder explained. “Remember, I told you it only needs to be injected once. By this point, all of their blood has mixed fine in a controlled environment, but things can change once that blood is in the body. Many die here.”
My eyes were still stuck to the frightened Alderi in the chair nearby, watching as his body convulsed so abruptly that he fell from his chair, the piece of furniture hitting the wood with a clatter. The man heaved while struggling to get up on all fours, sweat starting to visibly drip from his forehead.
“How was it...?” I asked Calder, distractedly. I couldn't help but feel sympathetic for the would-be beastmen before me, though the men and women down the line were starting to transform. The Alderi man beside us wasn't.
“Fucking terrifying,” he admitted.
“Uh...no one thinks we should try to get this guy medical attention?” Nyx questioned, jabbing a thumb toward the man we watched, who started to cough painfully over the wooden floor. White foam bubbled from his lips, before dripping heavily to the surface below in clumps of fizz. Two blue hands grasped fruitlessly below him, before a splatter of blood exploded from his mouth, spraying across the swirls of wood like a crime scene.
“There's nothing you can do by this point,” Calder replied, his brow furrowed, as the Alderi at the center of our attention fell to the floor, unable to hold himself up any longer. All four limbs rattled in seizure.
I took note of Calder's selective words, and spun to face him. “He is dying?” I inquired desperately.
“His body is fighting the injection. There is no way to—”
I didn't pay attention to Calder's next words, even if he said them. I hurried into the small booth, falling to the side of the man as his body jerked over the floor. I could not hold him still, but my hands attempted to near him anyway, seeking out his wounds with life magic. I wasn't sure what kinds of injuries to look for.
“Kai, there are no wounds,” Calder insisted, leaning over the stack of crates that separated the booth from the hallway to watch me. “His blood is poisoned. His own body is fighting itself. He will die.”
His blood is poisoned. With a furrowed brow, I dispelled the first life spell and whispered, “Promotus le imun.” It was the only life spell I knew that might combat such a thing. Perhaps boosting his immunity would keep his body safe from itself. Maybe it would help—
The Alderi ceased his seizure. My disturbed breaths echoed in my head as I tried to figure out if I'd helped him. I reached out a hand, putting three fingers along the side of his throat, checking for a pulse.
“Kai,” Calder said, insistent.
“He is dead.” The words were hitched to an exhale of helplessness. I stood, staring at the man's body with a distance.
“This is normal, Kai. As I said, there's nothing you can do.”
I turned to leave the booth as a few beastmen walked in to retrieve the body. “This is unnatural, Calder. There has to be some way to prevent this.”
His two black eyebrows raised, overwhelmed. “If there is, we haven't found it.” Throwing a hand toward the other Alderi's body, he added, “This is a risk we all take.”
Jayce took a step closer to the booth, just to look into it at the sight. “Ah. Another one. Yeah, this happens, Kai. I wouldn't worry about it.”
“A man is dead. I wor
ry about it,” I replied, my eyes scanning down the row of other booths. The rest of the trainees had successfully transformed. An array of various beasts were hulking over the other half-walls, getting used to their new bodies. “Why do this if it can kill you?”
“Most Alderi feel they have nothing to lose,” Vallen said behind me. “Some of them have spent centuries feeling oppressed. They come here, and we offer them power. Most feel it's worth the risk.”
I found that intensely depressing. My eyes moved to Calder, who stared blankly at the Alderi's body as it was carried away. He must have felt my stare, because he returned it once the corpse was out of sight. “I could ask you the same question,” he said to me, softly. “There is much risk to being a mage, is there not? People do crazy things to obtain power.”
“Yes, but I can better sympathize with the male Alderi quest for it,” I murmured. “I simply find it upsetting.”
“Well, that's why you're here with me,” Calder managed, his voice sounding a little more energetic. “We're going to do something about it together.”
“That we are,” I agreed, finally leaving the blood splattered room to continue to our destination.
Just one more small set of stairs later, the pit opened up to us. The arena filled in a good three quarters of the base of the ancient tree, separated from the encompassing audience area along the borders of the room by a hastily built wooden fence. The fencing had clearly been broken and re-broken repeatedly, as many of the planks were nailed together so many times it was a wonder the wood remained stable at all. Many Vhiri and Alderi sat on benches and watched the ongoing fight in the arena, partaking in drinking and smoking, bandages on bleeding limbs from being recent participants.
Within the arena, two beasts were fighting. One was a giant crab with a carapace which shone a slick grayish-blue, its claws snapping in the air toward the arena's other occupant. Its shell was pockmarked with recent and past traumas, and a deep purple blood oozed from multiple gashes to the arena floor where it saturated thick dirt. At first, I thought the dirt floor was a terrible addition to the arena, since it spread this way and that from the movements of past fights. But as the two beasts circled each other, both leaking blood, I realized the dirt only helped to absorb it.
On the other side of the pit, fleshy wings snapping quickly in the air, was a bat. The majority of its body was a chestnut brown, though the transparency of its wings lightened flesh to a cream, the lights from the nearby sconces highlighting the veins which spread through them like a frayed river. Its head was an ugly mess of folds and fangs, and it spread apart its jaw to screech, the high-pitched squeal echoing through the room and causing our ears to ring.
The bat swooped down toward the crab in a clutter of wings, talons, and shrieks, unleashing its fangs into the crab's thick shell. The crab scuttled to the side on multiple segmented legs, leaving the bat to flutter in its absence, before it swiped at the bat with a thick claw, clipping the edge of a wing, leaving the flesh to flap loosely with its movement. With a shrill cry, the bat swooped down once more, attempting to blind its foe with its wings as it went in for a bite. The crab snapped its left pincer at the other beast, causing the bat to dodge the move, where another pincer was waiting. The claw snapped over the bat's wing, tearing the flesh completely in half. The flying mammal tumbled to the ground, at the mercy of its torn wing.
A bell ran shrilly across the arena from our seats, signaling the end of the spat. The Vhiri woman who rang it looked off across the room and yelled, “The winner is Troy!”
A few of the spectators clapped and whistled as the beasts began to transform. The fallen bat squirmed on the ground, its screeches morphing into the pained cries of a woman. Its wings shrunk and consolidated into two bronze arms, the left of which was hanging loosely by the elbow. On the other hand, the crab shriveled to the size of a man, its carapace softening to Alderi skin. Dark purple blood seeped out of the fang wounds from the fight from multiple places along his nude body.
I turned to Vallen, who sat just behind me on another bench. “Troy's blood is purple?”
Vallen nodded. “Alderi blood is red, and crustacean blood is blue. Shapeshifting combines the blood in the body. Everyone's blood is blue before it hits the air.” The Vhiri nodded toward Troy in the arena. “The elven blood still in Troy turns red when he bleeds, but the crab blood stays the same. The colors then mix, making purple.”
I thought back to the kraken of the sea, and then farther back to Mantus. “We have fought two beasts which bled blue, but neither were crustaceans,” I pointed out. I figured that if I were going to learn anything about beasts, it would be from a beastman.
“Mantus and the kraken,” Cerin spoke up from beside me.
Vallen nodded. “Krakens are of the sea. Many sea creatures have blue blood. What was Mantus?”
“A centipede that was about a billion times too large,” Nyx commented, her voice dry with the memory of the battle.
Vallen chuckled at her wording. “Ah, yes. Arthropods, then. The blue blood makes sense. We will be seeing a lot more of it once we go to the underground. Insects thrive there.”
“Ha! Not ones as big as Mantus,” Nyx argued. “I was on its head when it reared to the skies, and I found out what it was like to fly.”
Vallen laughed. “Well, no, certainly not that large. It is a wonder you slayed such a beast and lived to tell the tale. Don't worry, friend. Surely you remember the underground has no skies.”
Nyx nodded toward the man in agreement. “True, that.”
“You son of a bitch, Troy!” The yell pulled our attention back to the arena, where the fighter known as Troy carried his sparring partner's clothes over to her as she sat nude and with a broken arm on the ground. The Alderi man laughed as she swiped at the clothes as if rejecting them, and the garments fell to the arena floor.
“You fall for it every time, Leyla,” Troy responded, grabbing the clothes off the ground before moving to help his partner dress. “And I have to say, you deserved it. Broke my leg all the way through in the last battle.”
“Yeah, well, your leg regenerated, didn't it?”
“You're lucky I am a crab, friend.”
“You are? Ha! Then why am I always crabby around you?”
Troy groaned at the awful joke, helping to work the woman's broken arm through her sleeve. Within minutes, the two friends were shuffling together out of the pit, both of them brandishing many wounds despite neither seeming to much care. My eyes followed them off to the sidelines, where they proceeded to take ferris from a nearby beastman before moving onward to get their wounds healed.
We continued to watch the pit fights for a few hours that night, both as a means of spending time together and learning the culture here. Depending on the beast each person transformed into, the shapeshifters had different strengths and abilities. The recurring pain and trauma of the transformations tended to make them rash and even a little insane, but these were a strong and diverse people with a variety of skills. Moreover, many of them truly enjoyed battle.
I had no doubt that with Vallen and Jayce's help, we would be leaving Tenesea with a small army.
Twenty
Compared with Misu, Tenesea was full of beastmen jumping at the chance to join us. Even if someone there hadn't seen the corruption of the underground firsthand, they knew and were friends with others who had, and many of the populace joined us as a small group of family or friends. Tenesea was a large enough city that we ended up taking nearly four hundred recruits with us, and still the city continued as normal when we left it, with men and women working outside of the ancient tree amongst a murmur.
I ended up wishing I could stay in Tenesea, even though our mission was not yet complete. Vertical architecture had always fascinated me, perhaps as a side effect of loving my bedroom in the high tower of the Seran University as a little girl. Tenesea had both that and its own unique and laid back culture, and despite staying there for nearly a fortnight while recruiting, I left fe
eling as if there was so much more of it to discover.
Our final stop before the underground was the rain forest city of Silvi, the northernmost settlement in the wildlands. We surmised that we would reach it just before the year of 419 came to a close, so it would take us nearly a moon to get there with four hundred beastmen in tow. There, we would try to recruit more, and I would finally get to send my message to Hasani with our progress. Silvi was the only settlement of the beastlands to have a port along the river upon which it sat, and though Calder said it wasn't large due to its relative secrecy, it didn't have to be. All I needed to send was a letter, and if Chairel came across a mercenary ship on the seas, they wouldn't bat an eye.
After leaving Tenesea, our army traveled south the way we'd come, though it was simply to maneuver around the swamp lake which covered a large chunk of the northern wildlands. There were nothing but small fishing boats on the lake, so traveling across it was not an option. As soon as the edges of the lake curled around to the northeast, we followed, finally moving in the right direction. The land between the wildlands' two great lakes was quite the terrible trek to get through, because the depths of its water rivaled that of the swamps near the ocean's edge long ago. The land there was fed by the changing levels of the two lagoons, plus a river which flowed inland from the eastern coast, veining out into the wetlands as if it were reaching for a hold of the region with desperate fingers.
Within days of leaving the rivers behind us, the plant-life began to change. The gnarly plants of the swamps gave way to the taller, more vibrantly colored trees of the rain forest. The humidity was still high, but the ground was now solid, offering us all a reprieve from our constant treks through mush. The continual buzzing of insects gave way to the chatter of hundreds of varieties of wildlife, and the regular calls of birds. The animals did a good job of avoiding us, though from time to time I could see flashes of yellows, pinks, blues, and greens amongst the branches far above, or the glowing eyes of predators at night, as if the animals were sizing up our army. Thankfully, they decided we were not worth the trouble. What few animals I did see up close were the ones the beastmen hunted for food.