Everything Is Worth Killing- Isaac's Tale

by Alex Oakchest

  I noticed Harrien watching me. I felt bad. Truly, I did. I could see the confusion and fear in his eyes. He knew I hadn’t hurt my foot. He must have guessed what I was doing.

  But I hardly knew the guy, and for all I knew, I had a family someplace. There might be a way to get back to the world I’d left behind, back to my old life. What if I had people waiting for me, relying on me, wherever my old life was?

  Was I really going to put myself on the line for someone I met months ago?

  The gnome regarded me suspiciously now. He watched me limp, and I felt like a crappy actor about to get rejected for an audition.

  He had to buy this, surely? If he assigned the others to the temple with just a glance…

  “Temple,” he said.

  Phew.

  Sorry, Harrien Adi-Boto, Judah. If you guys got assigned to the temple and I was sent to the pit, I doubt you’d have stepped in for me.

  Hey, I never told anyone that I had honor. I’d help anyone with anything…as long as it didn’t conflict with my desire to keep breathing.

  Another gnome crossed the courtyard now. It was Glum Rabert. He leaned toward the judge gnome’s ear and whispered.

  The gnome’s eyes locked on me.

  Rabert moved away, and I found myself locked in a battle of stares with the other gnome.

  I thought I knew what was coming.

  Thanks, Glum Rabert. You’re a pal.

  “Pit,” he said.

  Rabert must have told the gnome that my limping act was bullshit. I guessed it was a crummy plan made quickly, so I shouldn’t be surprised it failed. Maybe it was karma beating my ass for what I had tried to pull.

  My stomach became a cauldron of emotions. Fear, mainly. I had seen a lot in this world, but that didn’t mean I was excited at the idea of fighting in front of what I assumed would be a bunch of drunk gnomes getting their Friday night kicks.

  Using mindfulness, I focused on my breaths as a gnome guard led me across the courtyard. I needed to get the cauldron in my belly to settle.

  Emotions are a survival trait that helps humans adapt to danger. Fear serves as a warning to us about potential danger. Anger can be a warning to others to make something right before a situation even becomes dangerous. Happiness is a reward from our brain, telling another part of our brain that we did something right and should do it again.

  Emotions had a place, but this wasn’t it. I needed to think clearer than ever now. I wasn’t the strongest person here, and I was even worse off without my elementals. Sure, I’d exercised my body some with running, pushups, and movement training for spells. That wouldn’t cut it, though.

  When I joined the pit group, Harrien gave me a beaming grin. I could see the relief in his face. He was still scared about what would happen, but I guessed I counted as a friendly face around here.

  Adi-Boto gave me a slight nod, which was about as much recognition as anyone ever got from the Tallsteep. Judah had a stoic expression. I shouldn’t have been surprised that he wasn’t worried. He was a middle-aged Tallsteep scout. He’d spent a long time out in the wilds, and he’d seen things worse than this. Even if he felt nervous, I doubted he would show it.

  “Idea, Isaac?” whispered Harrien.

  I shook my head.

  “Soon, then?” he said.

  Judah tapped Harrien’s shoulder. “Don’t talk. Watch, boy. Study the people here. See the things they try to hide.”

  “What things?”

  Judah pointed at the orc, with red tattoos all over his face. “See orc? He rubs his shoulder sometimes. An old warrior injury, that. Swing enough swords, and joints cry out for retirement. He is one who you would approach from the left and force him to swing with weapon in right hand, and aggravate shoulder.”

  “How do you know this?” asked Harrien.

  “I learn to see. I was na born a Tallsteep.”

  “Na?”

  “Born to a clan far away. The Jade Children. You know them?”

  “I have heard. I thought they were just a story.”

  “They are…now. Few of us left. Now, stop talking, boy, and watch.”

  They were wise words. I had already known how capable Judah was, because even Kostig had asked the veteran scout for advice. I didn’t know he could fight, though. I had no clue that he wasn’t a native Tallsteep. I mean, he looked like the rest of them.

  Actually, that was an ignorant way to think, that they looked the same. I was being an ass. I guess I needed to remind myself that I was the outsider around here. I needed to stop thinking I knew everything and keep an open mind while I learned more.

  Taking Judah’s advice, I watched my fellow pitmen, which is what I had heard a gnome call us, as Glum Rabert led us away from the courtyard.

  I gave one last glance back to Tosvig, Kayla, and Cleavon, but they were already being marched away in a different direction.

  “There will be a battle tonight,” said Rabert. “A way to see who is worthy of the pit.”

  “Do we fight each other?” I asked.

  “Not tonight. We have something else ready for you.”

  That sounded suitably ominous.

  “Will we get weapons?”

  “We will not give you weapons tonight.”

  We will not give you weapons.

  A curious phrase. A phrase that no pitman would want to hear. But to me, the wording of it was chosen in a particular way.

  We will not give you weapons.

  The way I took it to mean was, we will not give you weapons, so you must find your own.

  And not all weapons were physical. From here on out, until it was time for battle, I needed to find every single advantage I could get.

  They took us to what I guessed were the digs for us pitmen; shipping containers with some of their sides removed and roofs joined together so they formed a single building.

  Inside, it was lighter than I expected. The gnomes had cut squares into each wall, letting some light sneak in. The windows had bars, though. That was the first thing I checked.

  I couldn’t tell how big the place was, only that there was one wide room when we first entered, with a narrow hallway at the end that I guessed opened into further rooms.

  Once we were all inside, Rabert stood at the doorway.

  “Tonight, you will fight. Some of you will die, and if you are lucky, your souls will go to Treah.”

  “Why?” asked the big, human-like guy with fangs sticking out of his bottom lip.

  He was speaking Kartum, so and that opened all kinds of avenues in my mind. I’d assumed that Kartum was a language only the Tallsteeps and Lonehills spoke natively, and that the gnomes, who boasted of their linguistic skills, had merely learned it.

  But if this guy spoke it, then could it be the universal language of this world?

  A question for another time. I needed to stay focused.

  The more I looked at the fanged guy, the more I noticed that he wasn’t exactly human. There was a humanity to his features, sure, but all something kinda brutish as well. Was he a half-human, half-orc, or something? Could humans even breed with orcs?

  “Why?” said Rabert. “Because Treah accepts all souls of all kinds, horc. It is a person’s deeds that decide their entry, not their race.”

  Horc. Huh. Human-orc. Guess that solved the matter of interspecies breeding. I filed that in things I had never really wanted to know section of my brain.

  “Not that. Why do we have to fight?” asked the horc.

  “You were unfortunate enough to become our prisoner, horc. We already have enough smithies, alchemists, and thinkers in our city. That leaves but two options for ones like you; you fight, or you work.”

  “I was a lone traveler, gnome. I paid you no mind. I did not attack when your people found me. We could all have continued our journeys with no consequence.”

  “And waste a resource? We are not wasteful people. If you found a deposit of precious iron, would you leave it in the wilds?”

  “We are not
resources.”

  “Now you are. And you have resources of your own; your energy. I suggest you preserve it for this eve.”

  So, this was at odds with what I’d noticed about the gnomes. They had treated us fairly, or as fairly as captors could treat people they imprisoned. They’d even been friendly, to a point, when they shared their food with us.

  But now I saw that it wasn’t really friendliness or affection; we were resources to them. Machines. All they were doing was keeping us well-maintained.

  Rabert left us and locked the door behind him. There were eight of us in total; me, Harrien, Judah, and Adi-Boto. The horc. The ogre with his red face tattoos, and both elves.

  We had all been stripped of our weapons, items, and anything that counted as armor, so that we were all wearing crummy-looking shirts, tunics, and trousers.

  I looked around the room to see if the gnomes had left us anything to work with. There were a dozen padded cushions on the floor, which must have served as beds. All were untidy, and some had blood stains on them.

  Judah tapped Harrien’s arm. “Go and rest. You will need your energy tonight.”

  “Isaac?” said Harrien.

  Was he waiting for me to give him the okay, or something? Or was that look in his eyes one of a person searching for hope? There wasn’t much I could give him right now, but I would change that.

  “Judah is right. You need to rest. We all do.”

  The ogre settled on a cushion, lying on his back, and he closed his eyes. The elves retreated to a corner of the room without a word to the rest of us and then whispered amongst themselves.

  Only the horc stood with us, by the entrance.

  “Willi,” he said, sticking out his hand.

  Adi-Boto nodded at him. Harrien stuck out his thumb, waiting for the horc to press his thumb against it, but he didn’t seem aware of Lonehill customs.

  “I am Isaac,” I said. “This is Harrien, Adi-Boto, and Judah.”

  “Circle children,” said Willi. “Or, one of you is. But you…” He looked at me now. “We share ancestry.”

  “You are part human,” I said.

  “As are you.”

  “I’m just your run-of-the-mill full human, I’m afraid. As much as I’d like to be more interesting.”

  “You work as a miller?”

  “I mean I am just human.”

  “No. You have the mark of the circle children. Curious. I have never seen this before.”

  “I’ve never seen much of anything around here before,” I said. “What happened to you? How did you get here?”

  “I have long walked the wilds alone. Our circle and emerald children here will understand; it is the way of things.”

  “I know of a horc village in the north,” said Judah. “Did you belong to it?”

  “My mother did. My father was a human. When they became as one, there was no place for my mother in our village. They raised me in the wilds, and there we lived. When I was a teenager they passed, and since then I have lived the only life I know; as a wanderer. I had the misfortune to crossroads with our gnome friends, and now I begin a new chapter.”

  “You seem pretty upbeat about this,” I said.

  “Upbeat? You are a drummer?”

  “Positive, I mean. You aren’t scared.”

  “Every change in a person’s life is a new path. You walk it, or you do not. A path only gets shorter when you stop walking, and I intend to follow mine until I can walk no more.”

  “In other words, Willi does not intend to die here,” said Judah. “And neither will we. Harrien, you must rest. Adi-Boto, we will talk.”

  Adi-Boto nodded, though I didn’t know how much talking Judah would get done with a guy who never spoke. Maybe Adi-Boto was just shy. Nah, somehow that didn’t seem right. The two Tallsteeps left us and settled by a couple of padded cushions on the floor.

  This left Harrien and I. “Don’t be scared,” I told him.

  “You have a plan?”

  “Not yet. But worrying doesn’t make something less likely to happen. I need to think.”

  “Okai, Isaac. I will rest.”

  First, I trade to get a hold on our situation. This was a pen for pitmen, with locked doors and barred windows. No doubt there would be gnomes guarding outside, too. Escape wasn’t an option.

  So what about tonight? Rabert had told us we would have to fight to prove ourselves as pitmen. That meant there were other pitmen somewhere else. Or, it meant no pitmen had managed to prove themselves yet.

  But that didn’t make sense. We were resources for the gnomes, and having us get killed would just be a waste. So, there had to be a purpose for our battle. For proving ourselves.

  The presence of the stadium suggested that we were the entertainment around here. The gnomes probably gathered there to let off steam. It was Maslow’s hierarchy again; the gnomes felt safe. They had enough to eat and drink. The next step was fulfillment, and entertainment was part of that. We were playthings. Here so that gnomes could enjoy the time that they didn’t spend working.

  So, if we weren’t going to fight each other, then what? Monsters? Komonauts, wolves, some other crazy beast that lived out there in the wilds? It was impossible to figure out, without having other pitmen to ask.

  No, I couldn’t do anything about the fact I had to fight, nor about what I would fight. So, I needed to focus on myself.

  Right now, I only had the sharpened piece of metal in my pocket. It was four inches long and could serve as a dagger in a close-combat situation. Given my only training had come from Tosvig, I wasn’t much of a fighter, and I didn’t feel much better having the metal. I needed something else.

  I spent the next hour walking through my new home. It was a larger place than I expected; there was a hallway at the end of our room, which led to yet another, similar-looking room full of nothing but padded cushions. Another hallway branched right, leading to an exact copy of previous rooms.

  Finally, another hallway led to a room that smelled like hell. No, that wasn’t doing it justice. It smelled like all the demons in hell had bad bellies. In there, there were a dozen holes dug into the ground. No prizes for guessing the purpose of it.

  So, all we had were three sleeping quarters, and a room full of crude latrines. The fact there were so many cushions on the ground in other rooms meant the gnomes had built this place to house more pitmen. Maybe they had been doing this for a while, and sometimes managed to enslave whole clans.

  There was a dark, dark underbelly to this city. No more would I pretend they were courteous; these guys were as cruel as could be.

  After getting a feel for the layout, I started a more in-depth search. I checked underneath every single cushion on the ground to see if any previous pitmen had left something behind.

  All I found were bloodstains where wounded pitmen must have leaked blood into the cushion. I studied the bloodstains in case they could tell me something, but what can you really ascertain from patches of blood? It was dry, so whoever had come in here wounded, had done it more than a day ago. I couldn’t tell any more than that.

  So, next, I checked the floor of each room. I gathered everything I could find, no matter how useless it seemed. By the end, my haul was pathetic, but it was something. At least having something in my pockets made me feel a little better.

  Items Received:

  Pebbles x14

  Metal shavings

  Pieces of cloth x3

  I wasn’t really getting anywhere. Maybe I was wrong in how I had interpreted Rabert’s words. When he said we will not give you weapons, I thought he was implying that we would have to find our own. After a painstaking search, I knew this wasn’t the case.

  Okay, so what next?

  There was somewhere else I could check, but I didn’t relish the idea. There was one more room where there might be something hidden.

  Ugh.

  Deciding I’d rather do something unpleasant and maybe find a reward than just accept my fate, I headed to the latri
ne room.

  The stench was overpowering, but I walked through the room and examined every inch of it. I even kneeled by the latrines and peered into them, hoping an old pitman had miraculously left a sword or something in there.

  Nope.

  But, it was as I kneeled by one latrine, that I heard a noise. A kind of scrabbling sound.

  Was something in there?

  The more I listened, the surer I was. Something was down in the latrine hole, digging. Cursing the situation I had found myself in, I took a deep breath and I plunged my hand into the hole.

  I felt something soft and wet, and my stomach railed at me and I felt nausea rise, but I sucked it back. Then, reaching further, I felt something hard. I grabbed it and pulled it away.

  It was a rock. A rock covered in shit.

  Which karma god had I annoyed to end up like this? Whatever my old life was, I must have been a real bastard.

  I wiped the rock on the floor and then put it in my pocket. It was heavy, but only the size of my fist. Still, it might be good to bludgeon someone, or something, with.

  Item Received:

  Heavy rock

  The sounds from the latrine were louder now. And it wasn’t just one sound, but several. It was accompanied by a gurgling sound, and I saw that the liquid in the latrine drained away, leaving an empty hole.

  The rock must have been blocking a tiny passage at the bottom, perhaps a kind of crude sewer to drain the pitmen’s waste.

  But then, something emerged from the hole.

  Something small, grey, and with a tiny head, beady eyes, and long whiskers.

  A rat!

  The rat scurried out of the hole and joined me in the latrine room. Another followed it, and then another. More and more of them came, until soon a whole brood of the vermin had joined me. I guess the smell of the room must have attracted them, yet the rock had blocked their only way in.

  Maybe all the latrines were blocked. Maybe, left unattended, this place became a haven for rats, drawn by the, in their minds, sweet smell of pitmen crap. Either gnomes or the pitmen had blocked their crap holes.

  I knew two things then.

  One, I didn’t like the idea of being in a room with a dozen rats.