Chapter 2- Bad odds

Chapter 2: 2- Bad odds

The heavy iron portcullises slammed into the ceiling of the arena, the metallic shrieks instantly drowned out by the roar of starving lungs.

From the pitch-black tunnels, the beasts poured into the freezing dirt.

They were hideous, like wolves, their skin stretched tight over pale, iron-wood bone, with patches of shiny grey fur, they looked starving.

They didn’t stalk.

They hit the crowd of shivering, unarmed slum kids like a tidal wave of snapping teeth and jagged claws.

The screaming started immediately. It was the wet, chaotic sound of a slaughterhouse that had lost control of its line.

Sol didn’t run since running turned you into prey and it exposed your weaknesses.

He planted his boots in the dirt, his fingers coiling around the handle of his rusted cleaver.

His chest was radiating an agonizing, suffocating heat, like he had swallowed a lit coal during the lunar test, but the sheer pain of it kept his limbs from locking up in the freezing air.

A Blighted hound the size of a calf locked eyes on him. It launched itself forward, jaws snapping toward his throat in a blind, feral leap.

A nobleman with a sword would have tried to pierce the heart, and a hero would have aimed for the skull, but Sol was trained as a butcher, he looked only for efficiency.

He knew that bone dulled blades, and a skull that thick would trap a rusted cleaver instantly.

He didn’t see a monster, but instead he saw a carcass in motion.

He knew their weight distribution, ligaments, and the exposed radial artery of the foreleg.

Sol dropped his center of gravity, pivoting hard in the mud to dodge the snapping jaws.

As the beast’s massive body sailed past his shoulder, Sol swung the cleaver in a vicious, upward chop, aiming perfectly for the back of the creature’s knee.

The chipped blade bit deep into the hock joint, severing the Achilles tendon with a thick, satisfying crunch.

The Blighted beast shrieked, its landing completely collapsing as its right hind leg gave out.

It hit the dirt in a chaotic tumble of limbs. Before the beast could thrash, Sol stepped inside its guard.

He drove his boot onto the creature’s ribs to pin it down, hooked the cleaver under its jaw, and dragged the rusted edge hard across its throat.

Hot, foul-smelling blood sprayed across Sol’s boots. He didn’t waste energy watching it die. He ripped the blade free and instantly backed away, his lungs burning.

The heat in his sternum spiked, sending a wave of dizzying nausea through his skull.

He staggered, blinking sweat out of his eyes, his grip on the cleaver slipping.

A shadow fell over him.

A second Blighted had circled around his blind spot, its jaws opening wide to snap his spine.

Sol tried to raise his arm, but his muscles were completely locked by the agonizing fever in his chest, it was obvious the difference in their physiques was a gap one couldn’t surpass.

A heavy, rusted iron pipe swung out of Sol’s peripheral view, connecting directly with the side of the charging beast’s skull.

The sheer blunt-force shattered the creature’s orbital bone with a sickening crack, dropping it instantly into the mud.

Sol exhaled a ragged breath and looked to his left.

Standing over the twitching carcass was a girl about his age, dressed in filthy rags.

She gripped the bloodied iron pipe with both hands. Her skin was deathly pale, and her lips were completely blue.

She was shivering so violently that her teeth clicked together in a rapid, terrifying rhythm.

Sol could feel the lunar energy radiating off her skin, actively freezing her from the inside out.He didn’t know why she had been thrown into the Meat Pen with the failures, and right now, he didn’t care, as she could surely swing a pipe.

She didn’t speak. She just locked her eyes on Sol, stepped over the dead beast, and turned her back to him, raising the pipe toward the next wave of charging monsters.

Sol tightened his grip on his cleaver and stepped back-to-back with her. His boiling body pressed against her freezing spine.

Close to eachother, her freezing aura kept his blood from boiling over, and his radiant heat kept her from freezing to death.

They didn’t have time to think about it.

A third Blighted lunged from the peripheral gloom, its jaw unhinged in a wet snarl, aiming straight for the girl’s blind spot.

They didn’t need to coordinate. Survival was a universal language.

The girl pivoted, swinging her rusted pipe in a brutal, two-handed arc. The iron caught the beast right on the snout. The heavy crack of cartilage sent the creature staggering sideways, its momentum broken.

Sol instantly stepped off her back, using the opening she created.

He lunged forward and drove his chipped cleaver deep into the side of the beast’s neck, hooking the muscle and ripping outward in a jagged, bloody arc.

The creature collapsed into the mud, choking on its own black blood.

Sol stepped back, his chest heaving. He spat a glob of metallic-tasting saliva onto the dirt, keeping his eyes locked on the dark tunnels where more shadows were moving.

"Sol," he called, covering some of the screams inside the arena, introducing himself. "What’s your name?"

The girl didn’t look at him. She just wiped a splatter of black blood from her cheek and tightened her blue-tinted fingers around the iron pipe.

"We’re not friends," she said, her voice shivering but completely flat. "Don’t ask my name."

Sol gritted his teeth, gripping his cleaver. Fair enough. In the Meat Pen, attachments were just another way to get yourself killed.

Before he could ask her to cover his right flank again, the chaotic roar of the arena suddenly shifted.

The remaining Blighted beasts stopped advancing.

All around the blood-soaked dirt, the mutated wolves flattened their ears.

They whined, a pathetic, unnatural sound, and began to slowly back away from the surviving humans.

Then, as if pulled by an invisible leash, the beasts turned and sprinted back into the pitch-black tunnels.

The heavy iron portcullises violently slammed shut, grinding into the dirt and sealing the monsters away.

A sudden, suffocating silence fell over the Colosseum. The only sounds left were the ragged breathing of the survivors and the wet, bubbling gasps of the dying.

Sol and the girl separated, the agonizing extremes of their bodies immediately returning without their shared contact.

Sol gripped his chest, his vision swimming red as the fever spiked again.

He forced himself to look around.

Out of the hundreds of kids who had fallen into the pit, almost everyone was dead.

Exactly ten people were left standing in the blood-soaked mud.

Sol, the girl with the pipe, seven battered slum kids clutching their weapons, and an arrogant noble boy.

The noble was unharmed, his pristine coat splattered with the blood of the kids he had shoved into the jaws of the beasts to save himself.

"We did it!" the noble boy suddenly screamed, dropping to his knees and weeping hysterically.

"We proved our worth! The trial is over! I can live.."

The slum kids slumped in relief, dropping their weapons, tears cutting through the grime on their faces.

But Sol didn’t drop his cleaver. The colossal Silver Eye above them hadn’t blinked.

A chilling, synchronized chime echoed through the Colosseum.

High above the dirt, the frosted glass of the system prompt reappeared, its elegant silver text bleeding into existence.

TRIAL 3: The Offering.

OBJECTIVE: The Moon demands a refined battle. Cull the weak.

CONDITION: 5 Must Die. 5 May Live.

The noble boy’s laughter choked in his throat.

Before anyone could even scream, the ground beneath them violently ruptured.

Massive, impenetrable walls of black glass shot upward from the dirt with the speed of a guillotine.

The glass walls crisscrossed the arena, perfectly and forcefully dividing the ten survivors into five isolated cages.

Sol backed up as a wall of glass erupted inches from his face, sealing him in.

He looked through the transparent barrier. In the cage next to him, the freezing girl was locked in with a massive, desperate slum thug.

Sol slowly turned around to face his own opponent.

Standing across from him, his pale hands trembling as he reached into his fur-lined coat to draw a pristine silver dagger, was the noble boy.

"Shit, out of all the survivors" Sol thought.