Another screaming chorus of cries erupted into the stinking, hot air from the patchwork metal structure looming up ahead of them. He refused to call the monstrosity an arena or colosseum or any other proper name for a gladiatorial amphitheatre, for it wasn’t. 

It is a pit of death. 

There was no honour in those sands. No glory. No rules, no structure, no dignity. 

The hot, desert planet of Old Trov12 was nothing more than a meat market dealing in the lowest of the low of slaves and goods. A backwater planet so far off the beaten path that one had to have run far afoul to find themselves collared up here.

This was exactly where his new Master, Eli, had bought him only a few moon-turns ago, after the children of his late Master Baranth had dumped both him and the gladiators he had trained with here, to be rid of them all as quickly as possible. The short time he had been here had been his only experience of the place, but he’d heard stories of this planet for years from dozens of men who’d come and gone through Baranth’s training house.

Vor couldn’t stop the tingle of fear that raced up his spine every time he heard the crack of a whip or the zing of a collar. The sounds made the skin around his own collar itch and crawl. 

He pulled the fabric of his loose scarf over his mouth to stop the stench of shit, heat, and rot from getting into his mouth, but it hardly helped. 

This place stank worse than anything he’d ever experienced, and there was something else in the air that made it worse, something from deep within the planet. 

The stall merchants they passed seemed not to be bothered by the smell, and neither did Master Eli, who chattered nonstop to Bifur. He watched his new trainer and Elder pull up his own scarf to cover his snout, obviously equally affected by the arid stench. The old Krassi turned to make sure Vor was still following them, and he pushed himself through the thick mass of bodies to catch up. 

Bifur had assured him he wasn’t there to be sold off, but rather the Master was searching for the fourth and final man to add to their roster of gladiators aboard The Helgafell.

Why they insisted on bringing him along, he didn’t understand. Master Eli had done so several times already, but until today, he’d always been left in the cargo hold of the shuttle.

Thrago and Gladden both remained on the main cruiser. 

Master Eli only brought him along… 

“Don’t lollygag, Vor,” Master Eli yelled back at him in his Human English, and gestured for him to catch up. “God knows you’ll get swept away in this rabble of riffraff. Stay close.” The translator his new master had implanted behind his ear translated the words into Common in his head, but he had slowly started picking up some Human words here and there.

He had a curious way of speaking, this human, very unlike anything he’d heard before.

Many things were unlike anything he’d experienced before.

Vor shoved a hooded man aside and pushed through the crowd as they came to the doors of the sandy pits. When he’d been here, he hadn’t had the chance to fight in the sands, which, despite his low opinion of the place, had disappointed him on some level. 

He’d trained under Master Baranth’s banner his entire life, for as long as he could remember, and never once had he been allowed to fight in the arena. Every year it had been promised, and every year he had been left behind. Instead, he trained and sparred with the men who would go on to live and die for House Baranth. 

Some part of him had itched to enter the pit and show anyone watching what he could do, what he was capable of, what he had trained for his entire life, but Master Eli had procured him directly from the cages without even seeing him fight.

Vor had to duck to get through the short entryway, but both Eli and Bifur entered with ease, and the sound lessened inside the structure—long hallways of people curved around in both directions with doorways that led to the stands. 

He’d never been in stands like that before. 

Only a handful of times had Master Baranth brought him to his personal gallery to view the events, but this wasn’t that. 

The people who pushed around them like water around a rock were vapid, putrid, and loud, but there was something about the energy of the place that he liked very much. 

It was… exciting. 

“Come, boy,” Bifur grabbed his arm and pulled him left. “You dawdle like a little cub looking at toys,” he grunted and pushed him along. Master Eli was maneuvering through the crowd ahead of them and quickly ducked right through a doorway and disappeared.

“If anyone tries to lay hands on the Master,” Bifur said, “You throw them down into the pit, hear me? Don’t hesitate.”

Vor nodded once, and it was good enough for the Elder, who pushed him again. “Hurry up. Only a poor bodyguard lets their master out of their sight.”

“Bodyguard?” He asked, surprised. 

“I decided you need to be more useful. Now go,” Bifur waved him forward, and Vor did as he was bidden, confused. 

These people are strange.

He had to bend down almost double to get through the doorway that the Master had slipped through with ease.

Humans were small creatures, and he… Well, he was taller than most he had come across.

Another cry rose up, and the spectators jumped to their feet, screaming and throwing food, drink, and coin all around. Vor scanned the many shapes and sizes of various heads, looking for the pale yellow curls of his human master. 

He was far shorter than most, but he spotted him down at the railings overlooking the sandy pit. 

Vor had never seen the Old Trov12 pits before. 

“Push these useless shits out of the way!” Bifur yelled from behind him, and Vor finally realised what he was meant to be doing: paving a pathway for Bifur to get back to Eli’s side.

The old man was perfectly capable of doing so himself; he just didn’t want to, and Vor was significantly bigger than most here in the stands, so he used his bulk to do exactly as Bifur wished. 

As long as the Master and Elders were happy with him, the threat of his being sold off again remained low. 

Master Eli, as odd as he was, had been feeding them three full rations a day, and for the first time in his life, his ribs didn’t stick out, and his belly didn’t cramp with chronic hunger. 

He needed to stay on The Helgafell.

Three Greskhs had suddenly converged behind the master, and whether they were just trying to see down into the pit, or had more devious intentions, he didn’t know, and didn’t care. Vor grabbed two of them by their brown, scruffy braids and tossed them aside as if they weighed no more than children. 

The third looked back, then up, and audibly gasped. His dirt-textured, lumpy skin changed from brown to grey to tan in quick flashes, his wide, black-orbed eyes blinked rapidly with two sets of eyelids, and he turned and ran into the crowd, disappearing as quickly as he’d appeared. 

Bifur patted him hard on the back and then pushed him aside so he could stand beside Eli, and Vor took up the space behind them both so nobody could crowd behind them as the three Greskhs had done, and he let his gaze fall to the fight taking place down below. 

“Is that a human?” Bifur asked, disbelieving. 

“It would appear so,” Eli answered. “An Earthling fresh from home, based on his clothes.” 

Indeed, a man who looked like Eli, only dirtier, darted and dodged around a massive Zviok. The bodies of three dead Zviok had been dragged to the side of the ring. 

“I mean no disrespect,” Bifur said. “But an Earthling has no chance against a Zviok—”

The man darted forward and drove his crude sword through the heart of the lumbering giant, who then fell to his death in the sands to the pounding cheers of the crowd. 

It was invigorating, and a fresh excitement coursed through him, overpowering the fear that had been coursing through him since they set foot off the shuttle.

Eli’s eyes swivelled around to meet Bifur’s gaze with a sly smile under his face-hair. “You were saying?” He said. 

Bifur snorted and quickly covered his snout with his scarf. “He got lucky,” he said. “You can’t add a human to your roster. They’ll stand no chance against men like this one.” He jerked his thumb back at Vor to make his point, and Eli looked up at him, then down to the arena where the human now moved in a slow circle, his head tilting this way and that, his movements strange, while five Skael guards slowly fanned out around him. 

They could just as easily shock the collar around his neck to incapacitate him, but it looked like they were enjoying themselves and putting on more of a show for the crowd than anything else. 

One of them dragged a large net behind him, and the others shouted and laughed as they encircled Human. 

Except, to have felled a Zviok, perhaps he wasn’t a Human; it seemed more likely that he was a Humanii, a Human mixed with something else, but what? He looked… entirely Human, just like the Master.

Humans were not overly rare out in The Reach, but Eli was the first one he had ever come across that didn’t have a collar around his neck.

The five Skael moved in close to the little fighter, and it looked like they had him, because even from here Vor could see him sway on his feet, his head lolling back and forth oddly. 

He wasn’t even looking at his opponents. His eyes were on the ground; his head bent forward. 

Bifur was right; he’d gotten lucky—

Quick as a flash, before Vor even realised what he was seeing, the man darted backwards and jumped, twisted in midair, and brought his blade down across the jugular of the man who had been stalking up to his back left.

The Skael dropped like a rock, the blood spray visible from high up in the stands. The remaining four scattered back, but the man was already moving, head down, darting right, then left, drove his blade through the knee of one, and sliced the ankle tendons of another. 

More Skael guards started gathering on the edges of the arena, panicking and pointing. 

“Oh, shit!” Bifur and Eli said together when, in the few seconds Vor had turned his attention to the guards gathering, the man dropped yet another, this time slicing the tendons on the back of the ankles of another man. 

He was working through them. Incapacitating them, if not killing them. 

A larger creature, larger even than he, walked out onto the sandy arena, and even from here Vor could see the small device in his hand: the controller for the collar. 

An icy shard of fear shivered its way across his body as he watched the Tloesk Quartermaster lift it up and hit the button. 

The Human’s blade was inches from the fourth of the five guards when his body jerked hard in midair and fell to the ground in a hard heap. 

The crowd booed in disapproval and began mocking the Quartermaster, who paid them no mind. The last two Skael rolled the Human into their net and dragged him out of the arena, kicking him again and again along the way, barking in anger. 

Eli looked at Bifur, who was already shaking his head. 

“I cannot train a Human—” 

“You can,” Eli interrupted. “And you will. I want that one.” 

“We agreed on a Krassi fighter—”

“And now I’ve changed my mind,” he smacked the railing and pointed down at his target. “I want him.” 

Bifur sighed heavily, but nodded. 

The Master’s word was law. 

That is how it was done.