Haldrych gaped at the towering thing through the throng of the dying.

Its fiery blade drank lives as a glutton guzzled wine.

The heat had grown sweltering and the ash was choking.

What deviltry had come for them!? Even the werewolves - who had seemed so mighty and fearsome to him - could only die like curs as they threw themselves upon that fiery point.

Familiar screams filled his ears from somewhere very near.

It took him a moment to realize they came from his own throat.

Did he truly sound so feeble?

“This isn’t working!” Adelmar cried. The merchant’s son was pale, but the bestial rage has arisen within him to bite down on his fear. His quick mind had gone to work, and he grasped the arms of two of his transformed pack brothers to hold them back. “Get its blade! Use your bodies if you need to! I have a plan and Haldrych will do the rest!”

The young poet’s heart leapt into his throat. “W-we?” he stammered.

“We!” the merchant’s son grinned at him, his expression half-smile and half-snarl. His handsome features bloomed in the confidence of youth and thrill of battle. “We’re about to become legend, my brother! Come, let us see to this demon together!”

And Adelmar charged. “Lycundar!” he cried.

Haldrych followed, swept up in his oldest friend’s bravery, but his own steps were slow and unsteady. His bare hands shook in front him. He screamed.

Oh, how he screamed.

Vroooosh!

Another werewolf burst into boiling viscera, only to be finished by another silver knife. Now only the two lycanthropes Adelmar had grasped, Adelmar himself, and Haldrych remained of the hunting party.

The poet gasped, and his lungs filled with ash and blood-born steam. He fell into a choking fit which halted his steps, and the warrior of legend in the making could only watch as others leapt into the fray before him.

Scchhnk.

The first of the werewolves threw himself upon the demon’s blade and grasped its haft. Even as its core boiled and burst, it held on in a death-grip as its fellow lycanthrope leapt for the demon. With a curse, the devil released its weapon and drew another knife, casting it into the second werewolf’s eye.

Schnk!

It died on its feet.

But Adelmar was already in its place, having slipped past his burning ally. His sword drove toward the demon, but a dark hand caught his wrist in an iron grip. Adelmar continued to drive forward, catching the lean figure in a hug with one arm and entangling the monster’s movements.

“Now, Haldrych!” Adelmar cried. “I’ll hold it! Strike it down!”

Hellfire winked out, leaving only the light of fallen torches to light the tunnel.

“You!” the demon roared in incredulity.

Haldrych’s eyes adjusted now that the blinding blaze had abated.

And he saw clearly what they faced. He screamed.

Towering and lean as death, a dark-skinned man stood, unperturbed by Adelmar’s struggles. His eyes were as crimson as burning embers and his expression might have been carved from obsidian: a glare of barely stymied rage and a disgust as deep as the bowels of the earth. It pierced the young poet to the core and brought about a fearful memory:

The same man had stood in the snows of Paradise.

The same man’s glower had pierced into Haldrych’s core.

The same man had lay beneath the table the night he had planned his mother’s demise.

The same man-

“I had hoped that I would find you here!” the crimson-eyed devil boomed through the tunnel, its voice swallowing all in its wrath.

“Haldrych!” Adelmar cried. “This bastard’s strong! I can’t hold him! Haldrych! Kill him!”

The young patriarch could not move.

Memories reached for him in the black of the tunnel. Childhood laughter. Learning to mount a horse while soft brown eyes watched. Small hands clapping and a woman’s cheer when he finished his first ode.

And then a dagger that rose and fell. Again. And again. And again.

The stranger couldn’t have…he was only here for the thief-

“Filthy, crawling thing! You killed her,” the stranger pronounced, as though in answer to the poet’s very fears. “You killed your own mother.”

Haldrych’s heart might have stopped.

Adelmar froze.

“You and this filth that dirties my skin by his touch!” The demon’s lips curled back in a vicious snarl. “The stars have brought you into my path! Come! Seek my life!”

His ring flared white.

Ssssss!

“Aaaaaargh!” Adelmar cried out.

The devil struck a blow into his side, grinding the burning ring into his flesh and searing it. He caught the merchant’s son by his blonde locks as the latter recoiled. “Let us see this wonder! How a coward that would slay his own mother stands against Kyembe the Spirit Killer!”

“Haldrych!” his oldest friend cried, reaching toward him. “Haldrych! Help me! Help me!”

Time slowed to a glacier’s creep.

An opportunity had come to the Master of House Ameldan. A chance for the ‘warrior-poet’ to show his true quality. At last, he had received what he had always desired.

He stood, alone against a fell opponent that seemed to have crawled from the afterworld. His compatriots lay slain and death held his oldest, greatest friend in its burning clutches. A thousand epic poems had been written about such stands against the dark as Haldrych knew well. He had composed many such odes himself and read those of his betters.

In them, courage always decided fate.

So long as the hero’s courage and will held out, no villainy, sorcery or demon craft could stop him. The moment his courage failed; he would be undone. To triumph, all that would be needed would be to take that first brave step forward. Of course, in true struggles of life and death, courage alone rarely proved enough to carry the day. But here, the question of whether Haldrych - heir to the Ameldan warrior legacy - could have triumphed by courage was moot.

For he did take that step.

Backward.

And then another. And another.

“H-Haldrych?” Adelmar stammered.

“Stay away, spectre!” the warrior-poet screamed. As a terrified child, he whirled and fled down the tunnel - leaving his dreams, his fantasies and his gossamer-thin bond with his oldest friend. And so Haldrych Ameldan, who had from boyhood strove to write poetry of his own valour, fled his very first battle and abandoned his friend to death.

He had not even drawn his perfectly polished sword.

Adelmar could only gasp as Haldrych fled into the dark.

As the man within reeled in horror and betrayal, the beast rose to fill its place.

“Why are you running?” the demon scoffed at Haldrych, raising his burning ring.

Adelmar shifted in his grip, swiping at him with a hand turned into lycanthropic claws. Swelling with bestial strength, he twisted away and snarled as the transformation took him.

Kyembe the Spirit Killer calmly watched, not bothering to retrieve his sword.

Adelmar howled, his cry a reflection of both rage and loss, and threw himself at the Sengezian. Yet even with his bestial speed, Kyembe proved more than his match. For all the lycanthrope’s boasting and bloodlust, he was still a merchant’s son that had slain a mere three others in his life:

A drunk whose presence he had taken offence to one night.

A vagabond he had lured with a promise of hospitality.

And, of course, his oldest friend’s mother.

In these deeds, he had viewed himself as growing closer to the primal creature he strived to become. He had embraced Lycundar’s curse, and the beast had filled him with its feral savagery. Yet it did not change what he truly was: a common murderer who had given himself to a beast. He too had been a soft man who had convinced himself that he was hardened.

And now that mistake was killing him.

Kyembe of Sengezi danced and weaved beyond the merchant’s son’s lunges, all the while muttering in some strange language that pierced the ear. As Adelmar barrelled forward, his fangs bared to snap the Sengezian’s head off, Kyembe slid into his guard and raised his burning ring. With a final, dreadful syllable, the point of hellfire belched out a cloud of foul smoke that swept through the werewolf’s snout.

The lycanthrope froze and sneezed once. Then twice.

A dread fell upon him.

Strange sorcery rode the smoke into his body and coiled about his spirit within.

Then it squeezed.

“Raaaaaaargh!” His scream was that of both man and animal.

He fell to the stone, his beast’s body writhing and twisting.

‘What? What has happened?’ Adelmar screamed in his mind.

Sccchnk.

The Sengezian ended the other werewolf still burning on his blade, then drew up his weapon and sauntered to the writhing young lycanthrope. “I have left you a gift: the smoke of hellfire - a substance that bears curses like few others.”

Adelmar’s eyes grew wide.

“Oh yes, I have cursed you,” Kyembe crouched beside him.

The merchant’s son’s vision began to falter. His tongue and eyes began to burn.

“I have done deeds some would say are good and some would say are vile. But there are few fouler acts than what you did - aiding a man in slaying his own mother.” He shook his head. “From what I have learned, the poor woman’s crime was in only loving so foul a child. She did not deserve her fate, but I do think you deserve this.”

Adelmar’s gasps grew muffled as his tongue began to swell. He screamed as it split, filing his maw with a foul decay that rotted his teeth with a touch. Maggots wormed forth from softening fangs to feast on the ruins of his mouth.

Such a thing should have killed him in moments, but Lycundar’s power healed as quickly as the curse decayed. Kyembe made a face as the stench struck his nose. “Agh, I had intended for you to suffer, but die within a short time…but it seems your god’s curse brings about more resilience than I had accounted for.”

He rose to his feet, towering over the suffering lycanthrope. “I think you will not die quickly…and that is how it should be. Now, I leave you to your fate. I must find my friend…and yours.”

Agony crawled through Adelmar’s body, eating him from within. It felt as though his entrails had come alive and sprung a dozen fanged maws to consume his other viscera. As organs regrew, they were eagerly consumed again and again.

In a sense, he too had received what he had wished for. For primal strength, he had worshipped He Who Consumes Himself. And now his body was doing just the same.

He had come to mirror his god in a way that few others ever could.

As his eyes began to swell and fill with pus, his vision dimmed. The last sight he saw in life was the wizard stalking away through the tunnel.

Then his eyeballs burst.

And his world became unending darkness and torment.

“You all ready?” Wurhi asked.

Grim nods answered.

The armoury lay bare.

Slaves filled the room to bursting, bearing bronze arms and ill-kept armour. Merrick had taken another spear and strapped on a crooked breastplate. Saxa, Gannicus, and Agron bore shields, blades and javelins.

The sabre-toothed tiger needed no weapons.

He was a weapon.

Wurhi had strapped on a shirt of bronze chainmail too large for her, but better that than a sword sticking out of her belly or back.

“You know…” Gannicus said. “We’re armed and ready. We could slip out of the mountain now.”

“No, boy,” Merrick glanced to the door of the arena. From it could be heard dying men and beasts, but also the howls of werewolves. “Those wolf-men’ll put down their animals soon enough: then they’re going to start looking for us. Even if we got out of the mountain, they’d ring us in the valley and maul us to pieces. I’m a thief, trust me, I know when to run away.”

He took a deep breath to steady himself. “But if we don’t break them now, then we’re not going to make it out of here.”

Wurhi nodded. “He’s right. But if we go for ‘em before the beasts are down, then we’ve got a chance. Anyone want out?”

The captives looked to each other. Some were grim and some transfixed by terror, but all knew that they had come to a single choice:

Fight now or die later.

And they had done enough waiting for death.

None stepped away.

Wurhi sighed, looking down toward her sword. She was about to charge a bunch of bloodthirsty wolf-men alongside a horde of slaves, captives and pit-fighters. And she was not even considering running the hell away.

She sighed. Kyembe and Cristabel had truly rubbed off on her.

If only they could see her now.

“Alright.” She gripped her sword. “Let’s go get the bastards.”

Gannicus, Agron and two burly slaves marched over to the arena’s gate. Grunting, the four men struggled together and slowly began to raise the barrier, straining under its weight. Yet, they could lift it no further than their waists.

Snorting, the tiger pushed through their ranks and crawled beneath the gate, bracing it upon his shoulders. With a growl, he hoisted himself to his feet and heaved the heavy door skyward. The passage to the arena yawned open, revealing chaos within.

For a moment, the captives hesitated. A terrible battle loomed before them, the sort that would spawn both legends and horrors.

But one, at last, took a step.

Forward.

And then another. And another.

Screaming in rage and terror, Wurhi the Rat charged through the breach with silver blade in hand. The change came over her as she did, and so smooth it was that she hardly noticed the pain of it. A breath later, the other captives looked to each other, roared in unison, and charged forward in her wake.

When the last had gone through, the great cat snarled and surged forward.

Boom.

The gate dropped behind them, cutting off retreat. As the escapees boiled into the arena to the shock of Lycundar’s followers, they leapt for their tormenters with a savagery born from suffering.

Under the stone eyes of the wolf-god’s effigy, so began the greatest battle the arena would ever see.