“That’s right, pull that rope next to Lesha!” Ponda shouted at Victor. He wasn’t sure who Lesha was, but he figured it was probably the Ardeni woman standing nearby. He grabbed the rope and yanked, and Ponda hollered, “Good!” He bent and pulled on a brass latch, and a massive section of the floor started sliding toward Victor, slipping underneath the wooden planks where he was standing. He kept pulling the rope, and he heard Vullu and another guy grunting as they pulled theirs, and the floor kept sliding, revealing the deep pit that had lain hidden the whole time Victor had been training at the Wagon Wheel. Pit Night was happening at the Wagon Wheel that night.

The venue wasn’t nearly as large as the Rusty Nail, but there wouldn’t be as many fighters here; according to Ponda, there’d just be another fighting troupe coming here to compete with Yund’s stable. These were terms Victor was starting to pick up. Stable - like they were horses or something. Fighting troupe - a nice name for slaves who had to fight for your amusement. He felt some red heat start to spread through his body, and he clamped down on his Core, trying to think of something happy. His fuse seemed shorter now that he had actual rage Energy boiling at the center of his being.

It was funny how a person’s living conditions could change their outlook. Over the last few days, as they practiced fighting, and Victor practiced using his Energy and trying to figure out how to cultivate his Core, he’d begun to look forward to the next fight. He’d put another point into strength, a point into dexterity to bring it up with agility, and the rest into vitality. He felt great, despite his shitty living conditions and boring diet. His muscles were ripped, his endurance was easily as good as when he’d prepped for State, and he felt vital - more alive than he could remember, and he was an eighteen-year-old athlete, so that seemed to be saying a lot. “Hey, Ponda, what’s next?” He called after the pit was fully open.

“Now you five over there need to get your asses out back; bring in the stands and set 'em up. Vullu, you know how it’s done. Show the others.” Victor followed along, helping Vullu or Yrella with one chore after another. They’d been at it all day, converting the practice gym into an exhibition hall. When they were finally done, and Yund announced that they’d be in their cages until match time, Victor was tired but impressed by the transformation. The pit was bigger than the ones at the Rusty Nail, though there was only one. It was a good forty feet by forty and had tall wooden stands on three sides. The side that faced the open barn doors of the Wagon Wheel was open so that the riff-raff without the funds to buy a seat could crowd around to watch the fights.

The afternoon passed quickly as Victor and his cage-mates rolled dice or dozed away their exhaustion. Sometime during the afternoon, lying on his back in the scratchy hay and sweating in the hot, stuffy air, Victor tried to think about his life back home. He was disturbed by how distant it seemed; by his reckoning, he’d been gone only about a week, maybe a little more, but it felt like a lot longer. He wondered how his Abuela was. He knew one or both of his aunties would be taking care of her, but she must be worried sick about him. He’d never been away for this long. Even when he’d ‘run away’ in high school, he’d only stayed the weekend at a friend’s house. He tried to picture Marcy and found he kept picturing a different girl he’d had a crush on during his sophomore year. What a weird thing to happen! He strained his mind for several minutes, picturing one friend after another, all the girls he could remember from his classes, and finally, it clicked in - there was Marcy. He’d never had that happen before, and he wondered what was happening. He figured it must be a combination of his mind being amped up about the fight and all the stress he’d been under since he’d gotten kidnapped.

“Hey, Victor, just win. They won’t put you against anyone too high level - there’s no sport in it. Well, unless they put you in a group against a stronger enemy like last time, I guess.” Yrella smiled at him from her corner of the cage, and he blew out his breath, trying to banish the memories he’d purposefully been calling out of the depths of his mind.

“Yeah, I just want to get it started. I hate waiting around for my match.”

“You’ll have more fun during this Pit Night - since there’s only one pit, you’ll get to watch all the fighting,” Vullu supplied, speaking into the air as he lay on his back with his eyes closed. Victor grunted and rolled over, cranking out some pushups. He had so much nervous energy that he felt like he was going to crawl out of his skin. Vullu sat up, grunting, and laughed at Victor. "Imagine getting as fit as he is without any Energy, Yrella. You have to give him credit; I don't know how I’d cope if I didn’t have my levels and Core.”

“True. Your people must have strong wills to thrive in a dead world.”

“Nah. First of all, not everyone thrives, and secondly, we have a shit load more tech than this world. We have all kinds of gadgets to help us cope with our weak-ass bodies.”

“I think you’re being modest,” Yrella snorted, “which is very unusual for you, I might add.” Victor sat up and laughed with her.

“You’re busting on me? Does that mean we’re becoming real friends, Yrella? You’re not just helping me for a bonus from the Boss?”

“Don’t get too sure of yourself, kid.” She laughed, though, and Victor could see she was happy with the banter. The door slammed open, and Yund came striding down the central aisle, banging his long inscribed metal rod against the cages as he walked.

“Get ready to fight! I only need twenty-four fighters tonight, so line up by your cage door when you hear your name!”

“Awe, boss! Can’t we watch the fights if we ain’t fighting?” A tall goat-person, er Cadwalli, bawled out from a cage near the back wall.

“No! I barely have room out there for the paying customers and the fighters. Now shut up!” Yund yelled, then he lifted a clipboard and started calling names. Victor and Yrella got called, but Vullu didn’t.

“Good luck, you two.”

“He probably didn’t have a suitable opponent for you, Vullu,” Yrella said, reaching out and clasping hands with him. Vullu nodded, then held a fist out toward Victor. Victor nodded and bumped his fist, standing behind Yrella by the gate. Ponda and Urt went down the row of cages, letting out the fighters, then led them all out the door into the crowded, smoke-hazed, steaming hot exhibition hall. He led them to a roped-off area where the corners of two bleachers met. Just enough room between the two corners for a fighter to slip through and drop into the pit.

Yund was standing on one of the bleachers about halfway up, where he could look over his fighters and see into the pit easily. He looked down at the twenty-four fighters and shouted, “Yrella, you’re up first. Into the pit!” Victor held his fist out for her, and she bumped it, smiling in that way of hers that made her yellow-green eyes twinkle, then she hopped down into the pit. Victor was taller than most of the other combatants, so when he pushed as far forward as possible, he could see most of the pit. He saw Yrella standing down in the sand, stretching her arms behind her back. A moment later, from the opposite corner, a lanky blue-skinned Ardeni man dropped into the pit.

“First match!” A black-furred goat-like Cadwalli man shouted from a tall wooden stand overseeing the pit. He reached behind him and spun a crude-looking wagon wheel with pictures of various weapons drawn in charcoal around its circumference. The wheel stopped spinning, and the little arrow pointed at a picture of crossed axes. “Axes!” He shouted, and a person near each corner threw an axe down to their fighter. On Victor’s side, the weapon was supplied by Ponda. Yrella knelt and picked up the single-bladed hand axe. Victor groaned quietly - she didn’t like fighting with axes. The Ardeni man picked up his axe and flipped it nonchalantly between his hands. “Begin!” shouted the judge.

Yrella was fast, and this was the first time Victor had seen her go all out. She moved like a blur, gliding over the sandy bottom of the pit, dropping into a low slide, as she swung her axe, aiming to relieve her opponent of his leg below the knee. He saw it coming, though, and dodged to the side, flinging his axe. It tumbled through the air to land with a wet thud in the back of Yrella’s skull. She fell to the side, twitching in the manner bodies do when they haven’t yet realized they're dead.

“Victory! One match for the Broken Rope!” the judge screamed. Yund cursed and spat, uttering a bunch of words Victor didn’t have a translation for, though it wouldn’t have mattered because Victor couldn’t hear anything. His vision had gone red, and his heart had started beating like a runaway drum solo, pounding in his ears like the rushing of a waterfall. Yrella was dead, just like that. He couldn’t believe it, he couldn’t accept it, but he kept seeing her body topple and twitch. He felt himself suffocating and had to lean over, holding onto his knees and trying to breathe. Air wouldn’t come, though, and the redness in his vision continued to deepen. His hands began to shake, gripping his knees tightly, squeezing the denim of his jeans into his flesh.

“I said you’re up, kid!” Yund hollered. “Put him in, Ponda!” Victor thrashed and jerked away from the hands that grabbed his shoulders, but they were huge and strong, and though he struggled, he was tossed into the pit to fall sprawling into the sand. He struggled to his hands and knees, looking out over the sandy pit, wondering at how red everything was. There she was, her corpse just ten feet away. They hadn’t even taken her out before they started the next fight? He gripped the sand, grinding it into his fists. He was still on his hands and knees, still shaking and grinding sand into his fists, when he felt the ground shudder slightly. He looked away from Yrella’s body to see that his opponent had dropped in.

He stared at the big otter-man. He looked a lot like Ponda, but his fur was darker, with a slight red sheen. He was younger than Ponda, Victor figured, but he didn’t care. All he cared about was that Yrella had just been slaughtered like one of his auntie’s chickens. The idea of going back to that cage to just Vullu, of spending time here in this troupe of prisoners without Yrella, was unbearable. A choked scream of rage started to come out of his throat. “We have a rowdy one there, folks!” the goat-man judge yelled. A moment later, he shouted, “Maces!” Victor wasn’t listening, though; he was pushing Energy out of his Core, into his pathways, letting it run rampant. He didn’t try to control the flow; he didn’t aim to turn it back to his Core. He just let it surge through his pathways, toward his hands, and into his mind. His vision had turned a deep red, and in his inner eye, replaying over and over, he saw Yrella dying, falling over to twitch like a broken thing.

“Begin!” the judge hollered, and Victor didn’t even look at the mace that had been tossed near him. He exploded up from all fours, a wake of sand following behind, and smashed into his huge opponent. He moved like a wolverine, with no regard for himself or defense, simply lashing out like a wild, furious animal. His Energy-infused fists smashed into the otter-man, cracking bones and pulverizing flesh, pounding it into jelly. The otter-man’s one feeble attempt to hit him with a mace was woefully too slow. Victor’s right fist destroyed the otter-man’s left knee. Victor slid around, dragging himself in close, using his opponent’s thick leather belt as a handle, and landed a devastating left hook into his opponent's blubbery kidney. After that, everything was a red-hazed blur, with Victor simply pushing as much Energy out of his Core and into his fists as possible, savoring all the dark images that filled his mind as rage consumed him.

When he came back to himself, Victor was lying in a curled-up ball in the roped-off area behind the other fighters. He had a message from the System in his vision:

***Congratulations! You’ve achieved level 5 base human. You have 10 attribute points to allocate. You’ve learned the skill: Berserk - Basic.***

***Berserk - Basic: Prerequisite: Affinity - Rage. You double your strength and speed for a short while, losing yourself in the glory of combat. Your body becomes more resilient, and you benefit from rapid regeneration during the duration, though you’ll lose all sense of self-preservation. You may suffer from the inability to discern friend from foe while under the effects of Berserk. Energy Cost: Minimum 75 - scalable. Cooldown: Long.***

Victor dismissed the notifications, then sat up, looking at the backs of the other fighters, cheering and hollering. Yrella was gone. Victor pressed his fists into his eyes, completely drained of emotion and exhausted; he didn’t feel any tears, but he didn’t want to look at the world.

“Thunderak shit, kid, that was a massacre!” Ponda said, squatting down beside him. “You alright? I had to drag you off that guy’s corpse.”

“No, I’m not fucking alright, dude. I’m not fucking alright at all.”