I had strange dreams that night. Of a black bird flying over the desert. In the distance, I could see the edge of the Waystland, dappled with jewel-tone trees. The fresh smells were carried on the wind: citrus, water, soil. I was so close. The wind was on my wings, ruffling my feathers as I soared above the dusty, golden land.

Something tugged at my foot, and I looked down to see Daya holding onto it. In her left hand, she held a birdcage. I tried flapping away from her, but her grip was tight. She tucked me away into the birdcage, cooing at me and poking her finger in. I could peck at them. I could make her bleed. But, no. I let her pet me, let her ease my racing heart. At least in this cage, I was safe.

When I looked back to Daya’s face, it was my own. The same big brown eyes lined with bare eyelashes. No longer were they covered in black ink and purple shadows. Daya’s dark, plump lips were replaced by my own, their dark pink skin chapped from the dryness of the Wayst. Her soil-colored skin was shades lighter, like a dusty desert stone that had been dampened. Looking into my own face, I watched as I pulled my hand away from the cage, and left there as I walked away.

I stoked the fire as I thought about the dream. It had been a while since I had dreamt anything. Perhaps Daya was playing mind games with me, using her magic to reach into my mind and remind me that she’s the reason I’ve lived as long as I had. But, why would I lock myself in a cage? It didn’t make any sense.

“Aumee!” Ambrose’s voice cut through the fog of my mind, and I looked up to see he was holding a trap of some sort. “I thought this would be handy. As a shipwright, I was sometimes tasked with catching anything that wasn’t where it was supposed to be. This trap here is pretty handy for lizards.” He sat it down in front of me, and I peered into the wide, spiked mouth.

“How did you do this?” I went to touch it, but Ambrose gently pushed my hand away.

“I wouldn’t touch it there. That’s the trigger.”

“Ah.”

“So, some of the desert lily stems are sturdy enough for weaving. Animals don’t usually eat them since they’re tough, well, not the kind that this trap will catch. Once the general body is made, it just takes a few cactus thorns here and there to really keep the animal locked in.” I must have made a face because he smiled gently. “These traps don’t kill anything. The cactus thorns point inward, see?” I looked to where his finger was pointing. Like a cactus bullfrog, the spikes decorated the inside of the trap’s mouth like teeth, facing inward towards the empty stomach. “The creature will go in for food, and once they pass through, the mouth of the trap closes. The thorns make it so that the creature can’t go out the way they came in. They can’t eat their way out, or dig their way out.”

I placed my hand on Ambrose’s hand, trying to hold onto it the way he was so I could see deeper into the trap. When he didn’t move his hand, I felt a blush creep up my neck. I didn’t dare to look back at him. “May I?” He released his grip and I sat back with the trap. “This is going to be very useful. Thank you. Can you teach me?”

Ambrose watched me as I inspected every inch of the trap. “Yes, of course. How about I go set it out first?”

I returned his masterpiece. “My apologies. I was never taught stuff such as this. I was taught more of a scavenging approach.”

His eyes widened. “As in… dead bodies? Carcasses?”

I laughed. “No. A spear and turning over some rocks, or putting bait in a hole to draw something out. Our saladassi are also pretty skilled at finding food, so it’s easy to split the difference of their bounty.” I looked over to Durabi, who was soaking in the sun on top of a rock that jutted out from the earth. “But, that won’t exactly work for the four of us. I only packed enough for Fal and I, so we’re definitely going to have to do some more hunting.”

“I’m not sure we’ll be able to find enough here,” Ambrose said, rising to his feet and dusting off his robe.

“What do you mean?”

“I’ve been searching for food here. The boneyard is great for plants, but most of the plants aren’t edible for us. Not to my knowledge, anyway. And I have yet to see anything scurrying around underneath the bushes.” He sighed, his eyes drifting to where Sidra and Fal were huddled over the spell book. “Sidra and I have some coin. We could stop by a Waystation and buy some supplies.”

I shook my head. “If it’s what we have to do. We should try to stick it out, though. You and your sister have caused a lot of fuss in the recent weeks. If the four of us showed up at a Waystation, there’s no saying what could happen or how would try tailing us.” I thought about the situation for a moment, running my fingers through my hair before they got stuck between the tangles and knots. I cursed under my breath. “Besides, we can’t use up all of our coin at the beginning. We have no idea how long it will take for those two to reveal anything. We could be out here for a few weeks. Starting off by spending all of our money isn’t a good way to go.”

“You’re right.” Ambrose swung the trap from hand to hand, unafraid of the sharp teeth-like dangers. He cracked a smile. “We could always fight in the Ring if we get desperate enough.”

I managed a smile back at him, and watched his back as he walked away to place the trap. As he walked, I looked down at his clothes. They were nice, but not too nice. If he walked into a Ring, no one would bat an eyelash. He wouldn’t draw attention for being too scummy, or attention for being someone to corner in the dark. “Ambrose, I think you may be onto something.”

⇼❂⇼

“No. It’s not happening.”

“That’s not up to you to decide, Fal,” I scoffed at him. Did he genuinely think this was a proposal? Ambrose and I had already packed up. It wasn’t something we had planned on debating.

“Actually, Aumee, it is. You’re the main fighter of our group. If you leave, we’re defenseless. What would we do if you didn’t make it out? Or if someone found you out?” Fal came to stand before me but I stood in front of him with crossed arms and a high chin. From beneath him, it was hard to ignore just how large he was.

“You aren’t thinking straight.”

“And you are? We don’t have enough to support all four of us, and it’s just like you said. I’m the best fighter here. If one of us is going to go into the Ring, it should be me.” I looked over to Ambrose, who was whispering with Sidra as they watched us argue. When my eyes landed on him, his eyes went wide. “Get our stuff around. We’ll ride Durabi so we can be there and back. Sidra, if you know any protection spells, now would be a good time to cast them or practice them. Neither of you should have to leave this area, but if anything happens, we should be back before midnight.”

Fal tried to say something, but it turned into a grumble in his mouth, and he stomped away from where Ambrose and I were headed.

“He makes a fair point.”

“What point?”

“What if something happens to you?”

“Ambrose, trust me, I’ve killed more people than you could imagine.”

That seemed to quiet him for the remainder of our ride. We stopped at a a Waystation to pick up supplies, but continued onward to find another station that had a Ring. Around sundown, we came up to the Waystation. It was a modest one with a crowd gathering around a hole in the wall. Large figures stood amidst the crowd, horns protruding from their heads. Desert orcs. Ambrose leaned forward, whispering in my ear. “Have you ever fought one of those?”

I tensed up. No. I haven’t. I didn’t say that, though. If he was going to sell the idea that I was going to win, I needed him to be confident. “They come down hard.”

I could feel him relax behind me. I reached into my bag, and pulled out a mask that we had purchased from another Waystation along the way. It was white, with magnificent horns circling back before spiking upward. Red paint decorated the face, a splash across where my eyes would be. There was no mouth painted on, and I preferred it that way. From behind me, Ambrose cut holes into the head of my robe, and we slid the horns of the mask through them. “Eater of Eoten, you are ready.”

“Really?” I rose an eyebrow at him, my smile hidden beneath the mask.

“Trust me, having a name will help to sell you. It rolls right off the tongue, anyway.”

I laughed. Ambrose was able to make light of our situations, and I appreciated it. I couldn’t help but think of how Fal had reacted. It made sense to worry, but he was acting as if I didn’t know what I was doing. I would be fine. I always came out fine. “Ambrose, I think you’ll do a fine job at making this run smoothly. I looked over my shoulder to see him grinning. “Don’t let it go to your head.”

“Me? Never.”

As Ambrose and I crawled closer to the crowd atop Durabi, heads began turning in our direction. “What do we have here?” A hulking man with gnarled teeth and long hair turned to us, one hand on his hips and the other holding a sack of coins.

“What do you think? I have a fighter.” Ambrose climbed off, pulling me with him. I so badly wanted to pull away from his grip, but knew it would be a bad idea. Ambrose waved his hand up and down in front of my body. “He’s well trained. We want in.”

“He can start in the lowest Ring.”

“What’s the lowest?”

The man nodded his head in the direction of a group of sickly looking prisoners, their eyes looking at us like injured animals. Ambrose sighed from beside me. “He’s a bit more skilled than that.”

“Thems the rules. New fighters have to work their way up. Prove themselves. Are you in or not?”

Ambrose tossed our own money to the man, and he peered into it, counting the coins with keen eyes. When he was satisfied, he waved his hand. One of his own men grabbed me and threw me towards the group of prisoners. I immediately stepped away from them.

I could feel their eyes on me, taking me in as they assessed what kind of fighter I would be. I refused to look at them. If I looked at them, their faces would be burned in my memory. Their blood would never be washed from my hands. If all went as planned, I wouldn’t have Daya’s Baurpei to rid me of my burdens. If all went well, I wouldn’t have to do any of this ever again.

I caught Ambrose’s eyes through the frames of two people, and he looked at me with a tense face. If I didn’t win this, we were both done for. The Ring didn’t take losers lightly. His face disappeared as the lower Ring of fighters were shuffled into the den.

The entrance was large, the smell of musty cells and bloodsoaked stone hit my nose first. One would think there were no lights in the den in order to prevent fighters from realizing their fate. Cells lined the walls, each one with a gateway to the center Ring. Guards shuffled us through the hallways, and we walked in line, each person’s head hanging low as we entered our own cell buried in the wall.

When my cell door was shut behind me, I inched closer to the grate of the gate in front of me. The one that separated me from whatever fate I would be facing tonight. Lights blasted the floor. Stains of varying shades of red colored the floor, and the roars of some mysterious crowd echoed through the chambers. I couldn’t see the people from where I was, but from the sound alone it was as if I were in the middle of Arden.

One by one, people were released from their gates. For lower levels, all of the fighters were put together in one massacre of a round. Each fighter left their cage and made their way to the center of the Ring, where weapons lay out in the open. My gate was pulled up and out of my way, and I walked steadily to where everyone else was. Weapons were there for the truly unfortunate. I had the comfortability of having my dual blades secured tightly at my waist.

The stands were crowded. Screams battered my head in waves, and at some point it all became background noise. It faded away. The loud blast of a horn interrupted it, and in a matter of seconds the fighters were to work.

I tried not to think about it. I tried not to think of the person whose face I got a glimpse of as they lunged for my neck before the blade of my dagger met their stomach. I tried not to think about the way blood poured from the neck of someone I had to grab from behind. I tried not to think of the way blood was seeping into my clothing, painting itself on my mask. I tried not to smell the iron in the air, or taste it on my tongue. A blade scratched my side, and it brought me back down to the earth as I spun around, grabbing onto the person’s arm and pushing it down over my knee at an unnatural angle. Their scream was interrupted by my blade, and I tossed them to the ground.

Don’t think about it.

Don’t.

By the time the last person was down, my chest was rising and falling as if I had just finished running away from something. I looked up, avoiding the ground where all of the fighters lay. All of your victims, a small voice said from the back of my mind.

Something was announced about there being a winner, and I was escorted out of the fighting arena and back to my cell. I was victorious. For now. That was only the first level.

The second level presented different challenges, where the fighters had more skill and more drive to win. In this level, the fighters were pitted against one another in pairs, and the survivor of each pair would go on to fight in the final level. The whole time, my mouth tasted like iron and salt. My vision was becoming blurred from the mixture of blood, sweat, and the mask. By the time I made it to the final part of the middle level, only two other fighters were left for me to take on. We were released all at once, but I returned to my cell in a matter of minutes.

Daya trained me for this.

She trained me to survive.

You chose this.

I lifted my mask off of my face for fresh air. I took a deep breath, only to find that the air outside of the mask tasted the same. Someone knocked on my gate, and I spun towards it, hand on the hilt of my dagger.

“Aumee.” It was Ambrose. “I…” He let out a heavy sigh. “You’re doing great. Are you sure you want to continue? I’ve been listening around, and there are four desert orcs. You’ll only have to go up against one at a time, but… are you sure about this?”

“I’m fine.”

“I can see that.” His expression hardened. “Are you even thinking about it?”

“What?” I looked over to him, my heart catching in my throat. “Thinking about what?”

“Them. The people you’re killing. If we pull out now, we’ll only lose a third of our winnings, but we’ll leave with more than we had when we got here. There’s no point in doing this now.”

My eyes burned with tears as he looked at me. I wasn’t the girl he was worried about just a while ago. I was the monster. “This was your idea.”

“I didn’t think it would be like this,” he whispered, but his voice was breaking. “I can’t do this. I can’t watch you kill all of those people, Aumee. I can’t.”

I pulled my mask over my face. “Then don’t. I already killed those people. They’re dead. What’s left are a bunch of monsters who don’t think. Who don’t have lives. We’ve come this far. There’s no use in stopping now.”

The gate lifted behind me, and I didn’t look back as I ventured to meet the first desert orc.

This was the part that the middle level fighter failed. This was the part where fighters were allowed to be pulled from the Ring so they could still win a sack of coins. This was the part that I was about to cross into.

A horn blew, but it sounded different than before. The desert orc froze as it was about to raise its fist.

“The Eater of Eoten is being pulled from the Ring!”

The crowd began booing, and I watched with fury as two guards came up to take me back to Ambrose. I can’t believe him. Why argue with me if he was just going to be a coward and take me out of the fight anyway?

I didn’t say a word to him as he stood in front of Durabi, holding the coins close to his chest. “I couldn’t let you do that to yourself, Aumee.”

“Do what?” I let out a scream, grabbing him by his shirt. “Do what I was trained for? Do what would have won us enough coin not to do this again? If I had gone up against those orcs, we would have made enough coin to never do this again!”

Ambrose shoved me off, unleashing his own fury. “If you had gone up against those orcs, you would have died!” He ran his fingers through my hair and took a step closer to me, lowering his voice. “I know you’re a good fighter. I know that. But there’s a point where you have to stop yourself. Those things were trained for that, too. Were you even thinking in there? Do you really think you’re that invincible?”

No. I wasn’t thinking. I couldn’t. Even now, as the smell of the blood rose from my clothes, I was thinking about what I had done. A tear escaped my eyes, and I removed the mask from my face. “We need to go. We passed an oasis. We’ll stop there so I can bathe.”

We rode in silence. If Ambrose had more to say, then he didn’t say it. The oasis was small, and the water definitely wasn’t fresh, but it would work to rinse myself of all the blood that was beginning to crust over my soft skin. Rocks acted as barriers around the edges of the small pond, and the sound of insects buzzing in the air hit my ears like a crash. Bugs, no matter how annoying, were always a welcome noise to block out everything else.

I stripped down, tossing my bloody robes into a pile nearby. “Keep watch. This oasis is up for grabs, and I’ve had a few bad run-ins here before.” I stepped out of my leather shoes, which were soaked down to the sole.

Ambrose cleared his throat. “You could have given me a warning.”

“You could have given me a warning back there at the Ring.” I rolled my eyes as I tied my hair up on top of my head. I stepped forward, easing myself down into the water. Its surface was a mirror, but as I sank into it, small ripples disrupted the surface. The blood came off easily, and after a few minutes, I stepped out, the water dripping from my undergarments. “Ambrose, hand me the blanket, please.” I reached out, but he had his head turned away. “Don’t be childish.”

A huff escaped his hips as he grabbed the blanket, turning around to hand it to me. “So you won’t admit that what I did back there saved your life?” He watched me with crossed arms as I dried myself off at the edge of the water.

I looked at him steadily for a few seconds. “I wasn’t thinking. That much you’re right about.”

“I’ll take it.” His gaze softened and his shoulders slumped. “Do you think you’ll be able to do this again?”

“Of course I will.”

“Can you… handle it? The stress of it all?” He continued to watch me as I wrapped myself up in new robes, the clean cloth draping over my skin with ease.

“I handled it tonight, didn’t I?”

He didn’t say anything, but I could feel him watching me as I saddled Durabi. He followed suit. “I don’t mean physically, Aumee.”

“This is what I do for a living. I can handle it.”

I have to.