“Hold still,” Calace said, slipping a bicep wrap through her hand and up to connect with her right shoulder pad. A plastic lace slipped through the hole of the shell on her shoulder and clipped into the wrap. Next, Calace put on another pad around her elbow.

Her armor fitted like one of those puzzles Anemone spent all of last night solving. They already attached the top half fitting in black painted leather, stiff unlike any of the clothing she had ever worn before.

“It’s itchy,” Anemone complained.

“You’re gonna be wearing this often, so you better get used to it,” Calace said. She smiled, patting Anemone on the shoulder after tightening a strap.

After the elbow pad, the leather wrist followed, and the glove after that. In the cold winters of the beast camps, they provided her with gloves when she had to work outside. Comparing them, these felt like a mere extension of her skin, hardly constricting the movements of her fingers.

Calace started putting her other arm together, nearly finishing the entire set. She gave instructions as she went along, and Anemone noted the important information in her head. Up through the loop, clip down under. Simple enough, right?

This was her second time putting the armor on, the first time being in the store when the armorers finalized the suit. It was exactly how Calace had ordered it, light in weight with metal plates covering her vitals, tucked inside the vest through pockets. Her shoulder pads, elbow pads, and knee pads were all hard iron shells.

They were preparing her for battle as if Anemone hadn’t fought every day for half of her life. The first eight years she was alive indoctrinated her into the beast mindset, preparing her to fight in the years after. After the fighting—when she was chosen—she stopped briefly, now suiting up to fight again?

I was born to fight. Never anything more. Never anything less. That is—or was—the meaning of being a beast.

Calace finished strapping Anemone into the remainder of her armor.

Anemone paced around a little bit. Near the front of the mansion, left of the front door, the corner of windows offered a reflection, allowing her to see herself.

The outfit itself was black. Anemone felt disappointed she couldn’t wear an all-purple set of armor, but Calace said it “sounded better than it would actually look.” But, she did give in a little bit to Anemone’s request. A small purple waist cape concealed the sheath hooked around her belt. It was small, but it stood out like a purple flower in a green field.

Her legs put together slightly differently than her arms, as her trousers were a single unit. The joints near the knee had a more flexible fabric sewed between the thighs and the calves, allowing her to move without resistance even after installing the kneepads.

“How does it feel?” Calace asked.

“It feels alright,” Anemone said.

“Just alright?”

“I don’t know what’s good or bad,” Anemone said. “It’s my first time wearing such an outfit. Like the dress, I just don’t know what I’m supposed to feel.”

Calace simply smiled. Did she understand? Could anyone truly understand Anemone? She was… adjusting to what was supposed to be a “normal” life. But what was truly normal about her? Her skin was paler than everybody else; the most powerful man in the kingdom adopted her, and her greatest skill in fighting came from her hands rather than with a sword. And, of course, she had black blood when everybody else bled red.

She wasn’t normal. She might not be the beast she once believed to be, but she wasn’t so far off.

“How do your boots feel?” Calace asked.

“Fine,” Anemone said. She raised her calf and foot by extension. Besides the purple waist cape, the most colorful contrast on her armor came in the form of white laces on her boots. A patch of gray showed up here and there, but it blended into an overall dark tone.

Calace approached her, looked at her foot, and told her to keep it up. “When you are in the field,” Calace said. She frowned, looking up at her. “And never in the house, you can take these off of the soles of your boots,” Calace said, pinching near the bottom of her heel before taking off a compartment that revealed prickly, dulled spikes underneath. “These will give you better traction in the field, particularly grass and snow. Otherwise, if you are on the street, you keep the cover on, alright?”

Anemone nodded, and Calace put the cover back on.

“Think you can get used to wearing this?” Calace asked.

“Yes, mam,”

“Does it feel hot?”

“No, mam,” Anemone said.

“Good,” Calace said. She slapped her on the shoulder. Anemone learned that was a sign of affection rather than aggression. “You look great in this, whether you feel it or not. Now, I want you to break this in for a while longer. Wait around a little bit, and maybe when Ranun gets home, you two can train with swords again.”

Anemone smiled. When Anemone first got her sword, she didn’t expect that using it could be so fun. Ranun told her that precise motions were among the first steps to mastering swordsmanship. When she first tried, she swung horizontally, but her strokes shook vertically. That, apparently, was improper form.

So, she would stick to it until she mastered the art of the sword, whether that came from following Ranun’s teachings of what it meant to swing properly or learning what was improper, like what she had done with Corden’s teachings.

When Ranun did come home, he looked miserable walking up the steps from the outside window. Oddly, Anemone’s heart sunk a level as she feared for what could be wrong. She’d never seen him looking anything below content.

When he opened the door to his home, his misery turned to happiness the very moment he spotted Calace. What was that about?

Anemone approached him, and before she could even ask, Ranun smiled and said, “Sure, I just need to set a few things down, then we can go outside.”

Anemone drifted into sleep inside the comfort of her blankets. The last few minutes in bed came comfortably, as moments before she undressed from her armor into a simple shirt and trousers, and her skin felt cold to the blankets; how she preferred.

When she woke up in her subconscious realm, she met the Gem God in an alternative environment. Blood wasn’t here like they usually were. Instead of the pitch-black void of old, she saw a town. A dirt road paved the way instead of the brick she was used to. Buildings that looked as compact as a city but smaller than most buildings she’d seen in Ryuso or Falcon Hill.

Then, she saw a young girl walking in a single file line, different from the six others she walked with.

An older girl with a clipboard and a ponytail led the line in a confident stride. The heads behind her sulked down.

“Where are we?” Anemone asked.

The Gem God grinned; his teeth were solid white. “I can imagine only one place this could be. This is your first dream since I’ve inhabited your mind.”

“A dream?”

The Gem God nodded. He floated down with the wind.

Anemone checked the street, noticing that down the road, darkness closed in the further the line walked down the street. She feared this darkness. It was foreign and unlike the pitch black of Blood that she had grown accustomed to. She made sure to follow the group, where the dark ahead turned to imagery as the line walked forward.

“Don’t fall too far behind,” the god said. “The image is only as vivid as you remember. It cannot recognize what it doesn’t know.”

So that girl is me? Anemone wondered. She walked on the street, looking at her, but her eyes didn’t seem to grasp her. That or she was ignoring herself.

Long hair, even back then. She remembered how often it was yanked in the fights, keeping it from growing too long. When she stopped losing, her hair started to grow up to her waist.

“Why won’t she notice me?”

“They can’t see us,” the Gem God said, hovering up and around the line. “You’ve been thinking a lot about your past, haven’t you?”

Anemone—her cognitive self—nodded.

“This will be interesting to see,” the Gem God said. “Do you know where you are walking to?”

“The beast camp,” Anemone said. “Before now, I was taught how to speak so I could obey.”

The Gem God lowered a brow but shrugged, hovering over to see the younger, expressionless Belch.

The dirt road eventually merged into stone, and the cement sidewalks had a crowd of people. At that moment, the slurs and insults came.

“Beasts!” one yelled immediately. He had a gray uniform on, similar to that of a policeman. “Stay on the sidewalk! Let their handlers escort them.”

“You monsters!” another yelled. This time a disgruntled citizen, reaching over the barricaded street. “You’ve murdered our ancestors! You’ve betrayed the human race!”

“They aren’t human at all!” another citizen argued back. And at the time, Anemone—or Belch in this case—believed that to be the truth.

Belch looked down while a few other beasts looked to their hecklers. She used to look so sad, so miserable. Complacent. When did she grow out of that? When did she accept her way of life? This Belch… she didn’t look like an individual at all.

“Javias curses us all with their presence!”

“Be wary of the Devil’s spawn!”

“Don’t look into their eyes, or else they will reach inside and poison your seed with their devilish curses.”

Their words continued.

And it appeared that those words hurt modern Anemone more than they did her past self.

“A cruel people,” the Gem God said. “You humans are so irrational at times. They are among the only species that do evil while believing they are doing good. Truly disgusting creatures… no offense.”

Anemone shrugged his comments off, continuing to follow the line. They reached the beast camp. A large property, blocked off with a large metal fence with barbed wire curling around the top to deter anyone from entering or leaving.

For the first time, Belch’s eyes moved from the floor to look around herself. She saw the field for the first time. Green grass she had never seen before, always locked in a white room without any windows. The anemones were there; these were among her first glimpses of nature. Belch’s eyes widened, but her mouth simply gaped. At this point in her life, she had no experience of joy, no way of showing it. But Anemone remembered feeling the wonder at the moment. The moment of love at first sight.

They moved along a path now made in gravel. At the front door of the beast quarters, Corden stood out at the front. The woman escorting the line moved beside him, and they exchanged words, but they came out in gibberish. Likely because Belch, at the time, distracted herself with the field.

Soon, Corden broke her trance, addressing the beasts one by one. He limped on his cane, walking up to everyone.

“I can barely tell if you will be talented or talentless,” Corden said to the first boy down in the line. “Only through talent can a beast find repentance for who they are.”

One more down, Corden grabbed at the arm of another boy. He turned around to the woman escorting them. “They were all raised identically, right? Why is this one stronger than the others?”

“Some, particularly males, grow faster than other males. About one in every twenty men will start their hormonal growth at the age of eight.”

“What weird breeds are these?”

“They are beasts, tamer,” the woman said. “A breed of their own kind. Devils.”

Corden frowned, brushing past the stronger boy. He then moved to Belch. “A girl. I need not waste time in assessing you.” He moved on to another.

She remembered the words well. It was the first time she was called a girl. At the time, she had no idea what that meant, but later it became obvious. She hadn’t realized her gender at the time, but the differences were evident once they entered inside.

Fight after fight, the kids battled it out with their fists. Anemone stepped inside along with Belch and others. The Gem God hovered around, looking at the beasts fighting from a higher angle. He swooped down with a smile. “This was how you were raised? That’s incredible! And you became the best out of them?”

The faces were void of noses or mouths: merely blank looks, a part of the environment. Anemone remembered the ground well. Rows and rows and rows of white rings were marked on the blue mat, covering the entire floor leading up to the kitchen all the way across. Two fighters in each circle, working to beat up the other one. But they fought ferociously, uncalculated. Fists punched, and bodies flew. The younger kids and most girls were closer to the door, as they were new and underdeveloped compared to the stronger, older boys. But as they gained strength, they moved up the hierarchy and started fighting closer to the mess hall connected to the fighting section without a wall dividing them.

At the end of the circles, one ring stood out. It had letters written inside. Letters Anemone couldn’t read back then. But they spelled “worthy.” You had to be the best to fight in that circle. You had to climb to the top, and you had to keep your spot.

And there was nothing more a beast wanted than repentance for being born.

Anemone continued following the beasts down the side of the rings. Bunk beds lined along the wall with narrow creases in between, packing as many beasts inside this building as possible.

When Corden halted the line, the woman handed out plastic sheets, all with green printed numbers off the front.

“Listen up!” Corden ordered the newly arrived beasts. “Follow the instructions closely. Pick the paper up, lick it like so,” he stuck out his tongue and glided it across a piece of plastic, but his piece had no numbers. “Now, stick it on your forehead like this.”

The lady went around making sure the numbers faced the right way.

With the numbers on their heads, they waited.

One boy fell drastically to the floor, hands to his head in agony.

Followed by another. And another.

Belch looked around and saw the other kids drop around her. Screaming filled the room, but none outside the group seemed to care. Soon, Belch fell too and endured the same excruciating pain, clawing and kicking wildly on the floor as if she were in a tantrum. After what felt like two minutes of continuous molten fire on their heads, the kids started crawling up to their feet when the pain settled down.

Corden had a hardened expression. He looked a lot younger back then, but just as short. About only a foot taller than Anemone was when she was eight.

On the kids’ heads were their numbers. Belch had 937 printed on her forehead, and her pale skin flushed as red as an apple. These were supposed to be their identity. Later, during her first meal, Belch would finally gain her beast name of Belch, burping and devouring new and exotic food for the first time.

She had no idea that it would stick for the rest of her beast life.

Time passed in what felt like a quickly paced dream. She was now on a field a few days after her introduction to the camp. She had fought in the rings but lost every fight almost immediately. She barely learned how to hold her hands up to defend herself. But she was getting used to it. She was finally starting to grasp what it meant to fight.

The only goal in these fights was to beat your opponents.

She looked forward to the next fights despite her bruises around her eyes. While she didn’t look forward to the pain, at least she looked forward to viewing the fields.

“I don’t remember the fields being this grand,” Anemone said to the god hovering beside her. “It’s almost too green.”

“You perceived these fields to be this grand,” the Gem God explained. “But you don’t remember them this way. It’s your mind’s reality, more so than actuality.”

Belch reached the bottom of the river. The night before, they denied her the regular portions due to her not contributing enough labor. She needed to bring two buckets of water up the hill to the compound. Otherwise, she wouldn’t get a full meal.

The fence boxed off a part of the river, keeping the beasts inside. At the bottom, a large pile of buckets and long wooden sticks in a stack to the left. Belch picked up a stick for her first time, then tried to replicate what the other, older beasts did. She hooked two buckets on, then dunk them into the river, collecting water. Then, she lifted the buckets by the stick—

Her arms failed to lift. She tried again, but the stick wouldn’t budge. Eventually, Pedr came down the hill and helped pull the bar up and over her shoulders. It felt like a boulder, but she balanced herself before walking up the hill. She pushed the limits of her strength.

On her way up, she walked past other beasts heading down. Belch, at the time, couldn’t see where she was going but knew she was walking upward, actively wincing from the workload.

Belch gasped as her water started shaking out of her buckets. She was losing strength on her way. Belch pushed through, more water flying out of the buckets holstered to the ends of the stick, becoming lighter as a consequence. Beasts started to walk past her from behind, stronger. Their heads turned to her and grinned menacingly.

That was the most humiliating moment of her life, followed by something even worse only seconds after. Belch bumped into a group of three girls slightly older than she was, splashing one in particular with about half of the contents from her left bucket.

Belch didn’t know what to say. Sorry wasn’t in her vocabulary back then. Words, in general, were usually picked up from the adults around the camp, then passed along from beast to beast.

The splashed girl scoffed. Her name around the beast camps, Anemone remembered, was Medium since she roamed around the camps with two other female beasts, one named Tall, the other named Short, named after their heights.

When Belch shrugged them off, she continued forward until she reached the top of the hill. Corden was there, counting buckets brought up by other beasts. He came over to Belch and showed her one of his more infuriated expressions. His aging eyes bulged as he checked the buckets, noticing that both of them were far from full, closer to empty. Even now, Corden struck a sting of fear within Anemone.

“You brought me back two buckets, half full?” Corden grunted. “Do you think me a fool? Did you think that that would work?”

Belch was speechless. Anemone watched with worry.

“Half a meal,” Corden said. He could withhold meals from beasts whenever he pleased. “For half the effort.”

Corden's expression soured even worse when the girls Belch bumped into returned up the hill. He approached them in such a wrathful, limping stride. He pointed his cane and roared. “What the hell is this?!”

“Sir…” Medium said.

“You each brought up only one bucket?” he snapped. He swung his cane around the floor, swatting at their legs. Each one winced and gasped.

“Sir,” Medium swallowed, her legs hopping from the hit. Then, her eyes peaked past Corden and saw Belch. “It’s her fault!” she pointed. “The new girl splashed us with water, weakening us!”

“What?” Anemone complained out loud. Her old self was speechless.

The Gem God laughed. “Kids… little devils, all of them.”

“That’s wrong!” Anemone yelled. He approached Corden, her face flushing red with anger. “That’s such a bad excuse! You can’t take them seriously—”

Corden ignored her. Anemone forgot she couldn’t alter anything. Corden instead turned back to Belch. “Is that so? Well, maybe you won’t get a meal at all…”

Belch and Anemone frowned simultaneously. The injustice… the harshness of another person’s lies.

“Unless…” Carter said. He turned to Medium. “You two fight it out. The winner gets their earned meal—half of one—and the loser eats nothing. How does that sound?”

Medium smiled. She was older, and therefore, had a better chance in the fights than Belch.

How is this fair? Anemone thought. Belch didn’t seem to think similarly to Anemone. No, Belch was infuriated. She loved the food, and the very idea of losing any of it—even half of a meal—pissed her off.

They both entered the compound, then met each other in a ring on the mat. A few days in, Belch had a scary grimace on her face. Probably one of the angriest moments of her life. Anemone remembered this fight well and wondered how it would play out in her dream.

Medium prepared, sharing a few sneers with her group of friends who watched. Corden also observed from the side, seemingly taking pleasure from making the two fight.

“Begin on my mark,” Corden said, standing on the outer perimeter. Behind him and all around their ring, other fights were beginning. The sounds of bodies slamming and punches thrown and painful grunts filled the room. At the time, Belch swallowed it all in.

Belch clenched her fists. She was waiting to fight all day, finally able to, and against someone she desired desperately to beat.

“Ready… go!” Corden commanded.

Medium walked up slowly. Belch had her feet planted on the ground, her arms tensing, shaking with fury. The smile on Medium’s face was priceless to Anemone right now. Cockiness.

Her opponent reached the center of the ring before Belch finally pounced. She charged with her torso facing up, launching into the chest of Medium, knocking her down to the mat. Medium tried to stand up, but Belch kicked her chin with the tip of her shoe. She dropped, mounting over her stomach. She then threw her first punch.

Medium tried to crawl her body out, scratching at Belch’s face. But Belch kept throwing her closed hands, pounding away at her face. They fought either until someone surrendered or was knocked out of the ring. Belch continued until she heard those words that never came. Fist after fist, her hands bruised and shedding blood. But she didn’t know whose blood was on her hand.

A beating that was unlike anything she had ever experienced before. This was the fighting expected out of Belch from the beginning. Unrelenting brute strength. Fighting without style or grace. Only punishment.

“Enough,” Corden said.

Belch stopped herself from punching. She sighed, stepping up. At the time, she didn’t realize. Not a clue that she beat Medium unconscious. Her bloodied face and heavy breathing on the ground was a brutal sight for Anemone to see. Belch looked so proud about what she had done.

But Anemone couldn’t help feel ashamed.

“A very ugly performance…” Corden said. Belch was huffing up the air as she stood over Medium triumphantly. “All of that for half of a meal. You beasts are undeniably disgusting. Welcome to the beasts. Beat or be beaten; that is your life now.”

But Anemone… it felt wrong to her. She remembered it being a pleasant memory, something she thought she’d cherish forever, the feeling of domination and superiority over another beast. But seeing it again replayed before her… reminded her of who she once was.

The beast they always wanted her to be.