Englecon Mine, Desmond, 10416 P.C.

Sand. Bright lights. Stephanie stood still, looking around in her hazy vision. She was in the middle of the Arena, but everything was covered in a thick fog. Hardly anything was visible beyond the tall, imprisoning walls. Everything felt wrong.

This is a dream, something whispered inside of her.

But was there pain in a dream? Because that was there too — sharp jabs in her head, drumming along with her heartbeat. She breathed lightly, lifting a hand to her head as she winced. What was going on? How did she get here?

"Stephanie!"

She turned in a flash, her heart racing. "Marcie? Marcie!" She couldn't see in the fog, but she knew that voice. Marcie was frightened. Scared.

She's dead, came the whisper in her mind.

"No, no," Stephanie groaned, stumbling through the soupy fog. She didn't want to believe it — the voice was too real! "Marcie, where are you?"

There! In the fog, she spotted a figure. She hurried forward, nearly stumbling as the sand became wet and thick. Her shoes began to sink. The figure was all blue, not moving at all.

"Marcie?" Stephanie whispered.

Slowly, the Veiled Lady turned to her. "Love makes you weak."

Stephanie was flung backwards, her back hitting the sand, gasping, her head a fiery storm of pain. She nearly screamed as the Veiled Lady descended on her, ghostly, terrifying, heart-stopping. She knelt over Stephanie, gentle as she tucked away a couple strands of Stephanie's hair.

"Dear child," the Lady whispered. "It would have been better for you to have never met him at all. See how much more painful this has to be?"

In a breath, everything went dark. The pain consumed Stephanie from her head to her feet, sucking away her breath. Struggling to breathe, she gasped out, frantically trying to get air into her lungs. The pain was nearly unbearable, and she heard herself whimper, the only sound she could manage.

Something warm touched her cheek; a shock like that of lightning exploded through her, warming her instantly, dulling the pain ever so slightly.

"Hey, shh," a male voice above her murmured. "Just breathe."

Stephanie couldn't see. Was she still dreaming? It felt painfully, horribly real, and yet so had the dream. "Todd?" she gasped out, her chest heaving with every choked breath.

"Just relax." The voice — one she knew without a doubt didn't belong to Todd — was calm, but there was a heavy tone to it, something different. There was no assurance, no soft words of comfort. Just steady, calm... heavy. "Deep breaths."

The hands were the same. Steady, calm, heavy. Warm. Incredibly warm. One cupped her cheek, keeping her head still; the other rested on her shoulder. They were worn, the skin tough and calloused, but unnaturally warm, creating sensations under her skin she couldn't quite understand. The pain in her head wasn't as severe anymore. Within moments, she was calming down, taking deep breaths as instructed. Her racing heart reminded her she was still alive.

Gradually, her memory returned. The boy in the pit, the Overseer cutting her, wanting to see if she'd heal. Trying to escape him. He had electrocuted her with something — it had created white-hot pain, freezing her muscles, paralyzing her. She remembered him dropping her, she remembered the fall. She didn't remember hitting the ground.

"I can't see," she whispered.

There was faint amusement in the voice above her as he said, "Try opening your eyes."

She did — and she saw. The light was dim, flickering, her vision slightly blurred as she squinted at the form crouched over her. She blinked, and he came into better view.

It was the boy. Or rather, the young man. He was crouched, but she could tell he was tall. Broad-shouldered but thin — frighteningly thin. There seemed to be nothing but skin and bones on him, besides the rope-like muscle that flexed with every movement. His face was shadowed, thin and gaunt, all sharp edges, skin stretched over bone. His hair was long, a frayed braid down his back. Shorter locks had fallen out, tangled about his face like a frame. He didn't look very old, but looks were always deceiving. Her mind fought for his name. He had said it earlier, once. It came back with a stab of pain: Matthew.

"Better?" he questioned, the amusement still mildly evident in his tone.

"Better," she breathed.

He pulled back as she fought to sit up. A stab in her head made her wince, and she accepted his helping hand. It was a tight space at the bottom of the pit. He crouched against one wall, and she crouched against the opposite side, facing him straight on. Now that he wasn't so shadowed, she could see the natural tan of his scarred skin and the blood staining it. There were drops and smears of it on his face as if a careless painter had used him as a canvas. A stream of it trailed down the side of his face from his forehead, but she couldn't find the wound that would have caused that.

It took another moment of staring at him to realize the obvious question. "Wait," she blurted out, wincing as speaking made her head pound. "How are you here? In here?" Had she fallen into his pit?

Matthew shifted, pulling a knife out of the pocket of his pants. "I carved footholds in the stone," he whispered.

She stared at the knife, mouth open as her muddled mind struggled to comprehend his words. The knife was small. Dull. Rather pathetic in general. She looked up in alarm. "How long have I been out for?"

"An hour or two."

"That's not possible," Stephanie whispered, grabbing the knife from his hand. She fingered it. Jabbed it at the stone. It skipped off the rock with a useless thunk. "This knife couldn't have carved through stone."

"It did." He took it back from her, tucking it back into his pocket. "See?" He motioned behind him. In the dim light she barely made out the small cuts in the wall of her pit, spaced a bit haphazardly apart but quite obviously meant for climbing.

She pushed herself up with a wince, leaning forward to finger one of the holes. It was shallow, but she could use it as a handhold. It was freshly cut.

"How?" she asked, leaning back against her wall and sliding down to face him again. "How did you do that? That knife is no carving knife."

"I..." He stopped, tensing. Then he sprang to his feet, spinning around and scaling the wall faster than Stephanie thought possible. He threw himself up and over, rolling, she guessed, right back into his pit. She heard his scraping as he went down, a grunt as he hit bottom. She pushed herself to her feet, her heart racing.

"Matthew?"

"Someone's coming," came his response.

Stephanie swallowed hard, leaning back and sliding down yet again. Her mind reeled over what had happened. Her dream — her nightmare. Marcie calling her, the Veiled Lady and her eerie proclamation.

"It would have been better for you to have never met him at all. See how much more painful this has to be?"

Pain. Her head ached. She put it in her hands, breathing through the stabs of pain, keeping an ear out for footsteps. She shivered, remembering Matthew and his warm hands, the weird sensations he had caused under her skin. How he had broken stone with a flimsy knife.

The minutes ticked by in strained silence. Stephanie fought to decipher everything that was happening through her headache,

"False alarm, I guess," came Matthew's quiet voice from the pit beside her. No one had entered the room.

She took a breath, replaying how he head scaled the wall in her mind's eye. With the speed of an arrow and the grace of a wildcat.

He had cut through stone with nothing but an oversized butter knife.

Something tells me you and I are Oddities for very, very different reasons.