This was a fun one.

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Chapter 1-7: After Time Unknown

I believe I’ll be turning 15 years old soon, which means I’ve been down here for at least a little over 2 years. Still find it almost impossible to accurately tell time in this black pit.

I’ve managed to claw through the other slaves and get enough food here so both my height and muscles have been growing exponentially for a while.

Cizin was a little shorter than me before, but now I tower over him at nearly 2 meters, maybe more. My strength and endurance also rival, or possibly surpass his own.

He’s still faster than me though, and that ridiculous tail of his is nearly impossible for me to handle if he really wanted to kill me.

My once fine blonde hair, which is now down past my shoulders, looks almost black from all the filth. I’ve also got old scars and gashes across my entire body from fighting the cage and the phantom pain from my missing arm still flares up at times.

A number of my scars are fairly fresh as that shithole Cutter threw me in there on my own against a ladon a few months back. I had to kill it with nothing but a 30 cm dirk. I got several long scars across my chest, narrowly avoiding its claws slicing through my skin and muscle to spill my guts all over the cage floor.

Finally killed the damn thing when I could get below the bulk of its body and eviscerate its un-scaled stomach. The smell from its intestines and blood was… amazingly foul. I had thought no odors could make me gag anymore but I was wrong.

Cizin trained me well, maybe too well if you asked him. Recently I’ve managed to best him in sparing, but only when he isn’t using his tail. We’ve also been thrown together for group fights in the cage three times.

The last time it happened we were all unarmed. Soon as we get close to the two Wilders we were in the cage with Cizin just picks my massive body up and throws me feet first at them.

They didn’t even know what the hell was going on as a 120 kg man comes flying at them. I landed on the first one catching his head between my knees and broke his neck before we hit the ground.

I think the other one pissed himself before Cizin finished with him.

I no longer feel even the slightest pity for ending the lives of these Wilders. The only ones I do regret were the two sane ones that Cutter threw me into the ring with.

All I could do was try to kill them quickly and painlessly. I had no choice….

Occasionally while in the deep mines I catch a glimpse of something creeping around in the darkness just out of sight. I’m not sure if it’s an animal or a person as I, and no one I’ve asked, has ever gotten a good look at it.

All I’m certain of is that part of it is hairy and purple.

It’s really creeping me out though. I feel like it’s been stalking me lately, whatever it is; more and more often these past few months I catch sight of it in the corner of my eye. Once or twice I’ve tried to run towards the dark shadows after I think I see it, but it’s far too fast and I can never get anywhere near it.

I’m still no closer to getting out of this hellhole either.

I don’t think I’ll be able to do it on my own, and Cizin won’t help me. Even if I could escape out into the keep itself I have no idea how to remove this collar, or what range they can activate it from to choke, or kill, me. Trying to escape is entirely pointless until I can find a way to remove it.

One day though, fate brought someone… interesting into this pit.

* * *

--Nyx’s POV--

“SHIT! I knew we shouldn’t have gone further out of the inner wastes, away from Elpis!”

“We had no choice! The deserts only been spreading the past 4 cycles!” I have to yell my response to be heard over the bullets whizzing past the group of rocks we’re using as cover. “How’d they get this far in without being seen from our outposts anyway!? We haven’t seen any airships! They shouldn’t be this far into the fucking wastes!” I lean off to the side of the rock to fire off a few round back at them.

“That cuss Roman probably has something to do with it. These look like Hung’s men. Someday we’ll end both of those shitstains on our satellite.” She angrily grinds her teeth. “Run Nyx, we’re almost out of rounds. I’ll hold them back.”

She pauses to look out from the rock we’re hiding behind and fire her rifle at them, and then turns back to me as I’m not moving to leave, “Why aren’t you going?! Run away now! Get back to Elpis!”

Dammit all. There are at least a hundred Wilders out there waiting for us, and they aren’t even 90 meters away now. I think I saw a pair of ladons with them too.

There’s almost no chance in hell that we’ll be able to kill them all, and that’s assuming they try to take us alive instead of just shooting us outright.

If we stop firing at them they’re going to close in and capture us. The only thing stopping them is not wanting a bullet in the face. But soon all we’ll have left besides our swords and shields are my mother’s javelins and my hunting daggers.

There’s a single path out to the other side of this massive outcrop of rocks. If I ran now and she held them off I might get far enough away that I’d lose them… but—

“No Mother, we’ll fight together! I won’t let these fucks have their way!”

“Please go, you know what they’ll do to you if they catch y--” the end of her sentence is cut off by a loud explosion a few meters away from us on the other side of the rock we’re hiding behind. They’re trying to blast us out now.

“And I would rather die than run away like a coward and leave you behind! Especially after what they did to Leto!”

She gets a grim look on her face. Then she smiles with a bloodthirsty glint in her eyes. “You are my daughter…. We’ll make them regret coming here today then.”

A grin spreads across my mouth. She’s given up trying to run me off. “We’ll teach them not to fuck with us or Elpis again.”

“I love you. Now stain the desert red with their blood!”

“Yes Mother! Their dicks will shrivel with the mere thought of today after we’re done with them!”

A moment later the gunfire coming our direction dies down.

Then I can hear the one that seems to be their leader hollering like a dumbass, “If ya come out now I promis’ta keep’ya as breedin’ stock instead o’ guttin’ ya like the heathens ya are! We always like da feisty ones like ya’ll!”

Oh yeah sure, we’ll just lie down and let you rape us all you want.

“FUCK. YOU.” I scream back while Mother fires off a couple rounds in his direction.

“Las’ chance girlies! Dun wanta hurt you! Too badly a’least!” He warns us again with his idiotic, driveling voice.

“SUCK MY COCK!” Fuck, I only have one round left for my revolver. “Come over here if you dare, you pathetic fucking degenerates! I’ll break your spines with my bare hands and feed you your own balls! Wait no, sorry I can’t do that. ‘CAUSE YOU DON’T HAVE ANY FUCKING BALLS, YOU FLACCID MIDGET-DICKED SHITS!!!”

I fire off my last round and hide behind the rock again to wait. As soon as the Wilders see that they have us cornered they’ll probably rush us all at once. I’m sure they want to try and capture us alive for their… purposes. They’ll wish they had just tried to kill us outright though. I can promise them that.

After firing off a couple more rockets to suppress us and kick up dust they charge just like I thought.

Mother has one javelin cocked back in her throwing arm now, with the remainder resting in her shield hand. When they get within 60 meters she starts hurling them at the Wilders.

One of them gets pierced right through the throat and falls over onto his face gurgling blood while the two behind him trip over the body. Several others get drilled directly in the temple or face, dying instantly.

A Wilder that took one of the closer throws got the javelin clean through his right shoulder and it sticks firmly into the ground behind him, pinning him here. The last javelin goes through one of the Wilders entirely, piercing his gut, and sticks into the knee of the man behind him.

As they get even closer it’s my turn. I start throwing my large, balanced hunting knives’ sticking the Wilders in their throats and unarmored armpits. One of them dodges a knife, but as it drops through the air after missing him it sinks right into the groin of one of the bastards behind him.

Unintentional but hilarious! He won’t be using those anyway.

We’re completely out of ranged weapons now. Only one thing left to do then. Mother and I draw our swords and cling to the huge rock face, waiting for them to come around either side.

The first one to pass my corner of the rock gets cleanly decapitated with a slice of my sword before he even knew what happened.

Then another dozen arrive nearly at once.

They’re rushing me with shock prods, clubs, and swords. Two of them are out in front, guess they have enough balls to try and fight me. I slam the one on my left with my shield, throwing my weight into it, and hear his neck snap from the blow.

The other one is clearly an idiot with his shield down at his side while telegraphing his mace swing so obviously a child could dodge it. I have plenty of time to bring my shield back to block his clumsy blow and greet his neck with the tip of my blade.

Two down, fuck knows how many more to go.

Most of them are cowering back now; hoping one of the others goes first. Shameless cowards.

I taunt them “WHAT’S THE MATTER?! YOU FUCKWITS GROW ENOUGH BRAINS TO FEAR DEATH?!” then brutally charge at the group. Before they can even react one is missing an arm, one is down a leg, and two wish they were smart enough to use their shields properly, or at least they would if they still had heads that is.

One off to my left side by the rock wall panics and pulls out his handgun. ‘Hope he doesn’t have AP rounds!’ is my thought as I raise my shield to intercept the trajectory of his gun barrel. As I rush at him behind my shield I hear a couple plinks as my shield is dented in three places.

HA! A bullet ricochets into one of his friends stupid faces.

I don’t even bother using my sword and just slam the dipshit straight into the rock wall. His hands holding the gun are knocked up into his face and my shield, in turn, drives the gun into his skull as his head explodes from the force of my tackle.

His brains make a nice blossoming flower on the wall. He’s certainly much prettier now.

Without losing a beat I run up the rock wall a meter or two and kick off it, jumping straight onto another drooling Wilder. As my feet land on his kneecaps, snapping his legs backwards, I drive the edge of my shield into his throat, crushing his esophagus.

I take a moment to look around at the surroundings. There are 10 more already around me in a half circle. A few of them have guns out but aren’t firing them yet.

A small distance away by the other side of the outcrop my mother just decapitated one, the head and blood flying through the air beautifully. She’s already killed many of them.

Just as my attention focuses back onto the ones around me they charge all at once. Good for them, they finally worked up enough courage to try and beat down a single girl.

Well, I suppose I can’t blame them considering it’s me.

As they reach me I duck down, raising my shield above me to blow any downward blows, and then slice through five legs in a single stroke. As they tumble over I jump through the gap it makes in their circle.

The first thing that greets me after I escape their encirclement is one of their ladons. The large reptilian beast tries to cut me open with the claws on its three long fingers, but I deftly block its lumbering swipes with my shield while giving it a few shallow gashes for its trouble.

One of the more idiotic Wilders runs at me from the side while I’m holding off the beast, but his abdomen gets caught by one of the razor sharp claws. It tears right through his flesh, spilling his entrails all over the desert sand. He falls down to his knees fumbling to stuff his slippery intestines back into his gut as he bleeds out.

Luckily the rest of them don’t want to get near us after this display.

They may be morons, but they’re still smart enough to fear getting caught by one of the ladon’s wild swipes too; which gives me some room to fight the beast. A couple of them do try and fire off shots at me, but they all either miss, hit the beasts scales as I move to put it between us, or ricochet off my shield with a *ping!*

The next time the beast takes a swing at me I put more force into my shield arm to resist it. When the claws impact my shield, instead of just being repelled like before, all three of them crack off and at least one of the fingers breaks.

While it’s reeling from the pain I try to charge down low below its head where it can’t easily reach me with its claws, but it anticipates this!

Shit, it’s too late to stop my momentum now but its head is lowered to meet me. It’s going to use its massive facial horn to crush me into paste. The only thing I can do now is raise my shield in front of me before the impact.

“AAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHH!!!”

*CLANG!!!* A loud metallic clang resounds through the desert crags as shield meets horn.

I take the brunt of the collision as I’m blown backwards at least 3 meters. The small of my back is jabbed by a large rock as I land hard.

My mouth fills with blood and it runs down my lips and out my nose. Worse yet, it fractured my forearm and my shield is cracked.

Fuck this, I won’t die that easily.

The bastard’s scales and hide is too thick though, it’s hard to cut through it and injury it more than superficially.

Before I can even stand up the damn thing is already charging me horn first again.

I stumble up and madly sprint to meet it. If I get this timing wrong at all my innards will be splashed across the sands like that dipshit earlier.

Just before the horn bores into me, I angle my shield at 45 degrees to deflect the force of its head upwards. My bones shake from the force, but it works as I’m not dead yet and the beasts head is pointed upwards, exposing its soft throat.

Using this opening I jam my sword upwards beyond the rim of my shield right into the soft spot on the base of its jaw. My blade pierces through the lower jaw and up through beasts tongue and palate, ending in its forebrain.

That doesn’t stop all of the forward momentum though. I have to cling to the beast to avoid being trampled as my body is carried along backwards by its bulk.

With the beast in its death throes I firmly plant my feet into the ground and brace my body against it, pushing as hard as I can to negate its momentum. I slide backwards across the sand for several meters before we finally come to a stop just before I get flattened between it and the rock wall.

As the Wilders watching me kill the ladon go silent I can hear yelling coming from where my mother was before.

“Wait! WAIT! STOP YA DIMWITS! We want ‘er ALIVE!”

I glance towards the voice and see that Mother’s on the ground, with several of them hacking away at her limp body. There are dozens of corpses around her, including the body of the other ladon, forming a huge circle of blood and gore.

“YOU!!! YOU FUCKS GET AWAY FROM HER!”

One of them takes advantage of my distraction and hits me in the back of the head with a club while another jabs me in the side with a shock prod. I crumple down onto my knees from the pain as blood trickles down my head and face.

“FUUUCK! GAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!” I let out a bloodcurdling scream as the rest of my mind is painted red and I go into a frothing rage without any regard for my body. My only thought is to end the life of everything around me.

* * *

The next thing I know I’m kneeling on top of a pile of corpses and blood. I must have killed several dozen more in my frenzy. In every direction for at least 20 meters the sand is almost pure red.

The carcasses of the two ladons are starting to sink into the sand from their own weight, with their fluorescent orange blood pooling around them.

Enough body parts to make at least six dozen Wilders are scattered in the sand. The ones that have yet to bleed out are moaning and crying in pain and the buzzards have already arrived to pick away at the dead and dying.

Mother’s body is also there… chopped into pieces with her blood seeping out into the sand. Her dead face still has a demented grin and her eyes are glaring hatefully into the distance like she’ll drown the world in blood, the only thing stopping her being the frailty of our mortal bodies.

It’s over.

My shield is gone, my sword broken with the two halves buried in the chest of a Wilder by my feet. My entire body is covered in gashes and contusions. Feels like I’ve been shot a couple times as well, nothing fatal though.

My rage is overflowing but my body won’t answer to me anymore.

The few of them that are left alive have surrounded me and are beating me down with clubs, prods, and fists; hollering and cursing the whole time.

“Fuck dis crazy whore!”

“Bloody hell dese two psyho fuckin’ bitches! Think we woulda had less trouble killin’ one of da other fuckin’ gods!

“Fuck Lord ‘Ung nex’time he wants ta send us ou’ta da damned wastes.”

“I wanta hear ya say dat in-fronta ‘em!”

“Screw ya dickhead, I dun wanna die!”

“Shut up an’ keep fucking hittin’ ‘er goddammit! She still ain’t out yet! We’re takin’ dis’un back ALIVE.”

“Jus’ knock da bloody whore out already! An’ quick. Dun want’er attractin’ any more attention. If Marcus comes lookin’ for em an’ finds us over ‘ere we done fucked.”

If they make the mistake of not killing me right now their blood will someday be my paint and the desert my canvas. I swear revenge against these bastards.

I refuse to collapse onto the ground until one final blow greets my face and knocks me into unconsciousness.

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This story is, and will remain, pure sci-fi.

My update frequency very well might depend on if anyone is actually reading, or cares, about this. I’ll probably try and keep on schedule more if I have an audience. Otherwise I’m just writing it for fun.

So if you want me to keep on it tightly then comment, review, rate and tell me I’m awesome!

Or don’t, and tell me I suck ass. Whatever really. Any feedback is welcome!

Thanks for reading!