“Mm…”
“When she went into my trap, she did it knowing that it would make Kldyn crazy. That he would consider it an affront against him. That was the thing that finally pushed him into making a move against me. Well, that’s probably not true. Kldyn and Iwere never close. We were always in competition. That was just the thing that finally made him act to get rid of me completely.”
“Huh?”
“Rik-Vane isn’t a prison. Though it feels like one. People who go there do it voluntarily. At least most of them do. There are some born there. There are some taken against their will. I was sent there. By Kldyn. He took over the family, cut down all my power, turned my allies against me, and stole Yl’ln from me. And when he took everything, when I was powerless, he sent me to Rik-Vane. He said it was to prove my loyalty. It was actually a death sentence.”
When he closed his eyes, he could so easily go back to that place. To the life he hated but still kept living. To a time when he’d carved his survival out of the lives of others. To a place that fed on brutality and pain…
***
J’tll put his foot to the chest of the male he had laid out on the ground, then used the grip he had on his arm to twist and pull. The shoulder popped out first, then the bone snapped as J’tll applied pressure to his elbow, breaking it by shoving it backwards.
The male below him was screaming. Thrashing. But J’tll could barely hear him over the roar of the crowd as they cheered for his agony. There weren’t many of them, only about two dozen or so. But they were all suckers, betting on who would win in this fight.
And the winner was the one who came out alive.
Dropping the now mangled arm, J’tll removed his foot from his chest. The male flopped over on his belly and tried crawlingaway. Definitely seeing his end coming and needing to struggle for his own life, even knowing it was pointless.
J’tll grabbed him by the hair and jerked him up. The crowd jeered. They laughed. They spit through the bars of the cage. Disrespecting the loser for his shame and defeat.
J’tll put his hands on either side of his head and squeezed.
It wasn’t a quick death. It certainly wasn’t painless. He screamed and thrashed, but his body was weak, beaten and broken. His arm wasn’t the only bone J’tll had destroyed.
The crowd loved it. They relished the violence, they laughed at his pain. One male had his cock out and was stroking it rapidly, enjoying the agony and death before him like a sex vid.
The skull cracked under his hands. Shattered. Turned into a messy, bloody, gooey mess as he crushed the male’s head completely. His body shuddered and went limp. His gray fur was already stained with blood, now only made worse by the way his head had been cracked. J’tll let him go and the corpse collapsed forward, mangled and dead.
J’tll spit on him as well, adding to the insult of his defeat, before turning and walking away. He had a few bruises on him as well, but the fight had been, overall, boring. His competitor had not been a willing participant. Someone threw him in here as fodder. Meat for the grinder. Quite literally. J’tll didn’t know who it was, but he was willing to bet on the male who was even now coming at the sight of the violently dead.
The crowd was rushing for the bookie, trying to get their winnings from their bets. They didn’t trade credz here on Rik-Vane. Currency was useless in this place, but goods and resources were worth more than their weight in gold. Somewould only be able to eat today because of what they won on betting on J’tll’s victory.
J’tll would get his portion of the winnings later. He wouldn’t say he trusted the bookie to bring it, but the male knew he’d track him down and do worse than just crushing his skull if he tried to rip him off. Their partnership was one built on fear, and all of it was from that sneaky little thief that used J’tll as both protection and a living.
Stepping from the cage, into the back halls of the fighting ring, J’tll made his way to his room. The halls were once part of a building from the time when the station had been functioning, but the fighting cage had been built sometime afterwards. J’tll didn’t know by who. All he knew was that the gang that previously ran the fighting ring had tried to stiff him in payment, and he’d shown them how he had earned the name the Brute.
Now, the fighting rings were his. Rik-Vane didn’t have laws so much, but if you took something, it was yours until someone else took it from you. So, he lived here, he let the bookies run the fighting rings, and he took mechanic jobs out the back.
All in all, it wasn’t a bad set up.
Wasn’t good, but at least he had a stable roof over his head. That counted for something. And he also had a water spout in the basement. That was worth a lot. It had been a secret the gang had been keeping, and one he kept in turn. Water, fresh water, was worth killing for. If it got out he had access to a water pipe, he’d never stop fighting off challengers.
Luckily, his bloody reputation proceeded him.
He needed to wash off the other male’s blood and brains off his hands. There were chunks of flesh and bone and fur under hisclaws, splattered all up his arms. He needed to get it off and get ready for his next job. Someone was trading him fresh meat for fixing their generator.
J’tll had many jobs. It was the only way to really survive on Rik-Vane. Fighting rings were good money, but they were brutal and risky. Using his mechanical knowledge to repair things was more likely to get him food and supplies, but it came with a different risk. If someone wanted to try to scam him out of labor, he needed to put fists and boots on them.
Luckily, the name he earned in the ring made it easier to scare others into paying. And making examples out of the brave few who tried not to anyway did the rest.
Walking into the room that had a water pipe in the back, he grabbed a bowl and bent to use the lever to collect enough to rinse off with.
Water gathered, J’tll crouched and began rinsing off his hands. Most of the blood wasn’t his, but there was one long cut along the back of his forearm that his opponent could claim.
He might not have been there willingly, but he fought with everything he had. J’tll respected that. It was why he only crushed his head. If he’d really hated him, he would have prolonged his suffering. There were times when he made his opponents beg him for death first – sometimes through broken, jagged teeth – before he’d grant them a slow, merciless one.
The sounds of the drops splashing back into the bowl must have covered the steps of the male that came into the room, because J’tll only knew he was there by the shifting of the dark shadows near the entrance.
