At least until all the sounds stopped. The king’s voice boomed, and silence descended upon the crowd.
"Friends! Family. You have all gathered here today for quite the spectacle. I promised you something new, did I not?"
Cheers rose, and Rose flinched into the guard. He clearly did not like that, because he grunted and shoved her away from him. It jerked her arm so hard she swore it popped out of the socket for a moment. The pain shocked her into silence as the king spoke again.
"For years we have watched my warriors fight. They have given us show after show. They have proven themselves worthy in so many ways. The ones who are still alive, at least." He chuckled, as though that was a funny joke, when it wasn't at all. People were dying. "Now, I want to give them a gift. A gift unimaginable to them, I'm certain. They have not seen softness or kindness in many years. But now, I give them?—"
There was a long pause, and then a sudden blast of light. The guard had whipped the bag off her head.
She tried to lift her arm to shield her face from it, but the guard held onto her tightly, forcing her to look into the sun where it was revealed from a hole in the ceiling above her head. Swaths of red fabric hung down from the ceiling as well, creating a river of blood that hung over her head. And then there were the stands. Countless of them. Far above her head, because the walls that held them up were at least fifteen feet taller than she was. No one was climbing out of the pit she stood in with the guard.
And it was a pit. The ground was just packed earth, a circle of earth that was smeared with dark smudges. She was alone with the guard and hundreds of eyes staring down at her.
Who even were these people?
She stared back at them, noting all the faces that were vaguely familiar but so much older than when she’d known them. There were priestesses up there, she realized. Quite a few of them must have been girls she had been in school with, but she couldn't remember a single one of them. All of those faces, all those people she had once loved, they were all gone.
Only one face had stayed in her memory, and that was only because it was like looking in a mirror.
"Astrid," she croaked, as though saying the name might call her sister out from behind a person. But she wasn't there. Astrid hadn't found her in countless years, and she wasn't going to find her now. The priestesses were likely handpicked from those who wouldn't know who she was, and people who wouldn't recognize her.
There was no one here who could help her. No matter how much she begged.
She didn’t want to be here. Whatever this was, it wasn’t going to end well for her. So instead, she turned her face to the sun and closed her eyes, soaking in the warmth of its rays that she might never see again.
"This woman!" The king continued, gesturing with a hand at Rose as though she was nothing more than property. "The priestess you see before you is a feral creature who has defied my orders far too many times. But her beauty has yet to fade, and my warriors are hungry. Tonight, I will give the winner a gift of beauty!"
A gift of...
Oh. Right. Her.
Rose should have been terrified, she supposed. There should have been some kind of fear, but she only felt a little spike of excitement that she wouldn't be here anymore. They could do with her mortal form however they wished, but she wouldfinally be free of this place. The king had given her the perfect opportunity to flee into the realm of her own making.
"Stay here," the guard grumbled, and then he left. She didn't have anywhere to go, so she stayed right where she was as doors all around her opened and men were shoved out.
Some of them were tall and broad. Clearly workers who had spent their entire lives using their bodies. Others were thin, weasel-like, probably surviving in this place through wit and wit alone.
There were even a few trolls, which shocked her. They were massive, lumbering beasts. Their tusks glinted in the sunlight that beamed down upon them, but all of them seemed to be handicapped in some way. One of them had his arms tied behind his back. Another appeared to be strapped down with weights. And a third wasn't given a single weapon when everyone else entering the room was armed to the teeth.
It wasn't a fair fight. But the trolls weren't even looking at her. They were looking at the human men with disdain and anger.
"Let the fight begin!" The king shouted from somewhere above them all, and a giant gong rang throughout the room.
Rose didn't even have a moment to flinch. All the men sprinted at each other with cries of rage, anguish, and brutality as they struck together in a wall of muscle that she swore she could hear. It was as if someone had thrown her into a battlefield.
Rose had been confined to a single room for years. This was too much space. Too many bodies. The sounds were overwhelming, and the blood even more so.
A man sprinted toward her, and she didn't even have time to react before a sword passed through his neck. The blade got stuck somewhere halfway through, and while the other man was wrenching at it, a third man cut the killer down.
Blood splattered across her face, and suddenly the heat of it, too warm, reminded her where she was. There were people dying all around her, and she was standing still.
Gasping, she raced away from the men who were fighting, only to realize there were men fighting everywhere around her. She was surrounded on all sides by so many people. The only sounds she could hear were the screams of the dying, the grunts of those who were killing them, and the hopeless moans of the wounded. No healers existed for those who lived in this labyrinth.
A sword swung by her face. She felt the wind of it brush her cheek and fell back trying to get away from it. Staggering, she twisted at the last second to land painfully on her hands and knees in the darkened earth.
The dark patches that dotted everywhere around her were blood. The stains spread out all around her, beneath her hands, coating between her fingers. It was brutal and awful, and she shouldn't still be here.
"Rhydian," she whispered as she crawled through the carnage. "Rhydian, please. Let me come home."
