BANG.

  A roar washed over him.

  “Yeah!”

  “Kill him!”

  “Rip him in two!”

  “Where—am i” Dion's consciousness swam for a second, like a ship slipping its moorings.

  Then it snapped back.

  The sun beat down on his face, the light catching the banners with an insignia of an arrow driven clean through the chest of a raven.

  The roar of the crowd, if you could call the raw, hungry noise a cheer, jerked him into the present.

  BANG.

  This time he felt it. The impact slammed the air from his lungs, hurling him backward across the gritty floor of the makeshift arena. The crowd erupted again.

  He pushed up on one elbow, his vision clearing.

  The spectators.

  Rags clung to bodies mapped with scars and starvation. Chains glinted. Captives, every one.

  And they were screaming for his blood.

  Fools.

  The thought echoed.

  “Lavos brat!” A voice cut through the din, sharp with impatience. His opponent stood at the far side of the arena, shaking out a scarred fist.

  Right.

  he thought, the last fog burning away.

  I’m fighting for my life.

  He wiped away the small trail of blood on his lip as he slowly stood up.

  “I’m going to tear you limb from limb.” the voice of his opponent echoed, eliciting another round of cheers from the audience.

  His gaze darted around the arena, not paying his opponent any mind, finding his weapon lying useless in the dirt.

  Unfortunately, it rested much closer to his opponent, who was hefting a massive, crude hammer in both hands, slowly moving in his direction.

  The thing was a brutal length of rusted metal bolted to a splintered haft.

  He had been hit by it twice.

  How was a kid no older than fifteen even standing after taking that hit? A question most of the spectators kept asking.

  Time to end this.

  Boom.

  He sprinted straight at the man.

  For an instant, the crowd fell silent, each captive held breath. The hammer swung in a wide, brutal arc, closing the distance between them.

  At the last second, he pivoted.

  His body twisted, a sudden redirection of force that left his attacker swinging at empty air. The momentum of the massive hammer pulled the man forward, off-balance. He was already inside his guard.

  Dion didn't grab for the hammer. He drove his elbow into the man's solar plexus. A wet, explosive gasp tore from his opponent's throat.

  The grip on the hammer faltered.

  He didn't let him recover. He clamped a hand on the man's wrist, twisted, and used his own stumbling weight to wrench him down.

  BAM

  The crowd's silence held for one more second. Then it shattered into a chaotic roar.

  “Hahaha I told you, only another of their kind can take them down”

  “Tchh, you cheered for the oaf just like the rest of us”

  Stolen from its original source, this story is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

  He ignored them, limping to where his weapon lay in the dirt, a sleek, rusted saber and picked it up without ceremony.

  His fingers curled around the worn leather grip, the weight of the blade a familiar anchor. The crowd's noise faded to a dull buzz in his ears.

  His focus narrowed to the space around him as he walked to his target.

  He rested the flat of his blade against the man's neck. His gaze lifted, not to the jeering captives, but past them to the figures on the elevated platform, the ones dressed in clean gear.

  "Champion."

  Round of cheers from the audience rang out, yet he paid them no mind.

  Around the pit of captives stood a ring of onlookers dressed in sturdy, clean gear. But what his eyes locked onto wasn't the cloth. It was the metal in their hands.

  Long, dark sticks of forged iron. Shorter, blocky ones of the same. They weren't tools. They were hollow things that spat thunder and made holes in men from a distance.

  He had seen their work.

  A signal came from above the pit, a slight, gloved hand raised. His gaze sharpened, following it.

  On the raised platform, shaded from the blazing sun, stood a woman. Guards flanked her, the dark shapes of their weapons a silent promise.

  She watched with him with a detached curiosity, as if observing an unusual insect.

  Her voice, when it came, was incongruously delicate, like polished glass in the dirt.

  “You Lavosians are something else. If I’d known your kind was this capable,” she said, “I would have 'taken' more.”

  Her eyes, though, held no softness. They gleamed with the cold, assessing light of a merchant weighing their stock.

  That was what he was, that was what they all were.

  The memory of the ambush.

  The deafening crack, the searing punch, the world going dark.

  His palm tightened, the blade biting deeper. A bead of blood traced a path down his opponent’s grimy neck.

  “That's enough for today” her words signalled for him to spare the opponent as she stood up, “I can't be losing good stock now, can I.” she ended.

  “Take them back to their cage”

  —

  For what felt like the hundredth time, Dion's eyes swept the cage. Nothing. Just silence pressing in, heavy and bare. No cracks to count, no sound but his own breathing.

  Every now and then, the world outside bled through, the snort of a horse, the murmur of voices too muffled to catch.

  Yet he could hear the distinct echoes of cries and screams of other slaves no doubt.

  A month in chains had accustomed him to the routine of capture. The shock had worn off, replaced by a cold, simmering fury.

  What truly shocked him now was the larger silence, the silence of the kingdoms. How had none of them noticed their borders being violated?

  These raiders, they moved like shadows, snatching people from the edges of the war.

  If he was being honest, wasn't this the perfect time to strike.

  So where are the armies?

  Unless something has gone wrong, horribly wrong.

  He was a prince. No, the Prince of Lavos. And here he was, bound in common iron.

  His manacled hands rose, the chain clinking, until his fingers found the familiar weight at his throat.

  He traced the cold metal of the signet ring hanging there, its engraved crest worn smooth from the gesture.

  His birthright.

  Now he had to fight in an arena to eat and live slightly better than the other captives.

  CREAK!

  A sharp sound split the silence, sharp enough to tear him out of his thoughts. The door of the iron cage groaned, then snapped open with a metallic clang that echoed in his skull.

  A figure stepped in the dark. Still, he knew who it was, there was no need for random guessing.

  He watched the figure walk forward. What caught his eye wasn’t the gait, but the mark, an insignia that glimmered faintly in the dark.

  His mind clawed at memories, rifling through court lessons, banners of rival houses, and sigils whispered in the old histories.

  A raven pierced by an arrow.

  Nothing. The insignia was alien, as were their faces.

  The figure drew close. The gloom around his cage peeled back, and he finally saw her clearly.

  Seris.

  The woman from the pit now stood before his bars. His utter lack of reaction, no flinch, no glare seemed to amuse her. A slow, wicked smile curled her lips.

  “You did well today,” she said, her voice a purr. Her palm came up to cup his face, the touch absurdly tender against the grime and dried blood.

  “You blanked out for a moment. Let that lumbering fool get a hit in.” Her thumb stroked his cheekbone.

  “Tell me, Prince. Were you thinking of home? Of Lavos?”

  She leaned closer, her breath ghosting over his ear. “Lavos will soon be dust, if it isn’t already. Your family, dead. Your kingdom, ruins. Whatever hope you’re clinging to…”

  She paused, letting the silence thicken. “It doesn’t exist.”

  “Where am I being taken?”

  The words stopped her cold. Not the question itself, but the way he said it flatly.

  No tears. No rage. Just a hollow calm, like he’d already bled out every last piece of himself.

  Seris studied his silence.

  Maybe there was simply nothing left to take.

  Still that commanding tone grated on her nerves. Yet against her own instincts, she chose to answer.

  “The New World.”

  Dion’s pupils constricted. The name hung in the air.

  At last, the look she had been waiting for flickered across his face. Despair.

  He had clung to a shred of hope, a fantasy that somehow he would rise above it all,

  He knew he was betrayed, even with their foreign weapons it was almost impossible to capture a Prince not to mention an heir.

  All of this led to a grim possibility. There were traitors in Lavos.

  His singular thoughts were about taking revenge against the traitor, who sold his kingdom.

  Her taunts had been easy to dismiss, the ranting of a child, the empty boasts of an enemy. That Lavos could fall? It was simply preposterous.

  Yet the new revelation, it was worse than he thought.

  If he was sold to other kingdoms or empires there was a chance to come back, but the New world.

  “Looks like you finally understand,” she purred, lips curling into a wicked grin.

  “Once we leave these shores, you’ll be paraded like cattle like the rest, sold to whichever of those devils decides your worth.”

  “I’ve heard there’s a particular order that delights in the bodies of young boys,” she went on, her grin widening. “And with royal blood in your veins? You’ll fetch a price high enough to make kings jeal—”

  “Why did you come here everyday? Frankly I'm tired of this back and forth with you”

  It was unthinkable.

  A slave speaking this way to a commander. Dion quickly steadied himself. Panic would fix nothing.

  He had studied her, too. For some reason, she enjoyed tormenting him with words. He didn't mind.

  She gave out pieces of information with every visit. And she had just given him the most valuable one yet.

  His worth.