HEIGHTENED SENSES FELT every rough edge of every pebble slam into the girl’s spine and crack her head. Her vision blurred and spiraled. She gasped, desperate to regain her breath, heart beating out a panicked cadence against her ribs. Only one thought emerged from her stunned mind. Better to die fighting than to live as a hen.
The infidel's victorious howl buzzed and rattled above her. The girl prayed the Gods would allow her to pass through the Gates. But as she drew another breath, something in her revolted. She wasn’t dead yet, so she had better keep fighting. Whether by force of will or the brew’s accelerants, her vision cleared enough to see her opponent standing high above.
The vermin made a mistake. It hesitated. It should have taken her head by now. But first, it wanted to gloat and shake its vile claws at the Masters.
Now it would kill her.
Raising the axe high above its writhing sense tendrils, it leaped from the top boulder. The axe came slicing down. Its aim was precise, yet the blade scattered only sand and gravel.
A fraction of a second slower, and she would have been over, another dead girl dripping brains on the pit floor. When she rolled to the side, the blade came so close she could feel the wake of air currents sliding over her scalp, its deadly song humming in her ear.
She rolled into the creature’s right leg. Trained instincts took control. Pivoting and twisting, she grabbed hold of its claw-foot while her legs snaked around the alien’s hind leg. One more roll and the vleez fell forward. It had four arms to catch itself with, but had to let go of the axe to keep from smashing its metal-grafted face to the ground.
In shape and structure, its legs were alien to her own. But like a human, it had joints that bent perfectly well in one direction, while not at all in another. Knowing better than to hesitate, she readjusted for maximum torque, then pulled and twisted on its foot with all her strength. Her chest erupted in agony like daggers were grinding into her ribs. She screamed, and she pulled, and she twisted. When the popping snap finally came, she didn’t know if it was her or the vleez who broke.
In truth, it was the both of them. For the vleez, it was grossly obvious. The flesh around the claw-foot ripped open, part of its joint tearing through. Thick, dark blood oozed from the twisted open joint, giving off a putrid reek. The alien’s agonized wail would have horrified the young mine rat she had been, sent her screaming and crying down into the tunnels, fleeing that wretched noise. But something broke in her too. The drums, the brew, the pain, the urgent shouting in her head demanding that she not die yet. All fused into an unrelenting bloodlust.
Tossing aside its dangling foot, she spied the fallen axe. To reach it she needed to navigate around the vermin and its claws. Even if she retrieved it, she would still struggle to wield the heavy axe while the slice across her chest drained her of blood and strength. Realization and movement happened simultaneously. She was scrambling up the rocks as she remembered the blue glint of light hidden near the top of the boulder pile. The girl had heard stories from the pitters of her discipline, but had never found one in any of her pit fights.
Please be there. Please be a gem.
Instead of slowing her climb, the agony in her chest propelled her onward. Her mind’s eye answered every flash of pain with a vision of her dismembering that thing, splattering black blood and guts, coating her hands and face with gore. She ignored the red smears of blood marking her trail up the misshapen boulders. She no longer heard the insistent rumble of drums. Only the harsh thumping of her own heartbeat throbbing in her skull.
The blue glint of light had come from a small crevice between two rocks at the top of the mound. She thought she could find it again immediately. But when she reached the small summit, nothing looked familiar. Her head swam, and her vision blurred around the edges. Her heartbeat morphed from a war drum to a hammer, pounding behind her eyes. She wanted to scream her fury and frustration, but her breath was shallow, and the scream faltered, unuttered. The glorious rush of ecstatic rage slipped away with the blood pouring from her wound.
No. No. No. I will find it. I will find a weapon. I will live. I will squash that vermin. And I will have a name. A name of my own.
She didn’t hear its labored, rattling breath until the claw bit into her ankle. The girl fell hard on her left side as the vleez pulled her leg out from under her. The daggers in her chest swarmed through her arm and down her legs. Her sight blurred further, reducing her vision to a small tunnel of light through the fog, filled with the image of her opponent’s head. The six probing sense tendrils were all she could see of its true face; the respirator masked the rest. It revolted her even as the sharp pain in her ankle enraged. Attempting to return the maiming she had given it, the creature gripped and twisted at her left foot, trying to tear it off. But the vleez twisted the wrong way to do any real damage.
She pivoted her hips, turning into the direction the vleez twisted, and slammed her bare right instep into the base of its sense tendrils. Howling in metallic anguish, the vermin released her foot immediately. It went berserk, convulsing against the rock and rubble, splashing black gunk everywhere. She scrambled away, almost pushing herself headfirst over the edge. Her right hand reached out, grasping for a solid handhold, and found what her eyes could not. The crevice.
After stabilizing her balance atop the boulder, she pulled her head up to meet her hand at the gap between the rocks. Blue pinpoints of light pierced the fog of her vision. The gap was narrow and shallow, but the weapon, whatever it was, still lay just out of reach. Summoning the last of her willpower, she found the strength to jab her hand down into the crevice. The rough-edged rocks scraping away the skin of her hand was a minor discomfort compared to taking an axe to the chest.
With her hand and arm blocking her view, she couldn’t see where she was reaching. But her whole body knew when she touched the perfectly smooth surface. An electric shock sparked through every part of her, flesh and blood and bone. For a brief moment, the fog of her vision dissolved into complete blackness before her senses exploded back into fierce clarity. She felt as if she had gulped down ten thousand bowls of pitters brew.
This must be a yarist gem. Oh Gods, it’s far more powerful than I dreamed. The ecstatic rage state she had briefly tasted before now blossomed within her, ready to burst into fire.
She gave in to her rage and let the flames consume her.
This time she heard the alien’s rattling wheeze before it ambushed her. Prone now, on five unsteady limbs, the vermin crawled toward her across the bloody rocks, foul-smelling, black ooze dripping from its injured claw-foot. With her right hand caught in the crevice gripping the gem and her left side awash with blood, the vleez didn’t hesitate to go for the kill this time.
It clumsily lurched forward, clamped two of its claw-hands around her neck. When she tried to pry them off with her left, a third claw snatched her wrist. They were face to face again. She could see the hostile fury in the creature. Its tendrils, swollen and puffy from her kick, stood straight on end. The reek of the oozing wound churned her stomach. Its claw-hands tightened around her neck while the tendrils trembled with seemingly vengeful glee. But she was not afraid.
Even as the infidel sought to squeeze the last living breath from her, the gem continued pouring a strange crackling energy through her body. The girl felt beyond strong. Felt a perfection unlike anything she had known before. She thanked the Divine Masters for creating miracles like the yarist gems, and she thanked the Gods for guiding her to one. By Their grace, at least she’ll kill one more unholy vleez before passing on to serve the Gods beyond the Gates.
The rocks on either side of the crevice cracked and splintered. An instant later, the cracks erupted into shards and dust as she ripped her hand free. She clutched the small gem in her fist, her fingers outlined with a shimmering blue glow. Her bones felt like steel, her muscles like pistons. The ecstatic blood rage felt better than sex, better than victory. The girl was a being of pure destructive focus, created
and wielded by the Divine Masters themselves.
She slammed her fist into the vermin’s respirator. The metal dented into its face with a terrible creaking sound. Mechanical hisses of gas accompanied its buzzing screams. Her left hand slipped free, and she used it to pull the choking claws from her throat as she continued to hammer the vermin’s head with her right. Her opponent crumpled beneath her attack, falling supine to the rocks. She kicked its abdomen and sent the vermin rolling over the side, cracking against ragged boulders as it fell.
She leaped down the mound’s rocky slope until she stood right above it. The feeble thing held its arms over its head, a weak and pitiful slew of buzzing syllables issuing from the mangled respirator. It begged for mercy.
She gave none.
The fury burned with complete control of her will. Bloody visions came to violent realization. She didn’t remember picking up the fallen axe, only the thrill of feeling it in her hands, the exhilaration of swinging the blade. She hacked into her opponent, again and again, until finally, with its chest cracked, its limbs scattered, and its thick, black blood coating her bare skin and staining her tunic, the last spasmodic death throes settled, and the once-quivering sense tendrils lay motionless in the rubble.
Then she took its head.
The drums stopped. Victory. Nine victories.
Too bad I won’t live long enough to have my name.
She raised her gore-covered face to the blinding white light above her, to the Divine Masters, to the Handmaiden—her blood-mother—who sat at their feet. She held up the severed head by the limp tendrils for them all to behold.
“See me!” she screamed, tasting blood. “SEE ME!” The girl threw the head spinning through the air, a spiraling arc of dark blood trailing behind. She lost her balance and fell to her knees. The pit spun around her.
“See me,” she gurgled one last time, her own blood gushing up over her lips. The bright lights of the fighting pit dimmed, then scattered, then faded to nothing.
5.
“I HAVE A name.” The girl studied her naked and bruised body in the mirror, its edges fogged by the warm steam of the nearby enzyme bath. Focusing on the reflection of her lips, wanting to study the shape of them speaking her name for the first time, she paused, and savored the anticipation.
“Sabira. My name is Sabira.”
Grandfather Spear had chosen well for her. She loved the sound of it. The sound of an honor she had nearly died for. The sound that was one thing that was truly hers.
“Sabira.”
Her fingertip brushed the two new glyphs tattooed on her left cheek. One for a victory, one for a name. On the right cheek, the Servants glyph. The three were still puffy and tender. The High Overseer of the Labyrinth himself had marked them on her. Pinnacle Rab Izd and Penultimate Ohrus Izd of the Zol-Ori also attended. Sabira had been astonished to be in their presence a second time. They both said her name. Grandfather Spear was there, along with all the other pitters who had been in discipline with her. A crew of servants from the Zol-Ori drummed for the ceremony as a group of chosen chanted holy scriptures. And in the back corner of the hall, Sabira saw her brood-sister, silent, smiling bravely, unseen by all but her.
May Mother of Life see you sister. I’m sorry that I probably never will again.
For years she had dreamed of her naming. The ceremony was over before she’d fully grasped that it had begun.
Time passes strangely for the unseen, she thought. For years we labor and train and fight, and it feels bottomless. And then something important happens, something extra gold, all for me, and it begins and ends quicker than a pit fight. But now, she let herself smile, now I have a name.
“A name stays,” she said aloud to no one, alone in the small victor’s cell.
Talking hurt. A chain of bruises encircled her throat, purple and blue splotches fading to a sickly yellow around the edges. They were barely noticeable compared to the axe wound.
The scar ran from her left shoulder in a straight, brutal line to below her sternum, cleaving her left breast in two. Seeing her disfigured breast didn’t traumatize her the way she thought it might. Seeing the scar in reflection for this first time felt unreal. That couldn’t really be her, staring back with three new glyphs and one less breast.
“They’d only just filled out this year.” She thought of her brood-sister and her swelling bosom and how just before her last pit Sabira had fantasized herself, gloriously covered in glyphs and scars.
The Gods do answer our prayers.
Too frightened to touch the puffy flesh of the wound, she reached out to stroke the mirror’s reflection of her ruined breast. The smooth, hard surface of the mirror reminded her of the gem. She didn’t understand how she had broken through stone and crushed metal with her bare hands, how she had survived. She remembered the frenzied bloodlust that burned through her, so much wilder and all consuming than pitters brew. Part of her feared that rush, afraid of losing herself to rage and transforming forever into something . . . brutish, animalistic. Another part of her wanted more.
She wondered what the pillow would do when he came in. Will he refuse my reward when he sees me? Will the Zohlun-Lo force him?
Eight times previously, Sabira’s victories had been rewarded by having a pillow and privacy for a full nine-hour shift. She may never know if she had conceived on those occasions, or any other time she drilled. If any human woman was impregnated, the medics would remove it, often in her sleep, and implant the child within a hen. The blood-mother may never know it happened. Never have to stop working, never stop mining, never stop training to kill.
She had this one sleep shift only in a private room; she knew better than to waste a moment. The room even had its own toilet and bath. A warm enzyme bath all to herself was a rare luxury few in Warrens Zevna would ever know. Only those brave enough to face the pit on their path to joining the Servants. And of those, of course, only those who returned.
Soon after finishing her bath and donning a new tunic, she heard three sounds in quick succession: the hiss of the front door sliding open, then the sharp crackling of an electric prod, followed by a boy’s pained yelp. She pulled aside the curtain separating the bath from the bedroom to find an overseer’s three yellow eyes staring back at her. The prod crackled again, reminding Sabira of her place, and she lowered her eyes.
“Allseer see me, if it isn’t the cheating little mine rat. You should be dead.” The overseer loomed over her, blocking out the corridor light strips from view. “I lost sixty privileges because of you.”
Sabira darted a glance up at him. He was the younger of the two that had walked her to her last pit. She knew it was against Divine Will to hate the Zohlun-Lo, but her heart betrayed her. She prayed this one sin would not be enough to keep her locked out of the Gates when her day came.
The overseer kicked the boy hard in his side, grunted at him to get up. The door swooshed closed behind as he left.
The pillow rolled onto his back, wincing. A kind face, grimacing in pain, returned her gaze. He was more handsome than the previous eight, deep handsome like her sister predicted, and that brought back a trace of her smile. Only a few glyphs ran down his smooth scalp to his thin, colorless eyebrows. The tattooed glyph of the Pillows marked his right cheek. Slim, but tightly muscled beneath his tunic, he looked like he was maybe the same age as her. As he stood, he clutched at his ribs where the overseer had kicked him.
“You have a name glyph,” he said. “It’s beautiful. What does it say?”
“My name is Sabira,” she said, trying to keep from smiling as she approached him. “I just had my naming today.”
“Sabira. The saber. Extra gold. It fits you,” he said with a hint of a smile, his eyes roving over her. “What warrens you from?”
“Zevna,” she answered, slyly examining the wide, sharp bridge of his shoulders.
“Oh, the Diggers. I’m from Warrens Dreena,” he said, “with the Aggies. Sometimes I work c
rops in the caverns, but there’s a pyramid ship on home leave right now, so my pillow duties have been keeping me busy lately.”
A wry twist formed on his lips. “Better than working crops. But even when I do, the overseers don’t work me too hard. They want me to be a pleasing reward for the Pitters and Servants, so they don’t give me the rod all that often. One of the advantages of choosing the Pillows.”
He shrugged off his tunic. “So do you like me? Am I a pleasing reward?”
“I do.” Sabira reached out and glided her fingers over the smooth skin of his muscled chest, the ripple of his ribcage, carefully avoiding the bright, fresh bruise from the Zohlun-Lo’s boot. She paused abruptly and pulled her hand away, rested it gingerly on her tunic over her disfigured breast.
“Something wrong?” he asked.
“I nearly died.” Sabira felt both fearful and relieved to say it out loud. “In my last pit. Was certain I was dead. But now here I am. I even have a name of my own. And for tonight at least, I have this room and you to share it with me.” She sat down on the edge of the cot and picked up the hand drum sitting nearby on the floor. Her first drum, a gift from Grandfather. She tapped out a short faltering beat similar to the rhythms played in the pit. Servant Discipline started tomorrow, and she would be learning the drum as she learned her weapons.
“Conqueror sees you,” he said.
Something about his tone felt off to Sabira. He sounded so much less sincere just then. Well, it wasn’t his sincerity she wanted.
“For some reason, the Gods have seen me and blessed me, Pillow. I don’t know why under the rocks, or how long it will last, so I will take all I can while the Gods still see me. And I remember you saying something about being a pleasing reward.”
She grabbed his hand and pulled him down to the cot next to her, pulled his lips to hers. His hands were strong and sure, his touch thrilled her. The simple glide of his fingertips sent chills up her spine. When his fingers slid up from her waist under her tunic and found her mutilated breast, he froze. His eyes went wide with confusion. He lowered his hands, leaned back from the kiss.
Before the Shattered Gates of Heaven Part 1: Trickster's Pit (Shattered Gates Volume 1 Part 1) Page 3
