by Guy Estes
Silence while someone thought it over.
“Yes, I think that will do. Marcus was particularly keen on this one, though he didn’t say why. Let’s take particular care not to spoil her.”
She heard her cage door open and felt someone kneel next to her. Fingers squeezed the side of her mouth and forced it open. A vial was inserted and dumped some burning liquid in. She had no strength to do anything but swallow. Then her symptoms got worse.
* * *
Aleena inexplicably found herself in frigid darkness. A mournful wind sang its dirge as it swept past her, its origin and destination unknown.
Have I escaped? What is this place? How did I get here?
Having no better idea, she began walking, but the total darkness made it impossible for her to know what direction she was moving in. She had been walking for what seemed a fair length of time (though something told her that time was meaningless in this place) when she noticed that her surroundings had faded from black to bluish-grey, and a few features were beginning to materialize. She was walking on snow, a strange and new substance to her, as it never snowed where she grew up. The wind blew it in gossamer veils before her, and she now noticed drifts piled up around black scraggly trees that appeared to be victims of a forest fire.
Now the wind scraped away snow to reveal boulders littering the desolate landscape. Aleena followed a vague path through the drifts and rocks. She passed a frozen pond and beheld herself in its mirrored surface. She wore a garment that was foreign to her. It was a sleeveless black gown that had red running over it in a pattern that mimicked flames. The skirt split up the left and right sides, almost to her hips. Her feet were bare. It was beautiful. It was also as practical for this climate as wool would be in the tropics.
Why would I have worn such a thing to this frozen wasteland? True, it is quite beautiful, but for all the warmth it provides, I may as well go naked.
Aleena continued on, past the frozen pond and down into a depression between massive snow drifts and entered a dense forest. Boulders lined the bases of the drifts, almost as if someone had placed them there. As she entered the depression, Aleena was stricken with a sense of dread so powerful it stopped her in her tracks. The wind blew harder, and she forced herself to keep going. As she reached the lowest point in the depression, the wind stopped as abruptly as if a door had been closed to shut it off. Everything was silent and still. Aleena wondered what this place was, why she was here, why she could not remember traveling here, and, most important to her at that particular moment, why she had done something as stupid as to come here unarmed.
"Because your weapons are useless here."
Aleena started, trying to locate the owner of the voice that sounded horribly familiar, and yet it was alien. A woman strolled out from behind a huge drift that stood just before the trail's entrance into the forest. Aleena's mouth dropped open as she beheld herself walking around the drift and coming towards her. She wore an identical dress and was Aleena's twin in every aspect save three. This new Aleena had claws. Her eyes were glittering pools of orange light, and when she smiled her fangs could be seen. She held her arms open to embrace Aleena, her demonic smile brightening.
“Welcome home!”
Aleena jerked awake with a gasp. Realizing she was back in her cage, she hung her head and wept. Most of her symptoms had faded, but her mind was no better. She felt as if she was being sucked down a black vortex. She had been taken from her home, she had been taken from her freedom, her new friends, the Solvah Shkarr, and now she was in the deep dungeon, having been taken from the sunlight. And while she lay there, Aleena felt herself being taken from something else. She knew she was losing something of the highest significance, but she wasn’t sure what that something was, and her lack of understanding made her utterly powerless to stop it from whirling down to unknown depths at dizzying speed.
What are they doing to me? Why are they doing it to me? Dear Tamura, how much of this am I to endure? Why am I allowed to contemplate my fate if I can do nothing about it?
Aleena saw the man in the cage directly across from her and noticed that he looked more like some abomination nature never intended to exist than he did a man. His arms reached his knees. His face now had a muzzle where his mouth and nose were, and only about half of his skin was visible due to the long hair that was sprouting from his body. And he had been receiving the same treatments that Aleena had. With the impact of a lightning bolt, Aleena’s mind cleared and she suddenly realized the purpose for the entire program she was being subjected to. They were going to make their profit off of her. They were going to make her fight, even if they had to turn her into a beast to do it.
* * *
They continued their treatments of her, giving her more and more of that drink or potion or whatever it was. Though her head continued to swim and her awareness was sporadic, she had moments of stability. She noticed she could see perfectly fine, despite her dim surroundings, and she could hear whispered conversations across the room. She could distinguish the separate smells of separate bodies, even separate ingredients in bottles and flasks. The phenomenon was tantalizingly familiar, but her fogged brain could not remember where it was from.
Even though she was not in the stupor she had been, she did not resist the potion they gave her. An attendant would open the cage and give it to her and she would mindlessly swallow it. Whereas they had given it to her from small vials that could be drained with a single gulp, now they gave it to her in flasks that took several swallows to empty. It was when she handed the flask back to the attendant that she noticed her claws. It was not simply that her fingernails were longer. She had actual claws, amber and curved, like a lizard’s.
“My,” said an attendant, “but we are making fine progress, aren’t we?”
He held up a mirror and let Aleena see herself. Her eyes were no longer grey. They were a glittering amber, with vertical slits for pupils, and her teeth had become fangs. Some part of her numbed mind ignited and told her this was cause for concern, but it extinguished almost as quickly as it had flared up.
* * *
Aleena again found herself in the frozen wasteland facing her double.
"Who are you?" was all Aleena could get out of her mouth other than shocked gasps.
"You know very well who I am," her double replied with a grisly smile. Aleena shook her head.
"I do not. Never have I seen your like."
"You see my like every time you look in a mirror," the double laughed. "You and I have danced more times than either of us can count. I have gotten you out of one predicament after another and, quite frankly, I am sick and tired of your ingratitude. After all I have done for you and you do not even have the common decency to acknowledge my very existence, much less thank me."
"What the bloody hell are you talking about? What predicaments have you gotten me out of? In every problem I have encountered, from the first time I killed to date, the only person who got me out of it was me."
"Precisely," the replica said, and gave Aleena another wicked smile. Her eyes glowed brighter, and she chuckled.
Aleena's hands ached for the heft of a broadsword. She flexed her fingers.
"I told you," the replica said. "Your weapons would do you no good here."
"And where exactly is here?"
"The absolute worst place you could ever go."
"And that would be?"
"Why do you ask questions when you already know the answers?"
"I grow tired of your riddles, demon. What business do you have with me?"
"Now that is exactly what I'm talking about. All that I have done for you and all you can do is call me demon." The replica sighed. "You really have no idea what this is all about, do you?"
"No, I don't."
"Yes, you do," the double laughed. "You just won't face the truth."
"Who in the seven hells are you?"
"Temper, temper," the replica purred. "I like that," she
breathed, like a lover on the brink of ecstasy. "Allow me to introduce you to the real you."
"And that would be?"
"Me." She gave Aleena another toothy smile and walked towards her with open arms.
Aleena jerked herself awake and was again in her cell. She took a moment to realize where she was, a realization that brought crushing sorrow, but then a new sensation flowered into being – anger. For the first time she hated these dark men in their dark robes. Before, her brain had been too fogged for hate, but now it was rolling in her heart.
One of them got into her cell to give her the potion, which was in an even larger flask than the previous one had been. Aleena needed both hands to hold it. She took it and drank. As she did so, her eyes were locked on him. He was confused, as she’d never displayed this level of awareness before. The others noticed it, too, but they were more experienced and had an idea of what this meant. One of them secured the cage door behind him.
“What in the –“ he said, turning.
Aleena pounced on him with a shriek. She continued to scream wordlessly as she pressed him into the bars. Then she stumbled forward into them as his body passed through them, sloppily divided into four sections. The others stared at her in horror. Her face remained expressionless and her eyes retained their saurian cast as she slowly licked the blood from the bars. They were cleaning up the mess their colleague had become when rage again lit her once-expressionless face. With a snarl and bared fangs, she grabbed a bar with each hand and effortlessly wrenched them out. Cries of alarm erupted throughout the room and the men began scrambling about. The ugly leader came forward and cast a glass ball into Aleena’s cage. It burst and scattered purple dust all around her, enveloping her. Aleena’s senses swam, but she remained upright and jerked another bar free. A second glass ball broke at her feet, followed by a third and fourth. The purple dust was so thick she could see nothing. Then she swooned into darkness.
When she awoke it was to the immense lethargy she’d experienced before, too weak to open her eyes, but she could passively listen.
"She is obviously far too dangerous. We've subjected her to the same regimen that we subject all of them to, yet this is the first time we’ve seen draconic traits emerge. How has that happened?"
"I heard tell today that Sternius placed a hot iron on her face. A few days later she was as beautiful as she is now."
They glanced amongst each other then.
"You know what that signifies," one of them finally said.
"We have snared one of the Chosen."
"And if her gift is that of the warrior..."
"Gods protect us!"
"Does Marcus have any idea?"
"I don't believe so."
"I am not a religious man, but I do not think it wise to toy with the Chosen. They are not of this world, and if her gift is what we think it is then we will all be dead men as soon as she can free herself."
"How would she do that?"
"The same way she snapped steel bars with her bare hands! One bar per hand, mind you! How in the seven hells did she do that? Our treatment would not impart that kind of strength."
“Given the physical changes wrought in her,” the ugly leader said, “I suspect she may possess the Strength of the dragon.”
“Dear gods! And we used her for a subject!”
"Well, we certainly cannot just set her free. Not after the treatments she's received."
"I’ll tell Marcus she’s ready," the leader said. “Let the games deal with her.”
The others nodded.
"Yes, that is the perfect solution."
Later that day the rear wall to her cage fell open to reveal more bars, and she saw that her cage was hitched to a team of horses. She turned to find the disgusting leader of the dark scholars looking at her.
"I apologize, my child," he said, "but you leave me no choice. I see now that you possess the Strength of the dragon. Had I known this before, I never would have given you the treatments. Now it is too late. You are too dangerous. I cannot keep you caged, and I cannot very well let you run free, so I'm afraid you must be destroyed. You will fight in the arena until you die. Not even the Strength of the dragon is inexhaustible. It is indeed a pity. You showed such promise, and we haven’t had a gladiatrix here in quite some time."
The horses began to drag her cage away from the ugly man and towards the source of the infernal light and racket. Aleena flung herself against her bars in berserk fury. She had finally sunk to the level where words no longer existed. She simply screeched and growled and spat, her hair flying about in a golden tangle. The horses continued to haul her closer to the cursed light and noise, and two arena workers were poking at her with sticks, one of which she bit off. On a deep level of her mind, one that was barely within reach of her tormented spirit, a coherent thought briefly surfaced.
Avenge yourself.
Aleena saw the ugly man down the tunnel in the direction from which she had come and wrenched one side of her cage off. Then she was out and bounding down the tunnel, down into the darkness and away from the light, towards the man who did this to her. She was fast, faster than she'd ever been in her life. She slammed into him, both of them hurtling through the air to land inside the laboratory, her claws tearing his robes and skin. She had him on his back and had her claws poking his chest. With fingers as stiff as iron, she inserted her claws into his heaving chest, his screams bringing a smile to her face. Blood erupted around her hands as they slid deeper into his thoracic cavity. A hand clamped onto her shoulder. Aleena's fangs found the wrist and bit it. The would-be rescuer fled, and Aleena spat out his hand. When she was into her victim's chest up to her forearms, she pulled her hands in opposite directions.
"Why did you do this to me!"
Her shriek echoed off the tunnel walls, sounding more like a tormented soul than a human being. The man's torso came apart, cracked open like a boiled crab. Aleena launched herself off of him and proceeded to swipe her claws across any throat she could reach, and there were many of those. Then she grabbed a torch in each hand and lit every scroll and every table she could find, until the dark room was awash in flames. A few attendants were huddled in a corner, surrounded by flames. Aleena continued to move around the room in a swirling fury that bore a macabre resemblance to a dance, passing directly through walls of flames, though not one blister was raised, not one hair singed. She grabbed chairs and tables that were completely engulfed in fire and threw them at surviving attendants, her hands coming away from the flames unscathed. Finally, when she saw that she could do no more damage to this diabolical laboratory, she headed for the tunnel through which they'd tried to drag her to the arena, flames caressing her body with what the survivors could only describe as reverence, her eyes iridescent pools of orange incandescence. She saw herself in the fragments of a mirror when her brain suddenly started swimming and her world began to spin as an alien feeling flooded through her. Her mind, degenerated into something that was more than an animal's but beneath a human's, did not recognize the strange but powerful emotion. As its last act before the floor gave her a sharp smack on the face, the ever-dwindling human part of her mind recognized the tragic loss of herself.
* * *
Aleena again found herself in the snow, facing her double. Aleena backed away from her, shaking her head, her eyes wide.
"No,” she said in response to the demoness telling her that they were the same. “That isn't possible. You just look like me, but you are really a demon, come to do what mortal men could not."
The replica chuckled. "Yes, blame it all on demons. Personally, I think you mortals are entirely too modest. Why give them all the credit for things you have done? And I must say I find many of your depredations truly artistic."
"What are you babbling about? I have committed no depredations."
"Oh? And what about your antics in the laboratory? You cost Marcus a great deal of money and resources. You wiped out his entire academic sta
ff, along with all of their materials and records. I was impressed." She stopped and smiled. "Yes, I was there. You saw me in the mirror."
"No," Aleena shouted as she continued to back away, her lower lip quivering. "That cannot be!"
"It can, and it is. Come now, Aleena," the replica said as she quickened her pace towards Aleena. "The truth is obvious. It will be much less agonizing if you just accept it and surrender quietly."
Aleena turned to run and found her duplicate waiting for her.
"Is it so difficult, Aleena? We have so much in common. We even buy our clothes from the same tailor."
Aleena looked around, as desperate as a cornered mouse. She grabbed a fallen tree branch and picked it up. Her double ran at her. Aleena sidestepped and swung her club into the double's belly. The replica bent over, and Aleena brought the club down on the back of her skull, dropping her face first into the snow. The replica rolled to her knees and smiled. Aleena slammed the club into the replica's face in a swing that would have toppled a stone tower, dropping her double in the snow ten feet away. Aleena watched in stupefied horror as the replica pushed herself up, her eyes blazing with such intensity that they cast an orange light across the snow, like the hellish light streaming from the slitted windows of a fortress. There was no trace of any damage on her face, and her mouth was open in a grin of sincerest gratification. When she stood up, she was a foot taller than Aleena. Aleena's frustration quickly became raw terror. She turned to run, her disgust with herself for cowardice equaling her desire for this to be over. Her replica laughed.
"You poor, cowardly little fool! Now you see why I no longer wish to let you rule. I can no longer stomach the dishonor your cowardice has brought upon us! Think of all those slaves who would be free if you’d embraced me. Think of those women who were raped in your place, all because you refused to accept me. I shall be the dominant one now, and you can sit in the dark recesses and be helpless while you are rejected and reviled."
