Break 4
Author: Wildbow

Break 4 | Pale

Next Chapter

Cagerattler

Men with guns entered the Arena, fanning out as they got past the bottleneck of the back hallway, stepping out onto the stands.

“What the hellllll?” one of the men asked.

“Entrants may come at any time before the contest concludes, two entrants may fight at a time,” the Aurum Coil told them.  “The last of you standing may take the Carmine Throne.  Have you joined individually, or is one of you set on the throne?  The others may be soldiers or servants of the entrant, so long as they swear to secrecy about what unfolds.”

“None of us,” another of the men said.  “None of us wants your shitty throne.”

“I would be very careful about what answer you give,” the Alabaster told them.  “There is a way this ends where some of you can walk away.”

The Sable passed across the hallway behind them, raising one hand.  Spikes of black crystal gathered around the door, all of them pointing from the door toward the Arena.  It meant that those entering could glide alongside the spikes and enter, but those within would have to walk into a hundred bristling points of varying lengths and angles.

A woman in the group pointed her gun at the Sable’s head.  She spoke with a coarse French accent, “None of that.”

“It’s done.  This sort of contest began before even the accords of Solomon.  Those of us who administrate this competition are backed by thousands of years of precedent.”

“This bullet is backed by some force too, non?”

Lucas Olson gripped the bars of the living cage he was crouched within, head bent forward, with no comfortable sitting position.  The most comfortable surface resembled sandpaper in texture, the least comfortable spots like razors fused to the space by something that seemed to combine the worst traits of rust and mold, or where needles were fused to the metal frame, serrated with rust along their length, so they dragged going in and dragged coming out.  His right wrist had a shackle on it, of the same material, and it had rubbed enough that there was barely any flesh, hard material grating against bone.  The hand was consequently weak, shot through with pain every second, more intense than if he’d slammed his funny bone on a corner.  His left ankle was the same, but the attached foot was mostly dead.  It didn’t inflict shooting pain on him, but instead it perpetually died, pumping toxins and weakness into his leg, groin, and lower stomach.

For all that, he was mostly pristine.  His skin would get scratched, then heal when he wasn’t aware of the pain anymore.  His hand wouldn’t die or rot off.  Clothes had turned to rags and fallen off, his hair had grown long, until it could touch his lap, and it wasn’t as greasy as it should be.

He’d forgotten a lot, over the years, but the demeanor of the woman struck a chord in his memory.

“Can we talk?” Lucas asked.

“What the fuck are you, man?” the first of the men asked.  He pointed the gun at Lucas.  “Jesus.”

“If you want to talk, get them out of the Arena so we can move on,” the soldier John Stiles said, as he rejoined his group.

“Eager!” Breastbiter crowed.  “I like it.”

“Some fucking Mad Hatter’s tea party shit, randoms everywhere,” one of the men at the back declared, looking around.  “Shredding the place, random trees…”

“Should’ve burned down the building,” another of the new arrivals declared.

“Yeahh.”

“I’d like to talk,” Lucas pressed.  “Because I don’t think you belong here.”

The man pointed the gun at him again.  Lucas stared at the barrel.

The woman at the back paced, when the others were still.  She was black, lipstick red, hair combed close to the skull and glossy.  She wore a leather jacket and jeans, guns at her belt, military-style bag slung over her right shoulder and resting against her left hip, gun in hand.

She aimed at the Aurum Coil.

“You achieve nothing by-”

She fired.

The bullet hit a sheet of glass that framed the rink, that hadn’t been there in the instant before the gun’s flash had distracted the eye.  Cracks spiderwebbed out from the point of impact, but the bullet didn’t pass through.

She fired again, over and over.  Lucas shut his eyes and covered his ears as the sound bounced around the Arena, carried by the good acoustics.

An eternity ago, Lucas and his wife had fostered three boys.  All uniquely troubled, all struggling, picked specifically because they weren’t the types to normally be adopted-  too old, too obviously problematic.  His wife had been an orphan, had grown up in a group home, and it had been important to her – having their own kids hadn’t even come up as a point of discussion.  She’d glowed as she’d risen to the occasion, raising the boys, talking to them, and sharing her own experience.  Lucas had stumbled in the first year or two, then he’d found his stride, being a father, being a support, a supporter, a role model.  To Ed, a chronic liar, to Norman, who was so afraid of losing the new home he’d gotten that he’d run away from it six times before realizing it was his place to stay.  The adoption that cemented that realization as truth had been- whatever the opposite of heartbreak was.  To Cruz, who had seemed to be an angel at first but was the opposite behind the scenes, especially with those smaller and weaker than him, which was a lot of his fellow students.

Past tears, past agonizing decisions, discussions with teachers and government officials, and talks with his wife that extended late into the night, they’d found a way forward.  Ed had found his way, Norman had found security, and Cruz had turned around enough he wasn’t a bully anymore, leaving them hopeful that he’d eventually become a support to those weaker than him.

Then Cole.

Cole, by accident, by the same means most couples had their children.

Cole, who had grown up just as his older brothers were getting over the last of their issues.  Lucas had found that as misbehavior was addressed, with consistent, firm and fair rules, that misbehavior would emerge in a final intense burst.  At a young age, Cole had seen the final throes of his brother’s misbehavior.

That wasn’t it.  There were a hundred complicating facts.  A hundred things that could have been it.  Lucas’s wife-

He wished he could remember her name.

-had taken the pregnancy hard, had gone from being a mother who could parent three troubled boys in a way most couldn’t, to someone who doubted her every move, inexplicably.  Doubted his.  They’d fought.  Lucas’ efforts to remind their three adopted boys that they were loved seemed to leave Cole wanting, but giving more time to Cole didn’t soothe the boy either.  So many things were like that with Cole.  Where he could fail but could never recuperate what he’d lost in that failing.

Then Cole had become old enough to be semi-independent, to go to school, out of their sight.  Where he was a liar, truant, a bully.  Suspended for a week after breaking the glasses of a girl in his class, first grade.  Suspended for two weeks, third grade, for emptying paint over a classmate’s desk and lap.  Fourth grade, he’d stolen extra cake slices before classmates had been able to get them, and had thrown them into the schoolyard, for seagulls to flock in and eat.  The teacher had gone to the effort to make the cake, and it had been her last straw with Cole, prompting her to spank him until she broke down in tears midway through, with most of the class consoling her.  Cole had run home.

Things along those lines until eighth grade.  Cole had assaulted one of the girls in his class.  He’d been arrested, taken away for two years, where Cole had learned to be harder, meaner, had made friends.  Cole’s mother had left for her mother’s, taking the other boys.  Lucas had stayed, trying to help Cole, getting ready for their son to come back.  Because someone had had to.

Was it nature?  A bad roll of the dice, of bloodline and blood?  Or had someone hurt Cole, or gotten to him at an age before he’d learned to read and write?  Or later, with the earlier instances of bad behavior normal, inflated in the heads of parents who’d never actually raised a child from birth and seen what was typical?  Had one his brothers said or done something at a critical moment in his early growth, when the brain was drawing connections together?  Had Cole’s mother?  Had Lucas, somehow, unwittingly?

Cole was released, but he came back harder, meaner, and connected.  He hadn’t even pretended to try to go to school, and disappeared with these other youths with criminal backgrounds.  Lucas’s work had suffered-

What was my job?  Who was I?

-and then the reports had come in.  A neighbor and classmate of Cole, who’d long liked the boy despite everything, assaulted.  Cole had been shot as he fled.

So Lucas had gone after Cole.  He’d known what Cole liked, the spaces his son had played in.  He’d expected to find his son in a hiding place, bled out and dead.  Instead he’d found a wounded Cole with one of the new friends caring for him, the one with a silver tongue and a sensationalist leaning toward the occult.

A leaning that had had some truth to it.

Lucas’s son had used what his friend had taught him and forced Lucas down into hell.  He’d bound him there with shackles, chains, and a cage.

The sound of the gunshots in the Arena faded.  Lucas’ ears didn’t even ring.  He didn’t know how much of that was the fact he was no longer human and how much was that he’d adapted to the clamor and chaos of the hell he’d been caged in for so long.

“If you wish to fight, fight through,” the Sable Prince told the new arrivals.  “The contest is set.  None here and nobody close to this place have both the power and the willingness to change the course of tonight’s events.”

“If you won’t leave the arena floor, then perhaps we can bring others to you,” the Aurum Coil said.  “Would any contestants step forward to battle the Witch Hunters?”

Witch Hunters.

“We’re willing,” the soldier declared.

The cage shifted.  Lucas braced himself, adjusting.

“Okay,” Lucas murmured.

John Stiles stopped in his tracks as the living cage cut him off.

Cagerattler made his way into the arena stairs, far from the Witch Hunters.

“What if we don’t want to play your game, huh?” the woman near the back of the group asked.

“You made the decision when you entered despite the Sable’s warning,” the Alabaster told her.

The lead Witch Hunter tried to enter the rink.  There was a hollow bang as his hand touched more of the glass, a material so clear it had looked like the way was clear.

Are they someone else’s Cole?  Angry, hurt people who hurt other people for reasons I might never discover?  Reasons their loved ones might never know?

Are they orphans, or people who had people surrounding them, people they wounded by leaving?

You fired that gun without even batting an eyelash.

Lucas’ eyes dropped to his lap.  He had a knife there, usually hidden, gleaming, clean, lying in a bed of his own loosely curling black hair.  He kept it, and the living cage that bound him let him.  At least part of the reason was that he might use it to try to escape, by one means or another, and in the doing he’d make his last words to Cole a lie.

The hell he’d been plunged into seemed to work on perverse logic and intent like that.  The cage was saturated in that, seeming to live by it.  If he tried and he failed to truly escape, maybe he’d deserve hell.

In this way, it was more a cage of his own making than something Cole had done.

Cagerattler’s body was dense, with bones crusted with barnacle-like growths of rust, iron, and denser materials.  As he left the rink, chains that dangled from his back pulled taut.  Bars within Lucas’ confines slid, and he pulled out of the way as best as he could.  The dead foot wouldn’t move, and his left arm had been braced against the wall, so his body wouldn’t be thrown against the back of the cage as Cagerattler walked.  The bar slammed into his forearm, cracking or bruising bone.

Lucas didn’t make a sound, his eyes dropping.

The chains, as Cagerattler walked up the stairs, pulled things from beneath the blood on the ice.  Objects.  A mallet with the chain tangled around it.  Dark, liquid hellstuff dripped down the length of the chain, dropped from the mallet… and left a trail of something behind.  A tether.  As more gunk flowed and fell, the tether became more substantial, with a shape to it.

By the time the head and upper body had been hauled free, other chains were pulling contents free.  A yoke for an ox, with a brutish man bound to it, hands and neck encircled by barbed chain.  A shard of mirror surrounded by corrosion, with a woman scrambling to grip chain, grab the edges with enough force her fingers were cut by the shard’s edge, all so she could keep her face in the reflection.

There were items without the damned of hell attached to them.  A straight-razor, a sun-bleached trash bin unlike any Lucas had seen, that produced sounds like the glass around the arena.  Hollow, dull.  A book of photos- grotesque photos of blindfolded people with sawn-off body parts.  The photos came free and the ones that touched the blood on the ice were grabbed by hands from beneath, dragged under.  The ones that touched the concrete of the arena started spreading dark stains.

Cagerattler whispered.

Every item without an owner became its own owner.  The shadows they cast became figures, the figures fit to each item.  A man with skin that looked like he’d been rinsed in dark ink a few too many times, his glasses bright in the dark, a camera at his neck.  A man in old-fashioned clothing with a face rendered unrecognizable by a criss-crossing of cuts.  The trash bin tipped over, and someone or something banged within as they shifted position.

Things that went down there got hardened, turned ugly.  It was easy to get angry, easy to get desperate, easy to give up on everything.  And Lucas had been down there long enough to see some get out.  He’d seen them fall back down, after.  Some came up, they killed a few, they were vanquished, and they’d be sent down, and that was the pattern.  Some of these objects were owned by those sorts of beings, and by binding the items, the owners were bound to follow and obey.

Others were just the objects.  Objects with enough awfulness behind them that they could boil up too, they could find targets, and they could hurt.  The people that Cagerattler had created were representations of the gathered negativity in those items.  Manifestations of the history, of the owners, of everything else.

Lucas had been sent down to that place and he wasn’t angry enough to get out.  He wasn’t desperate.  He was patient.  For Cole.  But that hellscape was still a place that took someone’s worst fears and gave them life.  That took their worst qualities and gave them physical shape, be it scars or monstrousness.

It hadn’t had enough leverage to get a grip on Lucas himself, maybe because of the way he’d been sent down there, but it could get its grips on other things.  On the-

Delusions?  At what point does support for someone troubled stop being a positive and start being something damning?

-connections.

How long had it been, now?  He hadn’t surfaced in some time, and they hadn’t come into the city much after that surfacing.  Cars were different.  Trash bins were this hollow material more than metal.  The lights were bright.  Clothes- the soldier’s military outfits, the signage, even, it all seemed more detailed than he remembered.

The chains began to reel out.  Lucas had to balance avoiding letting the chains saw at or through him as they ran through the main body with trying to keep the peace, maintaining the balance.  They’d found a kind of deal and he’d abide by it.  As with the raising of the three boys they’d fostered and then adopted, he had to believe in consistency.

Consistency might’ve been the only reason he hadn’t become monstrous in that monstrous place.  After his cage had started moving, started delivering him to scenarios that would test his resolve, he’d met an old man who’d been made part of the walls around him, like the cage had mingled with Lucas.  The man had said he was a pearl in the Abyssian depths, not directly corrupted.  There was little hell could deliver unto him that would beat what he felt inside.  A father that had failed his son.

The Witch Hunters were circling around, careful, guns at the ready.  The chains dragged noisily against the ambulatory cage as the various servants of Cagerattler charged forward.  They made more noise as they slapped and scraped against the floor, and the edges of the blocky stairs.

“Abyssal,” one of the men said.  The gun he held up was old fashioned even by Lucas’ standards.  “I hope you’ve kept your brass polished.”

“Doesn’t have to be brass.  Anything old,” another man said.

“Anything old and looked after,” another corrected.

The youngest member of that group lifted a crossbow bolt from the small one-handed crossbow he carried, clamping it between his teeth, so he’d be free to slip another one into the top.  The little mechanism clicked.

They’ll come after me.  They always do.  Lucas breathed hard, muscles straining, arm throbbing where the bar had smashed it.  His right arm with the weak, pained hand was held out where the shackle helped deflect a chain that was pulling out from the darkest recesses of Cagerattler’s leg and pelvis, bottomless and endless.  Keeping that chain from sawing its way through Lucas’ side.  His other hand gripped bars where needles pierced and blades cut.  On the abrasive surfaces, rust ground its way beneath his skin.  He had to brace himself-

Cagerattler charged.  The ‘ride’ was not a gentle one.  Bones had calcified and been coated in collected rust and debris from the dark, cold parts of hell.  The living cage was too small for Lucas, every movement throwing him against one side, against the ceiling.  The chain found his arm and skinned it to the elbow.

The deal.  He’d told Cagerattler that he wouldn’t fight the propensity for violence, so long as it was aimed in the right directions.

Was this the right direction?  Were the Witch Hunters like Cole had been?  Stubborn, impossible to decipher?

The boy shot the crossbow bolt.  It passed between the bars of the cage, and punctured Lucas’ forearm.

He bit back any noise of pain he might make.

This was the compromise.

“Nice shot!” the woman called out.

Most of the others were focusing on the servants Cagerattler had brought up.  They moved fast.  Bullets- Lucas had seen things like this and how bullets didn’t seem to work on them.

The first Witch Hunters met the man with the straight razor and the man with the yoke.  Bound as he was, the yoked man was monstrously strong, and kicked a man with a sickening crunch.  The woman with the French accent wielded what looked like an old knife against the straight razor.

And won.  Lucas’ eyes widened.

The yoked man fell, as the bullets took their toll.  He started to rise, then collapsed.

They were losing?  This easily?

The picture-book man used cover to creep forward.  Two men circled around the cover, aiming for a pincer attack.

“I’m the prettiest, have to be the prettiest…”

The woman with the shard of mirror stepped out of shadows she hadn’t actually moved to, tackling one of the men to the ground, pressing the mirror down at his face.

“Won’t let you be prettier than me…”

The whisper was sinuous, flowing through the Arena.

The man managed to push her off, one hand near his face.  When she did, he slipped, losing footing, and rolled down two stairs.  Nose cut off, ears cut off, eyes stitched closed, mouth stitched open, chin to neck, lips pulled up and stitched to the edges of the cut-off nose and one cheekbone.  A hand with only two fingers stitched to the side of his face.

“Cover each other!”

She ducked away into shadow, catching one bullet at the shoulder.  The chain continued to reel out, threading into that shadow and out of another, as she emerged.

The album man threw himself backwards, lying on his back, camera up just in time to catch the remaining Witch Hunter that had been after him.  The camera went off, producing a flash bright enough to illuminate the arena, blinding everyone.

In the second or so that it took eyes to adjust, the Album Man had the subject of his photo butchered, limbs removed, a band of metal welded around the eyes as a permanent blindfold, a ring of metal piercing the floor of the mouth and extending out, so he was propped upright, connected to the ceiling.

“Those are two of the strongest bogeymen I’ve ever seen and he’s got them on a leash?”

“Focus!  It’s gotta be him, at the center!  He’s a power source.  Something old!”

They weren’t wrong about the power source.  They were wrong about Cagerattler being old.

He hadn’t been down in Hell that long, had he?  Cagerattler hadn’t taken that long to gather this strength, had he?

They were coordinated.  The bogeymen weren’t.  They were predators who hunted by opportunity, picking off stragglers.  As the Witch Hunters organized, there were less opportunities.

The vain woman with the mirror shard tried to scare them, to divide up their number.  She got shot, through the mirror, first and she flew into a frenzy, hurling four people about ten to twenty feet each, in various directions.  In the midst of it, the woman with the old knife cut her throat.

Meanwhile, the yoked man needed four of the Witch Hunters to keep him at bay.  He was dumb, and their bullets and cuts were working better than anything Lucas had ever seen, but it was his nature to be the last one to fall.  He drank the power Cagerattler provided through the chains and he used it to keep going, no matter what.  A small explosive took a chunk out of his chest, and it became apparent that the chains threaded into the yoke also threaded through him, much as they did with Cagerattler.  There were enough chains and connection points for chains that the explosive had stopped at a wall of metal and bone.

The trash can contents exploded out, a naked man with legs that had never grown, head distended on one side, mouth perpetually open, teeth malformed.  Behind his lower body was twenty feet of worm-like mess; translucent skin bound around intestine, choked to the point of gruesome swelling by the umbilical cord that was still attached, connected to the fetid meat at the bottom of the can.  Prehensile enough that the distension from his midsection and buttocks let him move, weaving around, letting that flesh pour out of the stained can as he made his lower body a barrier to the Witch Hunters.

They shot, cut, hacked away with an old cleaver- but as the discarded man extended himself further, another twenty feet of length, a lot of the flesh they were trying to damage was put out of their reach.  The thrown-away man grabbed onto branches of the tree growing out of the corner of the arena, letting his lower body buck, thrust, and shove, pushing Witch Hunters off their feet.

One threw one of the explosives down toward the can that rested against boards beside the ice rink.  It was Cagerattler who hauled back on the chain tied to the handle, pulling it out of the way.  He caught it in one arm, and Lucas twisted his face away as the fluids from the can splashed him.

The wielder of the straight razor was finding his feet again, slowly.  Like the soldier’s helpers, these were not entities that stayed down.

Four of twelve Witch Hunters had fallen.  They didn’t seem like they’d rise again.  Maybe the one man with the cut-off nose and the stitches could, but…

The woman had something.  A splash of liquid, and what was stretching before began to crack and tear.  It created a gap they could fight through, and slowed down the movements of the discarded man.

And another something- tossed into the air.  A coin, flipping end over end, catching the light as it flipped- each time it caught the light it returned it brighter.

Lucas had to shield his eyes as the coin lit up the arena.  It wasn’t descending.

Cagerattler swiped out with chains, and swatted it out of the air.

It seemed the thrown-away man was losing.  He’d caught the Witch Hunters off guard at first, but even as he added more mass, and the ongoing disemboweling of his seemingly endless lower mass added slick blood and guts to the concrete stairs, slowing the Witch Hunters… he was losing.

Cagerattler was strong but he wouldn’t survive the fight.

Cagerattler and I made a deal.

Lucas huddled in his prison, cradling the broken arm with a small arrow sticking through it.

“Judges,” Lucas said, quiet.

“Lucas Olson,” came the response, from the Alabaster Doe, who’d heard him, as quiet as he’d been.  Her voice carried.

“This is a contest of leadership, of fitness for the throne?”

“It is.”

“We test our leadership by managing our own.”

“We do.  That was John Stiles’ claim.”

“But can we have more of a test of judgment?  Something to help decide this?”

“The time to propose rules was before,” the Sable Prince declared, stern.

“But we may allow it,” the Alabaster Doe added, unreadable.

“If the majority agrees,” the Aurum Coil finished, smiling.

“No more delays,” John Stiles said.

“Does it have to be a delay?  Can we test each candidate, put forward a challenge in a moment, let it count?” Lucas asked.  “It could even speed up the results.”

They were close to cutting through.

“You may,” the Alabaster said.

There were things like this in the deepest hell Lucas had seen  In some ways, it was the only way to get around, every step forward a trial.

“The majority is in quiet, unspoken agreement over the idea,” the Aurum Coil declared.

The world faded away.

We’ll get out, we’ll stay out.

You can fight, you handle the challenges I can’t.  I’ll… I’ll try the talking part.  The kinder parts.

That had been the deal.

They sat on their throne.  Lucas was free of the cage, but not of the shackles at right wrist and left ankle.  He was dressed in red, and fresh blood dripped from each shackle, where it bit into flesh, where the blood joined that which formed a fine layer on the floor.

Cagerattler sat on the bifurcated throne.

Cagerattler, Lucas’ prison.  His struggles made manifest.

It was quiet.  For now.  Cagerattler would get restless, and he wasn’t sure what that would mean in this context.  In this quiet clearing where the ground and brick walls were soaked red, and the sun shone through at a low angle, casting long shadows and illuminating the edges of broken machinery near the walls.

“Cagerattler and Lucas Olson, your challenge,” the Aurum Coil announced.

A child, a girl of ten or so, was led into the clearing.  She wore clothes better suited to a boy, her expression fierce, angry-

Lucas swallowed.

“She’s to become Other.  Something savage and violent.  This is non-negotiable.”

“And the challenge?” Lucas asked.

“See it through.”

The Aurum Coil left, riding the centipede into the darkness.

The girl realized the coast was clear, and screamed, more like an animal than a human.  She ran at Lucas.

Cagerattler called chains out, barring her path.  The first stretched across throat-level, edges sharp.

“No!” Lucas called out.  “The deal!”

And the chain went slack.  But a shackle caught her ankle.  She tripped, falling, and thrashed.

“If you kill her or knock her out, we might fail,” he told Cagerattler.

The living cage didn’t move or react, only watching the girl thrash, fight, and tug.

Wounded, angry, fierce-

Inexplicable.

He had the means of seeing the anger take hold, deep in her bones.  Fury transcended normal limitations, the limits of strength and exhaustion.  She wouldn’t tire, she’d fight endlessly, and she’d take on a shape that wasn’t human.  Abstract forces loomed around her, like the ghosts of animals, but they came before animals had been born, rather than after they’d died.  There were others that weren’t animals.  Ghosts of violence, of weapons, of pain.

He knew what he had to do.  He knew he had to simply will it.  It would happen.

He couldn’t.

They were back in the Arena.  The Witch Hunters, struggling through, found their shoes had purchase on bloody concrete stairs.  The little differences began to add up.  Other things had changed too.  It was hard to say how, but one of the Witch Hunters got the advantage on the yoked man, and knocked him down stairs with a well-timed, well-aimed blow.

The straightrazor man was shot through the hand, shattering the handle of the straightrazor.

“It wasn’t a fair test,” Lucas said, forehead resting against bars that bit into his skin.

“Many of them won’t be.  I put the same sort of test before Cleo Aleshire.  The answer she gave wasn’t necessarily a correct one, but she has conviction, and she did give an answer.”

One of the older guns fired, a different sound than something more modern.  It clipped one of the bars of the cage and it hit Lucas.

Cagerattler didn’t slow at all.  Wielding fistfuls of chains like whips, whipping one limp corpse of the album man around as part of it, he waded into the attacking force.

Lucas fought to stay conscious, the heat of the bullet that had settled in his gut like touching a hot stove, but it was inside himself and there was no way to pull away.  Instead he retched, writhing in his prison.  As Cagerattler tipped forward, he had to catch the knife with his weak hand, to keep it from sliding between the bars.

A man gripped the bars and tried to pull Cagerattler off balance.  Lucas was given an opportunity to cut at those fingers.

But if he’d been the type to take that opportunity, maybe he wouldn’t have been able to survive as cleanly as he had in that hellish place he’d been caged in.  He’d gone most of his life without hurting people.  Deliberately or directly, anyway.

He might have hurt his other sons by trying to save Cole.

He couldn’t attack.  He kept the knife.  He let them gradually win the struggle against the cage that encircled him.  That punished him for his failures.

Cagerattler fell.  A Witch Hunter leaned over top, trying to weigh him down, while Cleo Aleshire, the woman, emptied a gun into Cagerattler’s face, metal bonded over skull and the corruption that had grown over skull.

“There’s a heart in here!” the Witch Hunter said, as he leaned over Lucas.

There was.  A short distance above Lucas’ head, an exposed, stained heart pulsed.

“You have a knife and you haven’t gotten it?  Afraid you’ll get locked in?” the man asked.

Cleo shouted out, “Don’t trust him!  He might be the power source, deception and shit!”

Lucas stared into the man’s eyes.

Cagerattler was losing, and Lucas had failed the very test he’d asked for.

“We surrender.”

Cagerattler relaxed, not fighting as hard, anymore.

It was the Aurum Coil who swept in.  Separating Lucas and the cage from the Witch Hunters.  The Aurum Coil who encircled them, a young face, smiling, almost mocking.

Cagerattler hadn’t been strong enough to win against the Witch Hunters alone.  Lucas hadn’t been strong enough to meet the test, mid-fight.  It stood to reason they wouldn’t have done a very good job in the role.  Maybe the tests really would have been that difficult.

The glow and brightness of the centipede’s coils around them became brighter.  They crushed in tighter, destroying the cage from the outside in.

The skull shattered from the crushing force on the outside, the fragments exploding out.  A face exposed.  The coils crushed in around it-

“Give them some kindness,” the Alabaster Doe said.

And then those same coils moved away, focusing efforts elsewhere.

Lucas sat up and sat as straight as he could, as the door opened.  Hair tore from scalp as the coils raked it.  He looked at Cole.

Cole had gone down, and he’d dragged Lucas with him.  Cole had shattered on the floor of hell, and Lucas had refused to leave.  Death hadn’t come for Cole, but instead, corruption and all the flavors of hell had embraced the boy.

“You could have used that knife any time.  Pierced the heart,” Cole said, not comprehending.

“I meant what I said.”

“You could have opened the shackles, opened the door.”

“I told you.  You’re my son.  I wasn’t going to leave you.  Especially when you were going through that.”

“You could have pushed me away, as I dragged you down.”

“I could have.  I didn’t,” Lucas said.  He teared up a bit, seeing Cole’s face for the first time in far, far too long.  How long had it been, that they’d been down there, that new materials had been invented, that lights were brighter, guns and clothes fancier?  “I’m responsible for you.”

Cole had fought, continued to fight.  Where so very many souls fought to get out, to get up, to return to wreak vengeance, Cole had plunged.  Intentionally.  And Lucas had held on, staying with him.  Cole might have been digested, but for his tie to Lucas, who had gone unclaimed.

Maybe Lucas had deserved that hell for that.  Unconditional love could be ugly.  Cole had not been a good person by any measure, and he hadn’t been any kinder as a living cage.

Cole was so small now.  A head and the rust-covered bones of the upper chest, stained heart beating.

The coils closed inward.

“I don’t understand you,” Cole said.

And I don’t understand you.

He might’ve said it, but it felt unkind in the moment, and past that moment, they were disassembled, taken to pieces, in body, mind, and soul.  A young man who had drowned in his own darkness and the father he’d dragged in after him, consigned to oblivion.  This way, taking this course, there would be no hell, no heaven, only elements returned to the universe.

Francis watched as the centipede man wrung out the coils.  As tough as the Deep Abyssal had been, there wasn’t even dust left afterward.

Cleo was talking with some of the others already, about strategy, sharing details that others might have missed.  Francis ventured over.

Pike stood up, groaning as he rubbed his ribs.  He was tall, thin, black, with a receding hairline, and way too fond of Cleo for his own good.  Lighthouse but not Lighthouse, he’d signed on after his family had been slaughtered.  Had the credentials but hadn’t gone through all the training.

“Guess that’s what they intend to do to us when we lose this stupid little game?” Pike asked.

“Guess so,” Cleo replied.  Pretty, black, and very Montreal as Witch Hunters went.

“It’s not the first time Witch Hunters have stumbled into a game or contest like this,” Toy said.  He was a Chinese Canadian, stout, with a belly, a scraggly beard shot through with white, and a shaved head.  Lighthouse.

“Done.  We may proceed,” the man on the centipede declared.  “Cleo Aleshire, as your group’s throne-seeker, if you wish to step onto the ice here, another contestant may step up.”

“And if I tell you to make me?”

“Then we could send another out.”

Francis frowned as a small Other vomited blood onto the bloody rink.  It was two feet tall, misshapen hands and feet, skin like thin scar tissue, and an ear-like shape for a face, crusted with blood at the canal, which had a spiral inside it.

“Trrfrpprheplath has expressed an interest in fighting,” the woman in white declared.

“Better you guys than us,” Reid Musser said.  His face was heavily bandaged, but he had other staining around him.  Abyss?

Francis nudged Pike.  Pike nodded.

“What’s your guess?” Toy asked.

“Not goblin.  If it wasn’t so small, I’d think it’s a horror,” Cleo said.

“Horrors can be small,” Toy said.

J.L.J. raised a hand to get their attention.

“Ntrstctaplalth will take to the arena.  Decide now if you’ll participate, Cleo Aleshire,” the gold-robed man on the centipede said.

“You have no power over us.  I don’t have to decide anything.”

“Perhaps, but decisions can be made without you.  It is your choice to be stubborn, and it is ours to allow Srentystrpleth to take the field.  The doors remain sealed.”

“Give me a second,” Cleo said.

“We’ve established we don’t need lengthy periods of rest and recuperation,” the man in the black suit declared.  “It was offered and candidates refused it.”

Srentystrpleth.  The name had changed, but as Francis thought about it, he couldn’t remember the permutation of sounds from before, and he knew exactly who it was meant to refer to this time.

An anti-binding measure?  A way for it to slip easy labeling and summoning?

It fell in the right ballpark for horrors and darker things.

“The fight may begin in-”

“A second, fuck it!” Cleo swore.  Then she swore again, “Tabernac, how are the wounded?”

“They killed Jarrell twice over, Fry got smashed, two more hurting,” J.L.J. said.

Estrada was one of the ones who was hurting.  He’d had had his face stitched up, nose cut off and cauterized.  J.L.J. had cut the stitches, but some had yet to be pulled out of the one eyelid or upper lip, which made it look like he had a really bizarre mustache and eyelashes.

It looked like Keith might have shattered ribs.  The macabre photographer had turned Ted Jarrell into a limbless trophy that dangled from the ceiling by his jaw, and the giant bogeyman had turned him into a one-punch punching bag, hitting the guy so hard his insides came out his lower half.

Yeah, those had been some scary bogeymen, and they’d come as a group.  Would the rest of this be like that?

Francis licked his lips, not even sure what to feel.  His eyes scanned the others on the bloody rink.  Three important ones, managing this thing, the rest were practitioners and Others of the worst sort, it seemed.

“Take ’em out of the arena.  If I’m playing this savage little game of yours, I can do that, right?” Cleo asked.

“You can,” the woman in white said.  “You’d bring them down here.  Contestants aren’t to hurt one another outside of the sanctioned fights.  That precedent has been firmly established.”

“We’ll see,” Cleo said.  She turned to Francis and Toy.  “You two?  Take Estrada and Keith.”

“I can fight,” Francis protested.

She stepped in closer, hand cupping the back of his heck.  Her forehead touched the top of his head.

“You were distracted, and I want to keep you fresh, legs fast, for if we need it later,” Cleo said.

“I’ll be fast enough.”

Her eye flicked to her left, Francis’ right.

He glanced.

The Musser successor?

“I need you at your fastest, so you can get to them before they can get to whatever they’ve got in their pockets.  And I remember your sheet.  You haven’t fought horrors.”

“I’m a fast learner.”

“Go,” she said, squeezing his neck until it hurt.

“Are you sure?” Pike asked.  “Playing their game?”

“No, not sure,” she said, her accent momentarily heavier.  “Keep your eyes open.”

Francis made a pained expression, and she let go, pushing him at the same time.  “Go.”

He went.  The crossbow remained in his hand as he helped guide Estrada down to the rink.  Toy had his hands full with a grumbling Keith.

The soldiers were hanging back, some smoking, a lot of them talking.  The soldier that they’d heard was called John Stiles was a few paces away from the rest of his group, frowning, arms folded.

The soldiers unnerved Francis, and it was hard to say why.  He’d seen things like them, but the way so many of their eyes were cold, they’d never been children, they didn’t eat… maybe it made them a little different.  Uncanny.  Jaw muscles less developed, body not fitting together right.

He’d talked to others about it, about something similar, and they hadn’t seen it.

There were others.  A bald girl with a hood up, smiling at him in a way that made him take a few extra steps to the side to avoid her.

“You’re so young,” she said, her forehead wrinkling.  “Be careful, okay?”

He didn’t break eye contact until he’d walked far enough around her that eye contact was impossible.

There was also the Musser son, who didn’t pretend to be nice, and who stared Francis down, and there was the smirking, muscular pitbull of a goblin with glistening skin, features trimmed off to make him harder to grab.  Other medium sized and small goblins were hanging out near him.

Toy, Francis, Keith, and Estrada settled on the far side of the rink, still in earshot of the group.

Cleo and her group prepared.  The little horror stood in the stands, twitching and spitting up bits of blood here and there.  It had no genitals- only a stretch of skin like the webbing between fingers, and the texture of its skin didn’t line up like it did on some animals.  Rougher skin on the belly and one side, thin, nearly translucent skin on one pectoral, stretching up the neck.

“Taking bets,” the glistening goblin declared.  “I like the little gender-indiscriminate thing.  Name your terms.”

“No bet,” the Musser son answered, quiet.

“You’re no fun.”

Francis shivered a bit.  He watched as Cleo prepared, huddling with the rest of the group.  Nobody present was siding with her?  With them?

Brothers in arms.  The family Francis had never had.

Samaniego had said not to let Cleo lead.  He’d laid out a long chain of command and it had just so happened that that chain of command had been gutted.  Cleo had taken charge and it had felt alright.

Less so now.  She’d walked them into this.  That had felt alright too, until the bullets had been blocked by the sudden appearance of bulletproof plexiglass, and they’d realized they were in a sealed space.

The sort of space where the only way out was through.

He looked over his shoulder at the big white tree that had roots spiking up out of the ground.  An artifact of an earlier fight.

It felt more familiar than a lot of things in this place.  Way back when he’d been a little kid, he’d been lured away from his parents by sprites and fairies, the small wasp and butterfly winged kinds.  One fairy was stupid, only enough thoughts to fill a thimble, but as an organized group they could network, swarm, and think collectively.  They’d constructed a lie good enough to fool a kid who was only barely starting primary school: a fantasy world where he could be a hero, a robin hood type.  When he’d started to worry about the time, they’d convinced him that even though he’d spent all day with them, only a bit of time had passed, his parents casually still eating at the beach where he’d left them.

They’d laughed about that later.  That was how he knew.

No, they’d gotten lazy about keeping up the lie, and they’d put him in a giant bottle, and after their group had split up over some stupid fucking arguments about who had the best flower in their hair and who could dance best when nobody was looking, the illusions they’d made had fallen apart.  He’d been their plaything, to tease, mislead, torment.  They’d spin stories and let him think he’d escaped and he was fighting his way through fae landscapes or stranger places, and then they’d let the illusion fade.

When they wanted to buy something they’d sneak into his ear or up his nose and pull out memories in the form of glowing worms, and he’d wake up without a Christmas memory, or he’d forget his neighbor’s voice.  Or his mom’s.  They pulled out the little half-formed emotions and left him with huge ones and no ability to modulate them, then pestered him to push him to his limits.

When the Witch Hunters had come to set fire to the hive, the fairies had had four captives like him.  They’d reclaimed some bottles and tried to match them to each child, interrogating the little bastards, but fairies were stupid, and not every memory had gone to the right kid.  Francis had been left so jumbled that he couldn’t remember where home was, what his parents looked like, or any of that.  So he’d gone to the Lighthouse, and the Lighthouse had raised him.

He stared at the tree that very closely resembled the ones near the hive of fairies that had captured him, until Estrada nudged him.  The man was pulling the suture threads out of his eyelid, while giving Francis a disapproving look.

That was the past.

“He’s so cuuute,” the oiled up goblin cooed.  “Scarred up little nippleless wad.  Or maybe he’s all nipple.  Who knows?  Could be all folded up.”

“You know your horrors?” the Musser son asked the bald woman.

“Some.  Get your portals or space manipulation wrong and you might get distorted.”

“I’m trying to figure you out.  Not a realms practice, or you wouldn’t say ‘some’.  I don’t get the sense you’re a fighter.  You’d have scars.”

“What if I’m a really good fighter?” she asked.  “So good I don’t have any?”

“I know some of those.  But no.  Divine?”

“Divine-ish.”

“Yeah, pretty loose categorization, that.  Gods, demiurges, powers that be…”

The Musser son indicated the woman in white.

Francis nodded a bit to himself.

They’re basically gods, then?  Lesser gods?

That explained a bit.

“Speaking of, feels like they have a design,” the bald woman told the Musser son.

“Who?  The Judges?”

“The Judges,” she confirmed.

“You’ll say that right in front of them, will you?” the Musser son asked.  He looked at the man in the black suit.

“They know everything that happens in their territory.  Why not say it with them ten feet away?”

“What design?”

“That they let Cagerattler’s test happen.  A test of character.  Feels like it’s their idea, but they waited until one of us came up with it.”

“Will that test happen again?” the Musser son asked, turning to address the woman in white.

“If either contestant calls for it.”

“I think there’s something to that,” the woman told the Musser son.

“Hey, judges,” the goblin raised his voice.  “I have an issue.”

“Then raise it with us, Breastbiter,” the Judge on the centipede said.

Breastbiter?  Gross, Francis thought, repulsed.

“The girl, Snyder, she’s leaning on the throne.  Feels fishy.”

“I am very literally dying as we speak, Breastbiter,” the bald woman said.

“I don’t like it.  You don’t have any claim.  Don’t go getting your dying-ness all over my future throne.”

“Remove your hands from the throne, Lauren,” the woman in white said.  “My apologies.”

“It’s fine,” the woman said.  She straightened, then wobbled, clearly weak.

Reid put out an arm, steadying her, and she held onto it.

“Is this a con?” he asked.

“No.  I don’t have the strength for a con.”

“Okay,” he said.

Breastbiter looked over and shot the Musser son a big, obnoxious wink that scrunched up half of his face.

The Musser son sighed.

“Support Cleo however you can,” Estrada murmured.  “We can’t help her directly, but that thing is small.  Help keep eyes on it for her.  The way we’re facing can help her.”

Francis nodded, turning to watch it.

It was more or less motionless, standing there awkwardly with head tilted and belly thrust out, while Cleo’s group had divided in two, circling around both ends of the rink.

“Witch Hunters,” the bald woman said.  Lauren, she’d been called.

“Eyes in your own lane,” Toy said.

“Do you know what your leader saw?  What the test was?”

“Wouldn’t tell you whether we knew or not.”

“It matters,” Lauren said, turning to Reid Musser.  “If it’s about justice, or power, or something else.”

“Can you even fight?” Reid asked her.

“No.  I can barely stand,” she said, smiling.

The little horror burst into movement, as the Witch Hunters drew nearer.  Gouting blood from its mouth hole, moving on spindly limbs, it dashed through stands, past cover, and ran toward one group.

“Come on, come on,” Francis whispered, tracking it.

“Don’t like this,” Estrada murmured.

“Which part?”

“All of it.  The fact she dragged us into this.”

“Cleo?”

Estrada nodded.  “I don’t like how she approaches this.  She plays their game too easily.  Entering this building was her idea, and now she’s playing along?”

“It’s a snare.  Like the Judge in black said,” Francis replied.

“She’s playing along, she uses their power too readily.  Feels bad.”

“It works.  She’s strong.”

“It’s their strength.  Poisons the soul.”

Cleo paused, gun ready, and tracked the little horror as it ran.

It wasn’t really evading, its focus on the other group that had circled around.

She fired.  Francis’ head whipped around as he checked to see if the horror had been hit.

Straight through the lower back, out the gut.  It fell, leaving a streak of blood behind it.

“Hope you loaded something that counts!” Estrada shouted.

“They can’t hear you,” the Judge in the golden bathrobe told him.

Estrada shook his head, pressing a palm to the cauterized stump of his nose.

The horror dragged itself over to the edge of the broad step then fell.  Blood spurted out of the earhole and both holes in its midsection.  It was rapidly losing strength.

An arm emerged from the blood spatter, ten feet long and slender, fingers nearly a foot long, a ridged hole in the palm that seemed deep, though there was no hole in the back of the hand.

“Get back!” Cleo shouted.  “Back, back, back, back!”

Something slithered up through the arm and out the hole in the palm- two more arms, connected by bowed strings of flesh, each with a hole in the palm.

And more hands were emerging from the pool, in varying size.

“When they shrink a space down too much, try to make a dollhouse with a real house inside or some shit like that, you can get a horror like that,” Toy said.  “Features so pushed-together they get folded inside.  Compacted.  Give ’em an excuse, an outlet, and… explodes out.  Like compressed gas.”

Each hand was giving birth to more.  Some spurted blood, which produced more pools of blood, while others simply branched out, or groped, scratching, tearing, pressing against the fake plexiglass barrier.

They multiplied in strength every few seconds, and Cleo, at the far end, was digging into her bag.

“If you have to use their tricks to win, you’re already gone,” Estrada said.  “Would’ve been better if she thought more about the bullet she was putting into the chamber before she shot.”

“How do you fight something like this?”

“You don’t fight it in a sealed space, for one thing,” Toy said.

“Guess we’ll see how strong these Judges are,” Estrada added.

It wasn’t that long before three-quarters of the stands were filled with arms, pressing against one another, crushing one another to pulp, which produced more blood.  Some oozed between the plexiglass and the boards.  Nascent hands began to emerge, before turning to black crystal.  The Judge in black.

“I call for the test!” Cleo called out.

“Playing their game,” Estrada whispered.  “No.”

The hands went still.  Cleo sat down, firmly, while the others gathered around her.  Two of them dug into her bag, looking for magic items to use in the meantime.

Hands began to wither and die.

“I think Cleo has the right idea,” Francis murmured.

“Maybe, but wrong approach,” Estrada said.

The arms and hands needed momentum.  Without the driving force behind them, they were withering and losing strength.  Some broke under their own weight.  Ear canals in the palms that ran down the forearms puked up black liquid with fragments of bone in it.

“Raises the question, how do you fight something like that?” one of the soldiers asked their leader.

“I’ve got ideas,” John said.  “Black, Ribs, you’d be central to that.”

“Makes sense.”

Dying hands ceased dying.  They began to multiply again, slower than before.

Cleo sat up, eyes clearing.

“Tests complete.  Cleo Aleshire succeeds.”

Lauren Snyder hobble-walked, almost falling because she’d started moving without telling the Musser son anything.  “Witch Hunter!  What was the test!?  It’s important!”

Cleo looked at the woman, and flipped up her middle finger.

“First one,” Toy said, quiet, “Cleo was asked to give sanctuary and protection to some practitioner kids, against something monstrous outside the building.”

“Is that something these judges do?”

“Who knows?” Toy asked.

The hands reached around toward Cleo and the others.  Francis tensed.

“Don’t lose track.  She said to keep eyes open,” Toy said.

Estrada rubbed at the one eye where beads of blood were leaking out of the suture marks.

There wasn’t much to watch, though.  There were the Others gathered here, ready to compete, and then a sea of arms pressing against the barriers, both the real one that normally surrounded the rink, currently damaged, and the invisible wall the judges were apparently supporting.

He felt claustrophobic, realizing that.  It reminded him of being bottled.  Fucked with.

This was fucked.

Cleo was going to die.  The others were going to die.  If there was any chance he could get out of this, he’d still have to report back to Samaniego about how over their heads they’d gotten.

“I won your little test, you bastards!” Cleo raised her voice.  She shot at the hands.  One of the Witch Hunters had found a fire extinguisher and used it.  It helped slow the hands, inexplicably.  Another was trying to set a fire at one barrier, which was more plastic than wood.  The thin, groping hands tore the barrier apart before anything could catch.  “I won your test, and I get nothing!?”

“You obtained an advantage, but you’re in no position to use it.  You’re unequipped,” the Judge in black told her.

“Fuck you!  Fuck-!”

The hands reached the first of the Witch Hunters.  As they got a grip, multiple arms that were connected together moved in unison, slamming the first man into the barrier with enough force that his jaw unhinged, skull no doubt cracking.

Francis watched, dispassionate.  He let emotions slip away, and focused, studying- any weakness?

If there was one in the hands, it was going to be replicated, because they were fractal, clones or copies of the hands that had come before.

“Might have to use another lock on that bastard, unless one of you is feeling brave,” Breastbiter said, laughing.

Francis felt a surge of hatred for the goblin, who’d laugh when people who’d devoted their lives to an important cause were dying like this.  Brutally, torn apart.

“Cleo Aleshire!” the Snyder woman shouted.  “What was the test!?”

“If you really want to find out, you could participate,” John Stiles said.  He didn’t look happy.

“It’s less risky if I wait.”

“Of course it is,” Breastbiter said, laughing.  “Less chance you’ll lose.”

“That’s not what I meant.”

Hands gripped Cleo and lifted her up.  Each hand that gripped her had a hole in the palm, and the firm grip didn’t keep them from continuing to multiply.  Hands reached beneath skin, up her arm, and Francis could see as fingers bent, digging into joints, to sever and divide, or palms pressed in, so more arms could branch out.

For too long, the skin held, as the arms branched into and through her.  Then some broke the skin, reaching out, and she looked like a common horror herself, jaw yawning wide, arms where there shouldn’t be arms, her entire body stretched out, distended.

And the remainder of her tore apart.  Arms that weren’t supported fell, bringing gobbets of her with them.

Beautiful, dangerous Cleo… gone.

Francis had hardened his heart long ago.  He’d had to, to survive the hive of fairies.  It still hurt to see.  His eyes watered, and for a moment his thoughts were very confused as he glanced at some of the gore and realized it was her and he had no idea what part of her it was.

“Is it important that the arena be as stained with blood and gore as possible?” the Snyder woman asked.

Francis concentrated.  Trying to make sense of it, anchoring himself in the present.  He heaved in a breath, like he’d just finished running.

Estrada clapped a hand on his back, then squeezed his shoulder.

Francis nodded, even though he felt dizzy, his heart hurting, his stomach flirting with the idea of emptying itself if he thought too hard about how someone as whole as Cleo Aleshire, the people he’d seen around the Lighthouse, people who’d been like distant uncles to him, Pike who’d made funny jokes yesterday… they were steaming lumps of meat now.  They’d been those people and now they were meat that fogged up plexiglass.

He looked away.

“The brutal nature of it feeds the ritual of the contest,” Reid Musser said.

John Stiles nodded.

“How do you know?” the Snyder woman asked.

They were so casual about it.  Francis felt that spark of hatred again.  There… there wasn’t any wood for it.  Nothing for the spark to ignite.  He was paralyzed, helpless, convinced that even his crossbow wouldn’t work, because the forces arranged against them were so strong.

“Feels about right, through the parts of me that got touched with the Abyss,” Reid said.  He looked at the Judges.  “Am I wrong?”

“No,” the Alabaster said.  “This is ultimately about how power is asserted, from one corner of this.”

“A bullet is cleaner,” John Stiles said.  “This was unnecessarily brutal.”

“I’m sure the Witch Hunter would agree,” Breastbiter said, before bursting into laughter.

Francis tensed, that burst of hatred coming again.  His thoughts disappeared into a daze of hatred and confusion.  He momentarily wondered if people ever got to this point and just plain lost their minds.

He wanted to do something, but as long as they were here…

He shook his head.  He was fairly sure he wouldn’t get away with shooting the goblin.  But if they were slated to die anyway…

It took a touch of his shoulder by Toy to let him realize that as the internal dialogue warred within him, he was practically talking to himself, shaking his head, gesturing.  He went still.

The little horror’s hands receded, one retreating into another.  Some brought things with them.  The tangle of fingers on Cleo’s necklace, flesh, concrete that had been crushed by the press of arms, the fire extinguisher.

The multiplication reversing.

Until they’d all drawn together into an arrangement swimming in loose flesh that had accumulated in the process.  Collected flesh and items were dropped in a loose pile at the feet of the little horror’s body.  It lay there, breathing, no gunshot wound, and no apparent desire to move any further.

He’d just wiped out a squadron of Witch Hunters.  An ear-faced fuck of a thing with no apparent emotions.

Francis looked past the Other to the tree in the corner.  It felt fitting that something like that overlook things now, if this was the last…

There was a hole in the wall.

A crack, where the wood had strained the wall or pulled away and pulled some wall with it.  Francis could see the way the moonlight shone through, casting mottled light on the wall, where the actual lights in the building didn’t reach.

There had been a lot of times in his life he’d have given everything for a gap smaller than that.  A chink in the bottle that had contained him.  A chance to get at one of the practitioner families that dealt with Fae and stayed forever out of reach.  Cleo had only reignited those feelings with tales about the work they’d done on that front.

“Rgngrnncerplage’s victory,” the Judge in gold announced.

“To speed things along, I don’t think we’ll find and dissolve every chunk of flesh that has been scattered across the arena,” the Judge in black said.

Francis tensed.

There was a gap.  Now he had to find a chance to use it.  To get from the inside out?  They might block it.

“By the rules of your game…” Francis said.

“Don’t play their fucking game,” Estrada hissed, gripping Francis’ arm.

“It’s how we survive here.  The only way out is through, and I see a way through… and a way back in.  We can hurt them.”

Estrada’s eyes narrowed.

“What rule do you speak of?” the Judge in white asked.

“If Cleo was the leader, and we’re the soldiers brought in to help… she’s gone, we can leave, right?”

“I warned you that by entering you admitted yourself to the contest,” the Judge in black told Francis.  “You were admitted.”

“Is this the kind of thing you’re going to tell me, later?” John Stiles asked.  “That my people can’t leave?”

“We have a prearranged deal.”

“I can only imagine the other participants would have made different choices if they knew their participants might not be allowed to leave,” John said.  “Sable Prince, you’ve said nothing specific about the fact they must pick some new leader and continue…”

Francis watched the exchange, his expression neutral.

“You may leave,” the Judge in white told them.

Francis reached down to help lift Keith to his feet.  Toy helped at the other arm.  Estrada rubbed at his nose stump, where mucus was leaking out, and made an ugly expression that might’ve been pain combined with his frustration.

The spikes at the back door shattered, littering the floor.

“I helped you,” John Stiles said, as they got to the little door that let them off the rink.  “Leave Kennet, leave it be.”

“Fuck yourself,” Estrada told the man.  “We don’t owe you anything.”

They had to practically drag a groaning Keith to the door.  Francis wasn’t strong, but he was the only real option, when Estrada was hurting, and kind of a useless asshole besides.

They stepped outside, and the air was cool, free of the cloying stench of blood.

Clint was there, sitting on the back of a car, Rocky and a guy Francis didn’t know with him.

“Shouldn’t have gone in,” Clint said.

“Cleo said.”

“Shouldn’t have listened to her.  They dead?”

“Yeah.  Can give you the rundown after,” Estrada said.

“Already got the gist.  Get yourselves into the car.  There’s a kit, Rocky?”

“I suck at first aid.”

“It’s a chance to learn.”

Francis lingered, looking back at the building.

No Musser Patriarch, no pointed hats, nobody peering over the edge.

“They’re gone.  There’s some in the woods and out front, they agreed to leave us be if we’d return the favor, I agreed.  They’re mostly panicking,” Clint said, as if he was reading Francis’ mind.

“Panicking?”

“They got hit with a distraction out front, a tattooed woman got carried away.”

“What’d you do?”

“Nothing.  Their circus, their elephant shit,” Clint said.  “They really walked in there and got themselves killed?”

Francis nodded.

Clint’s expression fell, and he wasn’t an expressive person.

“We can do something about it,” Francis whispered.  “I saw something.”

“We can leave,” Clint said.  “It’s them killing one another, I see no reason to get in their way or slow them down.”

“Cleo told me she needed me to be quick, to keep my eyes open.  So I could do something later.”

“You think she intended this?”

“I think she kept the mission in mind.  I want to do the same.  We can hurt ’em.”

“We can hurt them more if we go back to Samaniego, report, and maybe come back another time with more forces.  Let them butcher each other in the meantime.  We only hurt ourselves if we get in the middle of them,” Clint said.

“Cleo was good to me,” Francis said.  “Respected me, was going to share some Montreal know-how with me.”

“That stuff gets tricky, Francis,” Clint said.  “Look, sometimes we bring in someone like Pike, they bring tricks of the trade with them, or we mix it up by working with Montreal’s group, but if you go there to stay for any length of time?  Some people here won’t trust you.  I’m not sure Cleo would’ve been doing you a favor.”

“Cleo was good to me.  So was Pike.  So was Jarrell, so was Fry, so was Epperson, so was Watson.  A lot of good men died.”

“That’s the war we’re fighting.”

Francis bit back words he knew he shouldn’t say.

“Sorry, Francis.  I get it.  I really do.”

“Losing our guys doesn’t bother you at all?”

“I was preparing to have lost all of you.  Then you four came out.  I’ll handle the rest later, but for right now, I want to make sure Keith isn’t bleeding out internally and that Estrada’s going to be able to manage.”

Francis drew in a shaky breath, and it felt for a moment like he’d somehow breathed wrong and there was no oxygen in there.  He coughed, trying to trick his body into working again, then huffed out a breath.  Each inhalation and exhalation were somehow a failure, too fast, too breathless.

“Ffffuck,” he gasped out.

“Breathe,” Clint said.

He could see the ways they’d died.  The white trunk and branches of the tree stood out against his eyelids when he closed his eyes.  So bright in the gloom. He clung to that, because the other thing he’d see was the pink behind his eyelids, and it was really hard not to see the bloody bits of people he’d once considered friends and fellow soldiers.

“It’s-”

“Breathe first, talk second.”

“It’s a big fucking brutal killing ritual.  Murdering one another.”

“Let ’em,” Clint said.

“To take a throne?  We really want something like that in charge of anything?  Fuck, Clint,” Francis said.  He coughed in a forced effort to regulate breathing.  “Fuck no.”

“It’s apparently been going on that way for a long fucking time, Francis.  These judges are all over the place, unless some practitioner Lord takes over.”

“That makes it okay?  You don’t think that might be why it’s all fucked?”

“I don’t think, because I don’t know enough.  You know even less than me.”

“Fuck you.”

“It’s the truth, Francis,” Clint told him, holding Francis by both shoulders.  “We don’t know enough, not knowing enough is what put you guys inside, in the middle of that.”

“Fuck off, no.  You want to walk away?  You won’t even hear me out?”

“Nah.  Tell it to Samaniego.”

“The chance will pass.”

“No,” Clint said, firm.

Francis stopped.

He looked past Clint, and he could see the car, with one of the back doors open.  Estrada sat in the doorway, feet on the ground, staring at Francis.

The man raised one hand to his cut-off nose, and dug a thumb into the wound, gouging the burn, opening a gap between it and the rest of his face.

Blood began to pour out, running down his hand, arm and down from his elbow.  He gasped in pain.

Clint turned, looking, and swore.  “Shit on me.”

“Started bleeding,” Estrada said, glancing at Francis.

“Get the big kit out of the trunk,” Clint said.

He threw Francis the keys.  Francis popped the trunk, then pulled out the clear case with the extensive first aid supplies.  There was enough for a minor field surgery, with clear saline bags, among other things.  He dragged it out and placed it on the ground by the tire, lifting the lid away.

“We won’t get attacked?” Francis asked.

“Half of them are worried about an attack from the outside.  I made a deal for info, like Samaniego said to do.”

“But we won’t get attacked?”

“Francis!” Clint raised his voice.  “Fuck, I know- just hang back.  Let me do this.”

“Bleeding like a stuck pig,” Estrada swore.

Francis took a step back, watching as Clint did what he could to staunch the other Witch Hunter’s wound.

“What the fuck did you do?”

“Fucking sneezed,” Estrada told the man.

Francis placed the keys on the clear tote, went to the trunk, and grabbed some canisters and a gun before shutting it.

He could move quickly and quietly when he wanted.  The world he lived in might’ve been a fantasy, but some of it had stuck.  The fairies had brought little gifts and points of education from the Fae realms to better reinforce the fantasy they’d built around him.  One where a six or seven year old could run circles around a greedy kingdom’s armed guards.

Silently, he walked away, taking advantage of the chance Estrada had given him.  The man had heard, the man had been there.

He looked, and he found the crack in the exterior wall, barely visible, but for a white branch that crept out, latching onto brickwork.

Clint had rescued Laprade, who had touched the ladder and gotten electrocuted, but Francis wasn’t willing to try it.  Besides, that got him nowhere near the hole in the wall.

Instead, he scaled a tree.  The same way he had in a fantasy world that had been painted for him.

The fairies had taken his childhood from him and shattered it, and now there were pieces that were really stuck in there, playing over and over again.

Climbing trees was one of those pieces.

He judged the distance from the most stable branch to the wall, and then made the leap.  He caught onto the edge of the crack, the things he’d taken from the trunk banging against his hip.

The next round was already starting.  He adjusted his position, hooking one leg over the white branch, body sideways, elbow in one bit of the crack, peering through, gun ready.

The Snyder woman.

Rgngnncerplath

Thoughts twisted through the horror’s mind, making several turns at odd and impossible angles before reaching their destination.

“Bets!” Breastbiter called out.  “I bid on the little fuck!”

Goblins in Breastbiter’s company, primarily the smaller ones, began to try to get his attention.

“We’re running out of candidates, so sure, we’ll include you guys,” Breastbiter said.  “And these wimps aren’t betting, sooo-”

“I’ll bet,” Reid Musser said.

“You don’t have to do that,” Lauren Snyder said.

Jhnstrstnyplath spat blood on the arena stairs.  Somewhere deep inside it, a glimmer of a man, mind, Self, and soul contorted into an impossible shape, tried to express something.  A scream, a cry for help.

The horror twitched, head tilting, and it mated with the universe, spitting out more blood.

Every sequence of movements was at once impossibly complicated and very hard to arrest.  Once Lrnsnycherpleth started moving, it was hard to stop.  It was hard to be aware of the world, but it was very aware of the shape of the empty space around it.  Sensations and awareness flared on it like spots and bursts on the surface of the sun.

In the midst of one, a frequency was struck, and the man that Chrlmssrogoplath had once been opened eyes wide and saw nothing but the cage of flesh that surrounded him, a cage smaller than the eyes and self it contained.  He screamed with a mouth that had virtually no connection to the eyes, and the scream disappeared in the maze of the horror’s compact creation.

It provoked a nervous response, and the little horror spat blood to mate with the universe once again.

“Shall we begin?” Lauren Snyder asked.

“Whenever you wish.”

“Then I immediately call for the test.”

Btrrstmssogplage felt the world change around it.  It thrust body forward, belly twitching, arms flailing.

Michael Horst sat atop the throne.  The world around him was flesh.  The throne was flesh.  Much of it was his.  Eyes roved on the wall, ear canals and other holes bled openly.  Hands groped everywhere.

The Alabaster stood next to him.  “Same as before.  All you have to do is remain in that seat-”

Michael rose to his feet.  He turned around, facing her.  “You can’t let it- me have the seat.”

“I could not stop it if I chose to.”

Michael shook his head.

Then he drew in a deep breath, and forced himself to bite through his tongue.  To choke himself on the blood, or to die by the blood loss- to do anything except-

“It won’t work,” she said.

The walls of the flesh room collapsed in.  He was wrapped once again in bondage of his own flesh, so tight and twisted that few things made sense any longer.

His head tilted back, and he mated with the universe, showering himself in a sputtering spray of blood.

“And that’s the test,” Lauren Snyder said.  “Did the last judge not want the throne?”

“She was ambivalent,” was the answer.  “She didn’t wish to die, but she had no passion for the role.”

“And that’s what you’ve contrived to add to this test?  Nudged Cagerattler to add to the dynamic?  A test of how much we desire the throne?  If we’re willing to compromise ourselves and our wishes to take it?”

“Essentially.”

“How many people here even want the seat?” Lauren Snyder asked.

“Do you?” Breastbiter asked, voice loud.

Lauren Snyder shook her head.  “So Cagerattler didn’t want it as much as he wanted other things.  Cleo Aleshire wanted it, or… she was willing to make the hard decisions for the victory, at least.”

“She made a decision for the victory.  Her competition was weak,” the Sable Prince answered.

“Vernystassiplath doesn’t want it at all?”

Vernystassiplath mated with the universe once more, in a trembling, agitated way.  It would fight.

It began to run around to where Lauren Snyder was.

“Breastbiter?  Would you wholeheartedly succeed in the test?” Lauren Snyder asked.

Breastbiter laughed.  “We’ll see!”

“John Stiles?”

John was silent.  A soldier behind him grunted his dissatisfaction, turning away.

“Reid?”

The man with the bandaged face only stared at her.

“What a sad, twisted little contest this is,” Lauren Snyder said.  “I thought better of you, Alabaster.”

“It’s not my contest.  I only administrate it.”

“I can’t see anything good coming-” Lauren Snyder said.

The gunshot was ‘silenced’, but even a silenced gun had some noise to it.

A bullet through Lauren Snyder’s head, so clean she didn’t even fall immediately.

She sat down on the stair behind her, then collapsed, draping herself sideways.

The horror stopped in its tracks.

“The fuck!?” Reid Musser cried out.

“Outside interference,” the Sable Prince declared.

“It doesn’t matter,” the Alabaster Doe answered.

“Witch Hunters can be so fun,” Breastbiter said.

There was a hallowed space within Lauren Snyder.  The horror could see the bonds, and it could recognize the connections.

Lauren Snyder had picked a familiar.  When she couldn’t manage it, she’d bound it inside herself.

Now that her head was cracked open, it could crawl forth from her heart.  A simple spirit given physical shape.  Nothing complex, nothing overwrought.  Something animal.  The horror didn’t have the senses to see the particulars.

But inside the spirit was a sliver of something.  It had bitten into something very, very bad, and that something had poisoned it.

“Oh,” Reid Musser breathed the word.  His eyes flashed with Sight.  “What did you do?”

Lauren’s body was picked up, limp as a doll with loose joints, the spirit unfolding around her, twisted, tainted, ruined.  She tangled from one side of its face, a morass of vague and roiling spirit with taint bubbling out and through it.

Ppscttlodoploth ran away, misshapen feet slipping and stumbling as it put distance between itself and the spirit.

“If the horror has no interest in fighting…” John Stiles raised his voice.  One of his soldiers leaned in close to whisper something, and he nodded.  “…does it concede?”

The horror stopped, turning.

A voice deep inside it cried out.

It shared the same sentiment for once.  It choked back its fluids, shaking bodily.

“That might be a yes,” Reid Musser said.  “You brought in someone with something so vile in her that you’re scaring the horror to the point it doesn’t want to exist anymore?  What even is this?”

“She exhausted all options.  If she participates and brings something that small to us, we can manage it,” the Alabaster Doe said.  “Fight her as you would any other candidate.  There is some risk of infection but the end result is much the same.”

“Don’t get infected,” the Aurum Coil said.

“And you’re forcing us to do your cleanup work?” Reid Musser asked.  He sounded angry.  He looked at Lauren Snyder’s limp body and clenched a hand.

“If you take the throne, you may influence choices and policies like this one,” the Aurum Coil told them.

“You didn’t need your shitty test,” Breastbiter growled.  All good humor had slipped away from the goblin.  “You have it right here.  Waste of time and words to do that other stuff.”

“They requested it,” the Sable Prince replied.  “And it seems we have more outside interference.”

The tree was burning now.  The fire spread.

“I can deal with it,” the Aurum Coil said.  “I’ll get him, if you’ll put it out?”

“Leave it,” John Stiles said.  “No need to extinguish the fire.”

“It’s up to the contestants.  Majority vote will serve.”

“I vote no,” Reid Musser said, quiet.

The Aurum Coil left the building, going outside to find the arsonist.

Breastbiter laughed, but it was a meaner, more intense laugh.  “Sure.  Keep it.  I don’t mind a bit of heat.”

“Lauren Snyder must abstain, as she is temporarily dead, Detckdtnsogrplath will abstain as he concedes.  The fire remains,” the Alabaster Doe decided.

Breastbiter laughed, and it was the mean laugh again.

“Witch Hunter did you a favor after all, after you argued for him to be allowed to go, didn’t he?”

“Did he?” John Stiles asked.

“Set your fire.  You’ve been itching for things to move along, now our arena is burning down,” Breastbiter crowed, before laughing.  “Someone going to turn up that you don’t want to fight?”

“Charles Abrams.”

“The Forsworn?” Reid Musser asked.  “Really?”

“Really.”

Breastbiter laughed, and it was laced with that grim negativity again.  “Let’s do this, then, four of us left.  Soldier boy, ragface, the girl with the tainted familiar, and Breastbiter the Chonk, devourer of nipples.  Better hope we can wrap this up soon, or that you can pass the test better than this forsworn dick can.”

The Sable Prince picked up the little horror, and started to unmake it.

“You think he wants it more than you?” Reid Musser asked.

“I want it enough I’ll fight her to be through this faster,” John said.  “As soon as I’m clear.  I don’t need or want my squad.”

“When the horror is unmade,” the Sable Prince said.

The Alabaster Doe held up one finger.  She was backlit by the steadily spreading fire.  The Aurum Coil returned, gliding in on the centipede’s sinuous body, weaving through the structure.

She dropped her hand as the unmaking completed, finger sweeping down.  The little horror didn’t see the last of the motion, or anything that followed.

Next Chapter