Lexa
There are no weapons to be had, which is my first and only observation as the horn sounds. Before the chains binding my wrists can fall to the ground like a dead weight, I grab the chain and spin, using my body weight and height to my advantage to send the chain ripping through the air. I keep my grip tight as it makes impact across the face of the first man to turn to us after the horn blares. Blood sprays, and the thick, heavy iron manacle attached to the end of the chain cuts through his face, taking teeth and bone with it. He falls to the ground. There’s a single moment of silence before all hell breaks loose.
Bodies surge in my direction, faces contorted in violence, rage, and determination. Smug, male arrogance scents the air, mingling with the blood already beginning to stain the dirt beneath my bare feet, but just as I swing the chain back around to collide with two more men, the ground beneath me begins to pull apart, shaking violently.
I teeter to the side, the chain snapping back in an uneven circle, missing my intended target.
Sharp screams cut through the crowd of fighters. Dirt pours into three gaping holes suddenly spreading at an extreme rate of speed. Meg leaps out of the way of the gap as it widens, her eyes wide with confusion, but I shout, “FIND CHESSIE!” before pushing and shoving into an opening in the center of the arena while everyone else is watching the ground swallow itself.
I count heads. There were fifty of us to begin with, and if Meg was honest about seeing Chessie in the group, that makes forty-seven foes. Forty-seven men wanting to kill us, to kill each other. Forty-seven souls hell bent on making sure we don’t survive.
Forty-seven souls I don’t give a shit about.
I sprint through the crowd, swinging the chain, using the trembling ground and the distractedness of the crowd to my advantage, but it doesn’t last long.
Several opponents fall into the holes. Six in total, which means there’re forty-one left. A grinding sound explodes through the arena, cutting through the cheers of the spectators, and three platforms rise from the pits, streaked with blood.
A man grabs my shoulder and tries to yank me backward, but I swing, sending the chain across his back. He stumbles away, reaching for me, but I lash out at him, the iron manacles colliding with the side of his head in a killing blow.
Forty.
“LEXAAAA!” Meg bellows as she runs at a full sprint, pointing at the tallest of the platforms. It’s nearly forty feet high and caught in the glare of the sun, but as I move to the side on quick feet, keeping the men currently turning in my direction in my line of sight, I see it.
A weapons cache.
Precariously resting on the tallest platform.
Other fighters notice. The air shifts as the initial confusion and shock of the floor of the arena opening subsidies, and violence creeps back in.
Grunts and shouts of pain echo toward me while the men fight each other, strategically cutting down weaker opponents with only their hands. But I’m a target. Ten men slowly edge toward me, backing me against the inside shaded curve of the arena. My eyes are on Meg until she’s lost to the sun’s glare, chased by at least a dozen men.
As the first of my immediate opponents steps forward, positioning himself ahead of the pack, I see her.
“Chessie,” I breathe as relief sweeps through me, untangling the knots in my heart and brain.
“What’d you say, bitch?” snarls the gnarled, but absolutely massive, fae-ish male creeping toward me, the old tongue falling from his lips in shattered vowels. There has to be some kind of difference between these men and the full-blooded fae watching our deaths with glee. I can’t put my finger on it yet, but I don’t have time to figure it out as it stands. Not here. Not now.
My eyes snap to his as a sudden sense of purpose replaces my relief. I’m not going to die here. Chessie, currently running across the top of the first platform, ten or so feet off the ground, isn’t going to die. Meg, who is leading the men on her heels on a wild goose chase around the base of the platforms trying to exhaust them, which is an incredibly smart move on her part, she’s not going to die.
I won’t allow it. We trained for this. They know how to put that training into action.
The fae man is almost within reach. I press my back against the wall, exhale deeply, and smile at him.
That catches him and his comrades–at least for now–off guard. He stumbles over his own feet–fine boots to go with his even finer armor, something made for a warrior, someone trained to hunt and kill–and I strike.
The chain whips from my side, striking him in the neck.
Through the neck.
I’m moving before his head slides free from his shoulders. I send the chain barreling into the three men behind him before his body crumples to the ground. The force of the chain being drawn back requires all the strength I have, but I tear through the plated armor, through flesh, until four men fall in a matter of seconds, but the fifth man grabs the chain as it bounces back to me and pulls.
I have a second to react. A single second to stumble, to reevaluate my next move. I allow him to pull me toward him while the other men rush at us, but the second he reaches for my hair, I leap, wrapping my arms around his neck while using my momentum to twist onto his back, dragging us both to the ground. His neck snaps like a twig despite his size. I roll away as he slumps, grabbing the chain, and whip it toward the men racing in my direction, eyes wild with hatred and violence.
Bodies litter the arena. The scattered fighters stumble over dead men as I hurry to the platforms, expertly picking my way through the carnage. A distance forms between us while I fall into the shadow of the first platform. It’s only ten feet tall, but two men bound out from behind it, also wielding chains. I scream in determination, sending my chain flying, soaring, through the air, letting go of the one weapon I had in my arsenal.
The chain knocks them both to the ground but doesn’t kill them. No, the final blow comes from Meg, who jerks her chain across their faces while they writhe on the ground until they no longer move.
Brutal. Sickening. Explicitly violent.
But we’re warriors. We’ll always fight for our lives. We spent our entire lives learning how.
“Where’s Chessie?” Meg shouts frantically, glancing back at the chaos painting the arena red. The men giving me chase ended up fighting each other, which is the break I need to just… think.
“She’s trying to get to the second platform,” I pant, desperately out of breath. “We need to get up there, to the weapons cache, before anyone else does. We need to claim that third platform and use it to kill off everyone else. We’ll have the advantage from that height.” I grab her arm, noticing the flayed open skin. She yanks her arm back, shaking her head.
“I’m fine. Go!”
I grab her and shove her toward the platform, silently commanding her to climb. I’m tall–far taller than the average woman. It won’t take more than a jump to grip the edge, but Meg needs the extra push, which I give her.
“Come on!” she shouts, frantic, as the surviving men move away from their recent kills and in our direction instead. “Lexa!”
I leap off my toes and grip the edge of the pillar, straining as I drag myself up, but just as I pull myself over the edge, Meg’s grunt of surprise, then pain, sends adrenaline and fury tearing through my senses.
I sprint toward the tall, lanky man dragging her backward by the neck. She kicks out, but his grip is impossibly strong, and her eyes bulge. He’s fae, but something’s off about him, too. I don’t give myself a chance to think about it. I can’t, not when Chessie is fighting for her life on the second platform, and Meg is passing out.
I send my fist against the underside of his jaw. The crowd goes wild, their cheers filling the arena with so much force it sends trembles through my skin. He rears back, dropping Meg, but I grab him by his torn shirt and shove him to the edge of the pillar.
“S-stop!” he grunts, turning to me with his hands raised. “D-don’t kill me. I sh-shouldn’t be here!” The Dead Tongue is strong and heavily accented but perfect. Fluent. His native tongue.
My stomach dips to my bare toes. I waver, confused, and almost make a fatal mistake.
I should have pushed him.
He lunges at me, teeth bared, but I’m a step ahead of him. His body collides with mine, but I tuck my legs in tight and then extend them, using my strength to send him careening several feet into the air. He rolls to the edge of the platform, trying to save himself, but slips over the side.
“LEXA!” Chessie cries, but I step toward the edge where the man is holding on, trying to pull himself up. The drop won’t kill him. Not even close.
But if he can’t save himself from the fall…
“We’re all slaves, like you. We’re just their entertainment,” he snarls, his mouth full of blood. “We’re just their entertainment!”
Meg rolls onto her stomach, panting. The six men remaining in the fight are climbing up the platform. I don’t have time for this.
“We’re just their–”
I kick, my heel colliding with his teeth, driving his nose inward with a wet crunch. He falls back, arms splayed, and when he hits the ground, his head bounces. Hard.
Blood seeps into the ground around his face while the crowd jeers.
I turn, grab Meg’s arm, and race to the far edge of the platform. “JUMP NOW!” I scream, and then we’re hurling through the air. Chessie managed to clear the jump to the second platform already, some twenty feet off the ground, but with Meg’s added weight, I struggle to maintain my momentum and then my grip as we collide with the side of the platform. I clutch Meg’s arm, but she dangles, her entire body flush with the blood-stained wall while I somehow manage to grab the edge. Chessie grabs my arm, yanking with all of her might, but she’s the smallest of the three of us. Meg finds a notch in the side of the platform and takes some of her weight off me and then begins to climb.
We’ve made it this far. The men now on the first platform fight against each other. The air fills with the sound of flesh meeting flesh in violent, deadly blows. Only the strongest remain–the biggest, the meanest, the ones, I realize, the crowd is screaming for and likely betting on.
“We’re just their entertainment!”
I scrub the stranger’s words from my mind and pull myself onto the second platform. Meg is right behind me, panting and whining as her muscles reach their breaking point, but I turn around and pull her up.
“We need to keep moving,” I say, cutting off Chessie as she shatters into relieved sobs. “We need to get to the weapons cache. The rest can wait.” My voice cracks as tears spill from Chessie’s eyes. I just want to hug her. I want to tell her I’m sorry for not saving her. I want to promise I’ll get her home.
But right now, I’m the captain. I have work to do.
“It’s a twenty-foot jump; we’ll never make it,” Meg grunts, bruises starting to welt across her arms and chest.
“It’s just another climb,” Chessie says, looking at me. “We can. We have to do it.”
Meg rises, and I can tell by the look in her eyes that she’s on the verge of giving up.
But she’s right. Chessie won’t make the jump. She’s barely five feet tall. The fall would be enough to kill her instantly. Meg? She might be able to jump, find her footing, and climb but… she’s exhausted, her arms flayed and bleeding heavily.
“Stay here. Do not let those men cross.” I turn before they can argue and sprint the length of the platform. The crowd goes totally, unnervingly silent the second my body is airborne.
Time slows to a crawl. I have a fraction of a second to search the side of the final platform for any openings, any chips and breaks in the stone, before we collide. The impact takes my breath away, but the fingers on my left hand sink into a break in the stone, and I hang, my ribs screaming in pain.
A hush rolls through the arena before the crowd breaks out in thunderous cheers and chants. I don’t look back. I grit my teeth and pull myself up, break by break, divot by divot until my arms feel like they’re going to shatter, but I find the edge of the third platform by the grace of the Goddess Herself.
Meg shouts something unintelligible below, and Chessie’s shout of pain is the last ounce of motivation I need to pull myself onto the final platform. It towers over the others, giving me a full view of the arena. My vision blurs, my body begging for rest, but I sway toward the weapons cache, knocking over swords and shields before my fingers lock around the smooth neck of a bow.
I whirl with the quiver, scattering arrows, weapons clattering. I pull back three arrows at once, taking a shallow breath before aiming and sending them soaring toward the four men trying to pin Meg and Chessie to the ground. Three arrows meet their mark–head shots. Three men go down as the crowd goes wild. But the quiver is empty when I reach back, finding nothing but air.
The final man–the last man standing–raises his fist, aiming for Chessie’s face, who he has pinned to the ground while Meg writhes a few feet away, her face bloodied from a similar blow, but she’s reaching for Chessie, her mouth moving, too far away for me to hear.
I grab a spear twice my size and grip it. I hate spears. I’m not very well trained with them, but I can’t fail.
I can’t fail them like I failed the rest of my regiment.
I scream at the top of my lungs out of pure, unfiltered grief and rage. The man looks up. He’s fae. Maybe. Still unnaturally gorgeous. Battered wings tucked in tight along his back. His hands are stained a deep, dark crimson, and for a single, aching moment I wonder how many of the dead bodies scattered across the arena are by his doing.
I let the spear fly, aimed for his head, his face. Then I crouch, gripping the arrow closest to me, knowing I’ll have a single shot if the spear doesn’t meet its mark. He starts to rise, to turn away.
The crowd hushes as the spear pierces through his neck and keeps going, soaring into the shadows on the far side of the arena, where it breaks into pieces against the farthest wall.
The shock among the crowd is so palpable I can taste it.
Meg and Chessie remain on the second platform. Alive.
There’s no one else.
But the game isn’t over, is it? Only one person was supposed to walk away, to ascend to whatever hell we’ve found ourselves in.
Today, there will be three victors or none at all.
I turn to the royal balcony and aim my last arrow at the king.
Gasps ring out, but the arena continues its silent watch.
The king just smiles at me–a sick, curious kind of smile that burrows into my bones.
But it’s the dark-haired man standing a few feet away from him that catches my attention. Tall and broad, he grips the railing along the balcony, his shoulders tense and arm muscles locked as he looks down at me and stares… disappointed, I think, at the outcome.
His slightly curly hair ripples around his bare shoulders in the light breeze I can finally feel at this height, and his tan skin is covered in tattoos, but he’s too far away for me to see them clearly.
Yet his eyes, a pale, amber gold, shine as he turns away and fades from view.
The king raises a hand and calls an end to this round of the Culling.