Sylas

SYLAS

T he roar of the crowd is muted as the heavy doors slam shut, cutting off my access to the dome.

"I wasn't done!" I snarl at the clerk operating the external forcefield which pushed me back into the antechamber. He stares at me with a blank face, then operates the locking mechanism, sealing me in.

"I wasn't vrexing done!" I bellow.

Green, black, and red drips from my sword and my claws. My wing feathers are covered in body fluids, the vast majority of it not mine. I'm cut in many places. My blood mixing with the rest of what covers me.

I'll heal.

"! Get over here!"

I swivel towards the captain, a bulky, scarred old Xnosson bull with one broken horn and many scars on his grizzled hide. I shift the sword in my hand, spinning it as I bare my teeth.

"Gladiator," he says, the warning tone in his voice lost on me. "Sword down. The games are done for today."

"I wasn't done." I narrow my eyes, calculating if I can get to where he stands and take him out.

The crowd roars again, the sound lifting me up. Making me want more violence.

"Don't," he says. "It's not worth it."

The blood screaming in my ears abates slightly, enough for some clarity. My nostrils are assaulted with the remnants of the first games of this season. My hearing remains acute enough I can hear the drip-drip of the blood from my sword onto the cold ground. All around me, the world speeds up, as if reality is breaking down the door of what I've done.

Rych sits quietly, wings drooped, as a clerk attends to a wound on his shoulder, his pupils already blown with the pleasure drugs he'll always readily accept for the pain.

"Gladiator ." The captain is pointing to my usual seat, but it means I have to let go of my sword, and I don't want to do it, not yet.

If I don't, I'm going to end up like Blayn who is fighting with the two biggest clerks. They have managed to get on the neck restraint and are wrestling with him back to the cell block. The long poles mean he can't reach them, but it's clear he'd snap his spine trying.

His torso sheens with sweat and blood, his wings beating hard as he attempts to lift them clear off the ground, but it's a battle he's not going to win, and I hear him shouting incoherently as he is dragged away and a door slams. It'll be pitch dark, but it won't stop him raging. Nothing ever does when he's like this after the first fight of the season.

At the far side of the ante-chamber, Klynn pants hard and glares at nothing, sword dangling from one hand, dagger still clutched in the other. He's drenched from the shoulders of his wings to his feet in sky knows what, the scent of him abhorrent. Three clerks surround him warily. One darts in to take the weapons, and he lifts his lips to reveal his fangs.

Instantly the hose is turned on him, but if they hoped to drop him, they fail. Instead he simply releases his fighting implements and holds out his wings and arms as if he's won all the prizes in the dome.

"Where is Maxym?" I growl, the captain getting closer with three of the most vicious clerks at his back.

"He's with the medic. He took a trident to the gut."

"I need to see him." The blood rushes back to my head, pounding along with my heart.

"You're not going anywhere until you are attended to, ." The captain has his hands spread, doing his best to appear calm.

I am anything but calm. I am anything but controlled. And I still have my sword. There's the scent of burning in the air, and I lift it up, ready for battle once again.

"Maxym. I need to see him," I snarl.

"Gak! ." The captain looks around at the clerks. "Relinquish your sword and you can check on Maxym."

I do not want to give up my weapon, or at least my hand doesn't. The sound of the water pouring onto Klynn is in my head and it is too loud. I spread my wings, attempting to center myself as I slam the weapon into the hard packed ground and the blade goes deep.

"Take him to the medic," the captain orders. "Do I have to put you in restraints?" he fires at me.

"Depends," I snarl, "do you want to survive until the next suns-rise?" I rasp.

The captain shakes his head deliberately at my threat, motioning over his shoulder. One of the bolder clerks darts in and the arm irons clamp around my wrists, the cold metal slicing into my flesh.

I fire out a wing, and the clerk goes sliding across the ante-chamber floor into the puddle surrounding Klynn, who immediately pounces on him.

In the midst of the chaos which follows, I walk sedately down the passage leading to the medic area.

Maxym is watching as a laser is used to stitch up his wound, one hand behind his head, wings flowing over either side of the bed.

"Who got you?" I ask.

The medic-tech looks up at me and squeaks in surprise. I lift my wrists to show I'm bound. The last thing I want is to stop Maxym's treatment, given he's the only one out of all of us who requires a medic today.

"Blayn, of course. He's always a liability for the first few games," Maxym replies with a sigh. "No matter whether we're supposed to be fighting each other, all comers, or the pathetic prisoners sent to die in the dome." He raises his top lip in disgust. "Hardly much of a match."

"Presumably it's been slim pickings for enemies of the Galaxy Council," I reply, pulling up a chair, spinning it around to straddle it as I glare at the medic-tech, clasping my bound hands together and resting my elbows on the bed.

I look down at myself. One arm has a large gash, almost down to the bone. I have a number of smaller wounds on my abdomen, none of which I noticed, and given I have a higher pain threshold than the others, I probably wouldn't have done for a while.

"Maybe they're keeping the best until later," Maxym says. "Who the vrex knows, ." He drops his head back and looks up at the ceiling. "All I know is we're here until our debt is paid, or we die fighting."

"Why are you Gryn always like this at the first games?" The captain stomps in, snorting up a storm.

"Because you make us fight without winning, and we always win," I growl. "Until you accept it, we will remain the danger you so clearly believe us to be."