Page 21 of Chained to the Horned God
His front-right arm swings in. I duck under it, pivot on my hoof, and slam my shoulder into his gut. He grunts, stumbles, and I hear the wet crunch of bone in his ankle when I bring my knee up into the back of it. He collapses hard on one side, howling, scrabbling at the ground with his other arms like a felled insect.
I give him a breath. Just one. Enough time to raise himself back to one knee, snarl crooked teeth, and raise the hammer again with a defiant grunt.
Then I take the other leg.
This one breaks easy. It folds sideways with a sound like snapping wood. He doesn’t scream this time. He just gasps, eyes wide. Like he’s finally realized what this place is. Like he just now understood that down here, in the sand, there are no rules. No gods. No mercy.
I step back. Let him crawl. Let them see.
The crowd is a writhing wall of noise. They chant my name with glee. Their mouths scream for death, their hands lifted in unison, fists and cups and coins raised toward the pit. “Bar-SOK! Bar-SOK!”
He tries to crawl to the edge of the ring. Toward escape. Toward anything but this.
I grab him by the back of the skull. One twist, fast and sharp. His neck pops like a ripe melon stem. His body slumps, limp, a sack of meat with no spark left inside.
The cheer that follows shakes dust from the upper columns. The crowd explodes into a frenzy. It isn’t victory they want—it’s spectacle.
I lift the hammer above my head and roar, deep and guttural. Their chant swells louder. I see a child on a noblewoman’s lap clapping with bloodlust in her eyes. I see two dark elf merchants shaking hands over a betting slip. I see Lotor at the highest tier, lounging like a bored cat with wine-stained lips and a crooked grin. He doesn’t clap. He doesn’t need to. His eyes glitter with something worse than approval.
They throw me a blood-crusted towel as the gates creak open. I stumble back through them, limping. My left side burns, ribs bruised, maybe cracked. My breath rattles in my throat.
By the time I make it to the cell, my body feels like someone poured boiling oil through my veins. The sweat stings my eyes, thick as grease, and I reek of copper and smoke.
Valoa is already there.
She doesn’t speak. She just takes the towel, dips it in the cistern, and starts wiping my face with slow, careful strokes. Her touch is cool and firm, her expression unreadable.
“You should see the other guy,” I mutter, trying for humor. It comes out gravel and blood.
She doesn’t laugh. But her eyes soften.
“You stink,” she finally says.
“Part of the charm.”
She rolls her eyes but keeps cleaning. The towel comes away red. She wrings it, dips it again, and presses it to my chest, over the worst of the bruises. Her hands pause on a particularly angry welt.
“Broken?”
“Maybe.”
She doesn’t press harder. She just nods and keeps moving, wiping me down with deliberate care. My legs tremble—not from pain. From the weight of being seen.
It hits me again how strange this is. How someone so small, so human, can stand next to a beast like me without flinching. How her touch doesn’t make me recoil. How she steadies me in a way no blade or shield ever has.
She changes out the towel. Reaches into her pouch for salve. The smell of crushed lavender and bitterroot hits my nose. She smears it across the raw edges of my shoulder with her fingers, firm and sure.
“I thought you said this was going to sting,” I say, teeth clenched.
“It is. In about three seconds.”
I growl through the burn that follows. She doesn’t apologize.
“I keep thinking,” I say, voice low. “About what this place does. To men. To monsters.”
She tilts her head, brows drawing together.
“The arena eats us,” I continue. “Spits us out harder. Uglier. I’ve seen fighters start with hope in their eyes. I’ve watched that hope rot. Watched them beg for a blade in the ribs before they forget who they were.”
