Page 28 of Chained to the Horned God
But because in his silence, I see the man he used to be. The one he still clings to in the dead of night. The one who believes there’s still something worth protecting, even if it costs him pieces of his soul.
I think I love that man.
8
BARSOK
The announcement echoes through the stone halls like a war drum: the Tournament of Thorns. A week of sanctioned slaughter dressed up in gold filigree and silk banners. A celebration of death masked as spectacle. The pit swells with anticipation. Murmurs stretch like thread between slaves, guards, gladiators, and merchants. Everyone’s got something to gain or lose. I’m just here to survive. Again.
The arena transforms overnight. No longer a killing ground of sand and rot—now it's dressed like a temple to some blood-hungry god. Saffron-dyed tapestries hang from the iron arches. The stench of roasted meat coils with incense and ale. Music grinds through the corridors from flutes and bone drums. Even the guards wear polished greaves, as if war’s a gala.
Foreign nobles arrive in clusters, wearing masks carved from ivory and lacquered beetle shells. They laugh through thin lips painted crimson. Their eyes trail every fighter who walks by, more interested in scars than smiles. Lotor shows himself midday, flanked by servants in veils and jeweled sashes. He reeks of wine steeped in rosewater and arrogance. His voice cuts the crowd like a blade when he announces the roster.
I’m on it. Of course.
Every day. No rest. One-on-one. Two-on-one. Doesn’t matter. They want me center stage. They want carnage. They want their monster.
“Play nice,” Valoa mutters when they come for me. Her fingers ghost over a cut on my brow. “You’re the star of this circus.”
I grunt, the closest thing I can give her to a promise.
Day one is a warm-up—if a minotaur breaking a lava-bred drake’s spine can be called that. I crack its armor-plated jaw with a stone hammer and watch the fire behind its eyes snuff out. The crowd screams. Lotor waves his jeweled fingers in approval. I don’t remember the drake’s name. I don’t think they gave it one.
Day two hurts more.
They send me out with the noon sun high enough to blister skin off bone. The crowd’s restless, buzzing on bloodlust and fermented honeywine. I stand in the center of the sand with a rusted axe in one hand and a buckler cracked down the middle in the other. The gate across from me screeches open.
What slithers out looks like it crawled from the bowels of a dying world.
It’s long. Thicker than a tree trunk, black scales gleaming like oil. But it’s the heads that chill me. Two of them, perched on thick necks, move like serpents dancing on the edge of madness. One hisses words I can barely understand—riddles, curses, prayers, I don’t know. The other snarls, froth bubbling in its throat, acid dripping from its fangs like green tears.
The crowd loves it.
Lotor loves it more.
The serpent lunges first. I roll under the first head and bash the buckler against the second, but it barely registers. Acid hisses against my armor, eating through leather and cloth likerot through fruit. Pain burns a path down my arm. I snarl and dive left, letting instinct guide the blade.
The talking head chuckles. “One must die so the other may feed,” it hisses, eyes glowing like coals. “Which do you choose, horned one?”
“I choose silence,” I growl and drive my axe into its throat.
It shudders, shrieking in a tongue I don’t speak. The other head thrashes wildly, tail lashing the air like a whip of thunder. The ground cracks beneath me as the beast coils, trying to crush me. I heave upward, muscles screaming, and slam my shoulder beneath the serpent’s midsection. My hooves dig into the blood-soaked sand.
“Stupid,” I mutter, straining. “Stupid godsdamn idea.”
With a roar that tears through my ribs, I lift the thing—at least half its weight—and flip it onto its back. The crowd gasps. They weren’t expecting that. Neither was I.
The creature writhes, both heads snapping in different directions. One spits a stream of acid that melts the nearest pillar into bubbling stone. I land atop the chest and drive the axe straight through the second skull. The cracking sound is wet and deep. It shudders once. Then stills.
I stand, panting, blood-slick and shaking. The crowd erupts. My name rains down from the stands like a chant of war. “Bar-SOK! Bar-SOK!”
I don’t feel triumph.
Only the hollow echo of what used to be pride. My hands ache. My wounds throb. My heart doesn’t beat faster. It slows, heavy and leaden.
Lotor watches from the uppermost balcony. He stands—just for a second—and turns his back. He leaves without a word. That’s as close to disapproval as he’ll ever show. I’d smile if I wasn’t so godsdamn tired.
They toss me a skin of wine when I return through the gate. I don’t drink it.
