Clovelle spent most of the day running quiet assessnts of the information Verath had shared, cross-referencing ga histories that she pulled from the available archive access their new patrons had provided.
Saffa worked through physical warmups with the sa focused calm she brought to everything, not because she was nervous, but because preparation was a habit she had never seen a reason to drop. Gopu and Lily sat together for a long stretch of the evening, talking in the low, unhurried way they sotis did when there was a lot to think about and no urgency to reach conclusions quickly.
Natalia slept. She did it completely and without apology, sprawled across a comfortable surface, and she looked entirely at peace with the decision.
In her defense, it was to show the variety of their group.
Almond sat by a wide viewing panel that looked out over one of the lower districts of the slave city below. The city moved in the way cities always did at night, or what passed for night in a layered realm that simulated light cycles without a sun, restless in so places, still in others, full of people who had learned to move within the limits of what they were allowed to be. He looked at it for a long ti without thinking about anything in particular. Sotis that was the most useful thing a mind could do before sothing large.
When morning ca, Verath arrived personally to escort them.
The transport that carried them to the edge of the ga’s starting field was not the kind that slaves typically used. It moved smoothly, elevated, and arrived ahead of the main crowds, setting them down with enough ti to get a real look at the battlefield before the gates officially opened. From the elevated drop-off point, the hundred-kiloter expanse spread out in front of them like a curated wilderness. The first five kiloters looked almost peaceful, open land with soft, filtered light spilling down from the realm’s upper panels. And then, just at the point where the eye began to relax, the colors began. Dinsional veils rising from the ground in tall, shimring curtains of blue and green and red and violet and colors that had no common na, each one sealing sothing entirely different inside itself. The air around them moved differently near the veils, not with wind, but with pressure, the quiet sense of compressed possibility that ca from space folded over itself.
A thousand kingdoms had gathered as spectators.
Not all physically. So through relay projections that hovered at the field’s edges in massive transparent screens, each showing the sigil of a kingdom watching from elsewhere. But enough were present in body, arranged in tiered observation platforms that ringed the outer boundary of the field, that the weight of attention was already palpable before a single slave had stepped past the starting line. The sound was different from the arena. Less raw, more layered, the murmur of people who had money on every outco and eyes trained to read odds in real ti.
A slave competition without betting? Get out.
Almond stood at the edge of the starting line with the others arranged beside him.
Around them, hundreds of other slave participants were doing the sa, sizing up the field, sizing up each other, making the quiet, invisible calculations that preceded organized chaos. So were alone. So ca in pairs or small groups. A few were clearly part of larger organized units, bearing matching marks or moving with the coordinated ease of people who had run this kind of ga before. Veterans. The kind who had survived previous rounds and co back because they hadn’t cleared the final the first ti, or the second, and had decided that persistence was a form of power.
Gopu glanced sideways at one of them, a towering figure with extra-jointed arms and a stillness that read like suppressed motion.
"A lot of people here who’ve done this before," he said.
"Good," Saffa said.
Lily said simply with a simple. "Better to compete with proper, strong opponents instead of randoms for more fun."
"Should I cook now or later? Or maybe I should continue to hide my culinary skills lest I get assigned as a kitchen slave." Ainen wryly smiled.
Everyone chuckled.
"No doubt. If you cook, and others find its taste, you’re done." Natalia snickered.
Soon, the announcent ca without theatrics. A single tone, deep and resonant, rolling across the field from every direction at once, as if the ground itself had spoken. It lasted three seconds. Then it faded, and the gate behind them dropped open, and a thousand kingdoms held their breath.
The Slave Mayhem Ga had begun.
The mont the gate dropped, the field did not erupt into chaos the way the arena did.
It moved.
Thousands of slaves surged forward, but it was not reckless. The first five kiloters existed for a reason, and most of the participants understood it. They spread out as they ran, so accelerating hard to secure early positions, others maintaining a steady pace while watching the movent around them, already calculating which clusters would collide and which paths would remain open.
Almond and the others moved with the sa calm rhythm they had carried from the arena.
Fast enough to stay ahead.
Relaxed enough not to stand out.
They did not group tightly, nor did they separate too far. Just enough distance to move freely, close enough to respond instantly. From the outside, they looked like a capable team advancing with purpose, nothing more, nothing less.
The safe zone passed quickly.
It always did.
By the ti they crossed the third kiloter, the veils ahead had already begun activating, their surfaces rippling as the first wave of participants entered and triggered the gas inside. Projections flared above them in layers, showing glimpses of different battlefields unfolding beyond each color.
A crimson veil lit up with imdiate violence, compact terrain forcing brutal close combat with no escape routes.
A deep blue veil revealed unstable terrain filled with shifting liquid platforms, where footing was the first enemy and opponents ca second.
A green veil unfolded into dense overgrowth, thick enough to swallow vision entirely, turning combat into ambush and counter-ambush.
The crowd watching from above did not cheer wildly.
They watched.
asured.
Focused.
The kind of attention that ca from people who understood odds, not just spectacle.
Almond didn’t slow.
He didn’t glance at the projections more than once.
By the ti they reached the end of the safe zone, the decision had already ford across all nine of them without discussion.
Violet.
The sa one.
Unstable.
Distorted.
Unpredictable.
They entered without hesitation.
The world shifted instantly.
No transition.
No warning.
The violet veil swallowed them.
The mont Almond and others stepped through, the distorted platforms and drifting space from before were gone, replaced by sothing far more grounded and far more dangerous. The battlefield stretched out as a wide, broken expanse of dark stone, cracked and uneven like the remains of sothing that had once been whole. No shifting gravity. No collapsing terrain. Just solid ground and open sightlines that made one thing imdiately clear.
There was nowhere to hide.
The sky above was dim, almost colorless, and the air carried a faint tallic weight that pressed lightly against the senses. It felt... intentional. Like the space itself had been designed to remove variables, to strip everything down to a single, unavoidable truth.
Fight.
A low hum spread across the field, and then the system voice followed.
[Rule: Elimination Requirent]
[Each participant must kill three opponents to exit.]
[Failure to et the requirent will result in termination]
User Comments
0 comments from readers