Starglass

Seven survivors of a long march across the lands between Tevoria and Kelmira stood, bound by chains and lined up like cattle. Athys barely had strength left to stand, but she’d made it this far. They were going to die today, but she would not be dragged to her death.

She didn’t know the Kalamandi words for “last supper,” but she knew what it meant for their jailors to give them food without them having earned it. Before they were taken from their cell, they ate in silence, slowly, savoring every bite of moldy bread and wrinkled vegetables as they sat among the only companions they had left.

Bular, Rogan, Milla, Naji, Cricket, Fordren, and Athys, herself.

They were all who remained of the hundreds that had marched. Half of them Athys had known for half her life. The rest she hardly knew—but it didn’t matter. They’d all gone through the same hell and they’d all meet the same end.

All they had left was their names and the memories that haunted them.

The jailors came before they finished and ushered them through long narrow halls. Deeper and deeper they went through the complex maze that Athys assumed ran underneath the whole city.

She lost track of the turns shortly after the fifth hall. They all looked the same; all made with the same, plain smooth stone that gleaned with a subtle damp.

Then the halls began to rumble with a dull roar. The stone lost its sheen, and they felt the temperature rise. Stone was replaced by wood, and torchlight by sunlight.

Dreaded, dreaded, sunlight.

It kissed their cool skin with a warm breath, but after months of marching under the sun’s relentless fire, even Athys, who once loved the sun, feared its light. Milla’s eyes were filled with dread, and Bular—once a mighty soldier who spent his days training under the sun’s good graces—flinched the moment it touched his leathery, damaged skin.

They’d come to fear the sun as much as they feared the whips of the masters.

But with a whip cracking violently behind them, they had no choice but face the lesser enemy.

They came to a large gate of iron bars, and beyond it, beyond the blinding sun, Athys could see an arena of golden sand. Hundreds, perhaps thousands of Kalamandi were standing, cheering in anticipation from their place in the amphitheater.

Athys had never seen such a thing, but she wasn’t sure she had it in her to appreciate it. Cricket and Fordren whimpered. Rogan looked back at her with tears in his eyes, but she ignored him. She didn’t need his sorrow or his pity.

They were going to die today.

The heavy iron gate of their prison opened with a deafening crank. Their chains were removed, and the masters pushed them forward, barefoot into the hot sand.

Athys lost her footing almost immediately, feet slipping in the sand as she stepped out. She slipped into Naji, and he quickly helped her up. Her senses were overwhelmed by the sheer amount of sound and emotion and humanity surrounding them, wishing to witness death.

The Kalamandi in the stands roared to celebrate their entrance into the pit. Once again, she and her comrades would be the entertainment for the people that had taken everything from them.

The head jailor walked to the center of the arena with practiced pageantry, arms out as he grinned from ear to ear. He held up his whip, and the crowd went quiet. He shouted something in Kalamandi that made them cheer again, then waited for them to fall silent once more. He pointed his whip at the seven of them, standing, shaking in their rags.

“Luck be with you, castra-tai,” he said with a menacing smirk, then saluted them with arms across chest. “May the Ancients choose!”

He left, leaving them to stand in the hot sun, exposed to whatever horrors would come for them next.

The seven of them stood in a circle. Athys eyed the door and the crowd with equal amounts of trepidation as she wondered what new hell was coming for them.

A roar came. Not from the crowd, but from something else.

Something wrong.

Silence fell upon the crowd as they put their arms across their chest and bowed. To the front of the coliseum, the crowd parted.

Then it came. Black-scaled and and ten times the size of a horse. A proud creature it was, with head held high, regarding them as nothing but ants as it licked its lips in anticipation.

All Athys and the others could do was stand there and watch Death approach with black wings.

Trapped in a cage, emaciated, exhausted, driven to the limits of humanity, and this was what waited for them at the end of the road. Months spent desperately fighting, clawing for their lives, and it all came down to this: the strongest was nothing but food for a creature of childhood legends.

A deep rumbling came from its chest and vibrated in the air as it stepped further down the sides of the colosseum.

Ha, thought Athys, the familiar dread of actually facing death creeping into her bones. So this is it. This is how we meet our deaths.

The first claw stepped out on the ground, and Milla and Fordren, standing at the front screamed as they staggered back.

They knew.

Their final fate had come for them.

Cricket wet himself. Bular and Nagi just stood there, stunned.

Rogan fell to his knees. “I’m dreaming,” he breathed. “This is a nightmare.”

Bular Spit on the ground, his face twisting into a look of determination that was utterly unrealistic for the situation.

“It’s over,” Cricket breathed. Tears stained his face. “What was the point? What was the fucking point!”

Chuckling, Athys couldn’t help asking, “You seriously thought there was one?” He didn’t answer. She didn’t expect him to. The dragon stepped closer, and everyone began to scramble for their lives.

How did they get here?

How did she get here?

How did this happen?

Athys questioned everything as stared into the dragon’s blue, blue eyes, she traced her miserable life from start to finish.

Everything I went through… was for this? Elgan and everyone else died… for this?

Standing in the colosseum, watching the chaos of man against monster, Athys laughed.

Come, she thought to the dragon as she walked towards it with a smile. Come, and let us end this nightmare!