The Beast Within

Champion of the Pit: Chapter Three

Dangerous silence fell over the room.

Murmurs followed it.

Caught up in the battle, I hadn't given any thought to what would happen once it was over, or how the audience might react to a fallen champion.

I looked at the faces surrounding me, that reached high on their raised pews, and tried to sense the direction the mood was shifting toward, but their features blended together, becoming indistinguishable splashes of color.

Someone began to clap, and they were joined by another, then another, until the room was on its feet and cheering. I had wanted their love, I remembered, in the seconds before I entered the pit. In that moment, I should have felt magnanimous.

But I couldn't.

There was no pride in what the wolf had done, only a great horror.

Grizzelda was not my enemy, not really. The will of the circus and its powerful, mysterious Authority forced us to fight, and it was only through dumb luck that I was standing near her corpse. There was no glory here. Only meaningless death.

As my eyes swept over the crowd, I looked for the face of the one in control. The Authority should be there, for the Authority watched every fight.

Or was that a lie?

Above the tallest row of people, so high it touched the tent's ceiling, I spied a box; a room suspended in the air with a darkened window that offered a view of the pit.

That must be the Authority's private seating area, I thought.

The gangly man appeared beside me with an amused smile on his face. He grabbed my hand, unconcerned that he was soiling his own with Grizzelda's blood, and raised it into the air. At this, the cheering grew louder.

I felt no victory.

I should have refused to fight and let the bear end my life. At least my hands and soul would have been clean.

Several wranglers hurried by, scrambling to remove the remains of my opponent. It hurt me that her death was treated with no care or respect. She had been loved, hadn't she? She was the audience's favorite, their champion, but they paid her end no more attention than they would have mine.

The gangly man spoke but I did not hear him. I wanted to strangle him, but Myranda's hands were on my shoulders and she was leading me away.

"Well fought, well fought! I've never seen anything like it! Took down a champion in your first fight! You really are something special!"

She rambled on about how fortunate she was to be my caretaker. How she couldn't be more proud of my success. She said nothing about the pain on my face or the fact that I was naked.

We moved through a series of connected tents, never once seeing outside of them, until we stopped in the same room I had woken up in, with the bed that had held me prisoner. A large basin had been added, and Myranda instructed me to bathe. Fresh clothes were waiting once I was clean.

After I dressed, Myranda inspected my body for wounds, but it was a pointless task. The wolf had taken its injuries with it, and even the red line on my stomach was gone. Somehow I knew that when it appeared again, the wolf would bear no marks from its fight.

This made me strangely sad, that there wouldn't even be a scar to show Grizzelda's final battle. It didn't seem right, not to wear her remembrance. Perhaps I just felt guilty.

I wanted to cry and scream. I wanted to swear at Myranda and tell her I would never set foot in the pit again.

But all I did was stare numbly ahead as Myranda searched my skin.