The sky above the arena was tar-soaked sackcloth punctured by faintly glowing red stars that almost drowned in the darkness. The arena floor was bathed in an unhallowed scarlet glow that waxed and waned with the cheers of the crowd. The sands were burgundy burnt and stained. There was an audience of creatures from every plane and legend and terror known and unknown to man.

  At the center stood an athletic figure protected by tight leather armour, wielding two identical rapiers. His face was almost canine, sharp and ingenious, and somewhat regal. His left eye was swollen shut by a blow, but his right maintained a focus of preternatural strength and gleamed within with a cold blue fire. His chest heaved once, twice, and then he brought it under control. A monster with lizard-like features the size of a rhinocerous flicked its giant tongue out like a whip, and the man dove under the blow attempting to close the distance. He got inside, but was knocked sideways by a swift turn of the monster’s giant scaly head. Cheers cascaded in a torrent of indistinguishable sounds, curses, filths, monstrous blasphemies, encouragements, and blessings in ten thousand tongues. The man rolled away, but spat blood as he regained his composure, looked up and saw the creature’s charge too late. He thrust his right arm, rapier and all, toward the lizard-rhino’s eye as he was struck in the chest, and the two tumbled to the ground together with the great beast atop the lightly armoured man. Silence chopped off the next wave of cheers like a butcher’s knife, and a quivering stillness swept over the whole arena.

  Atop the highest battlements overlooking the crowd sat the Arena Master, Wrothmaul the Immortal. His heavy plate armour was bone white and smeared with sigils in scarlet. His helmet covered his whole face, leaving only a slit through which two glowing green eyes flamed and danced. He stood with his arms crossed, his flickering eyes intent upon the floor.

  A shudder went through the beast atop the man, and a twisted creature in the lowest balcony shouted something in a strange guttural tongue. New sounds broke out as the whole crowd gasped. The wolfish man crawled out from under the slain beast on all fours. As he stood to his full height, one rapier broken, leathers torn, eye swollen shut, he raised one arm in a kind of salute toward Wrothmaul. A great cheer erupted high into the alien sky and filled the whole world with cacophony before drifting away into incoherent mutterings.

  Attendants emerged from the underbelly of the arena and performed the blooding. They dragged the creature to a large grate in the center of the sands and drained all its life into the pools of conquest below as a wave of chanting rippled through the stands.

  When all was complete, Wrothmaul spoke, his voice the crackling of a lightning storm with smacks of thunder on its edges, “Victory for Renard the Fox. Rewards…” There was a long pause after this word as Wrothmaul turned his head and surveyed the crowd and the floor and then settled his gaze upon Renard. “Life alone. Next conquest!”

  Renard’s face twisted with rage, but he crushed his emotion into a passive stare before nodding, dropping his arm, and hobbling toward the exit of the arena floor. When he reached the exit, an attendant in long white robes disarmed him and guided him down a corridor of deepening dark. The attendant wore a faceless silver mask scored into shape as if by blows of many swords and axes and cast strange luminescence in the shifting of low torchlight. The only sound was the muted thuds of footsteps on stone as they drew deeper into the bowels of the coliseum’s quarters.

  The two passed the upper quarters where broad cages held creatures of nightmare and madness. A floating eyeball with countless stalks and extra eyes was chained to walls, and silver capsules were placed over every eye. Its mouth was sewn shut, and there was the faint tingle on Renard’s skin as they went past, the raising of hackles that told him there was magic nearby. It was only a sense, a danger reaction ingrained in his mind from youth, but it never led him astray. Another cage was filled with an impenetrable darkness that made Renard’s skin crawl as if thousands of spiders burrowed beneath his flesh. He knew that darkness watched, though he could see nothing but the endless black. He looked away and walked more quickly. The further down they went, the more recognizable the monsters became. A basilisk wearing an iron blindfold, a jittering skeletal dragon with hollow eyes filled with materialized malice, then a chimera, bears, lions. Layer by layer, the possible opponents changed from nightmare to real and natural but daunting, until finally the two reached the middle quarters. The middle quarters housed the humanoid combatants, varied as they were in height and form and size. A human-shaped being almost eight feet tall covered in fur with the head of a lion and claws on his hands shared a cell with a small child sized figure whose face was old like a grandpa. Both averted their gaze as Renard and the attendant passed. There was a beautiful woman who looked almost elven, but who had no arms but only wings which glowed white and were lined with downy deep crimson feathers. Her eyes were the color of a snowstorm, and Renard’s skin tingled again as he nodded to her slowly. She smiled a kind smile made uncanny with rows of sharp teeth.

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  Finally, they reached his cell, and the attendant guided him in, closed the iron bars behind him, and left him. It was a deep kindness, he thought, that he was not shackled to the wall like so many. Small though the room was, he could lie down outstretched instead of hunched over like an animal. He stumbled to the far wall, turned his back to it, and slid downward into a seated position. With a long sigh, he set his head back against the stone and let out a small prayer, “Beyond Timeless One, strength and patience grant your servant, who knows not why he fights but perseveres in the blind dark. Your servant is…”

  He turned and pressed a small segment of the wall which gave way and revealed a simple hidden cubby. He pulled out a small dagger, its hilt made of antler and blade shining steel with etched symbols. He glanced back toward the cell bars then huddled over it, hugging it to his chest. He bent over in choked sobs that could not produce the tears he wished to wash him clean of years now beyond count in daily battles. He yelled out, “HA! Reward, life! What a reward…”

  In his deepening despair he heard a clear crystalline voice reply back to him, “Undeserved.”

  Renard stood and took a fighting stance facing the voice, as he hid the dagger behind his back. No one was there.

  As the tension drained from his muscles and his breathing steadied, the voice spoke again, “Undeserved.” This time the voice was around him, even within him. Renard closed his eyes to focus and try to listen, but his vision shifted into an almost dream. He stood face-to-face with a man whose skin was alabaster, eyes the color of polished silver. There were the faint impressions of scales on his uncovered torso. Renard tried to wake, but could not.

  “What do you want?” Renard said.

  “Help.” The figure said, and his voice was more melodious than before. The tone of the word seemed to echo into Renard’s being.

  “How can I possibly?” Renard said exasperated.

  The albino replied with a friendly laugh and approached with open arms, “That’s the question!”

  “What is undeserved?” Renard said.

  The smile faded from the albino’s face but not fully. “You’ll learn. I am coming.”

  “For all the worlds, why?”

  “Hmm,” the rumble of that note seemed deeper than the lithe frame could have born, “For duty and honor and joy.”

  “Are you cryptic enough, nameless one? Who are you?” Renard’s voice was laced with poisonous impatience.

  “Many names have attended me, Renard, but in this I will be the Knight Tumult. I bring a cold reckoning of chaos to twisted order that new order may flourish.” The voice was deeper now, and there was a sense of underlying rage that set Renard’s spine quivering. His whole body tingled with the touch of magic.

  “Do you only speak in riddles?” Renard quipped.

  “Do you listen only for what is expected?”

  Renard’s patience ended, and he leaned forward and threw his arm as if to strike the man, but as he did his eyes opened to his cell and his hand smashed into the wall. His voice died as the fire of pain shot up his arm, and he set his jaw against the agony.

  #

  Siegyrd opened his eyes. A pillar of impossible ice shot high into the winter sky splitting the sun at its zenith. Arcane markings spidered their way across the whole of it in silver threads. Siegyrd’s hand rested on the ice and faint pulses of blue hummed through it. Around him, men and women wandered about in robes of wild colors, hemmed with varied metallic threads. A man approached wearing deep violet robes hemmed with gold. He carried a little girl in one arm. The girl’s dark curls danced around warm caramel eyes and soft cheeks.

  “Your hair is so preeety!” The little girl’s voice was filled with wonder.

  Siegyrd turned, his hand still on the pillar. “Thank you, little daughter of delight.”

  “Why sad?” The little girl’s question hovered in the daylight air, and Siegyrd smiled as he closed his eyes.

  The robed man’s face was dark and regal, his eyes set like onyx gems. His voice was a booming base, “Lira, that was kind, but let’s leave the man to his business.”

  Siegyrd opened his eyes and caught the man’s look, nodding in gratefulness, before he turned back to gaze into the ice, through the ice, to what it contained.

  He heard the man’s footsteps as he walked away, and fragments of the whispers between the man and his daughter, but he paid them no mind. He focused his gaze through the shifting light and imperfections in the ice until he could see it clearly.

  Within the center of the glacial tower were two figures. One knelt while the other was locked in an attempted retreat, his hand on the haft of a polearm through the first man’s chest. The wielder’s head was raised back and face was frozen in a mask of primordial rage. The one pierced, knelt upright, his face regal and smiling, eyes closed and peaceful.

  Siegyrd whispered, “Brother. What would you do?”

  He pulled his hand away and turned to depart. Where his hand had laid, a small mote of darkness slipped between the silver threads and inked its way into the topmost layer of ice.