"Who's that?"
The air became heavier, the very particles in it thickening with dread. The ignorant question Muna had asked hung between us, a single, vibrating string that could have been the pivotal point of our lives. It was a turning point where everything could have gone wrong, right then and there. A crossroads with only one road leading to victory, freedom, survival—anything but our total annihilation. But that's for the future, and I may be overthinking. Maybe. We're in the present, and for now, someone's pissed off.
Aiden violently shrugged Muna's hand from his shoulder, breaking free from the strong grip as if it were a cobweb. He turned, and his eyes, flat and cold as winter coins, scanned us once before dismissing us entirely.
"I'm the richest person you'll ever meet," he said, his voice a low, dangerous hum. "If you understand what I just said, then get the hell out of here. Have fun rummaging around the town for a place to sleep. Just know that I even bought out the managers. Peasants." He shrugged, a single, dismissive twitch of his shoulders, and marched his way deeper into the opulent belly of the hotel, leaving us in the suffocating silence of his wake.
I could feel the anger boiling in Muna, a palpable heat, but someone like him, thrown into the outside world at a young age, would know this is reality. The reality is, if you mess around, you'll find out real fast. Was it something the locals said? "Attacking the bull without measuring its horns." A lesson best not learned the hard way.
Soon enough, we found ourselves wandering the streets. With nowhere to go, we were forced to embrace a nomadic culture we had only read about in history texts. It was a hard week. The initial bravado of "surviving" curdled into the daily grind of haggling for scraps, sleeping on the itchy grass of public parks, and being chased from those parks by old locals who shook their canes like thunderbolts and officers whose faces were masks of weary contempt. A long week it had been, and now I could sense the group getting restless, their spirits eroding like a coastline in a storm. The food we ate was mostly market leftovers or pity samples. Only the old woman down the road, her face a roadmap of wrinkles, spared us bowls of lukewarm rice and some dried squid now and then. When we showed our faces anywhere else, they would shove us out or even close shop, the shutters banging down like a guillotine.
"I've had enough!" Kyle slammed his fist into his palm, the sound sharp in the quiet alley we'd claimed as our own. "How dare they treat a righteous knight like this?! Come, we must find Adriana and the others. We should be able to crash there. These people have gone mad, all ignoring principles over some coins. We even showed them the Yulo engravings! The engravings! And still they persist?" His voice cracked on the last word, a mixture of fury and despair.
"You have a point, Kyle," Josiah panted, his body a glistening machine as he completed his daily ritual of 1000 press-ups and 500 squats. He spoke in measured bursts between reps. "But now we have to think. If he has so much money, why does anyone barely know him? And how does he have so much money? To the point of going against the Yulo Academy, established under the Eze clan? We've made a terrible enemy this time."
We all sat in a grimy circle, the city's distant hum a cruel reminder of the world that had cast us out. We were discussing our next move, but the options were as thin as gruel. Showing up to our first real assessment at the Academy sleep-deprived and malnourished would be a death sentence. The Academy gave no training for this; it was safe to assume we wouldn't be getting any help from them. In fact, it was even safer to assume they hoped this would happen. What did they think would happen after they mass-released hundreds of meatheads who only know how to disagree? They weren't testing our strength; they were culling the herd.
"I have an idea. Lets go to the fencing arena. If the others want to get some training in, they would be there too. Besides, even if they're not there, we could participate in a match or two, get some work in. What do y'all think?" Muna suggested.
"Not a bad idea, but, dont you think the environment would be too bad? The old timers there aren't nice to youngins like us. Its better we wait around there for the others, or check with the reception."
And we were off, with Alana's suggestion hanging in the air like a last, desperate prayer. The road was unusually quiet. Before, when we traveled, the very air would hum with a chorus of whispers and the weight of multitudes of eyes would follow our every step. People would cross the street to avoid our path, mothers would pull their children close, shopkeepers would suddenly find their wares in desperate need of rearranging. We all knew the reason, knew it too well, ever since he joined us.
Muna. He walked ahead of us now, a silent sentinel whose presence was a repellant field of unease. I had so many questions, a tangled knot of them in my gut that tightened every time I looked at him. How did he survive 10 years in a cave? And still be well-learned, trained even? What kind of slave is mentally put together after a decade of hard labor? What is the source of his mental strength, his physical prowess? He was a paradox wrapped in an enigma, a walking ghost from a place that should have been a tomb.
With that, a few minutes that felt like hours, we were standing before the designated arena. Since Yulo left things in our own hands, we were forced to rely on our own intelligence, and therefore, only the specific class of people with this particular brand of cunning could survive. They weren't testing us; they were culling the herd, and we were the sheep.
The arena felt shabby, abandoned even, a place forgotten by time and hope. The stone tiles underfoot groaned with every step, and the walls were decorated with huge, chaotic scratch marks, as if some great beast had been trapped here and had tried to claw its way to freedom. The ceiling was a mess of fist-sized holes puncturing it everywhere, letting in shafts of dusty light that did more to illuminate the decay than to offer any warmth. The air smelled of mildew, damp stone, and something else... something coppery and old.
Muna walked before one of the walls, his movements fluid and silent. He used a single finger to wipe away a patch of grime, and where he wiped, the stone looked a lot whiter than the rest. He brought his fingertip to his nose, then to his tongue, a gesture we were all becoming unnervingly familiar with.
"Iron," he said, his voice a low rumble that seemed to vibrate up from the ground itself. "Blood. A lot of it. About a week old."
He turned his head slightly, his eyes looking past us, down the empty corridor behind us.
"The cave smelled like this," he added quietly, and a chill ran down my spine that had nothing to do with the arena's dampness.
The silence in the air was suddenly filled with a single, jarring sound. The loud, crushing sound of hammering. But it wasn't the steady, rhythmic beat of a craftsman. It was a violent, erratic pounding, full of rage, each strike a scream of metal on metal. We made our way through a dirt path at the back of the arena, following the noise deeper into the complex. We prepared ourselves to engage in combat, at the very least. The person who was able to turn that room into that state should not be taken lightly. The slightest chance we give them, and we could become the fresh paint on these walls. Taking our time, we made our way down a sloping path into a cave system below. Alana and Kainan stayed on the surface to guard the entrance, making sure nothing would creep in or, more importantly, run out.
It was longer than we thought. The air grew hotter, thick with the smell of coal and molten metal. After the long, winding descent, we found ourselves in what seemed like a workshop. Hammers of all sizes lay scattered, tongs were discarded mid-grip, and a massive fireplace roared with a hellish orange light. Some weapons were newly made, leaning against a wall, but one was still resting in the forge, red hot and pulsing with a malevolent energy.
As we were investigating, a deafening roar echoed from the tunnel ahead of us, a sound that was part beast, part machine. It was the source of the hammering, but it had stopped its work. Soon after, more sounds followed—the scraping of something heavy and metallic against stone. We all could assume one thing.
"Guys," I said, my voice tight as I drew my weapon. "Get ready. We're about to fight someone really strong."