Chapter 8: Teeth and Transactions
Orin woke to the sound of someone counting coins.
The rhythmic clink cut through the pre-dawn darkness like a merchant's prayer, copper against copper in the particular music of people calculating survival. He opened one eye, found Sera sitting cross-legged near the door, sorting a pile of marks by candlelight.
"Rent's due," she said without looking up. "Landlord doesn't accept sob stories or excuses."
The other girls were still sleeping, curled into defensive positions indicating childhoods where vulnerability invited violence. Maya had her back against the wall, one hand near a knife she probably shouldn't own. Smart girl.
Orin sat up, his body protesting in new ways. The essence integration had settled overnight, but his muscles felt stretched, like they'd grown a size too large for his skin. Growing pains at fifteen were one thing. Growing pains from devouring monster genetics was something else entirely.
"How much is the rent?" he asked.
"More than we have. Always is." Sera finished counting, her expression suggesting the numbers hadn't improved through repetition. "We're short by six copper. Which means someone doesn't eat today, or someone does something stupid for coins."
The economics of poverty, elegant in their cruelty. Six copper was nothing to green-stones, pocket change for blue-stones. For blackstones, it was the difference between shelter and the streets.
"I can get six copper," Orin said.
"How? You're wanted by the guard, remember?" Sera's eyes were hard little stones, polished by years of disappointment. "Can't work legitimate jobs with a bounty. Can't steal without making things worse. What's your brilliant plan?"
He didn't have one. But the void stone pulsed against his palm, and with it came a thought like broken glass, sharp and cutting.
"I guess I can fight.."
The words hung there, stupid and desperate. Sera stared at him for three long heartbeats, then laughed, the sound acidic enough to etch metal.
"You want to join the fighting pits. A blackstone." She shook her head. "They'll kill you for entertainment, Fox. Those pits aren't regulated fights. They're executions with betting pools."
"I'm harder to kill than I look."
"Everyone thinks that right until they're not." But she was considering it, he could see the calculation behind her eyes. "Pit fights pay five copper for showing up, another five for lasting more than two minutes. Win and you get twenty. That would cover rent and food for a week."
"Where?"
"Eastside warehouse district. Fights start at noon, run untill there's no one left willing to fight." Sera stood, moved closer. "You do this, you're on your own. We're not pulling your corpse out of some pit and explaining to guards why we knew a wanted blackstone."
"Understood."
"Good." She dropped two copper marks in his palm. "Entry fee. Consider it an investment in not getting evicted. Try not to die stupidly."
The fighting pits occupied a warehouse that had given up on legitimate commerce and embraced lucrative brutality. Orin approached from the blind side, hood up, keeping his birthstone hidden beneath wrapped cloth. The bounty made him careful. Twenty gold turned everyone into potential informants.
Inside, the warehouse had been converted into an arena of casual violence. A circular pit dominated the center, maybe twenty feet across, its floor stained with substances that predated recent history. Wooden benches surrounded the pit in ascending tiers, filled with the kind of people who found entertainment in watching desperation cannibalize itself.
Blue-stones and green-stones mostly, laborers and low-ranking military types looking for distraction from their own grinding mediocrity. Some merchants, their soft hands and calculating eyes marking them as parasites feeding on other people's suffering. A few nobles slumming in the poor districts, their purple stones barely visible beneath expensive cloaks, getting their violence secondhand not wanting to get their hands dirty.
The air smelled like sweat and old blood and the particular stink of humans packed too close together, a cloud of rotting breath and cheap ale.
Orin found the registration table, where a man with a blue birthstone and extensive scar tissue was collecting entry fees.
"Name and stone color," the man said, bored.
"Finn. Blackstone." The lie came easy. Using his real name would be volunteering for arrest.
The registrar looked up, actually looked at him for the first time. "Blackstone? You sure you want to do this?"
"Need the coin."
"Of course you do.." he took Orin's two copper marks and marked something in a ledger. "You're in the fifth match. Stay alive two minutes, you get paid. Win and it's twenty copper. Die and we sell your corpse to the medical college."
"Generous."
"We're humanitarians." The man pointed toward a waiting area. "Sit there, don't start fights before your official fight and try not to bleed on the good furniture."
The waiting area held six other fighters in various states of readiness and terror. Two blue-stones were stretching, their enhanced musculature evident beneath cheap clothes. A green-stone sat alone, his birthstone glowing faintly as he channeled essence through pre-fight meditation. Three blackstones huddled together, looking like condemned prisoners waiting for execution.
Because that's what they were.
Orin found a corner, settled into observation mode. The first fight was already starting in the pit below.
Two blue-stones circled each other, both armed with wooden clubs. The crowd was placing bets, shouting encouragement or insults depending on their financial interests. The fighters tested range, looking for openings.
Then one lunged, club swinging. The impact sounded like wood hitting meat, which was essentially accurate. His opponent staggered, countered with a low strike at the knee. Connection, crunch, screaming. The wounded fighter went down, tried to rise, got clubbed across the skull for his optimism.
The crowd roared with approval.
The victor raised his club, bloodied and triumphant. The loser was dragged from the pit, either unconscious or dead. Hard to tell, harder to care.
"Next match! Darius versus Wren!"
A green-stone and a blue-stone entered the pit. This fight lasted thirty seconds. The green-stone moved with essence-enhanced speed, his club a blur that the blue-stone couldn't track. Three hits, systematic and professional. The blue-stone collapsed like architecture losing faith in itself.
More roaring. More betting. More violence dressed as entertainment.
Four matches cycled through. Orin watched technique, timing, how fighters used their birthstone enhancements. Green-stones relied on speed and strength, overwhelming opponents through superior attributes. Blue-stones fought defensively, using durability to weather attacks while looking for counters.
Blackstones.. just died, usually quickly.
"Fifth match! Finn versus Marcus!"
Orin stood, dropped his hood, unwrapped his hands. The birthstone glittered with silver specks, but in the warehouse's dim lighting it just looked damaged. Appropriately pathetic for a blackstone.
He climbed into the pit. The floor was slick beneath his boots, organic fluids creating treacherous footing. Across from him, Marcus was entering. Green-stone, built like a cart horse and grinning like he'd already won.
The crowd's noise swelled when they saw the matchup. Blackstone versus green-stone. Predetermined outcome and poor but guaranteed odds. Maybe the blackstone would last long enough to at least make the execution interesting.
"Two minutes or submission!" the announcer called. "Fight!"
Marcus charged immediately, no subtlety, just essence-enhanced aggression. His club came down in an overhead smash that would've split Orin's skull open.
Except Orin wasn't there anymore.
Forty speed and dexterity let him slip the attack and pivot outside of Marcus's reach. The club hit the floor, splintered on impact. Marcus grunted surprise, already swinging again.
Orin ducked, felt wind resistance as the club passed overhead. Countered with a low kick at Marcus's knee. Forty-three strength translated to impact that folded the joint sideways with a sound like green wood breaking.
Marcus screamed and went down. Orin was on him before pain could organize defense, club taken, repurposed. One strike to the ribs, cracking them. Another to the shoulder, dislocating it. A third to the skull that turned consciousness into a polite suggestion.
Marcus stopped moving.
The warehouse went silent.
Orin stood over the fallen green-stone, breathing controlled, club ready. Around him, the crowd was processing impossibility. Blackstones didn't win against green-stones. That wasn't how the hierarchy functioned.
"Winner, Finn!" The announcer's voice cracked slightly, uncertain.
The crowd recovered, started cheering or cursing depending on their bets. Orin climbed from the pit, retrieved his hood, collected his winnings from a registrar who looked like he'd swallowed something unpleasant.
Twenty copper marks. Plus the original five for showing up. Twenty-five total.
He'd made rent and earned a reputation in under three minutes.
"You there, boy..."
Orin turned. A man in expensive clothes was approaching, purple birthstone visible on manicured fingers. Noble, or noble-adjacent. His face was familiar somehow, features arranged in aesthetic patterns that suggested expensive breeding.
"Impressive performance," the man said. "Very unusual for your stone color."
"Yeah, guess I got lucky."
"Luck doesn't dislocate shoulders with precision targeting." The man smiled, showing teeth too white to be trustworthy. "I'm Thaddeus Crane. I manage fighters and arrange private matches for discerning clients. Someone with your capabilities could earn real money."
"Not interested."
"You haven't heard my offer."
"Don't need to. I'm not for sale." Orin moved to leave, but Crane's hand caught his shoulder. Not aggressive, just insistent. The grip was strong, purple-stone enhanced, no chance of slipping out of it.
"Everyone's for sale. It's just a question of price." Crane's smile never wavered. "You need money, obviously. Fighting in these pits is subsistence brutality. I can offer you gold marks for a single private match. Interested parties who want to see how a blackstone managed to beat a green-stone."
The offer landed like poison wrapped in silk. Private matches meant no oversight, no rules, probably no survival. Rich people buying violence like they bought art, consuming suffering for entertainment.
"How much gold?" Orin asked, because refusing too quickly would be suspicious.
"Five marks. Win or lose, just show up and fight well."
Five gold marks. Quarter of his tuition. For one fight in conditions that would probably kill him.
"I'll think about it."
"Don't think too long. This opportunity has an expiration date." Crane pressed a card into Orin's hand. "Address is there. Match is tomorrow evening. Come if you change your mind."
He walked away, leaving Orin holding a card that felt contaminated.
Outside, the afternoon sun was attempting to pretend the city wasn't rotting. Orin navigated back toward the slums, hood up, senses alert for guards or informants or anyone showing too much interest in him.
He made it back to Sera's place, dropped fifteen copper marks in her hand.
"Rent, food, and.. extra," he said. "I survived."
Sera counted the marks twice, like they might disappear through miscalculation. "You actually won?"
"Beat a green-stone."
The room went quiet. Maya and the other girls were staring at him like he'd announced he could fly.
"That's impossible," Maya said softly. "Blackstones don't beat green-stones. The attribute difference is just too large."
"Yeah well maybe I got stronger."
"How?" Sera's eyes were sharp, cutting through bullshit with a surgeon's precision. "Blackstones don't get stronger. That's the entire point of the hierarchy. We're locked at baseline, permanently inadequate."
Orin pulled off the cloth wrapping, showed them his birthstone. The silver specks swirled beneath black surface, catching light like captured stars.
"Mine's different. Damaged, maybe. Changed. It absorbs essence better than it should."
The girls exchanged glances loaded with implications. Sera moved closer, studying the birthstone with clinical focus.
"That's not damage. That's transformation." Her voice dropped. "You're what they used to call a sport. Genetic mutation, birthstone evolution. Used to happen more frequently before the nobility started controlling essence distribution. They bred sports out because unpredictability threatens hierarchy."
"What happens to sports?"
"They disappear. Either recruited by nobility and vanished into private service, or killed by people who find unpredictability threatening." Sera released his hand. "You need to hide this better. Wrapping cloth isn't enough. People will notice."
"How do I hide attributes?"
"You don't. You lose." She said it flat, pragmatic. "You fight just well enough to survive, never well enough to dominate. You make mistakes, take hits, look beatable. Anything else attracts attention that ends in dissection or servitude."
The advice was sound. Orin knew it, hated it, recognized truth when it was beating him unconscious.
"I got offered another fight," he said. "Private match. But for five gold marks."
"Don't." Maya's voice was urgent. "Private matches are where rich people buy deaths. They'll put you against someone unbeatable and watch you get destroyed for entertainment."
"Five gold marks is a quarter of my tuition."
"Five gold marks is what they pay to own you." Sera stood, moved to the window, stared at streets that had witnessed generations of similar stupid decisions. "You take that fight, you're confirming you're valuable. Once you're valuable, you're collectible. Once you're collectible, you're property."
The economics made brutal sense. But so did twenty gold marks in three days, a deadline approaching like winter in a world without shelter.
"I'm running out of options."
"Everyone does. That's poverty's design." Sera turned, her expression granite. "But dying for five gold marks is accepting their price for your life. You're worth more than that, Fox. Even if nobody's offered better yet."
The words landed somewhere soft, unexpected. He'd spent fifteen years being told blackstones were worthless, their existence justified only by menial utility. Hearing otherwise felt like lies or manipulation, hard to process it either way.
"Two days until tuition deadline," Orin said. "I need fifteen more gold marks. How do I get them without selling myself?"
"You don't. Not in two days." Sera returned to her mat, settled into the particular exhaustion of people who'd fought this battle before and lost. "You accept one leash or another, or you walk away from the academy and pretend you never saw the door open."
Orin looked at his birthstone, at the void spinning beneath his skin. Unlimited storage, climbing attributes, power that could reshape his entire existence if he fed it enough.
But power without resources was just desperation with better muscles.
The card from Thaddeus Crane sat in his pocket, promising gold and probable death. Marrow's offer, research subject in exchange for tuition. Caius's sponsorship, servitude dressed as opportunity.
Three leashes, different lengths, same collar.
Outside, the city ground people into paste and called it economic necessity. Inside, four blackstone girls slept or at least pretended to, their futures predetermined by genetics and social architecture designed to keep them crushed.
Orin closed his eyes, felt the void stone pulse and wondered if climbing required losing pieces of yourself or if losing pieces was just what they called moving upward when you started from the bottom.
Tomorrow he'd decide which pieces to surrender.
Tonight he'd sleep in poverty's embrace and dream of doors he couldn't afford, power he couldn't control, and a future that required blood he hadn't spilled yet.