Chapter 9: The Scarlet Proposition
Morning arrived bleeding through cracks in the walls, light the color of infected wounds. Orin woke to find Sera already gone and Maya sitting by the window, watching the street with the focused intensity of someone cataloging exits.
"Guard patrol passed twice in the last hour," she said without turning. "They're asking about a blackstone who fights above their station. Someone from the pits talked."
Of course they had. Loyalty cost more than most people could afford.
Orin sat up, his spine crackling through an inventory of grievances. The essence integrations were settling deeper now, rewriting him at levels that felt molecular. His hands looked the same but moved differently, precision embedded in reflex. He was becoming something else, one attribute at a time.
"How long until they connect the fighter to the convoy thief?" he asked.
"Already have, probably. They're just gathering evidence before they kick down doors." Maya finally turned, her face carrying the particular weariness of people who'd watched this story before and knew how it ended. "You can't stay here much longer. Every hour increases our risk."
"I know."
"Do you?" Her voice sharpened. "Because you're sitting here like time is negotiable. It's not. You've got maybe a day before someone sells your location for the bounty. Then it's not just you bleeding, it's us."
The accusation was fair. He was contamination, spreading risk through proximity. The girls had offered shelter when they had none to spare, and he was repaying them with threat.
"I'll leave after dark," he said. "Find somewhere else, I don't want to put you and the others in any more danger."
"Where? You've burned the warehouse district, can't work legitimate jobs, and every blackstone in the slums knows your description by now." Maya stood, moved closer. "You're out of places to hide, Fox. Which means you're out of time for deciding."
She was right. The margins had collapsed while he'd been pretending he had another option.
Orin pulled out Crane's card, studied the address embossed in gilt script. Northside, merchant quarter. Where people conducted business in buildings instead of alleys, where violence wore contracts and called itself civilization.
"The private fight," he said. "Five gold marks."
"Suicide with compensation." Maya said.
"Maybe. But I'm already dead if I stay here." He pocketed the card. "At least fighting gives me variables. Running just delays the inevitable."
Maya's expression suggested she was calculating whether to argue or accept, weighing his stubbornness against reality's immovable architecture. She chose acceptance, mosyly from exhaustion.
"When's the match?" Maya asked.
"Tonight."
"Of course it is." She moved to a corner, pulled out a wrapped bundle he hadn't noticed before. Inside was clothing, better quality than slum standard. Simple but clean, the kind merchants wore when they wanted to look prosperous without inviting robbery. "Sera left these. Said if you were stupid enough to take the fight, you should at least look like you chose it instead of having poverty make the choice for you."
The sentiment was barbed and gentle simultaneously, which seemed to be Sera's default emotional register.
Orin accepted the clothes, felt fabric that didn't carry the texture of accumulated failure. Small dignity, probably meaningless. But the void had been born from small things, hadn't it? Moonlight, broken mirrors and desperation in a forgotten shrine.
"Thank her for me."
"Thank her yourself. Assuming you survive." Maya returned to the window, resuming her vigil. "I'll watch for guards. You should eat something. Fighting on an empty stomach is just volunteering for unconsciousness."
The address led to a building that had confused respectability with architecture, creating something ostentatious and soulless. Three stories of merchant ambition, windows designed to display wealth without revealing anything worth stealing. The kind of place where violence happened in basements and nobody upstairs acknowledged the screaming.
Orin approached from the service entrance because front doors were for people who belonged. A guard intercepted him, blue-stone and bored, his expression suggesting this was routine disappointment.
"Delivery entrance is around back."
"I'm here for the match. Crane's invitation." Orin showed the card.
The guard's boredom evaporated into something more calculating. "You're the blackstone? Hmm..Thought you'd be bigger."
"Sorry to disappoint."
"Not disappointed. Surprised." The guard opened the door. "Inside, down the stairs. Try not to touch anything expensive, which is everything."
The interior smelled like old money and pompus desperation, the particular combination of people who'd climbed over corpses and wanted everyone to forget the ladder. Portraits lined the walls, ancestors glaring with painted judgment. The carpet absorbed sound, making everything feel muffled and distant.
The stairs descended into the building's underbelly.
The basement had been converted into a private arena, smaller than the public pits but infinitely more refined. Stone walls, proper lighting, seating arranged in a semicircle around a combat space maybe fifteen feet across. Expensive brutality for expensive tastes.
Twenty people occupied the seats, all purple-stones or wealthy green-stones pretending at nobility. They wore their privilege like armor, casual and absolute. None of them looked at Orin directly, the way people avoided acknowledging servants or livestock.
Thaddeus Crane detached from the crowd, his smile professionally welcoming. "Finn. Glad you accepted. Beginning to think poverty and pride would cancel each other out."
"Poverty won. It usually does."
"Honest. I appreciate that." Crane gestured toward the arena floor. "Simple rules: fight until submission, unconsciousness, or death. My clients prefer entertaining violence over quick conclusions, so style matters as much as outcome."
"Who's my opponent?"
"Ah. The interesting part." Crane's smile acquired edges. "My clients wanted something novel. Blackstone versus blackstone seemed pedestrian. Blackstone versus green-stone you've already demonstrated. So we found something unique."
From the far entrance, a figure emerged.
Female, maybe eighteen, her birthstone visible and red as fresh blood. Not purple-red or brown-red, but arterial crimson that pulsed with its own light. Her eyes were flat calm, the particular emptiness that came from seeing violence as craft rather than catastrophe.
"Meet Eve," Crane said. "Anomaly from the eastern provinces. Her birthstone absorbed a blood essence parasite during childhood. Should have killed her. Instead, it integrated. Now she cultivates through hemorrhaging."
Orin stared at the red birthstone, recognition sliding through him like ice water. Another sport, another mutation. But hers had been weaponized, refined, made into entertainment for people who'd never bled without physicians nearby.
"What happens if I refuse to fight her?"
"You forfeit the gold and confirm blackstones are cowards. Also, my clients will be disappointed, and disappointment makes them creative with consequences." Crane's voice dropped into something almost sympathetic. "But between us? You're both anomalies. Both worthless according to the hierarchy that broke you. At least here, you're valued enough to be watched while you bleed."
The logic was diseased and perfect. They'd manufactured a spectacle of mutual destruction, dressed it as opportunity, and expected gratitude for the privilege of participating.
Orin stepped into the arena.
Eve was already there, stretching with clinical precision. Up close, her birthstone was mesmerizing and terrible, crimson pulsing like it had a heartbeat separate from her own.
"You're the one who beat Marcus," she said. Her voice was textured wrong, like speaking hurt something internal. "Guards have been looking for you. Twenty gold bounty, I'm impressed your still alive."
"Heard that."
"Going to be higher after tonight. Crane's clients include a magistrate's assistant. He'll report this, use it as evidence you're dangerous." She finished stretching, faced him directly. "We're both already dead. Question is whether we die entertaining or disappointing."
The assessment was clinical. No anger, no fear. Just someone who'd accepted that her existence was performance and death was scheduled between acts.
"How does your birthstone work?" Orin asked.
"I bleed, it absorbs, I get stronger. More I bleed, more power I access. Eventually I hemorrhage enough to die, but usually the opponent dies first." She showed him her forearms, mapped with scars in geometric patterns. "I'm very efficient."
"That's horrifying."
"That's survival." She pulled a knife from her belt, small and sharp. "You ready?"
The crowd was settling into anticipation, their conversations dropping to murmurs. Crane stepped to the arena's edge, raised his hand for attention.
"Tonight's exhibition: two anomalies, two methods of breaking natural law. Fight begins on my mark."
Orin had no weapon, no plan, nothing but attributes stolen from monsters and a void stone that whispered hunger. Eve held her knife with professional comfort, already calculating where to cut herself for maximum effect.
This was insanity dressed as economics. But insanity and economics had been dancing together since currency was invented.
"Begin!"
Eve moved immediately, knife flashing across her palm. Blood welled, crimson matching her birthstone. The stone flared, pulling the blood into itself. She gasped, her body suddenly faster, stronger.
She closed distance before Orin could process, knife targeting his throat.
He twisted, forty dexterity translating to evasion that looked prescient. The blade passed close enough to part air and possibilities. He countered with a palm strike at her solar plexus.
Connected. Forty-three strength folding her forward.
She rolled with the impact, came up bleeding from her lip where she'd bitten through it. More blood for her birthstone. More power cycling through her system.
"You're strong," she said, spitting red. "Stronger than you should be.."
"You're terrifying."
"I know." She cut her forearm, deeper this time. Blood sheeted down her arm, absorbed by the birthstone in a process that looked like reversed bleeding. Her muscles swelled, essence flooding her system beyond what green-stones achieved.
She attacked again, knife and fists working together. Orin blocked, dodged, felt impacts that would've shattered his bones a week ago merely bruised. His durability was holding, just barely.
But she was getting stronger with each wound. Cultivating through self-destruction.
He needed to end this before she hemorrhaged herself into an overwhelming advantage.
Orin caught her knife hand, twisted. Forty-three strength against blood-enhanced power. They were nearly equal. She headbutted him, breaking his nose. Pain exploded across his face, vision whiting out.
The void stone pulsed.
Something shifted in his perception. The world slowed, not physically but cognitively. He could see her next attack forming, muscle groups tensing in sequence, knife positioning for a follow-up strike.
**ESSENCE SIGHT ACTIVATING. ANALYZING OPPONENT.**
The voice in his head, clinical and absolute. Information flooded his awareness: Eve's essence flows, the paths her blood power traveled through her body, the weak points where her birthstone's integration was incomplete.
He moved on instinct and impossible knowledge, striking the inside of her elbow where essence circulation was concentrated. Her arm spasmed, knife dropping. He caught it, reversed it, pressed the blade to her throat.
The crowd was silent.
Eve stared at him, her red birthstone still pulsing, blood still seeping from her self-inflicted wounds. "How did you do that?"
"No idea."
"You saw something. Read my attack before I made it." Her voice carried something like wonder beneath the pain. "What are you?"
"Desperate. Same as you."
He helped her up, released her. The fight was over. She'd submitted through circumstance rather than defeat, but the outcome was settled.
Crane stepped forward, his expression professionally neutral over what might have been genuine surprise. "Impressive. Both of you exceeded expectations."
He handed Orin a purse heavy with coin. Five gold marks as promised, probably more valuable than his continued existence to most people present.
"My clients are intrigued," Crane continued. "They'd like to arrange additional matches. Better compensation, more challenging opponents."
"Not interested."
"You will be. Money has a way of creating interest." Crane's smile never reached his eyes. "But take tonight's earnings. Consider them investment in future conversations."
Orin pocketed the purse, turned to leave. Eve caught his arm, her grip still blood-slick.
"They'll use you until you break," she said quietly. "Same as they're using me. Don't mistake compensation for freedom."
"What choice do I have?"
"Same one I do. None that matter." She released him. "But maybe we break in interesting ways. Maybe that counts for something."
He left her standing in the arena, still bleeding, still being watched by people who'd paid for the privilege of witnessing suffering without participating in it.
The stairs felt longer climbing up, like the building was reluctant to release him. Outside, night had settled into the city's bones, darkness cut by streetlamps that barely pushed back the accumulated black.
Orin walked through merchant quarters turning hostile, five gold marks heavy in his pocket, fifteen more needed in less than two days. The void stone was quiet now, the Essence Sight dormant but present. A new capability unlocked through stress and violence.
*What else is locked inside this thing?*
The question tasted like curiosity and dread blending until they became indistinguishable.
He was halfway back to the slums when he noticed the followers. Three of them, moving with coordination that suggested professional rather than opportunistic violence. Not guards. Something worse.
Private contractors, probably. Bounty hunters hired by nobility to retrieve valuable anomalies. *Great, as if I wasn't exhausted enough*
Orin ran.