Chapter Twenty-One

58.9K 2.8K 137
                                    

   NOT EDITED



                  The roaring cheers of the crowd was deafening, it shook through Lym like an earthquake, unhinged her, made her uncertain. Her wrists were heavy with the familiar weight of shackles, in her calloused palm she held an old throwing knife, she gripped onto it like a lifeline. On the inside she shook with fear while on the outside she showed not one emotion, her pale face was a blank slate.

The dirt floors of the arena wore puddles of dark blood in many different places, which was often for the fighting rink. Ten foot high stone walls kept the fighters from the crowd, protecting them from the wrath of the scorned, unwilling participants. Every night the rusty steel bleachers we're crammed tight to was the so called crazed Wolves fight to the death, in the darkness the crowd sat while the fighters were surrounded by many lit torches that illuminated the twenty yard wide ring.

But the fights, there was a catch to them. The participants had to be shackled and armed with only one weapon if they were lucky.

This was her first fight and goddess be damned, Lym felt terrified, the hundreds of people and huge disadvantage she had made her sanity vanish. For the past few months she had watched the fights from afar, it was her first year in Everest and she had slowly started to lose it, her fear visited her more often and her sanity left without a simple goodbye. The guards did this to them, simply because they had the power to, the machinery to subdue them until time to kill. It was an underground fighting ring.

Lym had started to sneak in to watch them, the guards didn't care much about them those nights, they were focused on the money they would make that night. It was pure curiosity that had drawn her to the dungeons, the screams of excitement intrigued her. It was unfitting for a place as dark as Everest, then she had discovered the unsupervised fights.

That was the first night she had seen a man crack another's head open with his bare hands, she had watched in a mixture of silent horror and morbid fascination as the man tore the other's skull in two. His brains were a scrambled, bloody mess, but she didn't miss the way the winner's eyes held a nefarious sadness. A contradiction in itself.

But now, it was her turn. It had taken them a while to catch her, between her slipping through their fingers like vapor and maiming them off of her, one had decided to bring a stun gun. It had worked perfectly on her. She had done some wicked things in her short sixteen years but killing someone for sport was something she absolutely refused to do.

Yet, she didn't have a choice.


She waited in anticipation as the heavy steel door opposite of her shook. The crowd had went wild when they had first saw her, the first female prisoner, a savage she was rumored. They weren't lies, she could be a demon when it was called for, but tonight she wished to be fast asleep on her hard bed frame as Bracken snored loudly beside her.

The chains that lead underneath the door suddenly went taunt and the crowd quieted, a low roar sent shivers through her, not that any one paid her any attention, they were ready to see which bloody thirsty brute came through those hellish doors this time. She felt slack go through her chains, if only barely, and she shuffled forwards a bit, her knuckles went white from holding onto the dagger so hard.

                       Slowly, the doors creaked open, dust rolled out a few inches off of the ground. Lym tensed in preparation, she would not die tonight. She didn't live through eight years of hell only to die in a fucking arena. Any thought of mercy and emotion of fear dissipated as a six foot mound of unadulterated muscle sauntered out of the entryway, his black eyes were hard with pure rage. In his large palm he held a stew baton that was stained with either rust or old blood.

UnchainedWhere stories live. Discover now