The slavers threw Kasar into a cell. The sun had burned his skin, forming splotches on his face and arms. His mess of blonde hair, now turned into a mangled nest of dirty brown, lay matted against his sweat-soaked brow. Several bruises riddled his body and face from the constant disobedience. If not for his mother’s saber and his fighting spirit they’d have killed him weeks ago. They saw potential in him and his rebelliousness. A wrathful potential, as they labeled it.

  They wished to channel his wrath in the fighting pits of Akonai City.

  The journey to the city had been harsh and Kasar didn’t know when he’d been put through such a brutal treatment before. With his parents, learning to live and fight blind served as his toughest trials. Every Dancing Devil trained blind for a year so they could attune their senses to the World's Hymns. The march through the Akashtran wastes trumped that era in his life. It trumped just about everything.

  The stone felt smooth despite being a prison cell. Compared to the sands and rock they’d dragged him through, anything would feel smooth. Though, his mind raced as reality caught up to him now that he had a moment’s rest.

  He was a slave.

  Kasar felt a flicker of anger ripple through him. It empowered him despite his hunger, his woundedness, and his exhaustion. It even surpassed his grief.

  He charged his slavers and they laughed as they always did. He reached for them and they stepped back. Laughter broke through their hard lined, sun baked faces. Kasar bruised himself against the bars, lashing at them with his teeth, his hands, his legs.

  Kasar snarled at them, frothed, and cursed. Eventually, they strode away together, bored of Kasar’s feral nature.

  Kasar wished he could pry the bars apart and then pry the slavers apart likewise. He wanted blood. His heart still ached from the loss of his parents. Slowly as the grief settled as he’d never gotten a chance to process the tragedy. Perhaps the anger served as a better substitute, but now as the slavers left, he had no shield against the volley of longing and sorrow. A part of Kasar had always known his family could only run so far and so long. He cherished every moment because that’s how his parents treated every moment with him. Something fragile and precious on the verge of ruin.

  Tears didn’t fall from his face. He wished he could sit and grieve, but he wanted to act. Again, he didn't know if it was because he fled from the grief by doing so. He suspected as much, but didn't dig any further than that. He needed to act. He needed to fight.

  He shook the bars, kicked them, cursed, and finally screamed himself raw. When he couldn’t act anymore, Kasar sank to his knees and let his wail wither out in rasps.

  Behind him he heard movement. No, not movement.

  Presence. The way his parents had taught him. To fight blind. To live blind. To enhance all other senses with just the human spirit.

  He turned to see an old man who looked to be from the northern taiga called Vrodia. His skin reminded Kasar of worn leather. Before the desert, and before the pits, he must have looked Vrodian. Kasar could only tell because of tattoos he remembered his father telling him about worn by sworn warriors of the proud nation. The old Vrodian’s hair came down in wispy strands and looked as if once they were pure white from age, and before that a more youthful color. Now they looked a shade between grey and sand. His eyes shone neither malice nor warmth, but of death. Not malevolent death. Not loss. Just blank and cold and numb. The man hadn’t moved or said anything. He glared at him and the man glared back. After some time, the man closed his eyes and looked like he was resting.

  Kasar turned back to the bars and wished he could yell more. He wished he could hurt them all.

  ***

  When the guards reappeared, Kasar pretended to be asleep. Their keys rattled as they opened the bars. Two of them approached Kasar. When their arms grabbed his shoulders, Kasar clawed at their eyes and kicked their groins. He heard the old Vrodian man chuckle as Kasar wrestled them to the ground. He latched onto one’s helm and slammed his head into the floor. The second rose and drew a dagger.

  “Don’t kill him!” cried a third outside, shutting the bars. “Now we can see what he is capable of.”

  The second soldier looked betrayed, but Kasar seized this moment to snatch his comrade’s knife and slit the man’s throat. He turned to see the third cackle in amusement. He glared down at the first soldier who stirred.

  “They say he killed many of the Bronze Guard. They said he is a fierce warrior. But he is a boy. So let us see.”

  Kasar held the knife to the pinned soldier’s neck. “Let me go! Or I kill him too.”

  The third soldier laughed harder and shook his head. “Boy you are a fool.”

  Kasar cursed. The soldier had just watched Kasar kill a man and did nothing. He turned to the soldier on the ground. The old Vrodian clicked his tongue as if disappointed.

  Kasar removed the knife from the soldier’s neck and the soldier sighed in relief.

  The third soldier groaned. “You kill him, I’ll open the door.”

  Kasar hesitated. “What’s the catch?” he asked.

  “No catch.”

  The old Vrodian snorted. “He will hurt you as soon as you leave, boy.”

  Kasar glanced at the old Vrodian man again and scowled. “It’s my only chance.”

  The old Vrodian shrugged.

  Kasar looked at the soldier and realized it would be his first kill done in cold blood.

  The pinned soldier didn’t let him drive the dagger in. Instead, he struck Kasar in the side, knocking the air from his body. Kasar keeled over and the knife clattered away. The soldier slammed Kasar to the floor only for the old Vrodian to advance faster than Kasar could register. The old Vrodian tackled the soldier, restraining him to the floor once again.

  The old Vrodian glanced at the third soldier outside. “Same offer stand?” he asked.

  The third soldier laughed and shook his head. “Nice try, Vorza,” he said.

  Vorza the Vrodian clicked his tongue and proceeded to strangle the soldier. Kasar stared in horror at the needless brutality of it. The soldier on the floor struggled, convulsed, and went still. Vorza dusted his hands and walked over to his wall. Kasar stared with his jaw agape.

  “Oi,” said the third soldier. “Boy. You’re to go up with me. Seeing as you killed those two, I’ll grab two more.”

  “You don’t even care,” said Kasar.

  “I hated these two bastards,” said the soldier, kicking the strangled corpse’s limp head through the bars. “I was hoping you’d try something.”

  Kasar couldn’t respond. He watched the soldier saunter off to grab support just for him. He turned to Vorza and stammered his first few words. “Why did you kill him?”

  Vorza opened his eyes and gave Kasar a sidelong glare. “Because he is the enemy. I take their lives when I can.”

  “A slaver,” said Kasar. “I…” He didn’t disagree. In fact only a few hours ago, or however long it had been since they dumped him here, he’d wanted to spill blood. He had and it felt miserable. The body lay before him causing a large pool of blood to span out in the middle of the cell floor. He had another opportunity, but couldn’t take the leap.

  Vorza seemed to read his thoughts because he said, “you won’t last long here with that kind of hesitation.”

  Kasar struggled to find the words. He settled for silence, settling back to the side wall of the prison cell.

  Vorza closed his eyes again and Kasar kept his eyes sealed on the dead soldiers whose were forever shut.

  The enemy.

  ***

  The soldier came down with reinforcements to drag Kasar out. Much to everyone’s surprise, Kasar tried to fight again. They hadn’t expected him to use the dagger so effectively because he managed to dig into one of the soldier’s shoulders. However, they’d run him hard the past few days in the desert specifically to wear him out. His fight lasted a few more seconds before the soldiers overpowered him.

  To Kasar’s dismay, Vorza did not fight to help.

  The soldiers dragged a cursing Kasar away with a sack on his head.

  ***

  The slave master of the pits was a tall reedy man with rings on his fingers and warpaint splattered around his eyes so they looked like burn marks. His bald head reflected the overwhelming amount of bronze metals around him from his throne, to the linings engraved in the pillars surrounding him in his outdoor seating, and even his utensils and platters and goblets. He chewed on some spiced pheasant and slurped down some wine as the soldiers forced Kasar to his knees.

  “Feisty, this one,” he said.

  His throne overlooked the pits where several servants dragged the fallen bodies of warriors and monsters alike. They ripped the sack free from Kasar’s head but with his enhanced senses, he knew exactly the route they took. He smelled the wine and food before they even dragged him up the stairs.

  Not to mention the scent of blood; that he smelled the second he had entered the city.

  The slave master leaned forward, still chewing his food. He glared at Kasar who glared back with as much of a snarl as he could muster through his bruised and battered face.

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  “So what is your name?” the slave master asked.

  Kasar spat blood at the slave master. The beatings fell hard on him, but he gritted his teeth through him, not losing his eye contact with the sneering slave master. Eventually the slave master raised his hand for his soldiers to stop.

  “So he does not care for pain,” said the slave master, shrugging and leaning back on his throne. “And you say he slew seven of my Bronze Guard?”

  The soldiers nodded and through the blood seeping into Kasar’s eyes the elite soldiers from the Bronze Guard he had fought against tighten their grips on their polearms and great axes as they stared daggers into Kasar. A fire inside of Kasar belly ignited the way it did when he wished to lash out. He liked to channel it the way he figured mages did when they casted spells. Kasar was no mage, but he was angry. And he was a Devil.

  Kasar flashed a grin at the Bronze Guard who flinched in a surge of rage, but halted. The slave master eyed his Bronze Guard and then Kasar and smiled, which made Kasar’s own grin vanish.

  “Oh, I see,” said the slave master. “A rivalry, yes… We can spin quite the narrative for this. Let the people know that a fugitive much hated by the Bronze Guard will face them in single combat everyday until the Bronze Guard have regained their honor.”

  The soldiers saluted and bowed. One of the soldiers brought in a saber. Kasar’s mother’s saber. Kasar struggled against his captors and growled at the slave master who took the blade and appraised it.

  “A saber of high quality,” he said with a sneer. “Oh, you’re a Devil? A Devil in my pits? Truly I am a lucky man. So few of you dancing fools around these days.”

  “I am going to kill you,” snarled Kasar, shocked at his own ferality.

  “No, boy, no,” said the slave master, slapping Kasar across the face. “You are going to kill for me.” He looked up at his soldiers. “Isn’t Vorza a Devil?”

  “Yes, sir,” said a soldier.

  “How fortuitous. As if the fates themselves side with me. Place him back in there and hand them basic sparring gear. Like always he will train the young, but this time it will be a Devil like him. May you fare better than the rest, young Devil. Vorza gets so sad when they inevitably die to the cheers of a thousand fans.”

  They placed the sack over Kasar’s head and dragged him away.

  ***

  The soldiers threw Kasar into the cell with Vorza, but kept the sack. At least they unshackled him. A few kicked him for good measure before slamming the cell door shut. Kasar ripped the sack free and threw it at them. It hit the cell bars and slid down to the floor. The soldiers laughed and cursed and spat at him before leaving.

  Several other prisoners had leaned into their bars from all the commotion from before, and they seemed eager to witness yet another broken prisoner. Kasar felt battered to the bone, but his spirit burned. He wished to snatch his saber back and start fighting the way his parents taught him.

  He turned to Vorza to see him glaring at him with an amused smile.

  “You’re to train me,” said Kasar.

  His smile vanished and a grimace replaced it. He turned away from Kasar.

  “Why didn’t you fight them?” asked Kasar.

  “To what avail?” he asked.

  “Quail?” asked Kasar, remembering it to be a kind of bird.

  Vorza sighed and glanced at Kasar. “What would that have accomplished?”

  “We could have fought our way out!”

  “You and me? Against an army?”

  “We could have freed the lot,” said Kasar, gesturing to the other prisoners.

  “You have some high standards for all of us,” said Vorza.

  “You killed this one!” cried Kasar, kicking the corpse that still lay there.

  “Because he was easy pickings with no consequence. I have to satisfy my rage somehow.”

  Kasar’s jaw dropped. “What kind of Devil are you?” asked Kasar.

  Vorza’s eyes narrowed as he turned back to Kasar. “What do you know about it?”

  Kasar held his chin high as he said it. “I am a Dancing Devil like my mother and my father too. They both taught me the ways of Devils. How they were killed. How they were blamed for the world’s problems. And how we hold in our hearts the greatest gift of all. The human spirit.”

  Silence hung for a few moments as Vorza blinked through Kasar’s message. The old Devil laughed. Several of the other prisoners laughed too. One man as tall as any man Kasar had ever seen, with skin as dark as oak, and eyes that shone amber in the dim light of the torches, leaned through his bars and called out to Kasar.

  He stood in a cell across from Kasar. “Boy,” he said. “Devil. Little Devil.”

  Kasar peered over his shoulder.

  “If Devils are like you, then no wonder they died. It is a bloody world out there. Bloodier still for whelps like you.”

  Kasar ignored him, though his blood boiled and his fists tightened.

  Vorza sighed and flicked his foot as a gesture for Kasar to sit down.

  Kasar obliged if only because his legs hurt from all the beating and marching. He collapsed and exhaustion enveloped him, the fire inside his belly starting to flicker away. He remained awake to debate with Vorza if need be.

  “Listen, lad,” said Vorza like a grandfather would to his grandson. “Such rhetoric worked when there were thousands upon thousands of us. I am old and even for me that time is long gone.”

  “So?” asked Kasar. “We should still keep standing for those ideals.” He touched his wrists. “Break the chains that bind us.” He kicked at the corpse. “Defy those who would enslave us. That is what we do.”

  “And that’s what your parents did?” asked Vorza.

  Kasar froze. “Not always. But eventually they-”

  “Are they alive?” asked Vorza. “For their son?” His voice grew angry and Kasar felt scared despite himself. He knew what a Devil could do and here he was locked with an experienced one. “Or did their ideals leave behind an orphan and a slave?” He grumbled to himself for a few seconds before resting his head back against the wall and closing his eyes.

  “They left behind a Dancing Devil,” said Kasar. “With hopes of breaking out with everyone he can.”

  Vorza scoffed and the large prisoner clicked his tongue. Several others chuckled.

  “I will,” said Kasar. “Or I’ll die trying.”

  “You’ll die fighting in the pits one day, little Devil,” said the large man.

  Kasar felt the weight of the future start to bear on him. How had his life turned out this way? It had never been easy being on the run with his family. They helped where they could, stayed as long in one place as felt wise and safe, then struck out on the road once again. Long days traveling, scavenging, foraging, and hunting. Avoiding people unless they were isolated, with no chance that their hunters could hire spies or assassins.

  In the end it all ended with them in the mud, bloodied, and Kasar in the sands, also bloodied. It only got bloodier from here. He shook his head and decided his hopeless thoughts were foolish. They all died one day. Why not die knowing you lived well?

  He barely knew Vorza, but he gathered enough to hear his voice in his head. Because you die a lot sooner.

  Kasar decided he would reject that philosophy.

  ***

  Kasar didn’t remember when sleep snatched him from the world of the waking. He didn’t know how long he was there. However, he did know it was dawn when Vorza kicked him hard in the ribs to wake him up. Kasar groaned and sensed the desert morning chill in the air. Soon, the sun would hike up the sky and it’d be the hellish landscape which scorched Kasar’s skin the last few days.

  “Time for healing,” said Vorza’s gruff voice. He tossed a potion Kasar’s way, and though he didn’t see it, he felt the object hurtle to his face.

  Kasar snatched it out of the air and scowled at Vorza. “It could have shattered.”

  “If it did,” said Vorza. “Then you wouldn’t have deserved it.” He moved over to where the soldiers had tossed some training gear. “Drink up and heal. Then we spar to see if you’re worth the training grounds.”

  Kasar had taken healing potions before. Much like Green Magic, the brew hurt as bad as the wounds it healed. He prepared himself for the agony as he downed the contents of the vial. It coursed through his body and he welcomed the familiar pain as his bruises and cracked bones started to mend. He gasped at the quality of the brew. It worked faster than the shoddy ones he and his family concocted out in the wilds. Those were rudimentary ones brewed with the scraps they mustered together.

  This brew was professional grade.

  He stood and felt ready for anything. His head still throbbed, but that was a side effect of suffering so much pain. Your body assumed the worst despite it being whole again. A fatigue of sorts that didn’t affect the body as much as the spirit.

  However, Kasar was eager to learn. His spirit ignited and he nodded to Vorza who held a curved wooden stick to resemble a saber. He tossed it to Kasar who caught it and assumed a stance with the tip of the saber hovering around his eye level.

  Vorza grunted, as if approving of his stance and settled into his own stance. The prisoners who could see all leaned in to see their new Devil fight.

  Vorza moved fast for his age. Faster than he let on the way he took every motion as small as standing or sitting. Kasar had seen him kill that soldier whose body no longer lay in their cell. He knew just how lethal the old Devil could be. He had never seen him with a saber.

  But neither had Vorza seen Kasar.

  Kasar dodged, ducked, and parried three blows that Vorza threw faster than most prisoners could even process. The first cheer from a prisoner bellowed after not the first three, but the next three series of attacks Vorza lashed out with.

  Kasar barely defended against the flurry. He shifted backward, the wall close to his back, to create space. Vorza ate up that space quickly as he advanced again, not letting Kasar breathe or think. The sounds of wood clacking against one another resounded the prison halls. The prisoners in cells further down the corridor and out of sight, cried and complained that they could not see the duel.

  Those that could see cheered as they watched the two Devils fight in a blur.

  Kasar made an error in one of his feints. Vorza saw through it somehow. In a mistake that only took half a second to make and that same half second to capitalize on, Vorza’s wooden saber struck Kasar nose, breaking it on impact. Kasar’s feet flung up as Vorza swept them with one of his. Kasar’s head cracked against the stone floor where the soldier’s blood was still stained.

  The prisoners jumped and bellowed in celebration. The questions of who one cascaded down the corridor and the answers rippled back up.

  Kasar blinked through the pain and dizziness. His nose was a stormcloud of agony and tears flooded from his eyes. He blinked through those as well and peered up to see a satisfied Vorza.

  “I think you’re good to go for the training pits, lad,” he said.

  “But I lost,” said Kasar.

  “That was going to be a given,” chuckled Vorza. He sounded happier than ever before. Happier than Kasar ever would have imagined it.

  The large prisoner whistled in cheer and shook the cell’s bars with his giant hands. “That boy just might survive, old Devil,” he said.

  Vorza shot the large prisoner a sly grin. “That’s what Devils are like, Beregar.”

  “Maybe they will pair the two of you in a fight together for the spectacle of it,” said another prisoner behind Beregar. A thin woman with scars that lined around her eyes along with a burn mark on her cheek.

  “Don’t give them ideas, Sipha,” said Vorza. “At least not for free.” Vorza turned to Kasar and gave him a proud nod. “You’ll do, lad. You’ll do.”