Fiend's Fourth Hurdle

The clang of chains echoed down the narrow, dimly lit corridor as a young boy was dragged through the stone halls, his frail form barely able to support the weight of his shackles.

The guards, brutish and silent, prodded him forward with unfeeling hands, while his hollow eyes stared straight ahead, unflinching in the face of the jeers and harsh stares of the other gladiators.

From behind his cell bars, Aelric watched. The name no longer held the meaning it once had.

He had once been a man of faith, a scholar who spent his days in the quiet cloisters of a distant monastery, but now he was reduced to nothing more than another broken piece of the colosseum's vast and grinding machinery.

Beside him stood Valkira, her arms folded across her chest and her face unreadable, although her eyes burned with a quiet, restrained fury.

The sigil branded on her skin, a dragon coiling around a tall tree, etched a tale of its own across her arm, with the scales of the dragon shimmering faintly beneath the fabric of her sleeve.

As the guards ushered the boy down the hall, dragging his scrawny body like a ragdoll, Aelric's gaze swept over the other gladiators. Some were busy sharpening their blades or tending to their wounds, but most turned to watch the newcomer with expressions that mixed disgust and mockery.

Aelric had already heard rumors of the boy's first fight, the one where he faced a small girl, no older than eight, trembling in her innocence.

"Did you hear what he did? This guy just triumphed over a kid! We gotta cheer him up!" one gladiator whispered with a sneer. "That boy... he ate her. Took a bite right out of her after he killed her."

Another gladiator, his face twisted in disdain, chuckled darkly and said, "Desperate for flesh, human flesh, I suppose. A real piece of work. I guess we should call this beast of a man a child eater from now on!"

Aelric didn't need to hear more. He could already see it in their expressions; they mocked the boy as if his actions were nothing more than another grotesque spectacle to laugh at.

If the guards had not been standing there, Aelric was certain that some of the more volatile gladiators would have attacked the boy without hesitation.

He recognized the look in their eyes. They weren't simply angry, they were repulsed. They viewed him as less than human, a creature who had fallen as low as anyone possibly could.

"I don't know what's worse," Valkira muttered under her breath, "what he did, or the fact that he's still alive."

Aelric turned to glance at her, feeling the tension radiating from her body.

Her hands were clenched tightly by her sides and her jaw was set in a firm, rigid line. Valkira was not someone who showed weakness easily, but something inside her had fractured, and he could sense it. Her voice, usually calm and composed, now carried a sharpness that had not been there before.

"He ate her, Aelric," she hissed, her eyes burning as she stared at him. "A child. How can anyone, how could he, do something like that?"

Aelric's gaze shifted to the boy's frail figure as the guards shoved him into his solitary cell.

The boy's face was gaunt, his ribs visibly protruding beneath his skin. His eyes flickered, yet there was no emotion within them, only an empty void.

Aelric observed him in silence, his brow furrowed while the murmurs in the hall continued. Some of the gladiators mocked him, others openly loathed him, but none of them saw what Aelric saw.

"Do you think he chose to do that?" Aelric asked quietly, his voice soft but firm. "Do you believe he actually wanted to?"

Valkira's fists tightened even further, her nails digging deep into her palms. "He could've fought differently. He could've made another choice."

"Survived in a different way?" Aelric interjected gently. "There's no room for anything else in this place. Two warriors enter the field, and only one walks away. That is the rule here."

She whirled around to face him, her cheeks flushed with anger. "A mere child is not a warrior, Aelric, and that does not excuse him. Nothing excuses what he did to that girl."

The monk exhaled slowly, his eyes fixed on the boy's cell. "But what about what was done to him? They starved him, isolated him, turned him into a tool meant only for killing."

"Starved him?" Valkira scoffed, shaking her head. "Are you really suggesting he had no choice except to kill her and feast on her remains? Am I supposed to believe that?"

Aelric shook his head. "I'm not defending what he did, Valkira, not at all. What I'm trying to say is that this place destroys people from the inside out. It's not just the bodies that are broken here, it's the souls. They strip you of everything, your will, your dignity, even your sense of self, and when they are finished, all that remains is the instinct to survive, and whatever part of yourself you're still willing to sacrifice for that."

Valkira's breath quickened as she clenched her fists tighter, her knuckles turning white. "He didn't simply kill her, Aelric. He desecrated her corpse as if she was nothing more than food."

"Food..." Aelric echoed, his tone distant as he sank deeper into thought. "Perhaps that's what he has been reduced to. Maybe, in that moment, the only thing that mattered was survival. We all have something we cling to, something that keeps us going. It might be ugly, it might make no sense to anyone else, but it's what helps us endure."

He paused, letting the weight of his words settle between them. Valkira's eyes had turned cold and distant, though Aelric could still see the struggle behind them. His own past—the monastery, the prayers, the vows—had done nothing to prepare him for the horrors he now witnessed in this grim, suffocating world. And no matter how hard he tried, he couldn't stop himself from feeling a trace of sympathy for the boy who had eaten a child in order to survive.

"Look at him," Aelric said quietly, his voice nearly a whisper. "That boy is not a monster, Valkira. He's a victim. And if he was willing to go that far, to consume a child even at the cost of his humanity, then there must still be something inside him, something worth living for."

Valkira's eyes narrowed as her expression twisted in fury, and for a long time she remained silent. The anger that radiated from her was so intense, it nearly sparked in the air between them, but even so, an unspoken truth lingered in her gaze.

"Some men don't deserve to live," she muttered, the words slipping out quietly, though her tone lacked the conviction it once held.

"Everyone deserves to live," Aelric responded calmly.

"And so did the innocent girl he slaughtered and fed upon."

Aelric took a long breath, his thoughts drifting back to the empty corridors of the monastery, to the whispered prayers that had once guided him. He wondered if there was anything left to save in the boy or if he was truly lost.

"I wonder what's still inside him," Aelric murmured, barely audible. "What could possibly remain when everything else has been stripped away? Even monsters are driven by something. There is always a reason for the things they do. He might be lost, but I refuse to believe he is beyond redemption."

Valkira's gaze hardened, though she offered no reply. Instead, she turned her eyes to the floor, her rage shifting into something far heavier.

Aelric could feel the weight of her silence pressing between them. He understood that her fury came from somewhere deep, something personal. This place had a way of twisting everyone it touched, and whatever had shaped Valkira, it had carved her with cruelty far greater than the arena itself.

The air grew heavier between them, thick with things left unsaid. Around them, the other gladiators still spoke, some laughed, others sneered, but a few had gone silent, as if they too sensed the storm building in the space between Aelric and Valkira.