PAST

  Bloody and bruised, Gorjon forced himself upright in the center of the ring. Sweat and blood streaked down his torso, glinting under the arena lights.

  His opponent, a Dagon with a wooly beard, hurled himself into the energy ropes. They stretched, hummed, and snapped him back toward Gorjon. The muscles in the Dagon’s legs swelled obscenely, expanding to six times their size as he launched into a Mega Dropkick aimed straight at Gorjon’s chest.

  Gorjon stepped aside at the last instant.

  One metallic arm clamped around the Dagon’s neck. The other seized his tights. Gorjon hoisted him overhead, effortless despite the pain screaming through his body. His third arm, also sheathed in silver metal, drove into the Dagon’s back, forcing him to bend the wrong way over it.

  A ref-tek painted in black and white drifted close, hovering beside the Dagon’s contorted face, silently asking the question.

  The Dagon shook his head.

  Gorjon answered by hammering his fist up. Again. Again.

  The scream never carried sound. A second later, the Dagon slapped Gorjon’s arm in surrender.

  The arena detonated with noise.

  Gorjon dumped his opponent to the canvas and dropped to his knees. His arms reverted to flesh as he flexed them, head bowed, tears cutting through the grime on his face. The ref-tek returned, holding out a gold belt studded with precious stones.

  Gorjon stood, belt in hand, and jumped, shouting as he ran the ring, triumph spilling out of him uncontrollably.

  “This is the moment that started an era,” a voice said, steady and reverent. “Gorjon defeats Dagon Pride to capture the Galactic Wrestling Association’s Universal Championship for the first and only time, for this man has never lost a championship bout in over twenty years.”

  The holoclips rolled.

  Gorjon slamming bodies into turnbuckles. Gorjon leaping from energy ropes. Gorjon shaking hands with fans, signing autographs, holding children that stared at his third arm like it was a miracle. Promos. Entrances. Wins stacked one after another.

  “From humble beginnings,” the narrator continued, “he wrestled his way into the hearts of the masses—and the locker room. This is the story of how a simple entertainer’s son became the biggest name in the sport.”

  The title card froze on Gorjon flexing, veins raised, sweat shining under arena lights.

  IT’S IN MY BLOOD

  Becoming Glorious Gorjon

  The screen cut to black. Then flickered back on.

  A grainier holoview; no crowd or music. A child Ksush sat on the floor, smashing toy wrestlers together with clumsy joy. A Yuni with black-and-yellow polka-dot skin stepped into frame, scooped him up, and laughed as the child hugged him tight. Both turned toward the camera and flashed exaggerated thumbs-up.

  “At a young age,” the narrator said, voice softer now, “Gorjon idolized Mickle ‘the Fickle’ Mclojin. GWA champion, Coalition Carnage winner, and philanthropist.”

  The footage changed.

  A young Gorjon stood awkwardly beside his hero at a signing event, clutching a toy wrestler like it was sacred. The signature was real. The smile looked rehearsed.

  “When the GWA came to Ksush,” the narrator went on, “the impressionable youth met his idol. He still keeps that toy on his mantle.”

  Another cut.

  Teenage Gorjon drilled alone in a four-sided ring. All footwork and sweat and repetition.

  “Wanting to follow in the Fickle’s footsteps,” the narrator continued, “Gorjon dropped out of school and joined the GWA training program. He even tried to copy his idol’s regimen.”

  The footage jumped again.

  Teenage Gorjon stood in a dim training gym, shoulders bare, breath already ragged. Someone off-screen counted down with a hand signal. Gorjon plunged his arm into a container of open flame.

  For half a second, nothing happened.

  Then he yanked it back, screaming, clutching his wrist as blistered skin smoked. He ran in tight, panicked circles across the mat, biting back tears while trainers shouted for him to stop moving.

  The clip didn’t cut away quickly enough.

  “But he lacked the Yuni’s natural rock-hard skin,” the narrator said over the image, voice level, almost clinical. “He quickly discovered that if he was going to join the GWA, he needed to learn about Soul Style.”

  The fire footage faded out.

  “For those unfamiliar,” the narration continued, “the Galactic Wrestling Association permits its athletes to employ the Body subcategory of Soul Style. Only techniques that utilize elements inherent to the individual’s body are allowed.”

  A freeze-frame caught Dagon Pride mid-dropkick.

  “Dagon Pride, for example, increased muscle mass in his legs. That was legal.”

  The screen darkened.

  Gorjon knelt alone in a narrow room lit by a single overhead panel. Sweat slicked his chest. His breathing slowed as he folded inward, two hands resting on his thighs. Minutes passed. Maybe hours.

  His eyes snapped open.

  “Gorjon conquered the fear associated with bonding to a soul coal to learn his first Soul Style ability,” the narrator said. “Ksush physiology contains trace feldspar, a mineral commonly found in granite.”

  The footage cut hard.

  A masked Gorjon burst through the aisle curtain, sprinting toward the ring. The crowd reacted late, confused. In the ring, a Yuni opponent waited, bouncing on the balls of their feet.

  As they locked up, Gorjon’s arms turned gray, then fully stone, joints grinding audibly. He pushed forward, straining for leverage.

  The Yuni shoved him back.

  Gorjon dropped low, curling his body inward until he compacted into a rolling boulder. He surged forward, smashing into the Yuni’s legs and bowling straight over him.

  The crowd barely stirred.

  “He could turn his skin to stone,” the narrator said, unkind but accurate. “He even adapted it into in-ring techniques, such as the Rolling Rock.”

  The footage lingered on bored faces. Crossed arms. People checking holobands.

  “Fans and peers alike dismissed him as a second-rate Fickle.”

  The screen went black.

  “Failing to capture a following, Gorjon took a year off.”

  The next image hit like a punch.

  Scarlet gear. Two red horns painted onto his face. A wine glass held delicately in his third hand as he walked toward the ring, savoring the moment. Thick red liquid swirled inside as he took a slow, deliberate sip.

  The crowd roared now.

  Montage after montage followed. Brutal slams. Bloodied opponents. Gorjon posing, laughing, leaning into the spectacle.

  “Flamboyant. Cocky. A carousel of fun with a dangerous edge,” the narrator hyped. “Those were the early impressions.”

  A Tilris with snake-arms collapsed flat on their back, limbs reverting to normal as consciousness fled. Gorjon planted a crimson boot on their chest. The ref-tek counted three.

  “And he came with something else,” the narrator added.

  The camera zoomed in as a thin tube slid from beneath Gorjon’s wine glass, writhing slightly as it pierced the Tilris’s arm.

  “He debuted a new Soul Style,” the voice finished. "Blood.”

  Dark red blood filled the glass.

  Gorjon raised it with his third hand and drank deeply, deliberately, the way someone drinks when they want to make sure the audience tastes it. The Tilris jerked awake just as Gorjon’s arms reshaped, scales sliding into coils. The snakes wrapped tight around the Tilris’s torso and lifted him off the mat until their faces were level.

  “Take pride,” Gorjon said, studying him. “At least part of you is glorious now. The rest—ugh—needs a makeover.”

  The image froze on the Tilris’s stunned expression.

  “Ingesting blood granted Gorjon access to the abilities of the supplier,” the narrator said. “In a rarely seen interview recorded around his second run, he explained the process in his own words.”

  The footage shifted.

  Gorjon sat shirtless on the edge of the ring, breathing hard, toweling sweat from his hair. There was no performance in his posture here. Just exhaustion and something closer to honesty.

  “I drink a glass full to creep people out,” he said, a small smile played at the corner of his mouth. “Truth is, it only takes a little. Once it’s in me, I can copy any ability the blood owner has.”

  He shrugged, wiping his face again.

  “I don’t copy how they use it. I make it mine. That part sticks for good.”

  He hesitated, then laughed quietly.

  “It disgusted me at first. Drinking blood? Who does that? I had to force it down. Funny thing is, it all tastes the same, except Yuni blood. That’s basically water. Still don’t get that.”

  He glanced off-camera.

  “But yeah. It saved my life during training.”

  “In what way?” the interviewer asked.

  You might be reading a stolen copy. Visit Royal Road for the authentic version.

  Gorjon smiled without humor. “Uh… we won’t talk about my training regimen. It’s top secret.”

  The screen filled with motion again. Gorjon pinning opponent after opponent. Roars from the crowd at each victory; punctuated by a sip from the ever-present glass.

  “And that secret training,” the narrator said, “led to an unprecedented twenty-year reign as the Galactic Wrestling Association’s top champion.”

  The montage cut hard.

  Gorjon lay half-buried in snow, blood streaking down his face, breath coming in shallow bursts.

  “Unfortunately,” the narrator continued morosely, “that dominance did not carry over to Coalition Carnage.”

  A brief flash: Gorjon standing alone in an arena, scoreboard empty.

  “His first appearance, the ninety-seventh competition, ended in humiliation. Zero wins.”

  Another cut.

  Gorjon upside down in dirt, legs kicking uselessly, buried to the waist.

  “The ninety-eighth showed marginal improvement. One victory.”

  Then: the Finals. Gorjon battered but standing, eyes burning.

  “The ninety-ninth was his strongest showing yet.”

  The footage slowed.

  “He enters the one-hundredth with something to prove,” the narrator flourished. “Will the Glorious One fall short again, or finally cement his legacy; not just as a universal champion, but as Supernova One Hundred?”

  The question lingered longer than the answer ever would.

  Present

  With a guttural cry, Gorjon hauled Crimson’s shelled body up by the waist and pressed him overhead. Muscles bunched across his back as he leaned further back, driving Crimson down in a crushing suplex that rattled the corridor floor.

  Gorjon got to his feet, chest heaving, and turned his gaze upward as Roxy phased into view above the invisible curve of the geodome.

  “And once again,” Gorjon said grandly, spreading his arms, “the Glorious One is victorious. You may count now, Goddess Boss.”

  “Why, thank you, Superstar Gorjon,” Roxy replied brightly, “but that won’t be necessary at this time.”

  Gorjon turned away from her and froze.

  Crimson was already back at work, shovel biting into the hard ground beneath the spot where he had just been slammed.

  “Not again!” Gorjon barked. “Do you even know how to entertain an audience?”

  “Ground here not mined,” Crimson said, without looking up.

  Gorjon sighed, then turned back to Roxy, flashing his most practiced smile.

  “I’m sorry, sensual songbird,” he said smoothly. “Could you give us a moment? I think I know how to get ’em going.”

  Roxy winked out of existence.

  Gorjon padded over to the Winsker, who was already two feet deep, and leaned down close, dropping his voice into a conspiratorial whisper.

  “Hey, pal. I’ll make you a deal. I’ll leave you to dig all you want if you give me just a tiny bit of your blood.”

  Crimson paused.

  “Huh?”

  “That’s all you want to do, right?” Gorjon continued. “Dig into the ground?”

  “Mine the ground, yes.”

  “And you don’t want me to keep attacking you, interrupting such important work?”

  “No.”

  “Good,” Gorjon said. “I just need some of your blood, then I’ll get off your shell.”

  “You not on shell.”

  “It’s an expression,” Gorjon said. “Kinda.”

  “Okay.”

  Gorjon blinked, then grinned. “So, I can have some?”

  “Okay.”

  “Fantastic! Look this way. Okay, now hold still.”

  He drew back a fist and drove it straight into Crimson’s round, blank-eyed face.

  Crimson stared at him, puzzled.

  “Wow,” Gorjon started, shaking his hand. “You’re tougher than any Winsker I’ve ever—”

  Crimson’s return blow launched Gorjon down the metal corridor like debris caught in a sudden gust. He hit the wall at the T-junction with a clang that echoed through the maze corridor.

  He staggered upright at Roxy’s five-count, clutching his face as blood streamed between his four-fingered hand.

  Crimson nodded once, satisfied, and returned to digging.

  Gorjon wiped his face on his forearm and limped back over.

  “Excuse me,” he said. “Sorry to interrupt again.”

  “Have blood now,” Crimson replied. “Leave alone.”

  Gorjon stared at him, blinking, already regretting the deal.

  “I know where there’s an untapped mine,” Gorjon said, lowering his voice. “Never touched by mortals.”

  That did it.

  Crimson sprang out of his hole with surprising speed, shovel clutched tight.

  “Where?”

  “I’ll tell you,” Gorjon said, raising a finger, “but first, I need a favor.”

  Crimson lifted his shovel halfway, ready to strike.

  “More blood?”

  “No, no!” Gorjon waved both hands frantically. “Nothing like that. If you let me body-slam you and then lie there for the count of twenty, I’ll tell you where the mine is.”

  Crimson tilted his head. “Count to twenty?”

  “Yes.”

  A long pause. “Okay.”

  Gorjon approached carefully. When it became clear Crimson wasn’t about to attack, he wrapped his arms around the Winsker’s shelled body, heaved him up, and jumped.

  His head struck the invisible curve of the geodome fifteen feet above. Momentum carried them back down in a thunderous line. Gorjon drove Crimson into the ground with an ear-splitting boom that rattled the corridor walls.

  Gorjon rose from the small crater, dusting himself off.

  “Don’t forget,” he said, pointing down. “Twenty.”

  Crimson was back on his feet by the count of three.

  “Don’t know how,” Crimson said. “Count to three. Like GWA.”

  Gorjon opened his mouth to argue—

  —and a heavy, rhythmic stomping echoed from around the corner where Gorjon had slammed into the wall earlier.

  “Uh-oh,” Roxy said. “Our special guest has been alerted to the Superstars’ presence.”

  “What special guest?” Gorjon asked, taken aback.

  “Last year,” Roxy continued brightly, “a Winsker excavation crew discovered the lair of a creature thought extinct since Winsker’s prehistoric age. Instead of sealing it off or studying it, the Coalition did what it does best.”

  There was a pause.

  “They built a maze around it!”

  Something massive rounded the corner.

  “Ladies and gentlemen of the Papuru Galaxy,” Roxy announced, “making its grand reappearance in the Zantanium Maze, feast your eyes on... the armomus!”

  The beast lumbered forward on four thick legs, its shell adding impossible weight to an already enormous frame. Its mouth took up nearly half its body, and waves of color rippled across its hide, shifting from red to gold to purple. Each step shook the dull brown earth and sent vibrations through the metal corridor.

  Four eyes glittered, cycling hues as it advanced.

  Gorjon stared, impressed despite himself.

  “This is a beast from before recorded history?” he asked. “Living underground all this time? Is it carnivorous?”

  “Omnivorous, if I had to guess,” Roxy replied, thoughtfully. She then turned to him, smiling slyly. “Capturing it comes with a secret prize.”

  The armomus never once looked at Gorjon.

  Its attention stayed locked on Crimson, who had already gone back to digging, shovel scraping patiently at the dirt.

  “It doesn’t look so tough,” Gorjon said. “That prize is as good as won.”

  He stepped directly into the creature’s path, planted two hands on his hips, and raised his overhead arm, palm out, commanding it to stop.

  The armomus didn’t slow.

  Its wide, oval snout pressed forward and shoved Gorjon aside as if he were furniture, continuing its slow, inevitable advance toward the digging Winsker.

  "No one shoves aside a pro wrestler like he’s some average joe,” Gorjon said.

  His haymaker produced nothing, not even a twitch of the eye. The colors playing over the armomus’s shell and leathery skin reflected off the silver walls, reminding Gorjon of the lights that played across the surface of his home world at night. The creature stomped past him and stopped behind an oblivious Crimson.

  Without warning, the armomus produced a huge tongue, which dragged slowly across the Winsker’s shell. Crimson turned a pupil-less eye toward it and gently pushed it back.

  “Nice animal.”

  The huge mouth honked a long, mournful sound just as Gorjon planted both feet, encased in steel, into its shelled hide with a missile dropkick.

  “Universal champions are not to be ignored!”

  Two of the beast’s eyes regarded him for less than two seconds before returning to their previous task of cleaning Crimson’s shell with its tongue. Crimson continued digging, tossing a shovel full of dirt directly onto Gorjon’s head.

  “That does it.” He growled.

  Gorjon’s arms morphed into snakes, elongating under and over the beast. He heaved with every ounce of strength his Soul Style granted him, sweat streaming from every pore.

  The armomus didn’t bulge. When its wet, yellow tongue came back into view, Gorjon quickened and grasped it with all three hands.

  “How ’bout a little spice?”

  After making sure his skin was coated in silver metal, Gorjon brought forth heat hot enough to smolder. The beast howled, flinging the wrestler away with a massive whip of its head. It stomped about, head wagging, body morphing colors before settling on violet. The color pulsed from the armomus in waves so vibrant and bright that it changed the dark grey zantanium, even the very air itself, in mimicry.

  As the armomus howled, its cries bounced off the corridor walls, then mixed with the cries, snarls, and ungodly commotion of an environment full of monsters.

  Gorjon stared around him in shock. “It can’t be…”

  Where they were was an impossibility.

  A dark sky filled with specks of white condensed into streams that led into a black hole of astronomical proportions, which consumed half of space. A darker star dominated the other half, its black and red flames casting a dull glow down onto a scene of horror millions of miles from it.

  Gorjon, the armomus, and Crimson, who was even more confused than usual, stood in the midst of warring, oily black monstrosities composed of combinations of teeth, claws, tentacles, fangs, eyes, and tongues, each thrice the size of the prehistoric beast that had seemingly brought them here.

  A blob of oil with one red eye slithered toward Gorjon. Instinctively, he released a stream of flames to ward it back.

  “We’re on the Dark World!? How?!” Gorjon shouted. “Roxy, get us out!”

  The normally, annoyingly present master of ceremonies was absent. More monsters took notice of them.

  One reached a tentacle toward Crimson, who stood slack-jawed until it wrapped around his body. His shovel might as well have been a sharp sword the way it cleaved the groper apart. The armomus stomped in place in fear and agitation, glowing from purple to gold to silver.

  As Crimson freed himself, a four-legged monster with inverted limbs, horns, and wriggly things for a mouth leapt toward the armomus, only to receive Gorjon’s flame.

  “We won’t survive without the Spirit Guides!” Gorjon yelled. “Take us back, you stupid animal!”

  The armomus wailed, a rainbow among midnight.

  The bigger monsters were too busy eating and killing each other to notice them, but many more of the smaller, yet still larger than the visitors, creatures were starting to be drawn by all the pretty colors.

  Crimson took up a defensive position around the armomus. Somehow, Gorjon thought , the Winsker realized it was their only way home too.

  He also believed they would be dead in the next few seconds unless something was done.

  Time was the only currency left. He needed a few more seconds, enough to bring forth the one thing he hoped would buy them even more. Gorjon threw up a quick dome of flame around himself and focused on the shape he wanted.

  A few seconds later, an aged female Pian stood beside him.

  Where once Gorjon would have towered over her, his shrunken, two-armed body now left them eye to eye.

  “I thought I made myself perfectly clear.”

  She grabbed him by the throat with a tough, strong hand. The fire dome dropped as she lifted him, then released him just as abruptly.

  “Holy—” she barked. “Thought I was done with this place! You trying to tame me?!”

  “No!” Gorjon shouted. “We were brought here by that beast, not a soul coal! I need time to get it to send us back before it or me gets eaten! I wouldn’t call you if it wasn’t desperate! Please, Frenzy!”

  “Should let the monsters get you. It would free me.” She sneered.

  A half-snake, half-crab thing with a humanoid face locked in a permanent scream had a claw nearly around her.

  A second later, it was in pieces.

  Frenzy was suddenly everywhere, darting through the chaos in frantic, impossible motion. Before Gorjon could even turn, she was beside him again, gripping one of the severed crab claws like a weapon, coated in dark, thick slime.

  “Don’t just stand there, ya bloody fool!” she snapped. “Get that beastie going!”

  She vanished again.

  Gorjon rushed toward the armomus, which was contributing to the calamity with ground-shaking stomps of terror. Crimson had positioned himself directly in front of it, shovel raised, ready to dig blood from the first thing that came too close.

  Gorjon reached for the creature and had to dodge a sudden swipe from Crimson.

  “Leave friend alone!”

  “I’m trying to get us back!”

  “Who you?”

  “What?” Gorjon shouted. “We have no time for this!”

  He turned and bonked the armomus on the head with the side of his fist.

  “Take us back!”

  The response was immediate.

  The armomus’s wide snout swung hard, swatting Gorjon into the air. His arc carried him perilously close to the open jaws of a ten-eyed horror, but an elderly hand clenched his trunks and yanked him clear. He lands beside the Winsker denizens.

  Frenzy stood there, breathing raggedly, black goo streaked across her body. She spun once, flinging the muck outward.

  “Not as spry as I used to be,” she muttered. “Not much more I can do against these beasties at my age. Besides, without the Spirit Guides, you’re dead and I’m free.”

  She smirked.

  “So long, jackhole.”

  Her body melted into a dark red goo and flowed back into Gorjon. His form expanded instantly, returning to full size, third arm snapping back into place.

  Several of the twenty-foot monsters noticed them then. Smaller horrors surged forward, hungry and fast.

  The armomus wailed in blind panic. Gorjon hopped onto its back like he was mounting a ride, screaming louder than the creature itself. From somewhere nearby came a low laugh, deep, amused, unsettling.

  “What a surprise,” Crimson said. “Fear not, lowly one. I will send you back. This is not a place for the faint of heart. At least without your precious Spirit Guides.”

  A wave of death washed over the space where they stood.

  Gorjon’s screams bounced off the metal walls as the world folded again.

  He barely had time to register the shift before Roxy’s sweetly excited voice cut in.

  “In an uncanny development,” she announced, “the two Superstars disappeared in a flash of light, only to return a second later! And the armomus is terrified, running away out of sight, deeper into the maze!”

  Crimson watched the retreating rainbow hide with something almost like longing, one hand reaching out.

  “Come back, friend.”

  “Are you really a Winsker?” Gorjon demanded. “What the hell was all that earlier?”

  He stood a few feet away, tense, ready for an attack that might come at any second. Crimson turned back with his usual dull expression, shovel in hand, already prepared to resume digging.

  “Never mind,” Gorjon said witha shake of the head. “If you tell the floating hologram lady that you give up, I’ll tell you about that untapped mine.”

  Without hesitation, Crimson complied. Roxy’s disapproving look said everything, even as she loudly and boldly declared Gorjon the winner.

  Gorjon flexed for the viewscopes. A tap landed on his shoulder.

  “Where mine?”

  “Your what?”

  “Mine. Where mine?”

  “Oh,” Gorjon said. “There is no mine. That was a trick.”

  “You lie?”

  “It’s called acting.”

  Gorjon activated his Aura Cloak just in the nick of time. Crimson’s shovel slammed into the barrier, sparks spraying as strike after strike rang out. Crimson drew back for a stronger thrust and the cloak winked out.

  “Get me out of—”

  The shovel buried itself into a steel wall because Gorjon had been teleported out.

  Crimson yanked it free, then he too was gone.