Greenblatt let his mask slip around his neck, revealing the master code tattooed on his chin. Underneath the spinning lights of the arena, he wondered if the machine would even be able to register the pattern. The noise of the Pit was overwhelming as two combatants dueled each other.

  Talin the Great didn’t stir. Even with all of his modifications, the machine failed to come to life. The reality was that he was dead, and the Black Thumbs killed him.

  As he moved to replace the mask on his face, a bright beam of light arced a path through him. It was a split second, but the moment it lit the tattoo, the machine began to hiss to life.

  Greenblatt could swear he could hear a voice within, and he approached it with caution.

  “Where are you, you scab headed spawn of a piss puddle! I’ll tear your fucking throat out!” Krav was lost in the haze of the zerker. It tunneled his sight and forced his heart to beat so fast it felt like it might explode from within and shower the arena in his gore.

  Douglas Grave leapt through the shadows of the arena, dodging the spotlights as they searched for him. Krav couldn’t hear the idling teeth of the chainsaw over the roar of the crowd and the howl of music. His only warning was the voice of reason coming from his hip.

  “Duck!”

  Krav didn’t duck, he raised his weapon in the direction the voice came from and parried the chainsaw. It shredded against the axe and sent sparks blooming between them, then Douglas Grave broke their clash and disappeared back into the shadows.

  “Fuck this guy!” Krav shouted. “Fight me like a man, you cowardly-!”

  Another clash from the chainsaw. Krav saw it briefly, then smacked it midair. There was a flurry of strikes from the chainsaw, and Krav managed to knock each away with the help of Rufus.

  “Low right, high right!”

  As they traded blows, Krav had an uncontrollable smile on his face that only faded when the spotlights flashed in his eyes. They blinded him briefly, then Douglas disappeared again. It was starting to get to Krav.

  “Control yourself!” Rufus cried. “If you let him get under your skin, you’ll only allow him the upper hand. Try taking deep breaths.”

  “You try taking deep breaths!”

  Between the shadow of two spotlights, Douglas’s thin frame was revealed. He was far away from Krav, and the boy could swear that he was licking his wounds like a dog. Blood boiled, and Krav roared and ran screaming towards where he saw the shadow. A sword jutted from the sands, and he grabbed it, holding it in his offhand.

  “Good choice! Having two weapons will allow you to block more effectively, and… what the hell are you doing, boy!”

  Krav raised the sword and threw it at where he had seen Douglas. It flipped a few times in the air before bouncing on a boulder and sending the shadow fleeing. The boy smiled, “He’s on the run.”

  “You want to get out of this alive? We need a strategy!”

  “I have a strategy! Cut his head off!”

  If he had his own head on correctly, Krav would have taken his master’s advice to heart. There were ways out of this, and if he hadn’t lost his mind on the zerker, he could have thought of at least a few. The thought of finding some of the detox spray was tempting, but even in his state he knew there was no way they’d leave that out.

  No, the strategy now was to kill Douglas Grave. He was an Executioner, easily on par with Ulrich, but Krav had seen that fat bastard lose a few fights already. He just had to keep going. The zerker would keep him steady as he pressed the attack. Perhaps the Executioner would run out of steam before he did.

  Again, Douglas Grave emerged from the shadows. The teeth of the chainsaw screamed towards Krav, and this time the boy couldn’t block. An arc came at him, and the axe wasn’t going to make contact in time, so he moved to dodge and was struck in the leg.

  Krav went down on one knee and held the wound. A gush of blood was welling up in his thigh.

  “You need to stop the bleeding, fast! Use your sash to tie it off before he gets back!”

  “Where is he!” Krav demanded through gritted teeth. The pain was unlike anything he had ever experienced. He imagined it might be akin to being stabbed and lit on fire. His hands were stained red up to his wrists as he clamped down. There was no sign of Douglas Grave. “Where the hell is he, Rufus!”

  “Treating his wound… there!”

  On top of a boulder, Douglas Grave held the axe wound that Krav dealt to his shoulder. Intense pain was swelling from it, and it was affecting his performance. He could no longer handle the burden of hefting his chainsaw’s weight, and his attacks could only be made in quick bursts. If Douglas tried to prolong their fights, he risked running out of strength in his bad shoulder and throwing the match. But he saw how the boy was tying off the gash in his leg, and he knew now that they were even. A prolonged fight now may prove victorious.

  Douglas Grave rose and rotated is weapon. It spun, creating a plume of smoke around him. The crowd cheered as they recognized the unique arcs and intense focus. Their champion was finally going for a killing blow. Douglas felt it rumbling in his hand, hungry for the boy’s essence. One more attack, and the boy’s name was his to wear.

  The executioner reached behind his back and felt the axe wound. A droplet of blood touched his finger, and he spread it over his collar bone. The boy’s name would go there, no question now. In a minute, he would have his glory redeemed, and he would be back in the VIP room as a victor.

  The shadow leapt from the boulder and charged. Krav pulled the sash tight around his leg and stood. He was moving so fast, he would be on the boy soon. That leg of his wouldn’t support him for long. He raised the axe, ready to meet him.

  “There has to be another way…” Rufus said.

  “There isn’t.” Krav sounded more focused than was feasible under the effects of zerker. He was staring dead-on at the approaching enemy. “Some people just have a death wish.”

  “You won’t win this fight in your condition.”

  The boy nodded. The blood loss was starting to make his whole body shake and stammer. “I have to win, Rufus. I have to find Lenny.”

  Before the skull could answer, Douglas crashed into Krav. They slashed and parried into each other, trading blows that were met with grinding teeth. Krav noticed Douglas’s stammering arm. Douglas noted Krav’s failing leg. It was only a matter of time before one of them would faulter and the killing blow was struck. Neither of them had accounted for Talin the Great.

  The arena was filled with a guttural machine roar. It shook the Pit like an earthquake, causing sand and dust to fall from the ceiling as if it were a collapsing tomb. All eyes were on the giant that was planted on the throne. No one ever would have guessed the thing could move.

  Greenblatt, realizing his mistake, headed for the nearest exit. He needed to go downstairs, get Krav, and leave as fast as possible.

  The skull-faced robot craned its neck and looked at everyone in the stands with a glowing red glare. The raging music wasn’t stopping, the band hadn’t noticed that their warlord was rising from its slumber. A metal hand the size of a sedan reached out and pressed against the floor, raising itself off of the dais.

  Out of its throne, Talin the Great looked like a demon of tangled wires and rusting metal. He crawled on long arms, his only limbs, and swung his head from side to side as if to take in all of the new sights. Absently, it squashed a few of the onlookers, and a panic quickly stirred among the Pit. It moved closer and closer towards the killing floor where Krav and Douglas dueled. As it reached the edge of the bleachers, it rolled over the railing and landed with a quaking thud.

  The tremor of the giant’s fall made Krav lose his balance. He fell onto his back, his leg on fire and completely uncooperative. Douglas had lost his footing as well, but he was quick to regain it. Now he was rushing the boy, chainsaw raised and ready to sink into the boy’s flesh.

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  “Block it! Roll away! Do something!”

  Krav grabbed the axe and threw it hard at Douglas. The Hunting Soul swung his chainsaw hard and deflected it, but the powerful throw had unforeseen consequences. There was so much force behind it, the contact snapped Douglas’s wrist backwards, breaking it. He growled and released his weapon. He fell to his knees, holding his limp hand when he saw the giant robot crawling through the arena.

  “L-Lord Talin?”

  The robot pushed itself up and screamed into the sparsely populated arena. As the band finally noticed, their music became discordant and they ran from their post with their instruments screeching chaotic feedback into the speakers.

  Screams could be heard now, and Douglas looked around to see that their theater of pain was becoming an empty killing field.

  “Wait! I can kill him! Come back!” without the crowd to cheer him on, it wasn’t an execution. There was no glory to be had in killing a man without an audience. This was his last chance to prove to his brothers that he was worth the rank among the Pit Lords. Now they were leaving him.

  He looked up at the VIP room and saw that they weren’t even watching him. The eyes that were still on the arena, the girl Ulrich brought, weren’t even on him, they were on Talin the Great. A bloom of frustration froze his heart, and all the fight left him. “Who will witness me?”

  “Witness this, scab head!”

  Before Douglas Grave could turn, he felt the chainsaw stab through his kidney. The weapon wasn’t powered on, so it didn’t go in smoothly. It felt like a vaguely sharpened rock had torn its way into him. The punch of pain sent him into immediate shock and he simply stared down at the blood-soaked machine jutting from his stomach.

  “I can… I can still…” Douglas looked back up at the VIP booth. “Jerod… witness me… please…”

  With the help of Rufus explaining how the weapon worked, Krav pulled the ripcord. The chainsaw roared to life and chugged through Douglas’s waist. It dug out his ropy intestines, sending them splattering outwards like party streamers launched in a continuous arc. Chunks of liver and kidney splattered the sand, and tattered skin flapped like a torn banner in the wind.

  Krav let it weave through Douglas’s spine, then his stomach, then the Hunting soul was split in half. His ragged torso collapsed to the floor, and he looked for someone, anyone to witness his death. To his undying gratitude, his eyes met the gleaming red lights lodged in the massive robotic skull. He could feel Talin the Great’s approval in them, and Douglas Grave, the Hunting Soul, died with a satisfied smile on his face.

  But the boy didn’t let that smile last. He let the roaring chainsaw rage, and with a triumphant scream, he slammed it down onto that grateful grin.

  “Karma’s sake, Krav! He’s dead!”

  The robot crawled its way to him. Its massive hands were slamming into the Arena’s floor and shaking the earth, but it didn’t deter the boy as he raised the weapon and brought it down over and over again. Just as Krav was about to stab it back into Douglas’s pulpy head, a huge metallic finger poked him in the chest and sent him sprawling backwards.

  Krav struggled to his feet, trying to keep off his injured leg. He was getting ready to strike the newest challenger, but Rufus stopped him. Both of them froze and watched as the machine man lifted Douglas’s corpse. By now, it was a torso with a ragged stump beneath its visible ribs. The head was just a lower jaw with a lolling tongue. The robot brought it to its face and nuzzled it. Then it turned its attention to the VIP room.

  Until then, it seemed the thing was only capable of screaming. But suddenly, it pointed a finger at the VIP room. Its arm opened to reveal a large canon hidden within its wrist, and it yelled so loud it shook the arena. “JEROD!”

  Ulrich huffed and threw Jerod’s arm on the floor. As if its mechanical nerves were still twitching, it curled itself up into a ball. The imposter warlord touched it gingerly, then shot a look up at Ulrich the bear. “You won? And what do you think you’ve won, Brother Bear?”

  All the Executioners in the VIP room watched Jerod like he was a bully that had just fallen off his bike. The dominance he possessed only moments ago was seeping from his wounds faster than his blood was.

  “You haven’t won anything. You haven’t!” even with one arm, Jerod charged Ulrich and challenged him to another brawl. “The things I’ve done for this clan… You and that terminally ill pile of scrap could never understand!”

  “Stop this! Just call off the execution!” he allowed Jerod to strike him once, then before he could land another blow, he caught him by the wrist. They were locked in a wrestler’s embrace, and still Jerod tried to smash his forehead into Ulrich’s nose.

  Mateo was finally up from his spot on the couch. “Jerod, come on. This isn’t worth your dignity! Respect the duel and end the fight!”

  Jerod shot a look over his shoulder at the Reaper. There was pain and disbelief in his eyes as he lost the support of his brothers. They had seen the crack in his armor, that had to be it. They had seen him lose and now they didn’t respect him. He redoubled his efforts against Ulrich and vowed to deal with the insubordinates as soon as he was done.

  The next thing either of them knew, they were surrounded by their comrades as they tried to separate them. Shiela had her arms wrapped around Ulrich’s chest and she anchored herself so that he couldn’t move. Loken and Hati were trying to unclamp the duelist’s fingers from each other. Mateo and Boris were trying to get in the middle of them.

  “This is unbecoming of a warlord,” Hati admitted. He fixed Jerod with a glare, but that seemed to anger him more.

  “Don’t look down on me!”

  “We’re not!” Shiela said. “You’ve lost your composure! Submit to your own word and call off the fight!”

  The Pit Lords’ guests were staying far away from the brawl. Devlin Domino watched his obsession over the back of the couch like he was a soldier hiding behind a trench line. Mac was at the window watching the fight. She was bouncing on her heels, and her excitement went unnoticed, even as she screamed that Krav had won the fight. The question about the giant robot was ignored as well. Then there was a noise none of them could ignore.

  It sounded like their band’s frontman had roared Jerod’s name into the microphone. The tangle of Executioners quickly unknotted themselves and went to the window. They looked down into the arena to find that their incapacitated warlord woke up without warning. And now he was aiming some sort of canon at the VIP room.

  Ulrich saw Greenblatt’s skinny silhouette disappear into the tunnels beneath the bleachers.

  “JEROD!”

  The Executioners all looked at their imposter warlord, waiting for an order. But Jerod looked down at Talin with a sheen of sweat on his raised brow. He was frozen in the red glare of the robot he had commissioned.

  Without warning, the robot fired. The canon was some sort of long-lost technology that predated the war that created the valley. This wasn’t the pistols or pipes of the Gordo clan. The warlord’s metal arm glowed with a building heat, then fired a red beam that cooked anything too close. The boy was scorched underneath him, and he quickly hid in the shadow of a boulder. The beam shot up into the VIP room and blasted it apart.

  It hit Jerod directly. Ulrich watched him disappear into the red light. As soon as it made contact, the finely combed hair and oiled mustache were cooked away. Jerod’s skin flash fried, and the only visible marker that remained was a charred skeleton, but after another moment, even that was gone.

  The beam travelled further, crashing into the ceiling and flaring out into the evening sky, its light enough to rival the twin suns. As soon as the torrent of energy ended, the VIP room began to crumble apart. Chunks of concrete fell from the roof, and one landed on Boris. The musclebound Executioner caught it and struggled to hold it up.

  Shiela wove through the falling rocks, saving herself as she dove out the window of the VIP room. Mac did the same, only she was making her way to Devlin Domino. The old man had been too close to the beam, and it had scorched him horribly. Half of his body was a bubbling pink mess, and he died of shock before Mac could reach him.

  If she had more time, she might have tried to resuscitate him with her bag of remedies, but the place was tearing itself apart. If she didn’t act with a single-minded intensity, she could lose this opportunity. She just prayed the map was in the pocket that hadn’t been microwaved. She dug through his robes, elated to find that the precious parchment was only singed slightly.

  “Sorry old man,” she said. Then she was off to find her escape route.

  The collapse of the Pit had killed over thirty people, and the tragedy would be talked about for years to come. Future generations wouldn’t believe there ever was a place so prosperous that it killed people for sport, but the elders of the Valley of the Twin Suns knew the truth. At one point in time, the Pit Lords controlled a shining beacon on the hill, and it was the greatest entertainment the wasteland had ever seen.

  By the end of it, Mac had found Krav in the arena and carried him out. All of his skin that was exposed to the beam was bathed in a deep shade of red. She made sure he had his axe and skull, then she carried him out of the arena from right under the giant robot’s nose.

  Greenblatt searched the cells beneath the arena, but he couldn’t find the boy. When the tremors began to threaten the integrity of the underground levels, he quickly returned to his lobotomites and pack beast. He would spend days afterwards searching the surrounding area for any sign of his allies before he found Ulrich.

  The Executioner himself had aided his clan as much as he could. When the dust settled, he was the first to offer a hand to the rescue efforts. With his aid, they managed to recover many fine wares and corpses. He was the one who had led the excavations into the collapsed tunnels, where he retrieved the dead Lana and her guards. Down in those tunnels, they found their warlord.

  Talin the Great heaved under a cluster of crumbled concrete slabs. His augmented eyes glowed between the cracks, and they lit even stronger as they pulled the stones from his ailing corpse. When he was fully excavated, they all marveled at him.

  The warlord rose to his full height, towering over his kin. Ulrich the bear was the first to kneel, and then Shiela followed. Soon they were all kneeling, showing reverence to a being that had no right to be alive. It stretched the canon out over them like a guillotine ready to fall, then allowed it to transform back into a spidery hand.

  “Pit Lords…” it mused. The rumbling voice was as loud as a car horn, even as its tone implied it was meant to be a whisper. The red eyes turned and looked around the fallen stadium. Once a point of pride for Talin the Great, now it was a catacomb.

  “Jerod the traitor is dead,” Talin groaned.

  The Executioners all stayed with their warlord, sharing stories of the Pit. He had watched them all from his silent place on the throne, and he offered each of them his praises for jobs well done. They lamented the destruction of their home and the incredible loss of life. They drank from rescued bottles of booze.

  Ulrich took the bottle Hati offered him and sipped it. He passed it to Boris, who smiled and toasted something in silence. He may not be able to forgive them for making Jerod the warlord, but with Talin the Great back, they felt like they had all those years ago. A genuine smile spread on his face at the camaraderie that he had felt the clan lost under Jerod’s leadership.

  In the morning, he would look for Greenblatt and the kids. For now, he was with his clan for the first time in forever.