Under the scorching summer sun was a boy stalking his prey. He inhaled a shallow breath of hot, dusty air, and exhaled it even hotter. It felt far too thick to completely fill his lungs. The dust clouds surrounding him blurred his vision, but he knew that he was the one who would come out of this fight alive.
His prey was a human criminal—a man sentenced to death but sent to the ring instead in the hopes that he would be useful in his last moments, unlike the rest of his life. This human was hated; Malan did not know his crimes, but the human would have never been sent to fight Malan had the crowd not wanted him slaughtered.
The human and chimera circled each other, their bare feet burning in the sand. The white-furred ears on the sides of Malan’s head twitched at the sharp sound of the jeers thrown by the crowd above, but he never took his attention off his prey. Suddenly, the human charged him, roaring. With the sharp saber in his hands poised to attack, the human slashed at Malan’s torso, aiming for a deep wound he got earlier in the day. Malan sidestepped the blade and ripped his claws up the human’s side. The human screamed, wildly slashing his saber around. Malan backed off but soon pounced on his prey once again, ripping at his skin with fangs and claws. Each exchange brought more wounds to the human’s body as Malan slowly tortured him to death. The crowd swelled in excitement.
When the human finally fell, barely alive, Malan gripped his neck and rose him above the sandy ground. He held his hand out in a gesture as if asking the crowd what to do with his prey. They practically screeched, begging Malan to kill him. The sounds swirled around his head and pierced his brain like an ice pick. Submitting to the crowd, Malan drilled his hand into the human’s chest. He grasped a still-beating heart and ripped it out as he drew back, raising it high above his head. Under their feral gazes, he crushed it in his palm and let the blood run down, dyeing his white skin and fur the color of slaughter. The body and heart were thrown off to the side and Malan retreated from the ring under wild cheering. That was his last fight for the day.
Away from the sun and the stares of ten thousand humans at last, Malan sighed in relief. The inside of the coliseum known as the Hatria Amphitheatre was relatively cooler, and the shade was a welcome reprieve for his skin, which had burnt and blistered long ago and never fully healed. Sand stung his raw wounds. He was soon shooed away to the coliseum’s healers. Only honorable, free gladiators got the chance to be healed by Masters. As a slave and a lower race, Malan limped his way to the apprentices. His long, black-spotted tail dragged behind him in the dirt, the white fur stained brown. He had fought twice today, a highly unusual number of times. Once was the maximum, and sometimes he would not fight at all for many months in a row. After all, there was no shortage of gladiators with which to entertain the spectators. The large wound on his side he got in the first fight against another chimera—a black wolf. Malan won a narrow victory, but because they both impressed the crowd, he and the wolf were allowed to leave victorious and alive. He would have wondered why he fought twice, had it not been so hard to think.
Holding the bleeding wound that had gotten aggravated in his final fight, Malan carefully lowered himself to sit on one of the dozens of wooden treatment tables and waited for an apprentice to come with healing magic at their fingertips and ointment and bandages right after. Lying on the tables were other low-class gladiators in various states of injury; around them were ten or so apprentices busily scurrying. Malan was awake and sitting up, so it took quite a long time until an apprentice noticed him and realized there was a pool of blood dripping on the table and down his leg onto the floor. In fact, keeping his head up had been a struggle for the last ten minutes, but he could not find it within himself to move. His ears rang and his head felt like it was injected with lead. He was so, so dizzy.
When a hand suddenly waved in his face, nausea rose up his throat and he groaned, falling off the table. Someone tried to catch him, but he was large and heavy despite his young age, and they tumbled onto the floor anyway. There were some voices, but they sounded so far away that he couldn’t make out what they were saying. He vaguely felt himself being lifted up and placed on a table. His feet and legs, which resembled the hind legs and paws of a snow-ounce (for that is what he was), hung off the edge. Under the cool, soothing sensation of healing magic and ointment, Malan slowly regained his senses. Hovering over him were three apprentices—one used healing magic on his side while the other two cleaned and wrapped the smaller wounds he gained that day. Their faces seemed unclear, as if his vision had not fully returned to him. Apprentice-level healing magic would not be enough to completely heal such a large wound; it would only ensure that he did not die from it. In the near future, he would have a new scar to add to the collection. When the apprentices finished, they shooed him away as well.
Accompanied by his earlier persistent limp, a now bandaged Malan slowly made his way to the side to rest, reveling in the cold stone on his bare back. The fights would end soon, and the survivors would all make their way to the barracks after. Eventually, the bell signaling the end of today’s fights tolled, and the surviving gladiators gathered up to go back. Several tunnels ran between the barracks and the underground beneath the coliseum ring. They were dark and chilled and smelled of wet stone. The instructors each held a small device that emitted a uniform light and lit the way. Malan held his bandaged side while he walked. After a short journey, the group emerged into the barracks’ courtyard. It was flat and made of dirt. To the side was a miniature coliseum ring filled with sand with three rows of seats around it. The barracks were two stories high and surrounded the entire courtyard like a prison wall. There were no exits leading directly outside. Only the tunnel to the arena brought them anywhere outside the courtyard walls.
“——— ——— ———— dinner ——, ——— ————!” an instructor yelled. The gladiators dispersed and Malan made his way to his room. It was small and dim, but cool and quiet thanks to a thick wooden door and stone walls. A thin, straw-stuffed mattress covered most of the packed dirt floor. Once inside, he untied the drawstring on his bloody, short-cut trousers and threw them off, and his body began to change. His skeleton morphed, and thick fur sprouted from his skin, adding to the fur that was already there. In his place now stood a full snow-ounce, a thick-furred big cat colored white with black spots, with wide paws and a long tail. His body settled once again, Malan shook his fur and curled up in a corner of the tiny room. He placed the end of his tail over his face and, snuggling in, drifted off to sleep.
In the morning, he awoke an hour before the toll of the first bell, right as the sun began to dye the horizon red. Tears fell from his eyes as if he had dreamt of some mournful memory, but he could not remember what it was. He got up and stretched, feeling a sharp, burning pull from his side and aches all over his body, then shook his fur. He scratched absentmindedly at the thick suppressant collar encircling his neck, and upon feeling the pangs in his stomach, groaned, and rolled over. He would not be fed until after the first bell. Feeling lethargic, he rolled over again, regretting skipping dinner.
‘Will they make me fight again soon?’ he thought, still coming out of sleep. He pressed his back against one wall and his four paws on the opposite wall. ‘I doubt it.’ He had provided quite the spectacle for the crowd yesterday. In fact, it was incredibly odd that he fought twice in one day—even though one fight was simply a one-sided slaughter—and impossible that he would be sent back to the ring so soon. Death may have been prevalent in the ring, but the masters of the Hatria Amphitheatre would not purposely send their gladiators to it—not even if they were slaves. His eyes narrowed in contemplation, but none of the conclusions he came to seemed quite right. Well, there was no use thinking about it anyway.
Malan spent some time lying on the floor thinking idle thoughts until the toll of the first bell brought him out of his stupor. Yawning, Malan stood as his fur retracted and his body once again changed into a humanoid. Staring resignedly at the bloody trousers on the floor for a second, he still picked them up and put them on. He also pulled on a loose shirt that he had not bothered with the previous day. The rough fabric scratched sharply at his sunburns, but it was better than being bare in the oppressive summer sun.
Malan rubbed at his face with rough, paw-pad-like hands as he meandered out to the courtyard. The other gladiators were trickling in, and within five minutes everyone was outside. Malan’s room was on the opposite side of the mess hall, so by the time he got there and received his food, nearly everyone else was in the middle of eating. It was called a mess hall, but in reality, the gladiators were not allowed inside. Only the instructors and kitchen staff were. Taking his food, Malan sat against the wall under the shade cast by the second-floor walkway. He frowned at the mix of barley and beans in his wooden bowl but scarfed it down anyway, habitually chewing on only the right side of his mouth, avoiding the hole in his lips from a long scar on the left side of his face. The mixture was bland and unappealing, just like it had been every single day for the past four years, but it was still food. ‘If only there was meat too…’ he salivated. In the middle of his hopeful daydreams, a human teenager crouched in front of him, snapping him back to reality. The human was smiling, his mahogany eyes curved up into crescents. He had chocolate shoulder-length hair partially tied up. The most noticeable thing about him, however, was the lack of a suppressant collar around his slightly tanned neck. He was a free, honorable gladiator, and Malan had never seen him before.
“————‘— ———— ————?” he asked Malan. His voice was bright and clear. Without letting Malan respond, he continued. “—‘— Jean! ——— ——— ——— ———? ————— ——— ——— ————? —‘—— ————— ————…” Jean must be his name. Jean spoke quickly and without pause, turning his following lengthy monologue into pure gibberish to Malan’s ears. Jean let out an exclamation as Malan, feeling overwhelmed after a while of listening, swiftly stood and ran away, leaving his bowl behind. The gladiators he passed by in his escape snickered at him, and Jean ran to catch up.
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“Hey-!” Jean yelled as he ran. “— ————“ He jumped to tackle Malan but failed and fell into a roll. “———— —— ——“ Jean jumped for Malan again and failed again. “——————— ———— ———!” Malan, ignoring the searing pain in his side, leaped and scaled the barracks until he was safely on the roof. His ears flattened back, he peeked over the lip of the roof down at Jean, who stood on the ground in disbelief. Amidst the uproarious laughter and jeering of the other gladiators, Jean let out a frustrated groan and stamped a foot.
A bald, middle-aged gladiator who had been there for some time and knew Malan’s temperament, laughed and said, “———‘— —————— ———— ———, ———! ——‘— ——— ——— ———————— ————! —— ————— ——‘— mute.” He looked up at Malan, who still had his head warily poking out into view, and let out a chuckle. “————— ——————— —‘— ——— ——— ——— ——— ran away ———— ———————, ——— —————— brat!” He yelled, still laughing. Malan furrowed his brows in annoyance. His tail twitched as he debated whether or not he should get off the roof, but soon his choice was made for him. The instructors, having heard the ruckus, came out to see what was happening. Suddenly, the air turned suffocatingly quiet and still.
Upon seeing Malan on the roof, an elderly instructor shouted, “Brat! —— ——— ———‘— ——— —— ——— ground —— ————— ———————, —————— — punishment!” Feeling a frightening chill at the word “punishment”, Malan jumped off the roof as fast as lightning. The instructor glanced at his clothes, stained with dry blood, and the red seeping through his shirt, and irritably waved him off to the direction of the mess hall. After Malan ran off, the instructor turned and shouted at the rest, “——— —— ———, ——— ——————— ————!”
Glancing back at the nearly one hundred gladiators running their laps, Malan pursed his lips and turned to the mess hall. On the same wall of the courtyard containing the mess hall was the infirmary. There were no restrictions to the infirmary, so Malan walked in without hesitation, catching the attention of one of the two apprentices who ran it. She was another new face to Malan. She had long, platinum hair tied up and out of her face and a pair of bright green eyes. She greeted him and smiled reassuringly. “———— —— ——— ——————— ———— ————?” she asked. The Master was nowhere to be found.
From her tone, she had asked him a question. He pointed at his torso, where his right side was almost entirely red by then. With a questioning look, she came around some cabinets that had been blocking her view, then gasped in shock and ushered him in to be treated. As she busied herself with his treatment, she began to ramble to him.
“————————, ———— ——— ———— —————— —— ——————— —————— —— ——— —————? —— ———— —————— ———— ————— gladiators —— survive?” She spoke quickly, just like that boy, Jean. He only recognized a few words of the rest of her rambling. “Hatria Amphitheatre”, “dying”, “ring”. He felt restless and uncomfortable. She said many words he did not know, her sentences turning into garbled nonsense. Why must everyone speaking to him recently speak with such swiftness? When she finished, she clapped the nonexistent dust off her hands. She looked around the room suspiciously, and in a hushed tone said, “—— ——— ———, —‘— ——— ———————— —— ———— ———— —— ———, —— ——‘— — ——————… ——— ———————— —————— —— ——— ———— ————! —— ——— ——— ————, —— eat quickly!” Then she stuffed a big piece of meat jerky in his hands. Malan did not really know what she meant, but he tore into the jerky as fast as possible as if scared that she would take it away. When he finished, she gave him a new set of clothes and turned around to let him change. He did not quite understand that part of humans. What was so scandalous about the body?
As he was about to leave, he felt a pang of guilt. She gave him food, but he felt uncomfortable and was even going to leave without thanking her. He hesitated for a moment, then tapped her on the shoulder. She turned back, smiled, and asked him something he did not understand.
“Thank… you,” Malan said after a few moments. He ignored his rising panic. His voice was small and raspy. The Empire’s common language felt unfamiliar on his tongue, and his words came out awkward and heavily accented, turning his “thank you” into “sank you”. The apprentice had shock and confusion written all over her face. He frowned. Did she not understand him? He was sure that was how thanks were given in the Empire’s common tongue. Malan did not know how to tell her he would repay her favor in the future. To chimeras, gifts of food are highly revered. Had Malan’s mother been there, she would have been furious at him for not showing the apprentice proper gratitude. Gesturing to hopefully help her understand him, he said, “Uh… give food!” He pointed at her. “Re… uh… repay!” The beginning of “repay” rolled on his tongue. Then, he nodded stiffly and bolted back out into the courtyard. The gladiators were still running. Behind him, he heard the apprentice yell something at the other in the infirmary. She sounded shocked, but the closed door muffled her words.
He began to think about his promised repayment. Already, his head throbbed with a headache. How in the world would he repay her with the situation he was in? A gladiator with nothing to his name, enslaved from birth, with an abysmal understanding of the common tongue. Malan was at a loss. Shaking his head, he put the issue out of his mind and joined the others to run. He may have been injured, but even injured gladiators were not exempt from training.
After a few laps, he noticed the teenage boy from earlier running alongside him. He was about a head shorter than Malan. Jean curiously glanced at him several times, with Malan ignoring him each time. He did not want to prompt the chatty boy into speaking, lest he give Malan a second headache. He did not know if the boy got the hint, but despite all his glances throughout the day, he did not try to speak again.
‘Maybe what happened this morning did the trick?’ He thought only after he retired to his room for the night. Even until the day ended, the teenager did not try to utter another word to Malan. He tossed and turned, unable to sleep despite himself, thinking about what the teenager said to him. Much of it made no sense, but he found himself recalling what he could remember and deciphering it. The farthest he could get, however, was the boy’s name. Jean. The more he tried to recall the words Jean spoke to him the more incomprehensible the sentences got until he became unable to recall any of it at all. “Jean,” he repeated endlessly, but no matter how many times he said the name out loud he could not quite pronounce it the way the boy had. All his J’s turned into Z’s and the name rolled awkward and harsh off his tongue.
The next day, Jean did not speak to him, only watching him from afar.
For days and days after, this continued. Jean had apparently resigned himself to merely looking at Malan curiously, and even long after Malan’s wounds healed, he never approached him to speak. Somehow, Jean even roped the other gladiators in it, and every so often he sensed them staring and whispering. And so, after weeks of feeling like a captured beast on display, he found himself standing in front of the source of his problem during their daily hour of free time.
The two teenagers stood face to face, Malan with annoyance written all over him, and Jean showing both confusion and excitement. For a while, they simply stared at each other. The boy in front of him seemed to desperately hold himself back from speaking, which inexplicably made Malan even more annoyed. Frustrated at his inability to express himself in the common tongue, he just growled. Seeing Jean’s stupid-looking face up close only served as temptation to hit him—and hit him he did. Malan pounced on Jean and punched him in the face as hard as possible. The gladiators who had already been eagerly watching the confrontation immediately began to cheer and jeer and whistle at the two boys. Jean, at first anticipating what Malan would do, became angry in turn and returned Malan’s blows with equal ferocity. Without finesse, they tumbled to the ground and rolled across the dirt, punching and kicking at random. Malan was larger, but Jean had somehow equaled his strength, and the battle turned into one of attrition. They traded countless blows, but there was no clear winner. The fight lasted long, to the point their audience even settled down, and by the end of the fight, Jean and Malan were battered, bruised, dirty, and exhausted. Malan, having expended all his energy, burst into tears. It felt like not only the frustrations from the past weeks but his entire life were coming out at once. Jean was sitting on top of Malan, gripping his shirt collar and readying to punch him in the face when Malan started sobbing, and his anger and spirit were washed away with the tears. He panicked, clumsily trying to console Malan, their fight all but forgotten.
Malan, however, had not forgotten for even a second. Angered at seeing his enemy try to help him and seething with hatred at himself for showing weakness, Malan grabbed the back of Jean’s neck and slammed his forehead into Jean’s nose. Hearing a crunch as he scrambled some distance away from Jean, who fell back onto the ground, groaning and holding his bleeding nose, Malan sniffled. He was still crying. Their gladiator audience stood dumbfounded.
Propping himself up with an elbow, Jean glanced at Malan in annoyance which was once again quickly washed away at the pitiful sight of the chimera. Malan was crouched, crying angrily and wiping his face, his tail circled around his feet. Malan glared at Jean, but its cutting edge was eroded into nothing by his sobs. A strange silence hung in the air. Jean’s nose was still bleeding profusely.
Tired and not quite in his right mind, Malan yelled at Jean in his mother tongue. “Seriously, what is wrong with you?!” His voice was hoarse and cracked. Only when he caught a glance of the instructors watching from the side did he notice his mistake. Fear closed his throat and he paled. He hugged his head protectively and curled into as tight a ball as possible. He prepared himself, but the beating he expected never came. When a few minutes passed without any movement from the instructors, Malan peeked out from behind his arms. More confused than relieved, he released his head and looked around. Why was he not being hit for speaking in his mother tongue? That was what happened everywhere else. He looked at Jean, who was now standing, holding his nose. Jean, as well as their gladiator audience, exploded in a fervor.
