Adakontus thrust his sword-lance upward, retracted it, then thrust again. He’d been at this for at least a hundred sequences, which was his most recent count. He often lost track. Probably because he’d already gone insane long ago.

  ‘Cease forms.’

  Adakontus panicked. He had no idea how to cease forms. The last thing he wanted to do was guess. Perhaps he had already been taught but forgotten. He didn’t trust his memory. He would likely earn The Instructor’s punishment no matter what he did. It was better to wait and see how the other students react. The mass confusion allowed Adakontus to have a decent look around. Most students switched to “Vertical Hold”, some rested their sword-lance on a shoulder, and a few brave ones rested the butt of their weapon in the dirt. One lone trainee kept thrusting. Adakontus decided to rest his weapon against his shoulder. It seemed the safest bet. “Vertical Hold” was technically still a form, and if he was supposed to be in “Vertical Hold”, hopefully the dirt-butt crowd would divert The Instructor’s wrath.

  The Instructor observed the trainees as if searching for something specific in the eyes of each student. Then, it strode over to the most egregious student, the thruster. It moved the student into the proper position, feet shoulder width apart, sword-lance in the right hand, and left hand tucked behind the back. Everyone imitated.

  The Instructor moved to the left end of the rows.

  “Face,” the words shouted.

  In synchronicity, the students turned to the instructor. Adakontus resolutely stared at the back of his neighbor’s head. Her mess of greenish hair prevented him from seeing up the line. Silence stood. Adakontus waited, unworried. No matter what happened, his fate was outside his control.

  Lost in idleness, Adakontus’ eyes wandered. A mindless risk, a risk Adakontus would usually never permit. An errant glance would bring The Instructor’s attentions. Even stranger, his eyes rested on the lithe body of the woman in front of him. She stood poised, with her blue-black skin pulled tight across the smooth ripples of her back muscles. Black skin with blue shadows, artistry painted in inverted color. Beautiful.

  Beautiful, but no more and no less. An idle observation which Adakontus pushed aside. An empty feeling twisted his lips into a frown. Pain was too easy to accept, and everything else too easy to ignore. Adakontus never considered himself determined. He couldn’t draw on any specific examples, he simply knew. Based on non-existant past experiences, Adakontus was the type to leer at women and daydream. Yet here he was, fighting through exhaustion and adversity to survive. Laying down and accepting death seemed truer to his character.

  “March,” the words shouted, and so Adakontus did.

  The formation passed over the earthen courtyard and exited the castle through an overgrown gatehouse. The gates themselves were gone, leaving only huge, rusted hinges behind. Yellowish brown moss hung off the arched stones like filth on a rock monster’s teeth. Beyond the castle walls, nature struggled but persevered. Fungi littered the rocky ground. Some were ordinary, mushrooms and mold of pale, muted colors. Far more were exotic. A lightshow of lumescent stalks and bulbous growths in blues, greens, and yellows. Insects chittered and chirped, hidden among the alien fungus. The land was flat and wide, with no obstruction to sight except for the darkness itself. Far away, clouds of deep green fog that rolled along the horizon. The oppressive darkness and the otherworldly foliage somehow reminded Adakontus of an ocean floor.

  The trainees marched down a dusty path devoid of the chest sized rocks that covered the landscape. The Instructor circled the group on even strides, enforcing a standard pace. The Instructor caught Adakontus gawking more than once, and pretended not to notice. The scenery enraptured Adakontus. A cluster of blue lights wriggled on top of fleshy, pink sprouts. Adakontus wondered how they would taste. A pillow sized beetle lazily stepped through a meadow of yellow cap mushrooms. Its green-blue shell glittered in the mushrooms' faint illumination.

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  Soon enough, Adakontus ignored the sights. His legs burned and his bare feet bled. He focused entirely on each arduous step. All the trainees suffered. Adakontus stepped into bloody footprints, and left new ones behind. Somewhere along the way, The Instructor produced a switch. Every time the march faltered, The Instructor bled the students with swift strikes. The cuts on Adakontu’s back stung with each laborious breath.

  Adakontus couldn’t say how long they travelled, but the trainees’ tortuous march ended in a perfectly circular clearing, about fifteen meters in diameter. Flat, irregular stones paved the floor of the clearing. Only a fingernail width gap existed between each stone, in spite of their wild shapes. An iron obelisk waited in its exact center. The Instructor herded the students into the clearing, leaving them at the edges facing inward. As each trainee stepped off the dirt path and onto the stone, their wounds knitted and fused together leaving only bloodstains behind.

  Once all the students stood inside the clearing and faced the Obelisk, The Instructor paced around the outside of the ring. Adakontus’ eyes flicked about with uncertainty. None of the others seemed afraid. Their eyes showed either resolution or nothing at all, blank gazes with dilated pupils.

  The Instructor abruptly stopped its predatory circling. A bald, pale-skinned man sprinted towards the center, and a wide-eyed, tan woman rushed to meet him. Their sword-lances pointed at each other, readied for violence. The clash ended instantly, with the woman speared through the heart. The force of the man’s charge pierced the blade though the woman’s back, and slammed the her to the ground. The bloody tip of his weapon screeched along the stone as his momentum slowed. As soon as the man pulled his weapon out of the dead woman, the fatal gash in her chest healed with a disgustingly wet slurp. The pale man returned to his place at the edge of the clearing, while the bewildered woman clutched at her bloody chest with callused hands. The Instructor pushed through the ring of trainees, and dragged the woman back to a new place by the shoulder. Then the monster returned to circling its students with gliding steps. Its skeletal grin was wider than ever.

  Without warning, the next pair threw themselves into the arena. A brown haired man suffered a shoulder wound to disembowel a gray-skinned man. The loser fell groaning to the floor, holding his intestines. The Instructor forced gray-skin’s guts back into his stomach, and pulled him back to the edge of the ring. Next, a fiery haired woman cleaved a pink haired man at the elbow, then slit his throat. The Instructor held the severed limb to the stump, and it jumped back into place like a magnet. A green-bearded man crippled a hawkish, tan man with a lunge, but took a fatal headblow in exchange.

  Gruesome and brutal, the duels continued one after another. Some died silently, some died screaming. Adakontus could barely watch, but he forced himself to. Each duel observed was a lesson learned. Soon, he’d be called forward and he didn’t want to be the one maimed.

  The Instructor stopped across the ring from Adakontus. Staring over the shoulder of blue hued man, The Instructor met Adakontus’ terrified eyes. The black candlelights in its eye sockets danced.

  ‘Fight.’

  Adakontus stepped to meet his opponent, but nobody came forward. Pain lanced through him, right under his ribs. He looked down to find his neighbor’s blade thrust through his right side and poking out his left. The woman with the blue-black skin observed him with emotionless, silver eyes. With a twist, she sliced through his guts, pulling out the front of his belly. Adakontus dropped his sword-lance and staggered backwards. He felt The Instructor’s soundless laughter. That cruel abomination. A dirty trick. Just before Adakontus staggered backwards out of the clearing, a hand pushed him forward into the center. Adakontus fell coughing to his hands and knees.

  ‘Fight.’

  The pink-haired man charged, winding his weapon back for a strike. Adakontus flinched. The blade swung towards his neck. Adakontus’ head spun through the air as he watched his body crumple onto the stone ground. His head’s flight ended gently in a set of bony fingers. The Instructor’s white skull grinned as it watched Adakontus die.