Time and Task

by **Victus** on November 10th, 2014, 3:10 am

14th Day of Spring, 498AV
Tall Johnny's Casino and Cage Fights

They threw him into a dark hole with the flesh of the man who'd carried him still within his teeth. The boy had scrapped and flailed and beaten his fists against a chest like the face of a mountain the whole journey from the Tent City. Face after face they had passed, some of those he'd known. He'd called out to them to help him, save him, release him from the men who'd snatchd him from his family.

But they all saw whom it was that led the band of rough men. None helped him. None dared.

"Ah, little bastard!"

Once inside the big, loud building, the boy had sunk his teeth into the man's arm, pulling his head back and forth until he drew blood. Tall Johnny had turned with a frown at the sound of his enforcer's curse, then his eyebrows shot up at the sight.

Rastus was a tough bastard, but he was growling now like a whipped dog, throwing the boy he'd taken as payment onto the ground. The scrawny guttersnipe had bounced back up and ran for the way they'd come, the door out of the Casino-

-and got five steps before Rastus' backhand slapped him down again.

Again he rose, and Johnny cocked his head.

How interesting...

"Petching little shyke!" Rastus spat, grabbing the boy by his collar and lifting him clean off his feet and against the wall. "Teach you some petching manners!"

He drew back a fist like an angry titan, but before it landed-

-a gob of steaming spit splat onto the big man's ruddy, bearded face. For a tick he just stared in shock at the glowering, prepubescent kid that had put it there. He heard a few stifled guffaws from Johnny's other enforcers, all of them enjoying the show in the storeroom behind the Casino proper. Then that fist came crashing down-

-knocked out every whisper of breath from the boy, doubled him over and left him retching, gripping consciousness by his fingernails-

-before he tossed him back to the floor like a sack of potatoes.

"Petching cunt," Rastus growled, wiping his face and cracking his knuckles, "Petching slavers on the Row'll have to give me a bonus, after I make you good n' petching obedient-"

"Leave him."

His head snapped around to the calm, low voice that spoke. Johnny. Face neutral, eyes bright and focused on the gasping, coughing little pile of ratty clothes on the floor. He strode over casually and bent down.

"A scrapper, this one."

"Be good for the plantations," one of his men said absently, picking his fingernails with a bone-handled knife, "Get a good price for him, I'd wager."

"Perhaps... Perhaps..."

Rastus didn't like that tone. He knew it of old: his master was having one of his petching "ideas". Rastus didn't like those, mainly because his thuggish mind couldn't think much further than his next purse or ale or slice of cunny. Tall Johnny, though, he was a thinker. A schemer. His ideas always seemed to make money, but they didn't involve violence, so Rastus was often confused by them.

Case in point: why not beat the little petcher who'd bitten him to a pulp before they sell him off?

"What're you thinking, boss?"

"I'm thinking there could be more to the boy than a quick sale," Johnny said calmly as the boy shrunk away from him, worming back into a corner, eyes wide and defiant, "Coin for flesh is always available in this city, but to mold flesh, but it to task, and done so young..."

He held out a hand and the boy shrunk further away... before kicking out at it. Johnny withdrew it too fast, though, chuckling the whole time, amusement and something like validation of his thoughts sparkling in his eyes.

"Yes. Definite potential in this one."

"Potential for what?" Rastus said gruffly, not seeing his master's face fall to a frown a second time. "You already have slaves and servants. Why spend any more time with this one?"

"For the cage, Rastus," Johnny said as he stood, as if explaining to a child, "I can make this boy fit for more than field work or meat for the whorehouses."

"Ha!" Rastus' bark split the room and he looked around for likewise amusement. "That thing? He's barely up to my balls and you want to throw him in there?"

"Not yet, of course. He'd have to be trained up, made... suitable."

"Still think we should just-"

"'Think'?"

Johnny whirled on him, covering the distance between them in a tick. Shorter, narrower, younger, in any Sunberth bar the odds would have been against him but Rastus was the one who set his jaw and kept it shut. The other enforcers bristled with alertness.

"'Think'? You think I furnish you coin for your fucking thoughts?! I buy your flesh and your fists and your steel, not your business acumen!"

"What's ac-"

"Shut up and take him down to the hole," Johnny said, sweeping from their confrontation and moving to the door. "Let hunger and loneliness do what your crude fists cannot. I want him broken and willing, not bloodied and snapping."

He opened the door and turned one last time, his enforcers at his flanks, eyes hard as steel. That was the Tall Johnny few of his customers saw; beyond the bright, affable smile and eccentric moustache. The flinty resolve to have his money made and orders obeyed.

"And remember: I know the marks on him, as you have made them. If I find more when we pull him back up, I shall have them on you, as well."

Rastus flinched as the door was slammed shut, alone with the shivering street rat and his own impotence. Fucking Johnny. Always so smart, spoke so fine, spoke in circles around him and because of his fucking coin, he always got what he wanted. The boy flinched as Rastus roared and swung an arm like a knobbly branch out, shattering pots from a shelf and the grain in it across the floor.

Then his piggy eyes found the boy, the slave-to-be, and sadism flowered in them like a black, angry flame.

"Fine." He snapped, reaching down and picking the boy back up, tossing him over his shoulder. "Do my heart good to know you'll spend the next nights shitting all over yourself in the petching dark."

"Lemme go! Lemme-"

"Shaddup, you turd!" Rastus snapped as his lumbering gait took them from the storeroom, past the slave quarters where fearful eyes watched him go, to the room next to the privies, bare save for a metal crate on the floor. "Save it for the rats-"

The boy twisted and struggled as Rastus leaned down and threw up the grate, powerless as strong hand lifted him from his shoulder and hurled him down into it. He fell for only a tick, candlelight dying as he smacked into soft, stinking ground. He got to his feet in time for the metal grate to slam back shut, hands gripping the bars futilely-

-and Rastus to hawk an answering gob straight into his eyes.

"Fuck you!"

"Ha! Keep it up, turd!" Rastus said from above him, drinking in his misery. "Scream! Make threats! Beg! Cry! No-one'll petching hear you in here..."

He vanished from sight and the panting, bruised, angry boy heard only his falling feet... then the door close... and then he was alone. With the stink and the tiny space he stood in, where furry and chirping things prowled and sniffed at his feet.

He settled down in the darkness, huddled in a corner in his torn clothes. Knees up to his throat and hands around them, for the first time he thought back to their shack, to his family, to his father's face...

The boy that would be Victus bent his head down low, and his shoulders shook with lost, futile sobs.

by **Victus** on November 10th, 2014, 4:11 am

It was three days before they pulled him from the hole, though it seemed much longer. Rastus didn't lie about one thing: no-one heard him, no matter how much he screamed and cried and begged. He heard people bustle outside.

He heard the muffled shouts from what he assumed was a crowd; dozens, scores, hundreds of voices that never seemed to stop. But they dulled, at least. It was the closest method he had to know the passage of the days... but what did it mean? Nights? Days? No-one came to feed him, give him water.

The boy began to think they'd simply forgotten him. That this was his punishment for biting and spitting and fighting: a slow, wasting death from starvation, covered in his own filth, no witness to it but roaches and rats.

By the second day, he was looking at those rodents with eyes more hungry than frightened. There had been times when he and his kin had to subsist on rats. He didn't hold that against them: survival was what it needed to be. He knew they wouldn't bring him food, so... it was down to him.

They were fearless, though. They'd scamper right up to him and sniff, as if checking to make sure he was still alive. He'd lash out and they jump away... then come back... patient.

Once he awoke to industrious gnawing at his feet and he exploded. A whirling, frantic ball of energy that stamped and slapped until the hungry ball of fur had vanished, along with the others who'd come by.

The boy hadn't slept since then.

The third dawn saw the boy wrapping his hand with a strip from his shirt. He knew they'd bite and scratch, no matter how fast he was, and he didn't want his hands torn blood by those filthy teeth. He was crouched in that dirty hole, leggings soiled, face filthy, hand drawn back... waiting for one to come close...

Then the door opened. Wide, wild eyes snapped up to the grate and the figures above it. New faces but the same expressions: disdainful, detached, put-upon, as if this were an unpleasant chore. The grate opened and two sets of groping arms grabbed him, pulled him up-

"Rhysol's cock, he petching stinks."

"Wouldn't you?"

The boy didn't try to fight. That was what had gotten him in that pit in the first place. Parched, cracked lips begged without words for water, but uncaring faces answered him. They planted him on his feet and walked on either side of him out the room, smacking him around the head when-

"Keep up, boy! Yer not dead yet..."

"Wa... Water-"

Another rap, this time with knuckles, and his weak legs tottered, stumbled down to the floorboards. He felt his eyes sheen with shameful tears but got not a dram of sympathy: only curses from the men that dragged him back upright and pushed him down the hallway.

"Well, leastways we ain't gotta worry about him running, eh?"

"Huh, one way to look at it."

They walked, he limped, and finally they came to another room. This one lined with cheap cots and candles in alcoves carved into the stone walls. They were under the building now, where the slaves and supplies (same thing to Johnny) were kept. It was bare of life, save for... two figures at the end of the room. One sitting, hands on his knees; the other standing, arms crossed.

The man who had beaten him, and the man who had stolen him.

"Ah, there he is... and much more compliant, too. See now, Rastus?"

The big gorilla just grunted, unwilling to speak further. His glowering eyes never left the boy as he was brought up to his new owner. Johnny leaned forward, smile almost paternal... until his nostrils crinkled and he waved a hand before his nose.

"Gods... we'll have to do something about that, hmm?"

The boy didn't dare answer. The sheer helplessness of his situation had been made clear to him over the last three days. He was something to be used now, however his new masters wished. Left to die, beaten, starved, ignored, marched on legs that barely had life... what could he say now that would make a difference?

"Hmm? What was that?"

"I... I said... what do... what will happen to me?"

Johnny leaned back and breathed out, studying the ragged urchin down his sharp nose. Two fingers absently stroked his eaxed, curved moustache, and he smiled.

"Well... that is the question, isn't it? What could, and what will... and do you know who will decide that, boy?"

"... y... you?"

Johnny chuckled and nodded like the boy had said something funny. He knew the hole would work. The perfect combination of hunger and hopelessness. The only variable was time, and Johnny had some experience in breaking wills. Brute force was one method.

"Right and wrong both, my boy. Let me tell you why..."

by **Victus** on November 11th, 2014, 1:49 am

"You... want me to fight?"

Johnny answered him from behind the hand covering his eyes. "Yes."

"... in the cage?"

"Yes, in the cage."

"... you want me-"

"Oh, really, boy?!" Johnny's reserves of patience finally ran dry and his hand slapped down on his knee hard enough to make the boy flinch. "Is it really so hard to understand?"

"But... I'm just..." His eyes cast about desperately and were loathe to come upon the bulk of Rastus. He threw out a finger towards him. "Him! You need someone like him!"

Johnny nodded as if mulling over the point, picking odd bits of lint and dust from his tuxedo. He'd forgotten how filth it got down there.

"Rastus has his uses, to be sure, and he has graced the cage from time to time. But you are... unspoiled, shall we say." A slow grin that made the boy want to jump in a warm bath spread over his face. "Young enough to be trained up solely to be a fighter. Have you ever heard the expression, "Get them while they're young, and the possibilities are endless?""

The boy had last been in a school when he'd snuck into the orphanage to rifle through their larder; that was the extent of his education, and he shook his head.

"Well, that is what I thought when I saw you. Of course, I could sell you to the Row." That got the glint of fear he was looking for, even in his nonchalant tone. "They'd clap shackles on you in a bell and have you working the plantations in three. Or sent to Kenash to do the same. Eyktol, maybe, the far deserts. Or the brothels here. Plenty of willing customers who'd like soft flesh to play with. They aren't particular as to sex, I hear..."

The boy almost collapsed in on himself, born down by the cold words and the filthy chuckles of Johnny's muscle. No nightmare he'd ever endured could compare to what would be done to him in those places. He'd seen the Row: stall after stall of cages, packed with naked figures with dead eyes and wearing nothing but shackles. Just... corpses, bereft of life and all hope.

Anything was better than that.

"How... How do you know I could even do what you ask?"

Johnny grinned wider. He'd got through to the boy, that much was clear. Beforehand, he'd been asking the "why", as if his mind were still hoping to talk his way out of it. Now the subject was "how".

"All tasks are possible with time, boy. But, for the present, I'd have you show me," he said, nodding at one of his men, who swiftly vanished outside, "A demonstration of willing, if you like."

The boy's brow furrowed again but he had no time to query. The door opened again and the rangy enforcer returned, pushing a half-naked slave before him. The boy could tell he was such: brands on his wrist and chest, that hunted but subservient look in his eyes, always bending for fear of being struck.

But when he cast a glance at the boy, he could see a fierce, desperate hope in them that made him uneasy.

"This is Walkir," Johnny said, voice as easy and carefree as if he were introducing two dinner partners to one another. "He's a little older than you, I think. Been working for me for... I'd say about a year, as a tender in the Casino. Isn't that right, Walkir?"

"Ye-Yes, master."

Confused as he was, desperate and almost besital after three days in a reeking hovel, the boy couldn't help a pang of sympathy shake his heart for the poor creature. His voice was so... broken. Utterly eager to please, no thought of talking back, fighting back... he'd tend to his master even if he were a giant and his owner were on his deathbed.

Would I be like that? Spineless and dead inside?

"Indeed you have..." Johnny sat back in his seat and nodded to his men. Without a word, they stepped back, leaving the slave and the boy in the rough circle alone. "And now I offer you a chance to be free, Walkir. All you have to do is beat this boy into the floor until he can't get back up. Can you do that?"

The two young people snapped their eyes to each other. A tumult of emotions passed between them like a volley of arrows. Shock, disbelief, fear... and the hope that overrode it all.

Johnny grinned, relishing this simplest and most potent of powers: the power over other men. To have them so utterly in his thrall that they would batter each other for him. They might not think they could; might have never even thrown a punch before... but now? All he had to do was offer that window of possibility, and they were his.

"Wh-What?"

"I think you both heard me just fine," Johnny said carelessly, taking a sip from his wine and then dabbing a drop from his lips, "Walkir? Beat this boy insensible, and you'll be freed, along with a purse in your hand. Boy? Do the same, or it's to the Row for you."

Malice, filthy as a daemon's soul, shone in his eyes above a smile as cherubic and jovial as your favorite uncle's.

"Refuse, and both of you go."

The cellar was silent for what seemed like an age. Nothing but frightened breathing from the two boys and the low whispers as Johnny's muscle eagerly placed wagers. Johnny watched it all with eyes that were almost aroused.

Won't be long now. Walkir will break first. He knows the bitterness of slavery, but still had the youth to defy his fate.

"I'm sorry!"

Walkir blurted the word out in something like a sob and then lunged at the boy, fist flying in a malnourished cross that sent him staggering back, a tooth knocked loose in his mouth. The slave almost had tears in his eyes as his hands reached out to throttle the shit-stinking newcomer, and the boy's eyes went wide with horror at what they were being made to do.

"First lesson, boy," Johnny said, from beyond the maddened visage of Walkir, "Once the fight begins, there is no fleeing from it."

by **Victus** on November 12th, 2014, 1:46 am

There was nothing poetic about it. Nothing a bard could have spun into a gruelling struggle or a noble contest. Bards aren't to be trusted with such stories, anyway: most of the time, they weren't there. But there's a vested interest in making such great slaughters as battles glorious. That wasn't the case in that dingy basement.

It was two frightened, hungry, lonely boys who hadn't even kissed a girl or seen the world beyond their hellish city, scratching and biting and grasping and punching because if they didn't, the man who owned them sure as the tuxedo he wore would make their lives even worse than they were.

The boy felt thin but desperate hands grip around his throat, a weight on his chest like an anvil... and Walkir's tearful eyes above him. The slave boy squeezed and gasped as he did, feeling the boy's pulse under the grime... then let go with one hand, drew back-

Rastus cackled and clapped as the boy thudded into the boy's nose. Not enough to break it, though, and a tick later he rolled his eyes.

"With yer knuckles, ya doss cunt! Not your fingers!"

"Another lesson for you, boy," Johnny said, not quite shouting but speaking up so the boy could hear him, teeth bared and breath stalled by Walkir's grip, "I hope you're paying atten-"

The boy didn't need to be told. You didn't survive in Sunberth unless you learned to fight, and learned young. He swallowed the blood but it wouldn't go anywhere, gargling instead of snarling as he-

-bought his knee up hard between Walkir's legs, making him cry out and relax his grip-

-long enough for the boy to grip his shoulders and pull him to the side, rolling on top of him, straddling him-

-raining blows over and over on him as his hands came up to ward them off, knuckles hitting fingers, palms, cheeks, forehead-

-until Walkir jerked forward and wrapped his arms around his tattered torso, sending both of them rolling around, knocking over chairs, kicking out and punching at each other, little squeals of animal fury escaping their lips-

Johnny leaned forward, elbows on his knees, chin resting on his folded hands. His eyes were narrowed as if studying two peculiar animals in the wild. The boy had potential, true, but he had... yet to tap into something he'd need. At least until he could temper it with skill born from training.

"Fight, boy! I'm not seeing it!"

The boy didn't know what in the hells the bastard was talking about, and didn't really care at that moment. Walkir had sunk his teeth into his shoulder and was tearing deeper into it, drawing a scream that seemed to come from deep inside him. Through time as well as flesh, all the outrage and anger of the days coming out in one hateful burst-

Johnny grinned in triumph. Ah, there we go.

He didn't hesitate that time. No thought to the damage he'd cause. Walkir wasn't another boy like him anymore; he was someone worth his hatred.

He groped up around Walkir's shoulder and slapped his hand to the side of his face, making him squint, until-

-his thumb found his eye, and started pushing.

The slave started screaming. Some of Johnny's muscle groaned and laughed at the same time, one of them throwing up his hands as the grocery miza went into someone else's pocket. Johnny pouted his lips a little in pleasure. Oh... Oh, that was good.

Walkir started to spasm, thrashing, but the boy wasn't about to let up now. As Walkir's hands went to his face he seized his chance, gripped a handful of hair with his other hand-

-and slammed his skull onto the floor with all the might he had left and all the hate he could muster.

He didn't stop. Thud after thud like someone beating on a tree. After the first few the enforcers stopped laughing. They were silent, just watching... as the boy lifted Walkir's bleeding, screaming head up again, one remaining eye wide as a playing ball-

-and slammed it down yet again, finally withdrawing his thumb with a sickening slurp. Straddling the slave again and bringing his fist down hard onto his face. His nose broke under his knuckles; blood sprayed over his hand along with the sickly clear juice from that wasted eye socket.

"Alright, alright, enough. Rastus?"

The enforcer lumbered over and hoisted the boy off the jerking Walkir, skinny arms still flailing in fury, bloodlust thick and raging in his eyes. Johnny stood and leaned over the body and frowned, shaking his head with a tut-tut.

"Well, that was unexpected. Inventive, and welcome, considering the circumstances demanded, but... a shame we couldn't have just sold him on. Ah, well..."

He stepped on the boy's throat. One bloodshot eye looked up at him in helpless pleading, and Johnny looked back at it, never breaking contact... as he applied more, and more pressure... until something popped under it.

Walkir's hands went limp. The light died in his eyes, and still kicking off the ground, the boy realized what he'd done.

"... costs of doing business and all that." Tall Johnny sauntered over to the snarling, bruised, blood-spitting child and cocked his head. "Now... how did it make you feel, boy?"

"Wh... What?!"

"What did you feel? In those moments, those precious ticks hammering the snot out of his skull-"

"I had to! You made me!"

"You had a choice, just like him. And you held back, didn't you?"

The boy managed to speak only through sobs, turning limp and hopeless in Rastus' arms. He shook his head, not willing to face anything, anyone, just wanting it all to go away.

"Didn't you?"

"I... I thought I could..."

"What? That you could just... tap him away from you? Not hurt him too much?"

"I could... I could have-"

"No, boy. Because he wouldn't let you. He had more to lose, and he wasn't about to let some scrawny little rat stop him. So you fought harder, and you won."

"I... I kill-"

"No, that was me. You just... helped it along."

Johnny read the despair in the boy's eyes. The disgust at what his own hands had done. His hand snaked out and gripped his cheek, pulling his gaze up to his own... bending his head to shadow his eyes, pressing his point with both language and fearsome visage.

"He would have done the same. You won, boy." Something sparked behind the older man's eyes. "'Victus'. Have you heard the word? No? I didn't think so. It's one from the Old Tongue. It means "victory". I always like the ring of it. Would you like it?"

"That's not my name. M-My name's-

The slap rang across his face and sent an arc of blood from his lips. When his vision had settled into singular and not double, he found Johnny still bearing down on him.

"Not anymore. Not after what you've done. That's not the name for a gladiator."

The boy trembled but spoke not a word. They'd taken all from him. His family, his dignity, three days in squalor and hunger he would never get back, and now made him... he couldn't look at that corpse. That cyclopean gaze seemed to burn through him, judging him...

The boy swallowed. He closed his eyes. Survival. He had to survive, and making this man angry would not help that. He breathed out, bubbles of mingled snot and spit and viscera oozing from his lips as he looked up again:

"My name is Victus."