The crowd continued to chant, their voices thundering through the arena. The humans repeated their word for ‘victor’ over and over while the inarticulate Sathogs roared in unison. The lizard-like Vajizk in the stands were quiet, but then again, they were always quiet.

  The noble Vajizk sitting in their box seats were in an intense discussion as the crowd continued to chant. I got the feeling that I wasn’t supposed to survive my battle with Zusz, their champion fighter, but now that I had, they didn’t know what to do with me.

  I leaned forward and rested my hands on my knees as I tried to catch my breath. Now that the fight had ended, all the adrenaline in my bloodstream was gone, and I was feeling the full effects of my exertion. While I was bent over, I noticed something on Zusz’s scaly wrist. It must have been hidden behind the shield he wielded, or I might have just overlooked it while I was fighting for my life.

  It was a bracer just like the one Preet gave me.

  I glanced up and saw the Vajizk were still focused on their discussion and weren’t paying any attention to me. I stepped closer to the bracer and noticed it was made of the same green-tinted metal as mine and crafted in the same style, even with various sizes of mounts where one would put a gem. While mine only had two small gems, one yellow and another purple, his bracer had several gems of different colors embedded in it. As soon as I touched it, one of the red gems popped out and fell into my hand.

  I only got a quick look at it before I noticed the tone of the crowd changed. They went from a rhythmic chant to a steady cheer. I tucked the gem in my fist as I stood up to face what had caused them to change.

  The same human who had delivered the trident before the fight strode towards me from one of the open exits out of the arena floor. He didn’t carry anything this time, and he was alone. As he got closer, the crowd grew quiet, but I noticed there was something strange about his walk. It wasn’t until he stopped about six feet away that I realized what was wrong.

  All of his movements were stiff, as if he were a doll being moved by invisible hands. His eyes revealed a discomfort that wasn’t quite terror, but it was getting close. When he shouted, I could tell that he was speaking someone else’s words.

  “What is your name?” he shouted loud enough for the audience to hear.

  “Uh…Stephen.”

  “Stephen!” he shouted to the audience, who cheered in response. When they had quieted down again, he shouted once more. “The Champion of Sarisa!”

  As the audience cheered once more, I recognized the name ‘Sarisa’. That’s what Preet had called the bracer he gave me, a Bracer of Sarisa. I still didn’t know what the name meant, but it felt like it could be the name of a city.

  I looked up at the noble Vajizk and saw that the one in the middle, the one wearing the crown with a purple gem, was standing up and staring down at me. I noticed a brief flash of light in the gem as I heard the human speak behind me.

  “Follow me, champion.”

  I glanced back at the human and then up at the noble Vajizk. It all made sense now. The crown gave him the ability to control the human’s actions. He was using the man as his personal megaphone. I wondered if he could do that to anyone, especially me, or if it was specific to this human slave.

  The man turned away and walked across the arena. As I followed him, the crowd alternately chanted ‘Victor’ and ‘Stephen’.

  I’m not going to lie. I was feeling pretty good at that moment. I’ve always been the competitive type. I enjoy winning. I enjoyed every time my baseball team beat the other team. But I also liked challenging myself on the field and in the gym. I pushed myself to run a little faster than my teammates or hit a personal record during a workout.

  So, please understand when I say I couldn’t help but smile when I heard the crowd chant my name after killing a huge snake-man.

  The bars in the opening to the arena slid down to close behind me. I looked back and saw a group of Sathogs approach the bloody corpse of Zusz, which still lay in the center of the arena. I clutched at the red gem in my fist and hoped that no one noticed it was missing from his bracer.

  The human slave led me through a dark tunnel, which turned into a corridor that curved to the left and right along the outer perimeter of the arena. Large windows let in the light of the orange sun, but solid iron bars prevented me from climbing out of them.

  I stopped to look through one window and saw cylindrical towers outside the arena. They appeared to be about four stories tall and constructed from stone blocks. The towers weren’t built like the arena, which seemed to be cut from a single, massive stone because I couldn’t find any seams in the dark rock anywhere. I got the impression that the cylindrical towers were newer and built around the arena, but I had no way of knowing that.

  The slave cleared his throat to get my attention back to following him. As he guided me down the corridor, I noticed his walk had returned to a normal, relaxed gait. I wondered if the Vajizk released the slave after the completion of his task or if there was a range limit to the purple-gemmed crown. Or maybe the connection was lost once the slave was out of sight. Really, I had no idea how any of it all worked.

  The slave led me to a door that obviously wasn’t built for humans. It was square instead of rectangular and was big enough to let a horse pass through with no problem. Once I was inside, I could tell they had given me Zusz’s room. The Champion’s Chamber.

  The room was circular with a large impression in the center, which made it feel like a bowl with walls and a ceiling. There was no furniture of any kind in the room, but there were wooden shelves with various jars and items resting on them. I imagined Zusz coiling up in the middle like a snake after a good fight. What disturbed me the most was his choice of decorations.

  Dangling from ropes attached to hooks in the ceiling were all kinds of skins, skulls, and streamers. The skins were mainly from humans, particularly from people with elaborate tattoos or vicious scars. It looked like they had been tanned just like cowhide. The skulls were from different animals, some of which were obviously dinosaurs. The streamers were strange in how ordinary they were among the ghoulish trophies. Long strips of blue and green cloth hung from the ceiling from hooks or attached to some part of the skulls.

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  The human slave closed the door behind me without a word as I stood in the middle of the bowl at the center of the room staring up at Zusz’s weird trophy display. I heard an iron bolt slide into place before he walked away. I might have been the Champion of Sarisa, but I was still a prisoner.

  I wondered if Zusz was also a prisoner, a slave gladiator forced to fight for the entertainment of the noble Vajizk. Or perhaps he was too dangerous to be allowed to wander around freely. Hell, for all I knew, the bars were there to protect him from adoring fans.

  There were two windows in the room of the same size and shape as the ones in the hallway. One window looked out onto the arena floor, while the other looked out at the towers outside the city. The window was big enough that I could have climbed through it to get my freedom, but the bars were too close together to let me through. I gripped the bars in my hands and pulled them to see if my newfound strength was enough to get me out. No such luck.

  As I struggled against the bars, I realized I saw no people outside the arena. No one at all. No humans, no Sathogs, and no Vajizk of any kind. When I first saw the cylindrical towers, I assumed they were houses of some kind. Maybe even a form of Stone Age apartment buildings. But no one ever came and went from them, so I was left wondering what they were used for.

  With no answers coming through the window, I turned my attention to the red gem I took from Zusz’s bracer. I felt that enough time had passed since the human slave left the room that I could safely check on it.

  I held the gem between my thumb and forefinger so I could roll it around in the light. The red gem was cut, but not like a diamond or anything I’ve seen in a piece of jewelry back home. The faces and angles seemed to be random or with some kind of purpose that I couldn’t understand. I held it next to the yellow gem that was already embedded in the bracer Preet gave me and discovered that it was a little larger.

  As I held the red gem close to the green-tinted metal, it popped from my fingers and into one of the many empty mounts on the bracer. It felt exactly like when I was a kid and played with magnets. The bracer pulled the gem in, and I immediately felt its effects.

  My skin instantly became hot. The sensation started at my wrist but quickly moved up and arm and across my whole body. I gasped as my heart raced and my breathing became shallow. My hands shook and my legs trembled to the point that I sat down so I wouldn’t collapse.

  I don’t know if I fell asleep and was dreaming or if I hallucinated, but a snake appeared in my view. It had scarlet scales and a long, slender body. I don’t know where it came from. One moment it wasn’t there, and then it suddenly was. It circled around me in quick, darting movements that were so fast that I jumped in surprise every time it did so. It struck at me with its wide-open mouth. Though its fangs never pierced my skin, I knew I could never be quick enough to dodge its attacks.

  Its last strike was at the bracer on my wrist. This time, it connected. Its mouth latched onto the bracer, and then it disappeared into it as if the red gem on my wrist was a hole for it to slither into. When the vision was over, I found myself lying on my back. I felt the hard stone cool my skin as I stared up at the ceiling full of morbid trophies until the room stopped spinning.

  Eventually, I calmed down and looked at the bracer. Everything seemed normal, just three gems of different colors. When my hands and legs stopped shaking, I dragged myself to my feet. I was just in time because I heard the bolt on the door slide back.

  The same human slave walked into the room. It seemed like he had just left the room, but time was strange in the Hollow Earth. I felt like I was at the window just for a few seconds, but with no way to measure the passage of time, I could have been there for minutes. I really doubt it had been hours. Following the human slave were more men carrying a large iron tray covered with bread, cooked grains, fresh fruit, and roasted meats.

  The human slave said, “The Triumvirate believed you might be hungry after your victory. I have taken the liberty of choosing these foods for you.”

  “Thanks,” I replied.

  I didn’t know who are what a Triumvirate was, but the sight and smell of the food made my mouth water and my stomach grumble. I was reminded that I hadn’t eaten since I had come to this world. I didn’t even get any of the maggoty seed soup Erro mentioned before the fight. The last food I had was some chocolate-covered donuts and an energy drink from a gas station before I drove out to my grandfather’s place, which seemed like a lifetime ago.

  For all I knew, it was.

  “Water and wine,” the first slave said.

  Two human women carried iron pitchers into the room. My heart skipped a beat when I saw that one of them was Inda. It was the first time I had seen her since I was in the arena. Rather than wearing the sleeveless leather tunic I remembered from the ship, she wore a blue linen sash that wrapped around her body in the same fashion as the Vajizk. She and the other woman stood next to the men carrying the food.

  Her eyes glanced at me but then she looked down at the floor again. I noticed she suppressed a smile, but I didn’t bother to hide mine. I figured if the first slave noticed my grin, then I could just play it off as being happy about the food and drink they brought me. The first slave indicated a spot on the floor that was a little flatter where they could place the tray and pitchers.

  Two more women and a man, who were all practically naked, followed Inda and the other slaves. They wore thin, sheer fabrics that were obviously designed to enhance their private parts rather than hide them. It was pretty obvious what the purpose of this last group was. The first slave waved a hand at the barely clothed slaves.

  “To celebrate your victory, the Triumvirate will allow you to choose one of these to accompany you for a time.”

  The words ‘for a time’ stuck out to me. If I were in a movie, I would have expected him to say ‘for the night’ or ‘for an hour’ or some other measurement of time. But nights and hours didn’t exist in the Hollow Earth under its never-ending noon, so I guess they just didn’t have words to express the passage of time. It was just ‘for a time’, probably determined by the Masters, which I assumed were the noble Vajizk in the box seats.

  I put those thoughts aside as I looked over the slaves presented to me. I’m not gay, so the guy didn’t interest me at all, but I thought it was interesting that homosexuality must be common enough in the Hollow Earth to anticipate that I might swing that way.

  I looked the women over. The first one was slender, with the body of a dancer. Her hair was fiery red, and her skin was smooth and pale. She looked like she had just stepped off the boat from Ireland. The other woman was very busty and curvy, with curly brown hair and tanned skin. If I were back in Texas, I would have sworn she was Latina. Her breasts seemed to defy gravity despite their size, and I noticed she kept herself shaved between her legs. Her dark eyes looked me up and down and practically screamed ‘pick me!’

  Though my dick was in agreement, I pointed at Inda and said, “Her. I want her.”

  The human slave had a confused look on his face as he looked at Inda and then back to me.

  “Victor, may I suggest one of the others? This one is new and not properly trained—“

  “No, I’ve chosen. I want her.”

  The busty slave girl glared at me and then at the human slave who was doing all the talking. The look she gave him made me think maybe she was the one actually in charge. But he ignored her and raised his hands in a conciliatory manner.

  “Yes, Victor, you have chosen.”

  He waved the other slaves out of the room. The busty slave girl gave me one last look as if to say, ‘you’re missing out.’ I’m sure she was right, but I was more interested in finding out what was going on than getting laid. Besides, Inda was far more beautiful than any other woman I had seen.

  And I finally had her alone.