Marcus on Calospelegna

“Oh no,” Marcus said, as The-Dread-and-Sore-Amaze unclouded his eyes. “I didn’t try to be here, or should I have tried? What have I done, or what am I supposed to do now? Of course, I can’t tell gods what to do, and they know me, but I’m not prepared for what they want.”

Marcus attempted to hide his nakedness from the elderly woman dressing him in a tunic. Silently, she buckled the sheath around his waist, tied on his sandals, pierced his ear and lower lip with a needle, and inserted rings. The elderly woman wrapped Marcus’ hands around a double-handed knife hilt. Then the elderly woman left.

Two people stood on either side of The-Dread-and-Sore-Amaze, and five more completed the circle around Marcus. A burning cage lit the group.

The-Dread-and-Sore-Amaze put the words in his head, including You are on Calospelegna. Winning the labor might resolve the nations’ conflicts and settle the divine rivalries. Won’t such things improve your life? Remember my words. Speak your mind without fear of divine retribution.

To Marcus’ surprise, the words came out coherently and he mentioned things he was unaware he thought. Among other sentences, he said, “I’ve been assertive today, to the lady who wanted me to reglaze her vase after I fired it. I’ve never killed anybody, and I’ve never fought anybody, but I have been beaten up. I couldn’t survive a fight if I had all my fingers. I try to believe the gods know best, but why choose me?”

You believe equally in every god and goddess, and they have never shown you favor, The-Dread-and-Sore-Amaze said.

“But I was healed in the Djebu River.”

Anybody may be healed there, regardless of divine favor. Sheath your knife.

Marcus did.

Behind Marcus, The-Dread-and-Sore-Amaze parted the two halves of their body. He shut his eyes. Then the Sore-Amaze took Marcus’ arm.

Cringing, Marcus squealed and shrieked, “Please, I am a potter, and I need my fingers. Couldn’t I keep my fingers?”

The Dread bit each finger, excluding the thumb, at the base: one completely off and to puncture the other seven. When its mouth muffled Marcus’ screams, he lost control of his bladder.

A man laughed at him, interrupted by a woman yelling, “He is the most pathetic one yet, but not laughable.”

“It is an involuntary response to fear,” another man said.

But the Dread just left a ring of stinging teeth marks around Marcus’ neck.

While The-Dread-and-Sore-Amaze rejoined bodies, Marcus squeaked at the stumps of his missing left index finger. Rapidly, whiteness covered the healed stump and redness spread up the middle finger’s knuckle.

Unsheathe your knife. Look at your knife. Turn your knife over.

Marcus stared at the spinning, flipping green and brown stone in the knife’s hilt. One side of the blade was black and engraved with symbols. On the white side, clearer than a polished bronze mirror, and smoother than a pool, the blade reflected the red puncture marks circling his pustule-scarred neck. And it was definitely a knife, not a dagger—good for general household purposes and sturdy for traveling.

Take the phoenix torch. With two of its eight legs, The-Dread-and-Sore-Amaze pointed to the burning cage.

The phoenix cage on a torch handle weighed several pounds, but Marcus carried it comfortably, to his surprise. It strapped to his back. Marcus worried about catching fire, but the flames left him unharmed and pleasantly warm.

The-Dread-and-Sore-Amaze said, Look at the warriors. The fighter must kill one or more warriors by dawn. If the fighter fails to kill one or more warriors by dawn, I shall bite off the fighter’s head. I shall deliver his headless body home and his soul shall go to the afterlife. If the fighter fails to kill one warrior per hour, I shall bite off one finger: index fingers, middle fingers, ring fingers, or pinkies. If the fighter does not kill the seven warriors by dawn, I shall transform him into an animal. The transfigured animals participate.

The warriors were struck fatally in war. The fighter faces one warrior from seven nations, and the fighter cannot fight a warrior from his own. One warrior came from Lydan, one from Phahmese, one from Nesatope, one from Jadikira, one from Giruppik, one from Gelumnia, and one from Svalug. One warrior was struck by poison, one by fire, one by trampling horses, one by drowning, one by a spear through his back, one by disease, and one by starvation.

The labor lasts from the eleventh hour past the meridian to the next morning when in the customary time and place, the Sky-God raises the sun fully over the horizon. Therefore, the labor has begun. The rules cannot change during the labor.

You have all that you require. Depart now.

One warrior moved deliberately, while two met, kissed, and went in opposite directions. Two warriors supported a third to some distance away, then the third sat, the first walked straight ahead, and the second went elsewhere. The air cracked earsplittingly, and a horse galloped. The-Dread-and-Sore-Amaze departed last.

Marcus ran in the direction he faced, sure to find a warrior in the general vicinity. His sandals fit like he had already broken them in. The phoenix torch hardly swung and despite its brightness, his eyes adjusted to the dark.

He reached a cliff. Darkness and fog obscured the ground, but the moon and stars shone brightly in a perfectly cloudless sky. Marcus worried Calospelegna was on Oridocia, above the cloud bank, and below the rarely seen deities’ dwellings. Whoever climbed the holy mountain became sick; Marcus felt healthy.

Marcus climbed down a knotted rope onto a ledge just wide enough for his foot and smeared with bird droppings. He intended to search the caves systematically and act on whatever he found.

Marcus slipped into a shallow cave full of birds. The first one he saw had its back to him, marked with a woman’s face and neck.

“Please, don’t attack us! The-Dread-and-Sore-Amaze transformed us into birds,” another bird cawed.

Marcus shrunk into the open air. He heard a crack and a man’s shout. Somebody grabbed one of Marcus’ arms and he passed out. Twisting awkwardly, the person pulled him aboard clutching him, apparently oblivious to the bird’s tiltings. Marcus was quite aware of it—his stomach and bowels emptied. The bird leveled and glided.

Now Marcus saw that the man’s back ended with birds’ legs and, wings sprouted from his sides. Because he wore armor, Marcus found the first warrior. He whimpered.

“Hold on to me, and I will hold on to you, and we will land momentarily.”

And Marcus realized the warrior saved his life. Therefore, Marcus needed to give him help, a great present, or to save his life, or do a difficult favor, or else divine favor could not salvage his reputation.

The warrior landed in a cave, unstrapped Marcus’ torch, and lowered Marcus onto a nest.

“Are you hurt?” the warrior asked.

Marcus shook his head.

“Do you remember your name?”

Marcus nodded. He realized he heard the man’s native language in his right ear and a translation in his left ear, from which the earring hung. The warrior had a matching pair.

“What is your name?” the warrior asked, smiling.

“Marcus,” he squeaked.

“Flying sometimes makes me sick, too.” The warrior propped the torch outside the cave entrance and crouched by Marcus again. He opened a circular section of armor, which revealed tin tubes.

“…Speared through the back…” Marcus said.

“Yes, and the bird wings and legs allow me to move.”

“And I’m supposed to fight you, but should I now?” Marcus asked.

Marcus remembered The-Dread-and-Sore-Amaze’s words: The warrior shall give the fighter opportunity to fight.

“I intervened because falling off a cliff would be a dumb, embarrassing way to lose. I am not hospitable,” the warrior said.

The warrior can save the fighter from accidental death.

“Why could you not prepare for warfare or defend yourself?” the warrior asked.

“I had the plague and water settled on my brain.” Marcus showed the bald, sunken trepanning scar on his head. “My mother thought training would hurt me. I attended school for a few years, and she let me learn acrobatics, swimming, and running, and I played in caves.”

“And rock climbing was safer because a rock could not punch your scar.”

“I suppose, but it worried her, too.”

“Now we must fight, and I suspect you would not want to kill a man in his own home,” the warrior said.

“I won’t be able to anywhere,” Marcus said.

The warrior and Marcus walked a few hundred yards from the cliffside. Since the warrior was unarmed, Marcus set down the knife. The warrior removed his battered armor, showing raw, minor wounds. A green and brown stone decorated his belt.

Marcus jogged in a circle, forcing the warrior to waddle. Then Marcus was on his back in the dirt with the warrior’s talon on his chest; the warrior bent like a curious pigeon.

“You told the truth about your fighting experience,” the warrior said.

“I don’t know why she picked me,” Marcus said, straining his neck to escape.

“Never mind. An untrained, drunk, old man with an ordinary object can be as dangerous and lethal as a well-trained, experienced warrior like myself.” The warrior sighed. “I don’t want to fight like a monster, but it seems I have no choice.”

Marcus picked up the knife and checked his left middle finger’s red second knuckle.

The warrior’s wings cracked, and his talons brushed Marcus’ hair. Another crack and the warrior was a hundred feet higher. After another swoop, Marcus hung from the warrior’s talons, a few feet off the ground.

“I thought you wanted to survive,” the warrior said, perplexed.

“I didn’t know this would happen!” Marcus screeched.

He dropped a few feet before hitting a boulder. Marcus curled up to shield himself from the warrior’s earth-gouging talons. He raised the knife overhead as a warning and ducked. The warrior’s entrails splattered. Immediately, Marcus’ neck stopped stinging and the puncture holes turned white.

He scrambled out from beneath the warrior’s tailwings.

“Why didn’t you think the knife was a warning? Don’t birds have sharp eyesight?” Marcus asked.

The participant cannot kill himself.

He heard The-Dread-and-Sore-Amaze’s instructions, Marcus thought.

“Your eyes were human,” Marcus said.

The warrior came here of his own free will, equally willing to survive or die without divine intercession. the warrior wants the selected fighter to earn his life. The warrior willingly faces defeat, whether he dies honorably, by murder, or in another situation.

Shaking, Marcus smeared the gore with his hands, then handfuls of grass and dirt. He made his way to the warrior’s cave, where he washed his face and emptied his ear of something unspeakably disgusting. Then Marcus examined his neck with the clean knife. I have my head and will have one finger.

When the fighter wins the labor, if the transformed animals have survived, I shall break the spell and send them home. If the fighter dies during the labor or after being transformed into an animal, I shall deliver his human body home and his soul shall go to the afterlife.

For safety, hoping the rules allowed it, Marcus brought the warrior’s waterskins to the Calospelegnan caves. He remembered, If a rule does not forbid something, it is allowed.

He marked his route with the phoenix torch. He followed instructions his mother gave him as a boy: If the ground shook or rocks fell, or he encountered water, he left. As usual, he occasionally ignored the instruction that he could not climb to a stopping place higher than the height of his raised arms.

He assumed the warriors lived near the surface, but he found signs of animal and human habitation in deep, dark caverns and passages. For what seemed like hours he only heard water dripping, his movements, the phoenix’s fiery sounds and rustling, and his heartbeat. Talking to the phoenix soothed him.

“I can’t remember being very scared of caves,” Marcus said.

The knife chipped a stalactite, accidentally. Marcus pushed the knife into the floor to the hilt, like a shovel into frosty hard-packed clay earth. His two-handed tug sent him and the knife backward. Marcus embedded it in the cave wall and hung from it; the knife felt secure however he moved. He spelunked much faster, digging handholds and footholds.

While he explored, The-Dread-and-Sore-Amaze’s instructions popped into Marcus’ head, and he considered his situation.

I won’t die sitting in a cave overnight. An animal could find the way out or be unable to reach it. They will find me if I am supposed to participate.

Marcus’ red left middle finger turned black and stopped stinging. Redness quickly spread over the webbing between his middle and ring fingers and went slowly up his left ring finger. He wondered if the color changes damaged his fingers, but they moved normally. The coloration tracked time and kills.

Though he dreaded losing a finger, he also worried about killing again. He wondered if it was possible; his ability surprised him.

When his ring finger was nearly red, he rested—losing a finger while actively spelunking sounded foolish. He expected to travel more slowly afterward.

The-Dread-and-the-Sore-Amaze took his left ring finger. Watching his reddening pinkie finger, Marcus remembered, The loss of a finger weakens the fighter and alters his behavior, and self-preservation becomes harder.

Marcus thought, Completing the labors with two thumbs and one finger would have done the same thing! Even thinking the thought was risky under the circumstances until he remembered he could say what he wanted. What could a two-fingered potter do, especially when the fingers were on his non-dominant hand?

The fighter has opportunity to retain all fingers but one.

I’ve wasted too much time…But I don’t want to fight again…

Marcus spelunked to a warm passageway. Voices echoed in the distance, and he smelled old and new smoke. He laboriously read an inscription near a clearly tooled ceiling opening: “The fighter cannot enter the Palace.”

Thinking the warriors might exit the Palace, and looking for an easier route out, Marcus explored the nooks and crannies. He paused. Though he wanted to run from the lion, he sidled down the passageway.

Out of the corner of his eye, Marcus saw the roaring and bleating lion fly on eagle wings. The monster had a goat’s head on its back and a snake’s tail. He bolted, begging the monster to understand his point of view.

A flying griffin, the lion-goat-snake monster, and a bull with eagle wings forced Marcus into a crevice. A lion-bat hybrid crawled overhead.

Stone crunched overhead and a rope ladder fell around his neck. Marcus screamed.

“They understand you have lost your way, and they want you to escape,” an elderly woman said.

Marcus untangled himself from the ladder, strapped the phoenix torch to his back, and climbed up.

“Let me move the stone back for you,” Marcus croaked.

Instead, she stood on the stone, and it blocked the entry. Her earring and lip ring shone.

The elderly woman led Marcus to a cave full of boulders, stalactites, and stalagmites. She perched herself on a boulder.

“Leave the cavern by a different route than the one entered,” she said.

Marcus found a rectangular even crack, and within the rectangle, there was an intentionally carved and coincidentally scarred and bloodstained boulder with a slot.

“Is this the door?” Marcus asked.

“I can’t help you further,” the elderly woman said.

Marcus slid the knife into the slot, although it seemed silly. The wall thunked and rotated and something fastened over the knife’s handle. Rather than have his hands crushed off, or lose the knife, he pressed against the rotating wall. When the door stopped moving, the floor turned upside down, but in a few seconds, without rotating again, he felt like standing upright on his feet.

The steep tunnel opened to a cavern with three other entrances and a sphinx sitting in the middle.

“I always find one when I’m busy!” Marcus checked his left pinkie, red past the second knuckle.

The sphinx stretched and yawned.

“Listen, Marcus of Lucopoli,” the sphinx said.

“Huh?” Marcus tried to slice through a door bolt, but the knife just scraped off.

“Answer my riddle correctly and I shall open the door. Answer my riddle incorrectly and I shall not.” The sphinx recited the riddle that The-Dread-and-Sore-Amaze put in his head, which ended with: “What am I?”

Automatically, Marcus rattled off a common Lucopolitan solution: “The correct answer to the riddle.”

The sphinx hissed and batted Marcus, who stepped away from the doors.

“I answered it!” He spun around. “It works against—” Marcus choked on the last word.

Marcus had never seen a scorpion tail on a sphinx before, nor heard of one, nor imagined a sphinx with vulture wings.

“You’re the Lucopolitan warrior?” Marcus asked.

The creature opened the door and chased Marcus to it. He stepped from a floor onto a wall, but his nose broke his fall.

“Is this a trick?” Marcus asked the shut door. “I have to find my way out and fight you, don’t I?”

All attempts to open the door failed.

A warrior wouldn’t let me leave, but…I need my ring finger…Or I could save my right hand and become an animal.

But being transfigured into an animal bothered him, so Marcus ran down the tunnel.

A window in the door showed a bright feast hall, in which several dozen people of various social statuses sat at a richly laid table. More people rested on floor cushions, and even more on the floor, and all eating bread, meat, wine, and all kinds of good things.

He knocked. The generous host might let him stay until dawn (Marcus theorized about fighting and lacked determination), or maybe offer him a bath.

“You are welcome here,” the host called.

Marcus stepped through the doorway into a frosty, damp, dim feast hall with empty dishes, and full of dead bodies. He stepped back and saw the same thing, and wished for another way out.

The host urged him to enter. Marcus picked his way through the others; only their clothing styles and hair length indicated their sex.

“Sit here by me and rest,” the host said.

“I don’t have much time…”

His and the hosts’ breaths showed, and they shivered.

“Set the torch in the bracket.”

Marcus did. The host wore a cloak fastened with a green and brown pin, and he had an earring and lip ring—Marcus wondered if he looted a warrior. Other fighters probably fought before Marcus’ turn on Calospelegna.

“You must have been in battle. You must be exhausted and should spend the night here. Would you like a bath before you dine?” the host asked.

“Thank you, but…I will take one…when I get home.”

“Agnus! I am Unata, a Prince of Gelumnia, and we have already seen each other once. Please, sit.”

Marcus did. Agnus was the elderly woman; an earring and lip ring hung from her face.

“Let the guest wash his hands, and then serve the food,” Unata said.

Unata’s physical appearance made Marcus weirdly uneasy. To avoid looking at the host, Marcus picked up a black and white bowl. Don’t waste time. It doesn’t matter. He examined it from all angles. “Gelumnia…"

“The-Dread-and-Sore-Amaze preserved the others from starvation.”

Marcus felt like he had not eaten for a day or two.

“Drink from my cup,” Unata said.

Agnus handed a heavy golden cup to Marcus, who held it in both hands, worrying about damaging it, and wondering why he deserved it. The stem and base were gold and the bowl was another material with natural markings and edges filed smooth. Reluctantly, Marcus tilted the cup to drink, and blood stained the inside of the cup. Shrieking and falling off his stool, Marcus, dropped the skull cup. The phoenix torch toppled onto the preserved people. He wiped his hands on his tunic and hastily righted the phoenix torch. The preserved Gelumnians seemed all right.

“I…” he almost said, Fainted, but decided, under the circumstances, the cup was more than a trophy. “…I have never drunk blood before. Please excuse me.”

“Of course, and I usually wouldn’t.” The warrior lowered himself into his chair again. “Agnus, please help him up. I’m afraid I am too weak to help you up.”

“I’d rather stand.” Marcus leaned against a wall.

“It is my own skull and blood. If you had drunk it, you would have felt better.”

Women brought in serving dishes. Dashing to the door, Marcus tripped on a Gelumnian.

“Eat, though you need not accept my hospitality, but you may be too weak to return and fight me,” Unata said.

“Nothing fights starvation except food…and you are too weak to be a warrior,” Marcus said. “…You starved.” He thought, Why do the deities want me to fight a prince?

“Eat your fill.” Unata’s face was filling out and he sat straighter. “Agnus, help him to the table. I hope you like Gelumnian food.”

Agnus obeyed and scurried from the room. Unata began telling his story.

Leaning on the table, Marcus shuddered and squeezed his eyes shut—the first bowl resembled his grandmother’s chicken feet stew (his favorite), except the cook substituted whole human feet. He said, “I’m never eating chicken feet stew again, and if I look at the rest, I won’t eat anything again.” And he cared little about saying so aloud. Marcus experienced short hunger before and rarely found nothing to eat. Unata’s food smelled better than anything he imagined.

Marcus tried to identify what, other than cannibalizing Unata, was wrong with the dishes.

Along with fresh bread, sweets, and all kinds of vegetables and spices, he caught a strong whiff of outhouse, but not cooked liver and kidneys. Every woman Marcus knew (on the rare occasions they afforded it) cooked cut-up meat and offal, but Unata’s serving dishes contained whole cuts, which he thought suited a wealthy man.

Marcus developed scurvy. His belt slipped; adjusting it meant falling. When he clutched his stomach and hunched over, he knocked the phoenix torch onto the table. Unata muffled a painful moan. The knife jabbed Marcus’ thigh, but he was fine.

Marcus mustered the energy to pick up the torch with both hands. Don’t worry about putting out the fire, he thought. Then his knees gave out and he rolled to his back.

His trepanning scar and others reopened, which confused him. Marcus wondered if the starvation warrior and disease warrior attacked together.

“I can’t kill a starving man,” Marcus said, as Unata lifted him to the stool. He isn’t starving, Marcus thought.

But the food smelled so good, that Marcus hauled himself upright. Maybe eating an olive would be fine if it did not touch the liver. He considered the dishes burnt by the phoenix torch more appetizing than before. And the other meat and organs were raw.

Despite knowing cannibalizing was wrong, Marcus longed to eat. He doubted he could stop himself.

“I can’t eat it…And I can’t kill you slowly like this.”

He found the beating heart in a covered bowl. Unata pushed him down, but Marcus brought the dish with him. He stabbed the heart, and Unata crumpled like a blanket.

Marcus felt less hungry, possibly from disgust. Stumbling through the door and another tunnel, he realized he had forgotten the phoenix torch, but he could not tolerate Unata’s feast hall any longer.

The door opened to a torch-lit garden lush with various plants, and a large fountain splashed out of sight. He tightened his belt and sandals and explored as far as the fountain. The irrigated garden also held cushioned benches and extremely life-like statues.

The walk to the fountain exhausted Marcus. The pool was large enough to swim in; aquatic plants decorated the fountain itself.

Beyond the fountain, out of sight, a woman sang a bawdy sailor song to a lyre’s tune.

Marcus thought, The music will send me to sleep, or I might find giant scorpions and spiders. Or the diseased warrior is malarial. Now he thought about it, since he arrived, he had not seen any live animals, including nocturnal or sleeping ones, or insects and fish. He wondered if fighters became monstrous animals, like the ones in the cave.

Too grimy for a bench, Marcus rested in long grass, somewhere between sleeping and waking.

A splash jolted him. Marcus jumped into the draining pool after a person floating face-down in the water. Marcus swam quickly to her, turned her face up, and towed her to the edge. Unusually, she wore a purple veil over her face, in addition to the normal, optional cap. Under a purple robe, her purple dress covered her hands and feet.

Marcus climbed onto the edge and grabbed the woman’s hands to pull her up. Like a crocodile, the woman flipped Marcus into the water.

He surfaced and spit water; she stood on the pool’s edge, drying her face.

“You were drowning?” Marcus asked.

“You coped well with the apparent situation and worked so hard, I did not want to interrupt you.” She spoke his language with a thick accent.

Marcus shivered on the wet gravel.

“What was the—You’re—Alisha, Queen of Lydan.”

“Is it not easy to lose one’s place here?” Her gold jewelry clinked on the stones.

“I want to go home, and I didn’t want to come here.”

“You know how to leave.”

“But I don’t.”

“Your six or seven fingers contradict that,” Alisha said.

Marcus realized The-Dread-and-Sore-Amaze had taken his left pinkie while he slept. His right index finger steadily turned red. Six, he thought.

“Please don’t be upset,” Marcus said.

“My mood does not matter to you, but who have you defeated?” Alisha asked.

“The…flying birdman—”

“Belkish.”

“…him, Belkish, and the Gelumnian Unata.”

“I am not upset regarding the death of Unata. I took your knife while you slept, but you may have it again.”

“What?”

The knife plunked into the water. Marcus concentrated on the knife and avoiding the draining whirlpools but caught occasional glimpses of undressing Alisha. He attributed her odd appearance to shadows and water distortion. The knife glinted on the surface.

“My knife floats?” He ducked underwater again due to Alisha’s apparent nakedness.

Alisha pulled him up by the collar. “Do you not know my ship burned? I drowned. When I washed up on shore, my armor could not be removed,” Alisha said, hauling Marcus out of the pool. “Fight or leave my garden.”

Shiny bronze marked her forearms, legs, and wet hair. Bronze scales covered her torso and hips, and a white linen pattern showed where her tunic ended. Brown, leathery strips ran over her cheeks, chin, feet, and ankles. The marks showed which pieces of armor she attempted to remove. But her body moved as if she was naked.

“Fight or leave my garden!” Alisha yelled.

Marcus shoved her into the water but winded himself on the raised edge. Water gushed from Alisha’s mouth and nose. He stared at her dangling eyeball, but she popped it in, and it swiveled to face him. Marcus lacked the breath to whimper.

Alisha gurgled, “Have you stayed because a six-fingered potter from a poor family will starve and not support his wife and baby?”

“I didn’t want to fight anybody,” Marcus said, backing away. “I shouldn’t have been watching a lady swim, but you could have drowned again…You can’t drown again…And you are a warrior, but a lady, too…in a private garden. It doesn’t matter here?”

Alisha sighed and folded her arms. “If you do not fight or run in ten seconds, I shall remove everything I wear.”

Marcus scrambled up to run and skinned his knee. A few steps later, Alisha threw him and herself into the draining pool.

Alisha, who tended to swear and grunt, often dodged his pummels, slashings, and stabbings. The armor fused to her skin protected her like normal armor, and his knife scored it. Marcus aimed for light brown fleshy areas.

In water shallow enough to stand in, Alisha choked Marcus and restrained his legs. Marcus stabbed through her hand; his knife’s point stopped against his hand. With her other hand, she twisted it away. She grabbed Marcus’ arm, but he sliced her elbow to the bone.

Wading away from the billowing blood, Marcus thought, I can’t kill her! He said, “Let me stop the bleeding…What will the Lydanites do?”

Alisha squeezed the artery. “The Lydanites believe I am still dead.”

Her hand relaxed by the time Marcus dragged her from the pool. He held the already dry knife blade to her mouth, but she had stopped breathing. While Marcus arranged her in a more-or-less straight position and patted her dry, her fish-eaten armored appearance changed to a skin-like one. She removed all her jewelry except for her earring, lip ring, and a green and brown stone on a tight, bronze necklace. He covered her with the purple robe.

Marcus felt vaguely guilty over thinking about his own problems while Alisha died. I will have one finger on my right hand…he thought. The redness advanced up his right index finger.

He dipped his knife experimentally in the water; the water flowed from the smallest details. Cautiously, then harder, he pressed the knife point against his arm. It felt sharp but did not cut him, or leave a red or white mark.

Alisha had piled her gold jewelry (some beaded or set with gems) on the ground, and Marcus considered bringing it with him. He heard stories of Alisha’s wealth, and anybody willing to soak solid purple clothes could afford to. Of course, if Marcus took the clothing and most of the jewelry to Lucopoli, he would be arrested under suspicion of theft. Even the plainest items, the earrings, were risky. Warriors looted each other’s armor and weapons, which hardly fit Marcus’ predicament. Why steal if I will turn into an animal for years? he thought.

Marcus found Alisha’s tent and wrapped up in a sweet-smelling blanket but found sitting on her bed, stool, or even the ground impossible. Alisha left one of her cosmetics jars open on its side. She owned the lyre and a weaving stand. Marcus had never seen a mirror before, let alone a freestanding full-length one. He hardly recognized his pustule-scarred face.

I can’t stay in her home, and I need my fingers.

Marcus took a torch and behind ivy, found a door in the obsidian wall. Then he returned to the pool.

I’ll take the jewelry and ask to keep it. If I can’t, I will give it back. Marcus wrapped the jewelry in purple cloth and tied it to his belt.

Most wounds Unata inflicted on Marcus healed, but Marcus’ weight loss remained, and his scabs healed quite quickly. In the feast hall, he felt sick, which meant the diseased warrior already attacked him. How can he attack me if I feel better? Marcus thought. If he found shelter from the wind, far from the feast hall and garden, he might recover, or avoid another attack. The diseased warrior’s possible attack and the horror of Unata’s feast hall overruled wishing to speak to the phoenix.

As Marcus searched for shelter, a riddle repeated in his head:

I am flat and raised, and rough and smooth. I float, but I am heavier than stone. I am clean but have been in filth. One of my parts is sharp and dull. I turn myself, but you cannot turn me. I can be seen through but cannot be seen into. I represent nine figures and more. What am I?

In a grove, he held the knife to the torchlight. The closest tree whacked him with her branch and the others shooed him, saying:

“If you hide here, he will eat our bark.”

“It doesn’t hurt us much, but it is quite ugly.”

“We don’t like to upset him.”

Out of the trees’ range, Marcus broke up the riddle. He was fairly sure the correct answer was “the knife.” Will the riddle monster eat me if I don’t answer him completely? he thought. But The-Dread-and-Sore-Amaze gave it to me….

Marcus flicked, twisted, and otherwise failed to move the knife’s stone—until he turned his entire body. Reflecting seemed different than seeing into or seeing through. The deities oversaw everything, but his labors preoccupied them—that worried and alarmed him, though he also expected it constantly in his normal life.

With the deities’ symbols, the blade showed seven figures. Although the Three-Eyed Goddess and the Two-Headed Deity of Life and Death were the patrons of the shown cities, the knife’s engravings showed different ones. Marcus recognized a couple of symbols as foreign, but forgot which deities they represented, or if the deities belonged to his religion. If the knife’s design included general, vague symbolism, the green and brown stone represented the Three-Eyed Goddess’ hazel eyes. Black and white referred to the Two-Headed-Deity-of-Life-and-Death. The knife’s black, engraved sides symbolized the Death-Head due to the warrior’s deaths, and the white, mirror-like side the Life-Head, showed that the nations would live. “And more” referred to the deity parting into the Goddess of Life and the God of Death. Alternatively, “and more” meant the mirror reflected anybody’s face.

A rider on a headless horse approached, then Marcus noticed the rider’s hips joined a horse’s body and legs. He also either had donkey ears or a unique helmet plume.

“…Trampled to death…” running Marcus panted.

His knife’s stone pointed to the horse warrior, who raced Marcus at a trot, then a walk, occasionally whacking him with the flat. Rarely, Marcus slashed or stabbed, and less often, wounded him.

With a stitch in his side, Marcus slowed to a walk. He gouged the horse warrior’s sword, but the horse warrior kicked Marcus’ ribs. He tossed the torch and knife in opposite directions. Marcus scrambled for his knife.

Continuous lightning, without thunder or rain, distracted Marcus and the rider. Ball lightning drifted around them, and ozone and sulfur filled the air.

The warrior thrust the spear through Marcus’ tunic, intentionally missing his flesh. Marcus chopped the spear in two and picked up the bottom part.

A ball of lightning rolled down the warrior’s sword. The warrior and Marcus’ hair stood on end, then a lightning bolt struck the ground a few feet away. The warrior shouted and reared.

Marcus dropped the spear half, blanket, and jewelry, bolting and shouting, “I’m sorry for stealing! And I’m sorry for burning the torch! What…Do you want me to do…Do you want it back and how am I supposed to do that?”

The walking horse warrior mocked Marcus, who identified the language as Nesatopic. He knew most of the horse’s vulgar vocabulary and the translation reached his ear.

“It scared you, too!” Marcus snapped as if a comment like that ever helped him.

Marcus sprinted to a rocky outcrop, but the horse warrior reached it first. A face-flattening wind blew.

A bird screeched overhead, then the phoenix torch clanged off the horse warrior’s helmet. The warrior collapsed.

A few seconds later, the blanket gusted after Marcus into the smoky outcrop. He called, “Thank you!” The torch, spear, and jewelry clattered off the rocks, and the wind calmed, but Marcus had already tumbled down a flight of stairs.

Stones in the cave’s wall burned and smoked, which alarmed Marcus. Still, he preferred an underground fire to the horse warrior. Cautiously, Marcus retrieved the phoenix torch; the horse warrior had left.

His knife’s stone oscillated from a dim passage to various parts of the ceiling. I don’t want to meet another warrior, he thought.

He had killed Alisha for fear of drowning or choking, and he attacked the horse warrior simply to escape. The next time, he worried he would intentionally fight the warrior, and expected it soon: nearly the entire index finger on his right, dominant hand was red. Why had The-Dread-and-Sore-Amaze bitten off his left ring finger instead of the left middle finger? Now he constantly, involuntarily made the worst gesture known to the Crescent Sea. Don’t complain about having fingers, he thought.

The dim passageway contained an out-of-reach stone staircase. Marcus lowered it with a knife slot, and it swiveled to a lintel.

He followed the burning stones to a crumbling structure built into the caves. Because it resembled a temple, Marcus found a good shelter if he could not kill more warriors.

It can’t be a temple, he thought. The rules indicated deities rarely interacted with people on Calospelegna, but Marcus believed the deities should have temples, the fighters, warriors, and preserved people lived on the holy mountain, and they needed to worship.

One oversized man supported the tilting, cracked ceiling; his spear or stylus propped up the doorway. Marcus passed a line of bronze, burning, oil-filled lamps: life-sized people with lifelike expressions leading sacrificial animals or bearing bronze spelt or molten bronze. Marcus thought molten bronze was impossible, especially without a heat source. At the altar, the lamps depicted a priest sacrificing a young woman. Human sacrifice was a known religious practice around the Crescent Sea, but people like himself rarely witnessed it. Due to the sacrifice and unfamiliar features, he worried he found a mystery religion forbidden to him. The deities wanted me to come here, he told himself. Marcus thought the patron deity sent The-Dread-and-Sore-Amaze to preserve the priest, sacrifices, and warrior from something, possibly another deity.

“I’m not involving myself. I won’t fight in a temple,” Marcus called.

Against the deities’ wishes, Marcus longed to return to his old life. Those on Calospelegna can leave when the seven warriors are defeated.

Because he killed the chosen warriors of three deities, according to the warriors’ and deities’ wishes, he worried about the other deities’ reactions. Though he remembered, If the fighter survives the labor on Calospelegna, he shall not be subject to divine reaction, he wondered if the deities’ plan included every deity in the pantheon. What about the divine creatures, like The-Dread-and-Sore-Amaze?

Then he realized the deities could not heal his hands or mysteriously alter them like they changed the warriors’ bodies. Marcus had not thought of physical modification until that moment; the refusal disappointed him anyway.

The fighter shall be provided for during the labor. If the deities decide unanimously, the fighter may receive divine assistance. In extraordinary circumstances, the deities may reach a compromise.

Marcus believed that of everywhere in the known world, Oridocia was the most likely place to find divine assistance. Thoroughly, he searched the building for something providential.

Every lamp except the warrior’s lit the building’s interior. The warrior’s lamp held a solid, smooth, yellow substance and a wick. The illegible bronze tablet at the lamp’s pedestal shared letters with Marcus’ language.

The wall over the trapdoor was fresh, dried clay, easy to rehydrate and rewrite, the other temple’s paintings, permanent. While Marcus examined the drying comparison chart of deities’ symbols, a trap door opened. His knife slowed and stopped him. But he almost lost the knife. So, Marcus slid onwards, clutching the knife.

Hissing and shouting snakewomen lined the walls and galleries; Marcus assumed they had been preserved, but he stared at them—until several snakes carried an armless, legless woman towards him. Closer, he identified her as the warrioress: Two snakes came from the warrioress’ right forearm and one each from her right knee, left shoulder, and left foot.

Marcus seriously considered spelunking up the slide, but the warrioress dragged him to the center of the warm cavern. Her legs’ snakes held her upright, as steady and still as legs, and the warrioress’ arms coiled firmly around him like rope, at arm’s length. The warrioress wore the green and brown stone on a leather band around her human upper arm, over a mended and patched tunic-like garment.

Positive Ogdolia would understand his predicament, he noticed the average snakewoman flattened one breast more than the other, was of child-rearing age, and had white human skin and unfamiliar clothes.

No! Please, don’t be Svalug!

He spotted a few more snakelets (one nursing) and a complete absence of men or snakemen.

Svalug women!

Marcus lied, “I can’t have children! Men in my family never have children! Not on my father’s side or mother’s side! We can’t!”

Marcus’ ear interpreted the warrioress’ words as the unsarcastic sentences, “Congratulations on your baby. Go home to your wife and baby.”

Snakeskin scarred her black hair and the rest of her pale body, at least what little Marcus saw. Snakeskin replaced one ear. Her right, human eye was deep brown and her snake-eye yellow. The snakeskin was tan with yellow, black, and reddish-brown markings, and the snakes’ eyes were yellow.

A few months ago, Marcus read on the bulletin board that, the year before, the Svalug tribal queen poisoned herself to avoid capture. He bungled her name.

“Katarami. Kah-TAHR-amee. Katarami,” she said. “Mzia, prepare him.”

Mzia roughly bit Marcus’ left arm, cut open the bite, sucked the venom out, and washed and bandaged it. She held his nose until he drank a body-temperature, bloody, herby potion that burned his mouth, throat, and stomach. Both Mzia and Katarami had an earring and lip ring.

The treatment baffled him, but he worried about voicing objections.

Marcus drew his knife and stabbed Katarami, hoping to escape. The single spurt of blood burned his skin. She crushed his hand until he dropped his knife, then she handed it to Mzia.

“We do not fight yet,” Katarami said. “I am crying from the wound. You do not make me cry.”

The deep stab wound had already stopped bleeding, apparently without treatment.

I need a plan…She’ll kill me.

Katarami explained that the snakewomen’s poison was the antidote to hers and vice-versa, which confused her. Fighters required her and Mzia’s early intervention—Katarami grew more powerful than predicted.

Through the explanation, Katarami stopped crying, and white, leathery skin grew over the stab wound. Marcus expected a snake to burst out at any moment.

She isn’t a snake, he thought. Longing to run, Marcus told himself, I need my right fingers.

“Fight now!” Katarami shouted.

The snakewomen and snakelets quieted. Mzia tossed Marcus’ knife to him, and he fumbled it, as Katarami’s snakes slithered away. She sat cross-legged with other snakewomen.

Katarami’s snakes half-surrounded Marcus; she controlled them like arms and legs, and she required at least one stationary snake to stand upright. He wished he had two whole hands and the phoenix torch to brandish at the snakes on one side while knifing with the other hand. When Marcus attacked one side, Katarami tended to bite or coil around the opposite side. Still, Marcus half-severed her shoulder snake, and he ducked the two or three spurts of blood.

Her snakes constricted him, but eyes shut, and head turned aside, Marcus plunged the knife into her chest. Katarami’s coils relaxed. He wriggled his arms free, then Katarami knocked him down as she fell.

Through a closed mouth, Marcus yelled “Get off!” Katarami bit his back as he fought free.

“Please stop. I don’t want to cut your head off,” Marcus gasped wheezily. He attempted to wipe his face clean on a sweating arm and cautiously squinted.

Katarami’s mouth and the remaining snakes hissed at him. Like lizard eggs half-dug up, a white growth covered her heart and shoulder; Marcus expected a baby snake to burst out any moment. Either run now or cut her neck and run, he thought. But he doubted he could chop off a head.

Marcus grabbed the larger snake from her right forearm and slashed through it. The snakehead’s fangs embedded in his arm, but he kept a slippery grip on the smaller one and pried out the head. He yanked the smaller snake towards him. Clumsily, Marcus slashed her shoulder and throat to the spinal cord and a snake’s head drooped mid-bite.

The watching snakewomen quieted further. They will kill me, Marcus thought.

“Please don’t kill me,” he called.

Katarami’s mouth and snakes hissed in unison, and Mzia hurried to listen. She completely ignored Marcus, which relieved him. Then Mzia left, calling, “Do not tend her wounds. Follow him, if necessary, but do not kill him.”

Marcus untangled himself and crawled out of Katarami’s reach. Something kept her snakes alive and functional, but Katarami’s human body became limp and still. Her snakes fought independently, but he dodged them and stepped on one just enough to immobilize it.

Though he longed to escape, he rolled Katarami over and checked the wounds. Her clotted neck lacked a leathery growth. Marcus slit her neck, heart, and the leathery growths over her snakish stumps. A minute later, they stayed open, and her snakes had weakened.

In severe pain, Marcus hobbled from the cavern. The scorpion-tailed monster galloped down a passageway, so Marcus dodged into a room—full of baskets holding snake eggs. He crouched behind a boulder.

“Hold arrows!” Mzia ordered, and others echoed.

“Marcus of Lucopoli, leave the nursery!” Mzia said.

“I know four…five…two Marcuses, three Marcoses, and two nicknames, so who do you mean?” Marcus asked.

“The Marcus of Lucopoli who is a potter.”

“Marcus of Lucopoli cannot be a potter,” Marcus quavered.

“Look in front of you. Walk. Turn when I say. For every child you step on, I will remove an organ.”

Walking, Marcus said, “I haven’t stepped on children. I didn’t mean to disturb your…eggs…”

Soon, Marcus became too dizzy and weak to drag himself further, and he fainted.

Marcus vaguely remembered what happened next and drifted in and out of consciousness. Mzia bit him, easily made him drink the potion again, and the scorpion-tailed monster stung his upper back and buttocks. People carried him to a well-lit cave and moved around him, sponging, and bandaging the bites.

Agnus and somebody else balanced wheezing Marcus upright. He folded to the stone floor.

“Well, you’ll hold yourself up in a minute.” Agnus creaked to the floor and propped him up. “Open your eyes. Count your fingers aloud, not your thumbs.”

Marcus squinted at the hands Agnus held up and mumbled, including his thumbs, “One…two…three…four…five…No!” According to his black right middle finger and his reddening right ring finger showed approximately an hour passed since he entered the Svalug women’s cavern. His right ring finger was red halfway to the second knuckle.

“Close enough for now.” Agnus laid his hands down. “You’d’ve’d six, but Katarami hasn’t died. You’d’ve died if Mzia and the Winged Manticore hadn’t gotten you, and if Katarami hadn’t sent them to you. So many fighters died after fighting the snakewomen, The-Dread-and-Sore-Amaze turned the Sphinx into a Winged Manticore to cure them.”

“Do I have to kill him?” Marcus asked.

“Who?” Agnus asked.

Marcus pointed to the Winged Manticore. “I don’t want to. And isn’t he Lucopolitan?”

“No! Don’t kill him! He is not a warrior!”

“Good.”

“The Lucopolitan warrior carries Calospelegna on his back, so he won’t help you. Us preserved ones have very specific instructions.”

“From the caverns? But how long has it happened?”

“Longer than you’ve been here. You can’t stay with us anymore,” Agnus said.

“…But I’m too weak to fight now…”

Agnus and another woman silently hustled Marcus to the three-way passageway. Marcus’ knife and phoenix torch seemed heavier than before. Every part of his body hurt, and he struggled to breathe, but his legs steadied during the walk.

Marcus leaned against the wall to chase his breath; it refused to be caught. Considering the night’s events, of course, he felt sick. But his ribs ached and his breathing hurt. His bandages numbed his bites, or so Agnus claimed.

He wished The-Dread-and-Sore-Amaze took his fingers from left to right, rather than the most recently fully reddened one. Then he could just hide until dawn, keeping his right hand intact. Even a trained fighter could not kill the other three in the time remaining: one hour at the earliest and two hours at the latest.

It's too late to save my hands, but the deities want me to fight, Marcus thought.

He determined that every lethal wound he gave a warrior was quite different from the wound from which The-Dread-and-Sore-Amaze preserved him. Also, wounding the preserved part hardly affected the warrior, and, if the wound fell on a preserved part, the warrior survived an imaginably lethal injury—the monstrous elements functioned as armor. Marcus hated planning how to kill, and it disgusted him, but to kill a warrior quickly, he needed to attack the most human spots. Confident in finding a warrior if he went in the direction his knife’s stone pointed, Marcus limped down a passageway.

He came to a carved rolling stone with an incomplete machine. Marcus manipulated his knife in the slot until a metal bar emerged from the stone and completed the handle—the wrong shape for hand-turning. As Marcus pedaled, the stone rolled aside.

Marcus went into a stuffy chamber lit with oil lamps. He walked slowly from necessity, which saved him from drop-offs. Too weak to hold up the phoenix torch except to mark his route, it scraped the floor.

The venom continuously wore off, but Marcus felt feverish and shaky, both reasonable aftereffects of his recent activities.

Marcus found many dead-ends, but one had an inscription with backward letters. Marcus’ knife reflected them, and he read, Find the door. Marcus’ knife quickly cut through the thin wall.

He stepped into a corridor with a grooved wall, and, experimentally, Marcus pressed his foot to it. His foot stuck to the wall. He steadied himself with his knife and then raised his other foot to the wall. Stones ground and the walls shook. Some stones lowered, while others rose.

The groove ended facing a wall with a passage too high to jump. Marcus uncomfortably walked on the ceiling. He pulled himself into it, and, to his relief, he felt like standing the right way up.

An inscription over the door read: The fighter cures the disease.

The door had a deep recess with five fingerholes, clearly hand-shaped. He scraped dried gore from the fingerholds. Holding his knife between his palms, forming one complete hand, slid his knife into the slot. If he made a fist or raised or lowered his hand, sharp spikes and a wobbly stone would ruin them.

When the door opened, a recognizable smell wafted down the tunnel: plague.

I can’t kill it. I can’t reach the River Djebu. Then Marcus wondered if only his knife killed warriors.

Doctors knew that, inexplicably, an immune person in direct contact with the plague spread it to a healthy person. Until Marcus healed, his friends’ parents worried about his buboes bursting and infecting their children. If he stood close enough to smell it, he risked carrying the plague to Ogdolia and his baby. Maybe he could purge his lungs and bathe before going home.

Apparently sleeping, though the plague caused days-long insomnia, plague victims lay on beds and the floor, dribbling pus, cerebrospinal fluid, urine, vomit, and diarrhea.

As Marcus splashed and shuffled through similar rooms, his mouth was so dry, he thought it absorbed the water before it reached his throat. He suddenly needed to urinate in an overflowing bucket. Then he forced himself to continue walking. Sweat soaked Marcus and his teeth chattered. Despite double vision, he recognized the furnishings from his trip to Phahmese.

A hydrocephalic, pustule-covered Phahmesian man lay on a bed in an otherwise empty room. He wore a linen skirt and a belt with a green and brown stone; he also had an earring and lip ring.

Marcus felt for the disease warrior’s weak, rapid heart. The warrior held Marcus’ hand to his chest and his red down-turned eyes fixed on him. Probably from Marcus’ dizziness, the room spun. He tasted barley gruel and felt as anxious as he had when, aged six, he contracted the plague. Why am I sick again? he thought.

“You are immune. Please, tend the sick with me,” the disease warrior said.

“No, but I want to,” Marcus said. “…I should…”

“But you love your wife, and she—”

“She is in Lucopoli.”

“She came here for treatment, for she is near death.”

The disease warrior pointed to the bed, where infected Ogdolia lay under a sheet. Marcus rushed to her. Ogdolia’s long, black, curly hair had been cut to her scalp and one side of her head shaved clean for trepanning. Pus dripped into the freshly sewn cut.

“Unfortunately, the pus from her head entered her brain, and she will likely die soon,” the disease warrior said.

Marcus believed him; the complication terrified his mother. He whispered comforting things to her, but also thought, But she couldn’t become so ill in a few hours! Hydrocephaly developed after a few days. “Don’t believe him,” he whispered.

“Don’t you know, unfortunately, mothers spread the plague to their unborn and nursing babies?”

“Yes, but it isn’t normal…” Marcus felt Ogdolia’s fever long before he touched her forehead.

“It often happens, but, fortunately, we have a treatment.”

Marcus sniffed the pus on his hand.

“Perhaps extracting the baby will save your child, but, unfortunately, your wife will likely die.”

“How did she come here?” Marcus asked, gently turning over Ogdolia’s hand.

His wife burned her finger while cooking supper; the burn appeared as he examined the spot.

“She came with other plague victims,” the doctor said.

The-Dread-and-Sore-Amaze brought everybody here, Marcus thought. “I’m hallucinating her. And I don’t want to spread the plague.”

The disease warrior felt Marcus’ forehead with a hot hand. “Your fever is too low to cause hallucinations.”

“Don’t involve her and our baby!” Marcus found the warrior’s heart again. “They have nothing to do with my situation! …And I shouldn’t spread the plague.”

“Of course, I will treat her, but, unfortunately, she may—”

Marcus slid the dagger through the man’s heart and blood trickled down Marcus’ arm. The gruel taste disappeared. Scared he doomed Ogdolia and their baby, he looked at the thankfully empty bed. All plaguey bodily fluids disappeared.

Returning to the passageway required all of Marcus’ effort. The stone pointed down the remaining passageway, but he slumped to the floor.

I can’t participate as a sick, lame animal…

Throughout the night, Marcus had worried that the shock of The-Dread-and-Sore-Amaze taking him would hurt Ogdolia or the baby. A potential life without them was awful, and if he lost more fingers, he doubted he could support himself, let alone them. Having the maximum number of fingers prevented future suffering. By fighting, Marcus gave himself the opportunity to save at least one finger, maybe more.

And if he sat longer, he would fall asleep. Marcus forced himself up and followed the passage, which led to Belkish’s cave.

He wandered around Calospelegna. When Marcus encountered the warrior, he said, “I can’t kill you outright, and you have suffered too much to attempt a battle.” His earring and lip ring marked him as a warrior.

Marcus’ symptoms had faded somewhat, but he was too exhausted to reply. Eventually, his knife’s stone pointed to the rock outcrop, where he collapsed. Involuntarily and immediately, Marcus fell asleep.

The warrior prodded Marcus at an awkward angle with his spear. Marcus scrunched up, but then he lunged forward and stabbed the warrior’s thigh. The warrior limped circles around the outcrop.

Marcus checked his right pinkie, red to the fingernail. He worried about tracking time with totally red fingers. Katarami’s death also complicated matters: unless he fought her again, he expected to lose one finger from his dominant hand. Guiltily, he thought she might die.

Scared of the horse warrior, Marcus decided to find the fire warrior.

The fire warrior’s wick was out of reach, but Marcus figured out that his stylus or spear functioned as a lamplighter. Quickly, the beeswax melted into floor groves. The ceiling and the warrior’s slab lowered, and Marcus crouched underneath. The alternative was retreating, and he doubted, if another route existed, he had the strength to find it.

The warrior, glowing red-hot, stopped in a dark and silent room with a slightly tilted floor. Tin dripped onto the slightly tilted floor. Marcus cut a foothold and inserted his knife in a slot—but his right pinkie disappeared. He stood up, then snatched his knife from the approaching tin. The bronze deformed.

The webbing between his white left index finger and olive thumb reddened. Marcus expected to fight two or three more warriors, but all his fingers had either been taken or turned red and kept. Oh no…he thought. Marcus realized how much his red fingers encouraged him.

“They can be taken? But I saved them!”

Marcus carved deep footholds in the wall and three fingerholds for his left hand. Wobbling, with his right hand, he activated his knife key. One stone in each wall slid aside and ice-cold water poured through them. A vent in each wall let in fresh air.

“It has an exit somewhere, and the water probably opens it,” Marcus told himself.

A red mound with a black crust illuminated the steamy room, but as the water rose, the light faded. The steaming phoenix objected to the water; Marcus quavered comforting things. Though the water warmed, Marcus swam to the pouring ice-cold water, worried about the temperature increasing. He coughed from sulfur fumes.

Marcus swam on his back to the grinding stone and into the passage. Regretfully, he held his breath, unstrapped the phoenix, and entered the passage. The phoenix sank underwater and extinguished.

The passage tilted up, then down into a half-filled chamber. The red and black mass followed him, occasionally shedding a floating, gray substance. Marcus wedged himself into a corner. Ice-cold, filthy, smelly water flooded the chamber, but just as water reached the ceiling, it drained.

The water brought him to a drain partly filled with ice-cold water and ice chunks. Though he inhaled some water, he survived. Now the red and black mass resembled a person, and whether it was a Winged Manticore-like situation or the fire warrior, it scared and confused Marcus. The warriors are supposed to be human, he thought.

He swam toward the light but bumped his head on the ice. He cut an air hole in it. While making a large hole to escape through, he lost his knife. When he found it, he lost the air hole and cut a new one. It was the thickest ice he had ever seen.

Meanwhile, the fire warrior oozed into Alisha’s pool, like thick mud, and swam near the surface, melting the ice, slightly warming the water, and breaking free of the pumice. Marcus watched him for a few seconds.

Get out of the water, Marcus thought.

Marcus cut a new air hole and attempted to widen it, clutching his knife in both numb hands. He struggled to stay afloat. The fire warrior brought Marcus’ pathetic stabs. Heat radiated off the fire warrior.

Then the fire warrior took a deep breath and submerged again to knock the remaining pumice from his charred body. On the sixth try, Marcus clambered out of the pool.

“Leave the water before the lightning hits it!” Marcus called. “…It isn’t…normal lightning…”

The fire warrior floated by Alisha’s body, talking to her, and periodically dunking himself and rolling over. His charred burns began healing into severe burns.

Marcus warmed suspiciously quickly. I don’t know how to kill him, Marcus thought. Also, he found himself incapable of moving—until the fire warrior swam towards him with his knife. Marcus backed into a rosebush.

The fire warrior tossed Marcus’ knife into the bush, asking a question in a language very similar to Marcus’.

“Please repeat it. I didn’t hear it,” Marcus said, staring at the fire warrior’s green and brown teeth. Gold tinted his lips and ear.

He recognized some words in the question and his ear filled in the rest: “Why did you cut Alisha in such a manner?”

“I don’t know how to kill people! I didn’t want to, but she was drowning me.”

“I hope I won’t avenge her. If I killed you from revenge, I would not give you opportunity to earn your life, and I would not be killing for our purpose.”

“I can’t fight you,” Marcus said. “But…The last time I stabbed you, it didn’t work, so I want to escape…”

I will overheat…And I can’t survive another battle, he thought, finding the knife.

The fire warrior returned to Alisha. Feeling like a low-life, Marcus jumped onto him and stabbed him twice in the back. The fire warrior sunk and bobbed to the surface.

Once recovered from the cold shock, Marcus hobbled to the garden door.

The sky dimmed and, suddenly, the sun swooped over the horizon. Lightning abruptly halted. A total eclipse darkened the sky. It hurt his eyes and, because watching an eclipse was bad luck, he focused on his two-thirds red thumb. The sun emerged, flashed closer and northward, and then darkness fell again.

I’m supposed to be an animal, Marcus thought.

The Winged Manticore landed beside Marcus, who squeaked and brandished his knife.

“What’s wrong with the sun?” Marcus quavered, as lightning resumed.

“A deity other than the Sky-God moved it. The Sky-God intervened to save the world. The deities are discussing the situation. At the moment, I must examine Anaxeus, a scribe and warrior from Jadikira.”

The Winged Manticore padded to the pool and Marcus followed beyond stinging range.

“Please, let me keep my fingers,” Marcus said.

“I do not decide.”

The Winged Manticore grudgingly entered the water and pushed Anaxeus to the edge, then wrangled him onto the gravel, forbidding help from Marcus. He examined the body briefly, while Marcus paced to keep warm.

“Anaxeus is quite dead,” the Winged Manticore said, approaching him. “You shall keep a finger. You need only worry about one more finger and warrior.”

“I can’t fight more,” Marcus said.

“It is your decision.” The Winged Manticore had a lip ring, and his earring tangled in his mane.

“Do they truly want to be here and fight me?”

“Oh, yes. They have various reasons and motivations, but I cannot discuss specifics with the fighter. I may say that you killed Thones and Katarami in the same hour, and no other fighter has killed two in one hour.”

“Who was Thones?”

“Thones was a soldier and doctor present at the first outbreak of plague, in Bekhet. Katarami led the Svalug tribe. Belkish began a civil war in the Empire of Giruppik. A volcanic eruption destroyed Anaxeus’ home long ago, and the nursery rhyme Insula Peninsula comes from it. I believe you know the other warriors’ stories.”

“What about the horse-man warrior?”

“I cannot discuss him yet.”

“Agnus, the other preserved Lucopolitans, and some warriors have been dead for years, but how can they be alive?” Marcus said.

“The deities resurrected them, and they are very alive. Every warrior shall die and go to the afterlife.”

Like a cat, the Winged Manticore quietly groomed himself dry and clean.

Marcus worried about what would happen when other nations discovered he killed their people. He wondered about Ogdolia’s reaction to the night; she might understand.

Marcus’ right thumb reddened, and his left thumb turned white. He kept his other four fingers.

“But I can’t work anymore,” Marcus said. He barely held the knife.

A couple minutes later, Marcus asked, "Is the correct answer my knife?"

"Yes," the Winged Manticore said.

Finally, The Dread-and-the-Sore-Amaze appeared to Marcus. The deities have reached a compromise due to extraordinary circumstances. Marcus shall become a boar, and the sun shall finish rising in a customary manner. Manticore, send for Agnus.

The Winged Manticore flew away, while Marcus begged for his fingers.

He dropped to his hands and feet, and two of his lower teeth jutted over his lip. His two front cloven hooves missed half of each, but he wobbled like a piglet. His normal squeaks and squeals became pig-like. Agnus approached.

Open your mouth, The-Dread-and-Sore-Amaze said to Marcus.

Agnus set his knife in Marcus’ open mouth and lashed it to his tusks.

Continue with the labor, The-Dread-and-Sore-Amaze said.

Marcus practiced walking and moving faster around Calospelegna. White, red, and black colored his front hooves, which had one clove each.

Marcus correctly assumed the horse warrior would find him, and Marcus dreaded dying. The horse warrior moved at a pace difficult for him to match. The spear hardly wounded Marcus.

He dodged between the horse warrior’s legs and stopped but failed to trip the horse warrior. As the warrior twisted and turned, looking for him, Marcus sliced through a leg; the horse warrior kicked him and lost his balance.

Marcus charged the struggling horse warrior’s back. He stopped just short of goring with his tusks. A boar body was too unwieldy to attack the warrior face-to-face. But the horse warrior turned over and blocked his knife with his spear, so Marcus ran behind his back. Marcus cut through the spear and plunged his knife into the horse warrior’s side at approximately chest height. He easily shook free of the horse warrior, who gurgled, unable to stop two more attacks. Then Marcus backed out of a spear’s reach.

The horse warrior’s clothing resembled a horse blanket, and Marcus had seen a green and brown stone fastening it at the belly. So, Marcus knew he defeated the last warrior.

The-Dread-and-Sore-Amaze descended and restored Marcus’ human form, which felt much better. The red on his thumb stopped spreading, which relieved Marcus—now he stopped worrying about keeping his fingers.

“Who was the horse warrior?” Marcus asked.

He was Klonos of Nesatope, The-Dread-and-Sore-Amaze said.

But he won games and fought many battles, Marcus thought. …He lost an army at the Battle of Natyline.

You completed the labor and defeated the seven warriors.

“But more than eight nations live around the Crescent Sea, and I don’t know how many more live beyond it. We have more than eight gods, too. Why did killing the seven warriors help the situation?” Marcus asked.

The deities chose the nations for specific purposes and with reasons mortals might not understand. Great changes may come to your life. I shall carry you home now.