Page 9 of Chained to the Horned God

BARSOK

T he announcement echoes through the stone halls like a war drum: the Tournament of Thorns.

A week of sanctioned slaughter dressed up in gold filigree and silk banners.

A celebration of death masked as spectacle.

The pit swells with anticipation. Murmurs stretch like thread between slaves, guards, gladiators, and merchants.

Everyone’s got something to gain or lose. I’m just here to survive. Again.

The arena transforms overnight. No longer a killing ground of sand and rot—now it's dressed like a temple to some blood-hungry god. Saffron-dyed tapestries hang from the iron arches. The stench of roasted meat coils with incense and ale. Music grinds through the corridors from flutes and bone drums. Even the guards wear polished greaves, as if war’s a gala.

Foreign nobles arrive in clusters, wearing masks carved from ivory and lacquered beetle shells.

They laugh through thin lips painted crimson.

Their eyes trail every fighter who walks by, more interested in scars than smiles.

Lotor shows himself midday, flanked by servants in veils and jeweled sashes.

He reeks of wine steeped in rosewater and arrogance.

His voice cuts the crowd like a blade when he announces the roster.

I’m on it. Of course.

Every day. No rest. One-on-one. Two-on-one. Doesn’t matter. They want me center stage. They want carnage. They want their monster.

“Play nice,” Valoa mutters when they come for me. Her fingers ghost over a cut on my brow. “You’re the star of this circus.”

I grunt, the closest thing I can give her to a promise.

Day one is a warm-up—if a minotaur breaking a lava-bred drake’s spine can be called that.

I crack its armor-plated jaw with a stone hammer and watch the fire behind its eyes snuff out.

The crowd screams. Lotor waves his jeweled fingers in approval.

I don’t remember the drake’s name. I don’t think they gave it one.

Day two hurts more.

They send me out with the noon sun high enough to blister skin off bone. The crowd’s restless, buzzing on bloodlust and fermented honeywine. I stand in the center of the sand with a rusted axe in one hand and a buckler cracked down the middle in the other. The gate across from me screeches open.

What slithers out looks like it crawled from the bowels of a dying world.

It’s long. Thicker than a tree trunk, black scales gleaming like oil.

But it’s the heads that chill me. Two of them, perched on thick necks, move like serpents dancing on the edge of madness.

One hisses words I can barely understand—riddles, curses, prayers, I don’t know.

The other snarls, froth bubbling in its throat, acid dripping from its fangs like green tears.

The crowd loves it.

Lotor loves it more.

The serpent lunges first. I roll under the first head and bash the buckler against the second, but it barely registers. Acid hisses against my armor, eating through leather and cloth like rot through fruit. Pain burns a path down my arm. I snarl and dive left, letting instinct guide the blade.

The talking head chuckles. “One must die so the other may feed,” it hisses, eyes glowing like coals. “Which do you choose, horned one?”

“I choose silence,” I growl and drive my axe into its throat.

It shudders, shrieking in a tongue I don’t speak.

The other head thrashes wildly, tail lashing the air like a whip of thunder.

The ground cracks beneath me as the beast coils, trying to crush me.

I heave upward, muscles screaming, and slam my shoulder beneath the serpent’s midsection.

My hooves dig into the blood-soaked sand.

“Stupid,” I mutter, straining. “Stupid godsdamn idea.”

With a roar that tears through my ribs, I lift the thing—at least half its weight—and flip it onto its back. The crowd gasps. They weren’t expecting that. Neither was I.

The creature writhes, both heads snapping in different directions. One spits a stream of acid that melts the nearest pillar into bubbling stone. I land atop the chest and drive the axe straight through the second skull. The cracking sound is wet and deep. It shudders once. Then stills.

I stand, panting, blood-slick and shaking. The crowd erupts. My name rains down from the stands like a chant of war. “Bar-SOK! Bar-SOK!”

I don’t feel triumph.

Only the hollow echo of what used to be pride. My hands ache. My wounds throb. My heart doesn’t beat faster. It slows, heavy and leaden.

Lotor watches from the uppermost balcony. He stands—just for a second—and turns his back. He leaves without a word. That’s as close to disapproval as he’ll ever show. I’d smile if I wasn’t so godsdamn tired.

They toss me a skin of wine when I return through the gate. I don’t drink it.

Valoa’s waiting in the infirmary with clean bandages and fire in her eyes.

“More acid?” she asks, frowning at my arm.

“Yeah.”

“You ever think about maybe not getting sprayed with venomous sludge?”

“No.”

She presses a rag to my shoulder. I don’t flinch.

We say nothing else.

Because there's nothing to say.

Valoa’s fingers tremble as she threads a needle through torn flesh, but she doesn’t stop.

The cot beneath the wounded gladatrix is soaked in more blood than any body should hold, and still she works—biting back curses, barking orders, barking at me.

Her eyes are rimmed red, dark hollows carved beneath them like bruises from a fight she never entered but always loses.

She hasn’t slept more than a few breaths in two days.

When I tell her to rest, her voice cracks like flint against steel.

“I don’t get to rest, Barsok. Not when you’re out there bleeding for their amusement.”

Her words hit harder than the ogre’s hammer two days ago. I actually flinch. She doesn’t notice—or maybe she does and doesn’t care. She yanks a bandage taut and ties it with a jerk that makes the patient groan.

I open my mouth. Shut it again.

There’s no comfort I can offer her right now that wouldn’t sound like a lie. We both know what this place is. What it makes of people. What it eats of them.

She wipes her hands on a rag that was white once. Now it’s a patchwork of dried blood and something that smells like spoiled herbs. Her breath comes short, shallow. Her shoulders slump. But she doesn’t sit down.

Instead, she moves on to the next body.

It takes everything in me not to lift her, not to carry her back to the cell, to force her to sleep.

But I know how that would end—with her gone cold in my arms or screaming to be let go.

So I stand there like a statue, my fists clenched tight enough that I feel the sting of my own nails cutting skin.

By midnight, the infirmary reeks of sweat, piss, blood, and boiled poultices. I sit on a bench near the far wall. My armor’s in a pile at my feet, caked in gore and grime. My back is stitched and bruised, and I haven’t eaten since morning. But all I can do is watch her.

She moves like a shadow half the time, flitting between cots, fetching salves, whispering something I can’t hear to dying men with hollow eyes.

The rest of the time, she moves like a wildfire—snapping at guards, snapping at survivors, even snapping at Durk when he stumbles in with a cracked rib and tries to flirt.

“Don’t you have a wall to smash your head into?” she growls.

He grins, holding his side. “That’s tomorrow’s fight, sweetheart.”

She doesn't laugh.

Neither do I.

When she finally collapses onto a cot—one across from Durk’s—I feel something twist inside me.

She curls in on herself like a flame trying to survive the wind.

Her hands are tucked between her knees. Her head rests on her arms. Her red hair’s a tangled halo around her face.

Even asleep, her body is tense, like she’s bracing for the next disaster.

I should say something. Anything. I should go to her. Lay a blanket across her shoulders. Whisper the name of a star I used to follow across the seas. But I don’t move.

Because I’ve never known how to comfort something soft without breaking it.

Durk catches me staring. He says nothing. Just grunts and pulls a crust of bread from his belt pouch. Tosses it my way. I catch it without looking.

“She’s tougher than she looks,” he mutters.

“I know.”

“She’s got more fire than ten of you.”

“I know that too.”

“Then why the long face?”

I tear a chunk of bread off and chew it dry.

“Because she’s burning herself alive to keep us warm.”

He doesn’t answer. Doesn’t need to. He just shifts on his cot and shuts his eyes.

I stay awake longer. Listening to the moans of men too wounded to scream. The drip of blood into pails. The soft, rasping rhythm of Valoa’s breath across the room. It’s steady. Quiet. Sacred.

I lean back against the wall, staring at the ceiling as if it holds answers. But all it shows me are cracks and dust and the ghost of my own guilt.

Because she was right.

I’ve been pretending we’re in control. Pretending this thing between us—whatever fragile, quiet thing it is—is a choice, not a product of our captivity. I’ve been letting the crowd's roars fool me into believing I have power. But I don’t. Not really.

We’re all just dancing for monsters. Praying the music doesn’t stop.

For a moment, just a moment, I pretend we’re free.

She’s beside me, not across the room. My arms around her. Her body warm against mine. No chains. No screams. Just the wind, and the sea, and a fire burning in the hearth.

I know it’s a lie.

But it’s the only thing that lets me sleep.

I dream of her. Not the way she looks when she’s bandaging torn flesh or cursing at guards.

No, in the dream she’s laughing—free, full-bodied, head tilted back like she’s never been hurt.

Her hair is windblown, her skin sun-warmed, her eyes bright and sharp as lightning over calm water.

I see her mouth moving, saying something I can’t quite hear, but I know the sound of it is meant for me.

Then she leans in.