Underland(21)

“No one’s ever stopped us from beating a slave before. Why now?” he asked.

“Because she’s already been chosen,” Den rebuked him.

“So as long as we don’t kill it, can we still have fun with it? It does need to pay for killing Creeper, and for injuring Holly.” The speaker was tall with spiky blond hair and black tips. He turned golden eyes on Kira, and she recognized him as the cheetah, Chaz. So this was his human form.

“Sorry to disappoint you, Chaz, but I think that would be a bad idea.” Den turned and opened his arms wide, gesturing to everyone within hearing distance. “That goes for all of you. You are not allowed to harm her. If you have issues, you can take them up during training, but not before. Do you understand me?”

There were a few grumbles and complaints, but everyone seemed to get the picture. She was no longer fun if she couldn’t be played with or harmed. Most of the crowd wandered off or went back to their rooms. Two large monsters carried Zeke off, probably toward the hospital wing.

“You know you didn’t solve anything by that, right?” Den spoke directly to Kira, while nodding at Holly’s body.

“I know,” she answered softly. “I shouldn’t have punched her.” Kira looked down in mock submission, as Den paced around her. She knew how to pick her battles, and she’d had enough fighting for one day.

“Then why did you do it?” he asked.

“Because I wanted to,” Kira answered smartly. “And I enjoyed it.” She smiled and rubbed her knuckles, checking out the teeth imprints and skin that had been scraped off. She also felt a pang in her arm. A bruise was already forming along it from connecting with Holly’s nunchucks.

Den grabbed Kira’s arm. He felt along the bone, pressing hard, looking for a break. “The bone is bruised, not broken. You will live.” He spoke in a clipped, uncaring tone. Just the way he said it rattled Kira’s nerves.

“Obviously,” Kira rolled her eyes sarcastically.

“I don’t know how long if you can’t control getting into fights. At this rate you won’t survive long. I need to train you.”

Kira’s head snapped to attention. “I can take care of myself.”

“Obviously,” Den remarked, taking care to mimic her earlier response exactly.

“Why are you even going to the trouble to train me? I thought I was to be a slave.”

“If that’s what you want, I can still arrange it.” Den yelled, pointing to the herd of monsters walking away. “It might almost be better. Life isn’t sunshine and roses down here. You take what you get.”

A ruckus came from one side of the room, and the monsters gathered around the screens eagerly.

“What’s going on?” Kira asked.

“It seems that Hermes has scheduled the next event.”

“Who’s Hermes?”

“The game god.”

“You mean like the mythical Greek god?”

Den stopped and gave her a how-dumb-are-you? stare. “Look around you, girl. There’s no such thing as mythical. We’re real.” He pressed his hand to his chest. “The gods are real, although they’ve lost most of their mojo, but that doesn’t mean that they are weak. They’re still immortal. We call them Underlords now. All of this”—he gestured to the mixed races of slaves and monsters and back toward the city where the faint outline of the skyline could be seen—“exists for them. When humans no longer believed in the gods, they started to lose their power. That’s why they chose to gather all of us mythical races, beasts, and fae and bring us here. So that they could rule over us. Because we know what it’s like to not be believed in, we know what it’s like to be forgotten.”

“Can’t you leave?”

“And go where? This is our world. This is our lot. We have more freedom here than we ever did in the upper lands.” He turned away and focused on the screen.

“Except you’re ruled by gods.”

“And you’re ruled by a president. What’s the difference?”

“So these games, these events, are for what?”

“Hermes brought the Olympic Games back and merged it with the Roman games to appease the gods’ restless nature. Otherwise Ares, our war god would become bored and wreak havoc among the races. Except these games are much bigger and…new rules.” Den stopped walking and looked up at the screen. He seemed unimpressed. “Thousands of years of creativity at the hands of bored gods, not to mention their obsession with human sports, and this is what we get.”

“Then why not stop the games? Why compete at all?”

“It’s a balance. To keep peace upon the upper lands, we wage war through the games below. If that balance shifted, if the games ever stopped, all of them”—he pointed around to the monsters scattered throughout the room—“their purpose would cease. Most of our inherent nature is violent, so Ares is appeased when we turn it on each other. We’re his own personal addiction.” Den snarled.

“Each week it’s different, always changing. So the owners will switch out their fighters and teams for different games. But that doesn’t seem to be enough these days. They’ve added the random lottery, like a draft. Keeps the populace guessing and changes up the bets.”