The Butcher stepped forward, rolling his shoulders. He didn't need to rush. He'd done this before, hundreds of times, if the scars on his knuckles said anything.
The pit was small and tight, barely a few paces across.
Which meant Darian had two choices: get crushed like a dog, or move like a ghost.
The crowd howled above, throwing bets.
"Two silvers on the boy!"
"Two? You'll lose it faster than a drink in Old Sarren's!"
"Five on the Butcher breaking his ribs first!"
The roar of the audience faded from Darian's ears as he melted into motion.
The Butcher lunged, a mountain of flesh and violence. Darian ducked low, the fist whistling over his head by inches. He didn't need to overpower the brute, he needed to cut him down, piece by piece.
As he slipped inside the swing, Darian drove a fist hard into the Butcher's ribs, once to stun, twice to bruise. The second strike landed with a solid thump, and the Butcher grunted, a ripple of pain flashing across his face. Darian was gone a heartbeat later, already sliding back into motion. Two hits, clean and fast, not enough to drop him, but enough to remind the crowd, and the Butcher, that this dog had teeth.
'Make the crowd love you. Or make them hate you.' Darian repeated to himself.
"Slow." Darian quipped and grinned, a wide, bloody thing, more teeth than warmth.
The Butcher snarled and charged with another swing, faster this time. Darian stepped aside again with a dancer's grace, his feet barely stirring the coarse, forgiving sand, a surface meant more for cushioning corpses than slowing a retreat.
"You sure you're not still drunk from last night?" Darian added, shaking the sweat from his eyes. "You smell like a brewery under a latrine."
That earned a ripple of laughter from the stands. A few of the spectators started shouting bets again. One tossed a bone at the pit, it missed them both and landed with a thunk.
Darian saw another gap, a flash of exposed flank between the Butcher's raised arm and his lumbering stride, and stepped in. He drove a hook into the man's side, low and brutal, but instead of flesh, his knuckles collided with something pointy, one of the metal clasps beneath the Butcher's wrappings, hard as a hell and just as unyielding. Pain flared up his hand, sharp and immediate, like striking a knife.
He felt skin split, hot blood already welling between his fingers. Darian winced... but only for a second. He didn't pull back, didn't shake out the pain. Showing weakness now was an invitation to die. So he swallowed the sting, reset his stance, and grinned like it hadn't happened at all.
The Butcher came fast, faster than expected for a man that size. No theatrics, no posturing. Just a clenched jaw, a roar, and a hammer-blow of a fist aimed straight for Darian's face.
He dodged... almost.
The knuckles caught his jaw just off center, spinning his vision white and rocking him back on his heels. Pain lanced through his skull. He stumbled, barely catching himself as his shoulder hit the pit wall.
"Still slow?" the Butcher sneered.
The crowd howled.
"Look at him stumble!"
"Pit pup's all bark!"
"Should've stayed in the gutter!"
Darian blinked through the sting, jaw screaming with pain. Blood filled his mouth, hot, coppery, real. He tasted it.
He pushed off the wall, slow at first. Rolled his neck once. Spat blood into the sand with deliberate contempt.
"Still slow," he rasped, voice edged with steel and contempt. "Just letting you feel good about yourself before I put you to sleep."
From the stands, a few jeers snapped through the humid air.
"Cocky bastard thinks he's already won!"
A broken-toothed man in the front row cupped his hands around his mouth. "Hey pit boy, maybe toss your tongue at him, it's bigger than your fist!"
Laughter rippled across the stand. Someone threw a half-rotten apple into the ring. Darian didn't flinch. He just smiled, slow and sharp, without taking his eyes off his opponent.
"Get it out of your system," he muttered, tightening his fists. "Won't be much left to say once he's on the floor."
Focus.
Darian shifted his stance, weight fluid on the balls of his feet. The blood hadn't slowed him. It had sharpened him. And now the Butcher had made a mistake.
He'd let the crowd think Darian was arrogant and weak.
He looked up through the sting of sweat and salt. The Butcher was closing again, confident now, already smelling blood in the sand.
Let him.
Darian shook his head loose, working his jaw. It ached, but it wasn't broken.
"I've seen dockworkers with more finesse," Darian quipped. "What'd they feed you before this? Raw bricks?"
The Butcher's face twisted, red, vein-popped, more rage than man now, and he let out a guttural howl, charging like a bull with a cleaver.
Darian slipped to the side, just out of reach again, letting the Butcher's blade bite air. The crowd roared approval, more at the dodge than at anything else.
"Easy now," Darian said, voice calm, teasing, like he was negotiating a price for meat. "You'll tire yourself out before I get bored."
He feinted a lunge, stepped back, grinning.
"Tell you what," he continued, conversational now, like they were two old friends at a tavern. "Maybe after this, you and I go into business. You hit things. I talk. They die confused."
A snort of laughter burst from the stands. Someone shouted, "He's pissing in your mouth, Butcher!"
The Butcher let out another enraged scream, but his swings started getting sloppier.
Darian's smile sharpened.
Step after step, he skillfully edged backward, narrowly missing another blow. The Butcher's curses melded with the jeers of the bloodthirsty crowd.
"Hit him, you ox!"
"Put him in the dirt!"
Some of them were laughing. And that was all Darian needed.
The Butcher grinned wide. "You're all bone, boy. No spine. Thought you were ready for this? You're just a gutter rat swinging above your weight."
The Butcher came again, relentless, thundering forward with the weight of a boulder rolling downhill. Darian braced, but there was no clean opening this time. Just raw force and narrowed space.
He shifted his stance, too slow.
The first blow grazed his shoulder, enough to send him stumbling sideways, breath catching in his throat. He barely kept his feet beneath him. The Butcher didn't slow.
Darian lunged, not for glory, not for advantage, but to stay alive.
His boot connected with the back of the Butcher's knee, not a clean shot, not even well-timed, but hard enough to make the brute grunt and stagger a half-step forward.
It wasn't much. But it was something.
And in the pit, something was all you ever got.
Darian moved, because if he stopped now, he was dead.
The man in black leathers didn't move. He watched from the balcony above, expression unreadable. His eyes didn't follow the fight like the others; he wasn't watching for blood or coin. He was watching for something else.
A scarred hand rested on the edge of the table beside him.
"You see it yet, Old Thorne?" the man in black murmured.
Old Thorne answered, a voice smooth as well-aged rum. "Oh, I see it. Not strength, not size… instinct…and rage."
The man in black leathers nodded subtly. Below, Darian wasn't fighting like a pit dog. He was fighting like a man who had nothing to lose, but everything to prove.
"You think the boy's got the steel?"
The old man chuckled. "Only one way to find out."
The man in black nodded slowly.
The Butcher came at him again, and again, Darian was a breath too slow.
The punch slammed into his side, low, brutal, right above the hip. Pain shot up his spine like lightning. He gasped, staggered. Another blow crashed across his jaw, turning his vision white. The world tilted. Sand and blood and noise spun into a blur.
He tried to step back. Regain rhythm.
Too late.
A third strike, a rising hook, caught him beneath the ribs. He folded like wet paper, knees dipping toward the dirt.
The crowd roared with laughter.
"Come on, pup!" the Butcher bellowed, looming above him. His voice echoed like thunder off the pit walls. "You think you belong here? You ain't got the stones for it."
Darian spat blood into the sand, blinked hard, tried to breathe through the fire in his ribs. His body ached in places he didn't know he had.
"You're some street bastard tryin' to wear a fighter's skin," the Butcher sneered, circling. "No name. No scars. Just piss and bones. I've snapped bigger boys in half for less."
He raised his voice to the crowd, turning, arms wide.
"Who put coin on this one? Who's got a dead rat for a brain?"
The laughter rumbled like thunder overhead.
Darian forced himself to stand, slow, hand clutching his side. His lip was split. His nose, maybe broken. Blood was running from his temple now, hot and sticky, matting his hair to his cheek.
The Butcher pointed at him, grinning. "Look at him, don't even know what he's doing down here. Bet your ma begged the pitmaster to take you in so she wouldn't have to watch you cry into your soup."
Something flickered in Darian's eyes.
Not anger. Not pride. Something colder.
A flash, stone floors, blood on marble, a scream. His mother's hand, lifeless. A door slammed shut. The tattoo. Half-moon, dagger. Smoke.
Gone.
He blinked once. Twice.
The Butcher raised his fists again.
But Darian's world had already shifted. Gruntling back onto his feet, hand on his ribs, his focus narrowed down to the circle of sand beneath his feet, to the mocking of the crowd above, to the snarl of the Butcher's labored exhale. His skin stung with open cuts, ribs screaming each time he moved. Blood ran hot down his forearm from the opened knuckle. Everything else was sound, the rhythmic crunch of boots in sand, the low thrum of noise in the pit.
The Butcher came on again, teeth bared, arms wide like he meant to crush Darian in half. Too wide. Too confident. His own rage was making him cocky.
And Darian knew rage.
He slipped to the side, but not far, not fleeing. Inviting.
The Butcher lunged. Took the bait. His momentum swung too fast, too heavy.
That was the moment.
Darian didn't think, he let his instincts drive him.
One sharp elbow, driven upward into the soft of the man's throat, hard enough to jar Darian's arm on impact. The Butcher coughed wetly, staggering. But Darian didn't give him space. He stepped in, close, under the shadow of that hulking frame.
A right hook, not to the head, but the ear. A snapping shot that turned equilibrium into chaos. The Butcher swayed, off-balance.
Darian seized his wrist, twisted with everything he had, and brought his knee crashing into the man's gut. A low crunch. Air burst from the Butcher's lungs like a trumpet. Darian followed with a brutal strike to the solar plexus, then another to the throat, fast and punishing.
The Butcher's face twisted in pain, but still no scream. Just a rasping, drowning gasp. But the fight wasn't over.
With a sudden grunt, the Butcher surged forward and swung blindly, his thick, bloodied hand catching Darian square on the side of the head. The blow wasn't clean, but it was enough. The Butcher's momentum didn't slow as he stumbled to the ground catching his breath.
"I'm… going to rip you to pieces, filthy fucking rat!"
Stars were still swirling in Darian's eyes. His balance tipped. His vision swam.
He stumbled.
In that dazed heartbeat, he saw the Butcher rising again, teeth bared, eyes wild. One hand dragging in the dirt. The other reaching for Darian's throat.
Darian didn't think. He reacted.
He stepped in low, planted his weight, and drove his boot straight between the Butcher's legs.
The crack of impact echoed across the pit like a hammer on stone.
The Butcher's eyes bulged. A raw, strangled noise tore from his throat, less a scream, more a convulsion. He crumpled inward, every inch of him collapsing around the pain. No more defiance. No more will.
Only agony.