The Hollow Pit

The Hero's voice was heavy with scorn as he marched his jeweled fist through space. "Cast him in the Hollow Pit."

A gauntleted blow fell against my temple before I could spring—

—Darkness.

I awakened to a wheezing gasp. Cold stone beneath my cheek. The stench of iron and rotten hope.

"Kid," a gruff voice muttered. "How'd you get here?"

A man huddled in front of me, wiry frame deceiving the corded muscle he hid beneath sun-toughened skin. Forty winters had put deep lines in the flesh around his eyes, but his eyes were as keen as an executioner's axe.

Silence loomed between us.

"I'll ask you again," he panted with a cold whisper.

I regarded him with hollow eyes—the eyes of the already dead.

The man breathed and patted the rough brand on his forearm. "This is the Hollow Pit. Where the Empire sends 'faulty' summonses to waste." His boot scratched the floor, which was splattered with blood. "Most of them decay in a week."

I slowly raised my right hand, allowing the poor light to play across the twisting mark.

The man struggled for air. He bent forward, calloused hands inches from the design, not touching it. "A Blessing of Eldros." Sarcasm-filled laughter. "Of course they'd label a god's gift 'defective'."

"What does it do?"

"They adapt to their wearer." His eyes narrowed. "And yours—"

The cavern rang out with a deafening voice:

"A DEFECTIVE WHO SURVIVES ALONE HERE SHALL BE FREED!"

The Hero's words lingered as faraway shrieks answered—not of terror, but hunger. Spurts of darkness flowed everywhere about us as the Pit-dwellers crawled from their dens.

The old man bared his teeth in something too hard to be a smile. "Yours makes you dangerous." He rose to his feet, cracking his knuckles. "And the Pit despises danger."

The old man's face tightened in the middle of his sentence. "You should hide, kid. Things will become more—"

Footsteps.

Two figures emerged from the tunnel shadows—their marks pulsing with unnatural light. One bore a flaming crest on his palm; the other’s arms gleamed with radiance.

"Stay back." The old man shoved me behind him, his voice low. "I’ll handle this."

I scrambled backward, fingers scraping the damp stone for anything sharp, anything heavy—

The fighters moved.

CRACK!

The stone ground groaned with the old man's stomp, and a shockwave rippled through the chamber. A cloud of dust rolled like a smokescreen—

—To disappear from behind before the radiant-marked man could step out, inhumanly quick. The dust moved aside to let him through as he cut across the ground in an instant.

The fire-marked man babbled on the far side of the pit, his voice unearthly. A burning ball of fire uncoiled between his palms—

"OLD MAN!" I bellowed.

The old man dodged by the breadth of a hair, his mark coming to life. A malicious grin split his face.

"Didn't your momma teach you to bow to your elders?"

A bone-crushing weight pushed the light-marked man into the earth. Bones cracked like dry reeds.

Shiver.

In the time of a blink, the old man was in motion—a rusty shiv glinted, and the last attacker gurgled as his throat gave way.

But something was wrong.

The old man's face turned white. Blood oozed from his nose, and his breathing labored.

I went over to him.

"I'm all right," he gasped, wiping his nose with a smile. "Light wounds only."

For an instant, I stood there, my father's words echoing in my mind:

"Men who smile even in pain are dangerous, son. They have got nothing to lose."

SMACK!

The old man's calloused palm hit my cheek. "Don't stand there, you numbskull!"

I smiled. Yes.

He blinked. "Oh. Didn't know you could—"

BOOM!

The tunnel erupted as five more corpses stormed in—twitching, pulsing, jagged lines, eyes feral with hunger.

I grabbed the dead speeder's sword, its blade still hot with his blood.

"I'll assist this time," I said.

The old man coughed up red, shrugging his shoulders. "Nah. I've got it."

His mark glowed brighter, but the blood poured faster.

To Be Continued