To The Sixth

The mothman lunged at Stan, its antenna flicking the air as it gauged its next strike, the straight, double edged sword in its hand slick with sickly purple liquid. Stan’s spear was broken so he leapt up on the stone table, kicking out to try and crush his opponent’s antenna. However the moth people guarded that weakness with special vigilance. The creature slipped around the attack and swiped at Stan’s leg, severing the foot and sending him crashing down to the table. Rolling frantically away, Stan dropped to the hardened dirt on the other side.

His hand fell on a heavy rock. He scooped it up and threw it blindly over the table, the crowd in the stands booing his cowardly tactic. Uncaring, he lunged under the table and swept the mothman’s legs with the splinters of his spear. The creature dropped to the ground. Stan grabbed for his sword arm, trying to wrestle the weapon free.

The mothman kicked him away and Stan grabbed the edge of the table, trying to drag himself upright again. Instead he lost his left hand to the mothman’s slashing blade. He threw himself back from the table, trying to get away from the followup swing, but it was all in vane. Stan’s head flew free of his body, letting him watch the sands of the arena spiral about him for a few fleeting seconds before the world melted into a sea of orange.

Fluid filled his mouth and the urge to vomit came over him. Holding it down, Stan reached up and grabbed the edges of his tank, dragged himself out of the murky orange gunk and gulped for normal, breathable air. Disoriented and aching, he rolled himself out of the foul smelling liquid and onto a small bench beside the tank.

All around him, dozens of other living creatures were suspended in similar pods. Sometimes their limbs twitched when the glowing fluid constructs they were controlling in the arena suffered some kind of trauma. Every so often one of them would pull themselves out of a tank, like he had just done. After sitting on the bench for a few minutes, wiping the orange slime off their bodies and blowing globs of it out of their breathing apparatus, they would either roll back in or perhaps try to leave the arena for the day.

Less than half of them were human. None of them had a scrap of clothing to their name. As far as he could tell none of them spoke English. If they were very lucky they would all get to eat that night but he had no idea why any of them got food or didn’t.

At this point, none of this was a surprise to him, it was just life in the gladiatorial pits of Sanzu. Or whatever they were actually called. So far he could only speak a few words to the other gladiators but he was getting better and better at it as the days went by. Soon he hoped to understand who was in charge and what was expected of him. Soon, but not yet.

“Stanley Richards.”

The speaker was the only person he saw on a regular basis who had bothered to learn his name. She was a human woman of remarkable proportions. Tall, voluptuous, and totally white. Not in the European sense, either, in the no body pigment what-so-ever sense. The only thing that made him wonder whether she was an albino or not was her piercing green eyes. He scowled at her and said, “Artabani. What brings you here?”

Her lips tilted upwards maliciously. “Loser.”

“How right you are.” He waved her off. “Get lost. We’re through your entire supply of English words and I don’t need you to heal me before I go back in so we’re done here.”

“Doon heer?” She asked, head tilted to one side.

“What’s that supposed to mean? You’re not Irish.”

Artabani - if that was her name - pointed him back towards the pod with an imperious tilt of her head then swept away, the diaphanous sleeves of her robe drifting around her in a way the locals seemed to find very impressive. Whatever she was, she was the closest thing he had to an overseer. She kept the people in the tanks healthy and occasionally even spoke to them. She might even turn out to be a good boss, if Stan could ever figure out what she was saying.

That said, she definitely wasn’t Irish. He ought to know.

Which brought his thoughts neatly back to where he was and what he needed to be doing. So he rolled back into the tank and waited for the gunk to start glowing again so he could dive into another avatar and fight another round. Trick hadn’t shown up in the arena. As far as Stan was concerned that meant he was still out there, somewhere.

Which meant he had to figure out a way to get out of there and find him. Until then, he might as well keep fighting. It seemed like a handy skill to have in this place, wherever it was…

Sari grabbed the computer console for balance, unsettled by the sudden feeling of motion. It wasn’t clear what had happened after Trick told it to take them to the sixth sphere but she didn’t like it. The childish voice continued talking in its incomprehensible babble as they fell and Trick would occasionally mutter something under his breath. For several seconds nothing else happened.

Then Trick glanced around and said, “Do you folks want to see where we’re going? Apparently that’s something it can do for us.”

“I don’t see how it could hurt,” Chestin said. Sari nodded her agreement.

“Okay. Set hull to transparent, please.”

Sari had just enough time to process what was about to happen before the roof and walls of the room seemed to vanish, leaving them with a view of a massive, clouded landscape rushing away from them overhead. Confused, she looked around, seeing an inverted horizon in all directions. It was almost like they had wound up on the inside of an armillary dome.

Trick, on the other hand, was looking down. He made an odd sound. Then he began to laugh and laugh.

“What is it?” She asked, looking through the floor and wondering what he saw.

Light was coming up towards them from below. There was something below them although she wasn’t sure what. It was difficult to tell how far away it was and for some reason staring at it too long gave her a sense of vertigo. It looked like there were layers of blankets on the twisting arms of an armillary between them and the source of the light.

It was a bright light, too. Brighter than anything she’d ever seen before. Something about the way it shimmered and shifted far below hypnotized her. It looked far too small to be that bright. Small enough that she could just reach out and grab it in her own two hands.

Trick pulled her head up, forcing her to look away from it. “Don’t stare.”

She shook herself, feeling like she had just come out of a trance. “What is that? What is…” She gestured to the bizarre scenery around them. “What is all of this?”

“I don’t know what you might call it but where I’m from we would call this a dyson sphere.” He pointed down towards the light below them. “And that is the Star Imperial. I’d bet anything there’s ten layers to this sphere in total and Stan is on the second. Four more to go.”

Sari looked up at the ceiling again, watching the seventh sphere fall away from them. Her mother had told her this trip would strip away her illusions and show her the truth. She certainly felt like the illusions were gone. The truth?

Well, so far that was in short supply but perhaps that, too, waited somewhere below. She was certainly going further for it than her mother had thought but that couldn’t be helped. So she sat down by the console and waited to see what they would find when they arrived on the next sphere.