Saturday January 3rd 2015

Ramona parked the SUV by the entrance to the triage door. Either a habit she'd built up over years of managing lost causes or she was betting on him losing. The night held the yard with an iron grip, only stray beams of moonlight dared to tread the forsaken plot of cement.

Cesare opened the back door of the SUV. The wolf lept out before him in a silent shadow of murderous grace. Ramona’s words came from the driver’s side door, filling the empty silence of the graveyard of steel. “I started parking back here when I was starting out. Back then I couldn’t get the best fighters, so I spent a lot of time taking them out the Loser’s Gate.”

They only talked about small things, avoiding the land mines littering their relationship. He didn’t care; he was leaving for Primrose after this fight. Ramona might be part of some future life, but that wasn’t now.

Leading the way, her dress swished around tanned, athletic legs as she took the stairs. She’d gone for the understated look tonight, her dress coming down to her lower calves, hugging a slim waist and trim chest. It was thin enough to show off her ass as it flexed, the tempting cleft between only visible when she was in motion. Long brown hair ghosted across the small of her back.

Coming in behind her, Cesare was serenaded by the sounds of torment. Groans and moans moved sluggishly as barracuda quick screams darted darkly between their thick bodies, wombs of agony birthing them into the air. The cots were filled with rejects, faces grotesque with pain, the wreckage of shattered dreams littering their eyes.

How many would pick up the pieces and go back to the cage? Most would mark this as flat earth stupid, a savage lesson on why not to play in shadows, and fade back into the safety flock. Cesare didn’t blame them, white bone, torn muscles, maimed faces, and gap-toothed grimaces met his eyes wherever he looked. It was a high price to pay to prove you were the baddest Neanderthal in the house.

“I still think we should’ve gotten here earlier. If only to get you warmed up before the fight.” She’d fretted since he’d told her he didn’t want to wait for the fight to start at the warehouse. Instead, he’d cut it close so he could go straight to the cage.

She was used to owning fighters, getting them warmed up and ready for the fight, not just physically, but mentally. A fighter was a highly tuned machine. A thousand things went into prepping a fighter to perform on the razor of ability. Training regimens, meals, friends, self-confidence, injuries, and mindset, she managed every detail with the precision of a hag fish cleaning rotting flesh from bone. None of it applied to Cesare. Used to training horses, she’d found herself leashed to a wolf.

He didn’t want to be a fighter, he needed to be a killer. Glory was nothing next to survival. The beast he was becoming wanted its meat, if he didn't feed it this way, he'd have to strip it from his own bones. He wouldn’t be a pampered boy child with a hooker on his arm. He’d be what he was, a predator of men. That’s what he'd come here, because nothing he met in the cage was even a shadow compared to the abominations he went to school with. If he couldn’t put down petty thugs wallowing in their own filth and diseased desires, then the carnage of the moon shadows would devour him.

Ramona sliced through the crowd with the ease of a snake slipping into its den. The beast recognized its own, the way an alligator does the birds cleaning rotting flesh from its jaws. Baying and screaming insane needs into the air through hundreds of open mouths, it howled its glee. Its breath filled the warehouse with sticky heat, fat fingers of moist, sweat laden air, fumbled across Cesare’s skin and down his back.

The craven creature's flesh parted with unintelligible words, hundreds of crazed eyes latching onto Cesare in greedy, wanton anticipation. The fleshy avenue cut by the viper rippled in membranous need, flexing out to get close to him only to pull back from his grotesqueness. It was an avatar of a mad god, fed on torment and lacerated flesh, lapping up the remains of broken dreams and shattered souls.

Without the wolf at his side, they would have violated his space with impunity, touching and groping along his body, satisfying their desires with his flesh. The wolf's shoulder bumped him with every other step. Before New Year’s the wolf had kept a sliver of air between them, still in his territory but never touching. After that night, the wolf had closed the distance, always seeming to touch him now.

The world dropped away from Cesare as he stepped past Rocky and into the cage. The bellowing needs of the diseased flesh that called this hole its temple faded to nothingness as the moment flowed over him. The trance morphed, his guarded walk changing into the balanced stride of a wolf. Stress burned away in a flash fire of raw aggression.

The Kundalini rose around him, golden scales searing hot in the flames of sadism. Coils rustled against each other, the susurration setting bones thrumming with impatient need. Deep in its slumber, the serpent basked in the heat radiating from the caldera of his blackened soul.

Slinking across the cage, Cesare claimed the middle. He was the center of a storm of sound, it whirled around him, tearing at his clothes, ripping at his ears. Approval, need, want, desire, threaded the incomprehensible screams that battered Cesare. The cacophony worked at the trance, scummy fingers prodding at smooth sides, seeking to violate the serene rage that filled him.

Cesare focused on the other end of the cage where a massive man waited just outside the fence. Hog stared at him through the corrugated mesh as they took each other’s measure. Holding Cesare’s eyes, the man pushed the gate open and ambled into the slaughtering pit.

The Hogs body was mounded meat and flesh; shoulders broad enough to force the man sideways through doors. He wasn’t like Pantagruel, all watery muscle and bloated flesh. This man was strength given form. A bloody warrior hardened by time into a leathery thing who’d fought through years, mangling, crippling, and bleeding, in a never-ending orgy of violence.

The Hog’s every movement evolved the moment, changing it second by second. From the solid way his feet planted, the shift of his weight from step to step, the set to his shoulders, and the bunching of muscles under skin. He was a tank, slow and unstoppable. With that much muscle, he shouldn’t be quick, but he'd be armored against every strike Cesare threw.

The Hog stepped solidly into Cesare’s bubble, the moment pulling Cesare to the side in a darting step. Power ran through his core, transferring up his hip, unfurling his leg. The kick cut the air, smacking into the Hogs thigh, it ripped a grunt from him but nothing more.

Yanking his leg back under the teeth of the Hog’s grasping hand, Cesare danced behind the man. Lunging forward, his knee came up, arching his back as the knee rammed into the small of the Hog’s spine. Cesare had just enough time to get his guard up as the man swung around with a grin of triumph. The mammoth arm broke through Cesare’s guard with terrifying ease, hammering his shoulder, tearing his feet out from under him, tossing him across the ground until he fetched up against the fence.

Taking the middle of the cage, a smile tugged at the Hog's lips as he crooked his hand in a beckoning gesture. If Cesare wanted his place, he’d have to take it. Cesare gave the man a careful look as he flowed to his feet bonelessly.

He couldn't win this by keeping his distance, the only way to put the pig down was up close and personal. You can’t win a fight by playing defense, if you’re not chasing the razored edge of failure, you’ll never win.

Feet whispering across concrete, he stalked forward, the disturbing image of a cub picking a fight with a boar running through his head. So be it. If he was going down, he’d do it ripping and tearing with the taste of the Hog’s blood in his mouth.

Cesare felt the swinging hook like an undertow in the sea, seeing the movement of muscles as it became reality. Ducking under the punch, Cesare let loose with his elbows, each hammering blow thunking into the man’s ribs, right and left, body coiling, hips twisting with power, his entire being behind each hateful blow. Flesh rippled under his onslaught, gravel deep grunts pulled from the man.

Coming down in a rush of intent, the Hog grabbed for him. Ducking back, Cesare glided out from under the bear trap of the man’s arms. Fists let loose with a barrage of quick jabs into Hog’s face. Blinding knives, they savaged with precision, eyes, mouth, nose, the Hog’s leathery skin tore under the onslaught, smears of watery blood forming a scarlet mask.

Deep in his attack, Cesare felt the punch coming too late to stop it. The sledgehammer of muscle and meat blew him off his feet and into the air. Hitting the concrete hard, Cesare tumbled across blood-stained dirt. Flesh tore under the force of the roll, bruises blooming where they couldn’t be seen. The world dipped and swayed as Cesare slammed into the chain link wall.

A dribble of blood slid out of the Hog's mouth, winding its way to his chin. Swollen eyes, torn skin, and ruptured flesh showed where Cesare had landed his strikes. It was a lie; Cesare might as well have been kicking a rhino in the ass for the damage he’d done.

Heat pulsed through Cesare as he stood, lava pouring through his veins and gripping his bones with fire's cruel hunger. His heart beat a call to war, each hammer blow urging him to bleed and fight, kill and devour. The sound was ancient when time was young, a song to those that won't quit, the lost ones that couldn’t back down until the last drop of blood hit the ground, and ragged meat was beaten and dead.

White hot tongues of incandescent malignity ran over the golden scales of the Kundalini, the serpent coiling restlessly in its sleep. Cesare’s soul ached with the pain of the heated malevolence filling him, and still he pulled more spite into himself, his bones singing with vengeance. Waves of malice burned across the serpent like a supernova.

Coils flowed with purpose, no longer the sleepy movements of something lost in dreams. Pulling back, the golden scales freed the Kundalini’s head. Rearing above him, the serpent’s scales shone with blazing golden light. Terrifyingly awake eyes pinned Cesare in place, wisdom so cold and deep it dwarfed his consciousness owning void like eyes. Twisting heat waves rose from its body, twisting into alien shapes of grotesque meaning.

The Kundalini was the ocean that birthed Cesare. He was nothing more than a branch from its tree, a thing of limited life, only a shadow of its existence. This was the divine spark, an ember of the eternal, alien, incorruptible, unstoppable, and unkillable. Beyond the lies of good and evil, it existed through time and space, alone and at peace with the loneliness. When the rotting flesh Cesare called his had died and returned to the world, this being would exist as untroubled as ever.

Darting inquisitively, its tongue tasted the air of his soul. It didn’t judge him; the concept had no meaning for something born before life. In that moment, Cesare understood. It hadn’t been holding back on him. It hadn’t been waiting for him to become worthy of its power or for him to change into something worth helping.

It had simply been sleeping, waiting to be woken. Depression, sadness, melancholy, desolation, and misery, had frozen his soul into a wasteland of arctic cold, pushing the serpent deeper and deeper into sleep. At its core, the Kundalini was a thing of life and thrived in the cauldron of passion, love, hate, anger, delight, and vengeance. It didn’t care what life you lived, only that you lived.

Following the serpent’s eyes, Cesare watched as a red sun slowly formed out of the substance of his soul. Sluggishly turning, it gained power and definition, transforming into a four-leafed lotus closed tight.

Rising on the power of its coils, the serpent’s fathomless black eyes locked on the sullen red lotus. Coming up behind the tightly closed flower, the Kundalini spread its hood, displaying pure white scales radiating divine grace. Opening its jaws wide, ivory fangs gleamed in the blazing light of its scales. It stuck in a blur of movement, fangs sinking deep into the lotus, venom filling the flower.

Serpents poison coursed through the chakra, killing the earthly dross that had corrupted it. The sullen glowing lotus gradually brightened as petals grudgingly opened. Its glow transformed from the mean glow of burned coals into the welcoming red of a hearth fire. The Root Chakra shed a clean, welcoming light down on Cesare.

It happened in a timeless second, the inner landscape over laying reality. Scarlet power flowed into his soul, soaking into the desert hunger of his body. Muscles, tendons, and ligaments turned to the crimson power, gulping it down with gluttonous need.

New strength filled Cesare, stronger but not strong enough. The power would help, but it wouldn’t win the fight for him. It would take more than opening the Root Chakra to make him as strong as Hog. It gave him a chance, slim and crazy, but still a chance.

Stalking forward, Cesare started closing the distance. The man had stomped him like a punk, but that didn’t change the reality of the fight. Getting close was still the only way to win.

Lunging in a quick sprint, the Hog’s bulk quickly towered above Cesare in a mountain of muscle, temper, and flesh. Cesare's elbows cracked into the man’s side, flesh flinching back from punishing blows, ribs as strong as rebar vibrating under the force. It was the same attack, and Hog reacted the same way by grabbing for him.

Turning to the right, Cesare felt the moment slow, one chance to get the hold right. Any miss, any hesitation, would give the man time to overwhelm Cesare. Worse, he'd be on guard against it happening again, making the same strategy impossible.

Cesare’s fingers wrapped around the Hog’s hand. Thrusting himself forward, Cesare put his body behind the twisting hand. He felt loud pop as the wrist snapped out of place. Stopping his headlong movement, Cesare pivoted, his elbow angled up as he held The Hogs arm rigidly straight, a plank made of muscle and bone. Ramming forward, his elbow hit padded flesh, pushing inexorably forward, ligaments giving under force, dislocating the elbow.

Damage done, Cesare flowed away with two gilding steps, opening just enough room for the two fighters to look at each other but still in range to fight. Both holding the middle of the cage, neither willing to give up the territory.

The Hogs arm was grotesquely bent, hand twisted into a mockery of human. Cesare hadn’t just taken away his cannon, he’d made it a glaring weakness. A few strikes would turn him into a cripple, no doctor able to fix the twisted mass of torn tendons, rippled ligaments, and ruptured muscle.

The Hog had size, strength, experience, and weight on his side. He could win this fight; he’d let Cesare dictate the fight because he’d seen nothing worth fighting. Cesare had stripped that arrogance away. If the Hog gave it his all, he could pin Cesare against the cage and grind him into the ground. But in that kind of fight, the man couldn’t protect his arm.

Most fighters wouldn’t cripple a man in a fight, especially a cock fight with only money on the line. They’d hold back, hesitating to commit the final violation. Cesare wasn’t that man. He’d break that arm, tear it off the Hog’s fleshy body and beat the man to death with it. He’d bleed the big sonofabitch out until he could never fight again. It was a promise sealed in hate.

The Hog met Cesare’s eyes for an eternal second, shadowing Cesare’s thoughts. Nodding, the man stepped back, surrendering the center of the cage. This fight wasn’t worth being crippled for, there would be other chances to get his licks in. You didn’t get to be an old dog by fighting like a young pit-bull.

Cesare watched the huge man walk away. Victory, hot and sweet, rushed through his blood, an elation almost orgasmic. It was tempered only by the knowledge that he’d gotten lucky. If the man had taken him seriously and come after him .… Cesare would have lost. But the man hadn’t, and the win was his. Next time he’d be stronger; he’d have to be.

Burning with golden light, the serpent watched, its hood of blinding white scales framing the Root Chakra. Cesare met its infinite eyes; its mind beyond him. So far removed from flesh that life and death were concepts undeserving of its care. Shutting its hood, the serpent cut off the divine light. Dropping, it nested itself in the mass of golden scales, eyes closed in a light doze. The red glow of the Root Chakra dimmed as the Kundalini retreated, the four petals closing with a sigh of movement.

They were unchanged and transformed. Instead of the coma like sleep, the serpent napped, ready and willing to come to Cesare’s call. The Root Chakra was closed, its power retreating into the flower. Purified by the poison of the Kundalini, the flower would open again when he needed its scarlet power.

Cesare watched as the big man left the cage, the black god living in this squalid sewer of blood and degradation glorying in his offering of sadism and forced submission. It found him worthy because he lived out its fantasy of savage power. Loved him for feeding their rotting souls with his offering of brutality.

He didn’t care, he didn’t do it for them. He did it for himself. Like Tamlin said, the only way to learn to fight was by fighting. You couldn’t learn by doing endless kata or training in nice gyms. You had to push yourself, find the place where you broke and bled. Facing people who hated you enough to go for your throat was the razor that bled out weakness. Only through battle was a killer be carved out of useless meat.