Weave.

Dodge.

Duck.

Crunch...?

A left hook to the nose sent her stumbling back, as Winifred’s broken cartilage gave a satisfyingly audible crack. A loud cheer echoed from the stalls as a fountain of scarlet blood burst forth down onto the sand under her feet.

No matter. That, along with the three broken ribs and swollen kneecap would fix itself in time.

One of the benefits of being Chosen.

When Winifred had left the other Rogues behind, mentioning a personal quest, she honestly hadn’t expected it to be so straight forward.

There was no way she would ever admit it to the others but what she’d seen in her future was, quite frankly, fucking terrifying

She was a Chosen for Hell’s sake!

There was more strength in her one arm than a dozen men, and yet…

She wasn’t supposed to be taken down so easily. Her might was her power and yet when she’d seen her death play out, it was as if that power hadn’t existed at all.

Back when she’d first been taken by the Tomb-Makers, they’d made her fight day after day, and while it had galled her… she’d known exactly who she was.

There’d been no question of it. She was a fighter, a scrapper. She’d thrown herself into each fight like it was her last, and she didn’t regret a single punch.

Fight. Just fight.

Fighting was all she knew. For so long it was all she had to count on. To earn some coin and keep a roof, albeit a humble one, over her head.

So, what did she do when all else seemed bloody crazy?

She would fight.

Winifred had expected it to be much harder to find a fighting arena whose speciality was ‘enhanced folk’. Gods forbid they’d outright say ‘Chosen’ though. It was a word that created too much fear in the hearts of those with the coin in their purses, and made predicting bets much too unreliable for any self-respecting bookie.

Especially when it came to fixing fight knockouts.

But she’d used some of her old contacts, those who’d been in the Pits long enough to have seen the seediest underground arenas, if not fought in them themselves.

And that is how Winifred had found herself at The Sleepy Moon.

Such a gentile name for what was effectively paid for bloodletting. Chosen fighters would test their powers, sharpen their Pacts and it was all done for the entertainment of the noble folk, those of them that wanted something more than your run-of-the-mill Pit Fight.

Turns out coin could get you anything, no matter how gory your particular proclivity may be…

So Winifred had signed up. She’d shown off her Pact in the backyard of the tavern, breaking a large stone into pieces as though it were one of the tea biscuits her Mother had always forced the family cooks to make.

The sleazy owner, because they always were the Zacharias type, had hastily made her an offer.

Not that it was about the coin.

Dodge.

Weave.

The loss of one of her arms had thrown her off, had her balance all out of sorts and yet, it was astounding how quickly she’d adapted to it.

It was a good thing too, as she’d needed all the skill she could muster. A small part of her had still assumed she’d get by with ease. Winifred never really thought of herself as a braggart, but if there was one thing the brawler knew best, it was how to enjoy a good scrap.

Which made the beatdown she was currently experiencing all the more humiliating.

They’d scheduled her first fight with a Chosen who’d seemed nearly as unfamiliar with their Pact as Winifred was with her own, though that did little to soften the sting of the blows that they did land on her.

Her foe loomed above her own fairly fit frame, but there wasn’t much of a chance that her physique could match that of a huge, hulking Minotaur. The beast had at least three feet and two hundred pounds of solid muscle on Rodyr, the only other Minotaur she’d ever known, much less on a human woman.

Its red eyes were ablaze with anger and adrenaline, its sharp yellow teeth and elongated tusks already dripping with her blood. Thankfully, the brute seemed at odds with their own strength, which was why it was sporting half a dozen bruises across its torso from her repeated attacks.

The beast had slipped up a few times already. No doubt thrown off by its new bulk. Winifred had found herself thanking all the Gods Above that Blackmaul’s teachings were all about adaptability.

“If ye cannae adapt in the moment, ma wee chook, ye might as well be dead.”

“Come on darlin’! Give us a show!” Someone called out to her from one of the nearby stalls, a roar of approval sounding out from the crowd. They’d been getting slowly more raucous as the fight had continued. Clearly blood and broken bones weren’t going to satisfy their need for gore.

Winifred smirked through bloodied teeth as she kicked out at the back of the Minotaur’s knee, imagining it was the face of the fool who’d just yelled at her. Unable to dance back in time due to its ungainly size, the brawler felt her poor opponent’s kneecap buckle under the strength of her kick, as the beast tottered helplessly for a moment before crumpling to his knees.

Winifred stood over the Beast as it roared in pain, ignoring the flecks of saliva that splattered across her cheek. Decisively, she aimed one swift punch directly towards the Minotaur’s exposed neck.

It no doubt seemed comical to the onlookers due to the size difference, but Winifred knew that it didn’t matter. For all that the Minotaur looked like it could crush her without a thought, she was a Chosen.

Drawing deep on the Crux hidden within her chest, she moved the energy in tandem with her fist, slamming her knuckles into the Minotaur’s throat. She would end it with this strike, because this was who she was. Who she had to be.

And the fucking Minotaur would Brea-

In the blink of an eye, the enormous form of the Minotaur disappeared in a gout of mist. One moment Winifred’s fist was impacting soft flesh, and the next there was nothing but air under her blow. It almost seemed as though her foe had melted into the blood-stained sand of the arena.

Mogrify…

“Aye, quick wee shite ain’t ye?” Winifred spat out a globule of blood, cracking her neck as she retook a more defensive posture.

She spun around, all her senses on high alert. This wasn’t the first time her opponent had seemingly vanished like this, but it was certainly closer than the last exchange they’d traded.

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The idea of a Crux that could enable you to change your form so easily was pretty appealing and would certain give an edge in battle but a morphing body was never going to really beat a strong one.

The other Chosen had made the mistake of trying to fight brawn to brawn with Winifred, something that the Brawler couldn’t help but assume wouldn’t be happening again.

No, the beast would need to shake up its tactics, and that was exactly what Winifred was hoping for. She wanted the challenge. She desperately needed to prove to herself that she could do this. That she could be victorious. That those damned visions that she’d witnessed were just that. Visions. Not certainties.

Still, there was no sign of her opponent anywhere in the ring, and Winifred was left panting slightly as she used the sudden lull to regain her breath.

That was until-

A thick tentacle suddenly wrapped around her neck. Before she could raise her hand up to her throat it was joined by two more. A fourth ripped through her hair and she felt herself being lifted upward toward the center of the arena.

The crowd was going wild. They were shouting and catcalling, a cacophony so loud that Winifred couldn’t make out a singular voice, just a cry of excitement for the blood being spilled.

Her blood.

Winifred was slowly rotated to face her opponent even as it continued to squeeze her throat with its tentacles.

It was…. Huge. Truly gargantuan in size, it resembled a crossbred of an Octopi and a particularly ugly eldritch abomination.

It was a massive round blob of undulating gore, crimson and pulsating flesh seemingly moving at random with a mind of its own. It had one large glassy-looking amber coloured eye in the center of this mass and, underneath, a maw that was so wide it looked like the blob had been split in two.

Black drool hung from misshapen teeth, the largest of them were as tall as her, the smallest perhaps the length of one of her legs.

That single eyeball leered at her hungrily as the tentacles wrapped tighter and tighter…

“Squashing me. Like a grape.”

With lightning fast reflexes, Winifred used all her strength to swing her feet forward, aiming directly for the creature's massive eyeball…

Break…

Suddenly the grip around her throat was loose as the tentacle she was grasping tightly started to pulp under her fingers.

Winifred fell a good few feet down onto the sand, getting a mouthful of the filthy stuff, even as she staggered back to admire her blow.

Even as large as the large blob monster was, its girthy mass still sailed the entire length of the arena as it desperately tried to stop its impromptu flight.

She’d kicked her hard enough that its singular eye had pulped under her foot, and the rest of its body was left trying to grasp at anything that would slow its eventual collision with the nearest arena wall.

CRASH!

It collided with the one of the basement borders that wasn’t adorned with stalls of noblemen. Brick dust and wooden splinters flew into the air, raining down on the crowd who, instead of fleeing, started to cheer ever louder at the tops of their voices.

Clearly she’d given them the show that they’d been so desperate for.

Winifred was back on the balls of her feet, ready for the next shape the Chosen would take on.

When the dust finally cleared, Winifred wasn’t too surprised to see that the creature hadn’t stopped upon contact with the Arena wall, instead collapsing through it into another portion of the underground arena.

From the new hole on the basement wall, Winifred could see into the next room which was stocked with large barrels of what was probably mead. Some of them had toppled over, burying her opponent.

She kept her eyes on them as they started to jostle and vibrate. She heard Blackmaul’s voice in her head, telling her to stay alert, keep her wits about her…

She told herself this was a Chosen and that meant this wasn’t over yet.

What Winifred hadn't expected however, was the bloodied and filthy woman that appeared from underneath the barrels, with a hand shakily raised above her head.

“I… I give up!”

Cries of outrage sounded out around the fighters, but Winifred just stared at the young-ish Elven woman across the Arena from her with confusion.

‘She gave up?’

‘What the fuck does that mean? She’s meant tae be a Chosen. One of the strongest fucking things out there.’ Winifred could feel her Pact in her veins, the heat of it scalding her and empowering her in equal measure. ‘I’m nae even close tae fucking done yet, so what the Hells does she mean when she says she gives up?’

“Sorry, but I’m really not cut out for this sort of thing, can we just call it here?” The blonde woman hesitantly asked, patting dust and sand off her red tunic. “I absolutely forfeit, so sorry to anyone who bet on-“

When Winifred’s fist collided with her foe's stomach, the brawler was nearly as surprised as the Elven woman looked, before the force of the blow sent the blonde rolling backwards in the sand.

Break…

The same strange sensation that she’d felt while fighting the Shade washed over her, an unwelcome disconnect from her mind and her body.

Back then it was because she couldn’t even keep up with the speed that the Shade and her own body had been moving at, but now…

With a roaring crowd behind her, Winifred dashed over to her groaning opponent's prone form before delivering a kick directly into the Elf’s abdomen.

The sheer force of it lifted the slender woman high into the air before she came crashing down onto the sand with a sickening thud.

‘I dinnae want this. She… she gave up. I need tae stop, I should stop this.’ Winifred watched as her own body confidently crossed the distance between the two of them, helpless to stop as she reached down and lifted the Elf by the neck.

‘I want tae stop… don’t I?’

Whether through the tempered strength of a fellow Chosen or pure willpower, Winifred’s Elven opponent was still lucid as she tried to break the hold the brawler had on her neck.

‘She’s going to die if I dinnae stop.’ Winifred chastised herself, ‘She cannae even breathe. Why isn’t she fighting this? Transform again! Do something. Do anything!’

Break…

The sound of the Arena’s spectator’s jeers washed away as Winifred stared at the other Chosen, absentmindedly noting the streaks of tears and muddied sand on the Elf’s face.

The woman was feebly kicking her feet into Winifred’s chest, but the seasoned brawler could barely feel the blows.

All the power in the world, and it couldn’t help her. Winifred was more powerful then she’d ever been, but she still ended up with a dagger through the throat.

“Fight back!” Winifred cursed at the Elven woman, watching her face as it started to turn a blue hue. “Ye need tae fight back!”

One of the first rules of the Slums was that death was always around the corner. One wrong move and you’d end up being ripped apart by a peck of Ghouls, or on the wrong end of some thug’s dagger.

For as long as Winifred had been sneaking away from her home to visit the fighting pits, she’d been telling herself she wasn’t afraid of death. That she’d take it all head on with a grin.

‘But what if my death does nae come at me head on. What if I end up dead out in the desert without ever even seeing my attacker.’

Break…

Winifred almost didn’t notice the sound of breaking bones, distracted as she was, but the sudden sensation of her foe going completely slack in her grasp was impossible for Winifred to ignore.

All at once the roar of the crowd slammed into her awareness, and Winifred felt in control of her body once again, her labored breathing helping her focus.

Which was how Winifred suddenly realized that she was still holding the dead body of the other Chosen in the air by her broken neck.

Snatching her hand back with a snarl, the brawler didn’t bother to watch as the Elf’s body landed amongst the sand, instead stalking towards the fighters exit.

The sleazy fight organizer tried to catch her attention as Winifred stormed past, but she couldn’t stop, not without crushing the halfwits skull in her hand. She needed to get outside, to get some fresh air in her lungs.

The brawler was greeted by a light drizzle of rain once she stepped out of The Sleepy Moon.

She slumped against the filthy brick wall of the tavern and stared down at her remaining hand as though it were a stranger.

Winifred wasn’t stupid. This wasn’t the first time someone had died at her hand. But it had always been for a reason. Defense… protection...

It had been a matter of survival.

But this. This was senseless.

This was murder.