Greenblatt worked with deft hands through the performance of the Horde. He found simple errors the metal-shapers of the Black Thumb clan had apparently missed. A plug here that wasn’t fastened properly. A tangle of wires that weren’t grounded there. There were fans that failed to spin because they weren’t greased, and power cores that needed one more turn to fully emit their energies.

  It was a shame that the Pit Lords and the Black Thumbs were at each other’s necks over so many so many small mistakes.

  When he had completed his tinkering, he took a step back and marveled at it. It was a piece of art, he must admit. With everything installed, all he had to do now was find a power switch. Most lobotomites had it in their abdomens, where their stomachs once were. But this thing wasn’t a normal automaton.

  Where all of the lobotomites of Kiva Noon sported enhancements, Talin the Great wore an entire suit of it. There was no stomach to search for the power button. He circled the machine, scratched his head, and considered giving up. The announcer was being loud again, talking about some Douglas Grave character.

  Then, Albert Ibram Ao Dominus-Greenblatt had an idea.

  “GRAB A SEAT AND HANG ON TO IT TIGHT! THE HUNTING SOUL HIMSELF HAS READIED HIMSELF AT THE GATES OF DREAD!”

  The crowd cheered and hollered. Some who sat close to the arena’s edge were throwing flower petals into the sand.

  Krav woke up bound to something. There was an aching stiffness in his neck, and he realized he had a collar now. He could barely turn his head, but he managed to look at Polka-dot. The clown was wearing the same collar as he was, and Krav could see vials of liquid swimming in it. They were both strapped to a cross that must have been erected during the intermission. With the zerker out of their system, they watched each other, confused.

  “FIRST ON THE EXECUTIONERS LIST, POLKA-DOT! A SADIST GIVEN UP BY HIS OWN CLAN AFTER MULTIPLE UNCONTROLLED OUTBURSTS!”

  The crowd booed him. Someone even threw a rotten fruit at him, and it splashed red and green on his chest.

  Suddenly his restraints fell away, and he tumbled to the sands. He shook as he pushed himself up to his feet. His chest was rising and falling in ragged breaths. The collar at his neck whirred to life, and Polka-dot threw his hands to it. He looked like he was choking, but Krav watched as the liquid in the collar drained. Once it was empty, the device clicked, then fell away. The boy could see two injection sites leaking blood.

  Polka-dot spasmed and fell to the floor. He looked like he was being shocked by invisible prods. He rolled onto his back, thrust his pelvis to the sky, and roared as he clawed at the sand beneath him.

  Krav’s breathing was becoming labored as well. He tried to calm himself by calling out to Rufus, but the skull didn’t answer. The sobering gas had evicted the zerker from his body, and now he could no longer pierce the veil of souls.

  Suddenly the gates of dread opened. Their slow rumble was like an agonizing stretch over a rack. Krav’s eyes flicked between the gate and Polka-dot. If Douglas Grave was anything like Shiela the Lioness, this would be over before the clown could get up. Krav flexed his wrists against his restraints fruitlessly.

  Spotlights that swung over the arena in multiple shades of color all now flipped to a bright fluorescent. They tracked along the arena and all converged on the gates of dread. In perfect sync, Douglas Grave emerged. He didn’t have the fanfare of a performer. There were no kisses blown into the crowd or waves of gratitude. He simply walked into the arena with his eyes locked steadily on Polka-dot.

  His hands flexed on his weapon, a strange thing akin to a spear or javelin. It had a long shaft like one, at least, but the tip wasn’t an iron spike or halberd. It was tipped with a machine, and that machine had a blade coming off of it. The blade was similar to Krav’s axe with its toothy edge, but this one had the teeth running along all sides of the blade, not just its killing edge.

  Douglas Grave spun it, slow and calm like a martial artist with a guandao. It arced around his body, then he gripped something on the machine. He pulled it, a ripcord that caused the machine to roar. Krav’s eyes widened as he watched the teeth come alive and spin in a circle around the blade. He had to make his axe do that.

  Suddenly, the lights dispersed. They flew away from Douglas in a hundred different directions. They dimmed to their multicolor hues and began to strobe. Between bright intervals, Douglas Grave blinked in and out of visibility. One moment he was at the gates of dread, the next he was hopping on a boulder, then he was almost at Polka-dot. Krav got a glimpse of him as he got closer, and the look in the Executioner’s eye was like a rabid dog poised to strike.

  Polka-dot spasmed, and Douglas appeared over him. The clown and the Executioner locked eyes for a moment. Polka-dot’s mouth was squared in a painful grin as whatever was forcefully injected into him began to kill him from the inside out. It wasn’t much of a fight. The clown’s back was arched, sending his torso in the air like he was presenting his soft belly for Douglas.

  They called him the Hunting Soul, but there was no hunt here. No sport. Douglas Grave raised his chainsaw-spear over his head and slammed it into the clown. Whatever coursed through his veins prevented him from even reaching out to try and stop the assault.

  The chainsaw plunged into his chest and spun, ripping out bone shards and ragged skin. Blood sprayed in a fountain, drenching the executioner. The spinning blade pulled on Polka-dot, and it forced itself down towards his pelvis. Viscera sprayed from him like chum. When Douglas Grave finally removed the saw, he knelt with Polka-dot.

  The crowd went absolutely wild, but Krav couldn’t understand why. Shiela the Lioness had to hunt her Prey. Douglas Grave was served it without any danger to himself. Krav might not have liked the clown, but he loathed the Executioner more so. Bathed in praises and handed victory all because he was one of the people in charge here? The boy added him to his list of people who needed to lose their heads.

  “Whose head do you wear on your hip, kid?” Douglas said. He was pulling Polka-dot’s heart out of his chest. Krav was surprised it was still in one piece.

  The boy on the cross just stared at him for a long while. Then he answered, “Yours pretty soon.”

  The fiery temper returned to Douglas Grave’s eye. He looked up at Krav with a drooling grin. As he approached, two slaves entered the active combat zone through the gates of dread. They made their way to them as quickly as they could, but they had some distance to clear, and it gave the Hunting Soul time alone with his prey.

  “This did nothing to scare you?” He was smiling wide, and he pointed his weapon toward the mangled corpse. “I’d be pissing myself if I were you.”

  “You will be.”

  They watched each other for a long while. The slaves finally caught up to them, and Douglas knelt so that they could perform their infernal work. They came with a tattoo gun, and they quickly went to work filling in the final spot on Douglas Grave’s back. Polka-dot’s name was forever emblazed upon him. When they were done, they left as quickly as they came, and he rose to his full height.

  The Executioner pointed to his collarbone. “You’re going to be the first name on my front side.”

  “You can put it on your ass for all I care,” Krav said. He was matching that crazed grin Douglas offered up at him. Wrists twisted in their restraints, eager for freedom.

  Ulrich and Jerod traded blows in the VIP area. Jerod’s augmented arm was heavy and slow, but when it collided with Ulrich, it felt like being hit by a train. The Bear blocked one of its encroaching attacks and was sent tumbling into the buffet table. It broke under his weight, and food went crashing everywhere.

  “What a mess,” Shiela said over her shoulder. There was a quick interest in the fight, then it was back to the arena. The other Executioners didn’t try to stop the fight, but they were keen to move out of the way. Mateo stayed on the couch with his head down, Boris and Loken took Mac close to the window. Hati was near the door, ready to grab his brother and make a break for it as soon as things looked a little too messy.

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  Mac had her eyes plastered to the window. She was bouncing up and down from her tip toes. Boris raised an eyebrow and ignored the duel that was destroying their VIP lounge. “You seem eager for this.”

  “Oh yeah! Your asshole friend is going to die!”

  Now Loken looked at her. “I don’t think so, missy. Douglas has every advantage here.”

  “What’s in the collar?” she asked, ignoring him.

  “It’s a double lethal dose of zerker. After all the doses they’ve had tonight, it’ll shock his system and either kill him before Douglas can, or it’ll turn him into a mindless nut. Either way, Douglas is sober.”

  Mac laughed so hard she almost lost her balance. “Oh yeah… He’s so fucking dead!”

  “FROM THE DEPTHS OF THE WASTELAND COMES A FRIGHTENING SIGHT! THE ONLY OTHER LIFE FORM TO SURVIVE TO THIS POINT, THE MINDLESS ONE KRAV!”

  There was an uproar from the crowd, but Krav didn’t seem pleased. “Hey! You can come up with something better than-!”

  The restraints on Krav’s wrist fell away and he crashed to the floor. Douglas Grave was winding up his weapon, preparing it like a ritual dagger. Krav took the opportunity to enact his plan before the collar could go off. He reached down and plucked one of the teeth from Rufus’s skull and shoved it where the needle was preparing to stab. As he went down for another one, the collar activated, and his body seized up.

  One needle broke in Rufus’s tooth. The other plunged into Krav’s carotid artery. The high was so instant and intense, he seized up like Polka-dot had. His fingers curled in the sand and his back bent like a frightened cat. The collar fell away, and Krav felt light again.

  His third dose of the night had been his highest yet. His mind and body faltered as the constant yo-yo of intoxication and sobriety had severed something in his brain. The thoughts in his head blurred and corrupted like static. His eyes failed to focus on anything, seeming to cross at random without his input. Snot, tears, sweat, and saliva dripped off of him in fat globs. He didn’t know it, but he was screaming at the sand.

  “Krav! Move!”

  It was Rufus’s voice again. Krav rolled in time for the chainsaw to slam into the ground, grinding against the concrete underneath the sandy arena floor. Sparks lit the space between them, and Krav grabbed two handfuls of sand. He threw them into Douglas Grave’s eyes, and the Executioner howled in pain as he recoiled. When he cleared his vision, the boy was gone.

  “Where is it! Where the fuck is it!” Krav screamed. His blurred vision begged for his weapon.

  “Calm yourself! You took way too much tonight. If you don’t find a way to calm down, your heart could give out!”

  “RAAAAAGGGHHHHH!”

  Krav was clawing the sands, lifting rocks half his size and launching them. The axe was somewhere, it had to be. He had stumbled across a few other weapons. Each time, they filled him with a great joy until he realized they weren’t his, then he threw them at a boulder or the arena wall hard enough to shatter.

  The roar of the chainsaw could be heard over the music as the Hunting Soul made good on his moniker. He was flying through the arena at speeds that the audience couldn’t track. Still, they cheered.

  “Calm your ass down, boy! He’ll be here soon! You went down near the gates, go look there!”

  Krav was a drooling, manic beast. A few times on his mad dash to the gates of dread, he stumbled into a galloping run on all fours. He had sense enough to stop himself each time, but then he would forget and return to the animalistic run. The spotlight gleamed, and he saw his axe on the floor. He went back on all fours and charged forward.

  Douglas Grave locked onto the boy as soon as he saw him. A plume of thick smoke was the only way to tell where he was at any moment on the battlefield, and it was coming straight for Krav. The boy managed to get his hands on the axe in time to swing it behind him and parry the chainsaw.

  Sparks showered between them, and the crowd lost their minds. Cheers and roars of applause rained down on Douglas Grave, but his crazed eyes were focused intently on Krav, and the boy shot his own glare back up at him.

  Douglas shifted the weight on his weapon, breaking the locked blades from each other’s grasp. He swung the chainsaw in a horizontal arc, attempting to disembowel Krav, but the boy jumped backwards. Douglas followed up with three stabs with the weapon. It had so much reach, that even at a distance the spinning teeth tangled and ripped Krav’s clothes.

  “You need another weapon! Lose the damned axe and get a spear, you can’t win like this!”

  Krav’s response was a guttural roar. Rufus wasn’t sure how to interpret that, but the zerker had clearly pushed the boy far past his limits. He managed to listen to half of the instructions. The boy raised the axe high over his head and flung it at the executioner.

  It missed. Douglas Grave dodged it with so much practiced ease, that he didn’t put any flare on it. He simply leaned to one side, let it pass, and rushed the defenseless boy. The chainsaw gave another horizontal swing at the boy, and he rolled into Douglas. The attack passed over Krav, and he sent a fist into Douglas’s groin. The Executioner faltered, surprised at the cheap shot.

  He collapsed to one knee, holding himself aloft with the pole of his weapon. The pain was juvenile, but it was shocking to say the least. The boy should have been dead by now, he thought. No one can last on that high of a dose.

  Douglas Grave did not fight for honor or glory. He fought for vanity. He chose his opponents by the ease of their defeat and the cheers he could pull out of the crowd. Polka-dot and Krav were formidable opponents to the audience, but behind the scenes, they never stood a chance. The collars would dose them to death while the Hunting Soul tore out their guts. It was supposed to be easy. It was supposed to be rigged.

  He just needed this one single win. After his blundered execution of Cypher the traitor, he needed to clear his name. This boy had to die. He had to-

  Pain erupted in Douglas Grave’s shoulder. He felt the boy’s weight on him, and the axe was biting into his tattoos. He looked over his shoulder, and met Krav’s bloodthirsty grin. There was no more time to play around with this boy. He wasn’t going to fail another execution. If he took one more hit like that, he would either shamefully be forced to retreat, or Jerod would leave him to die.

  The Hunting Soul jammed the shaft of his weapon into the boy’s stomach and sent him tumbling backwards. The axe was still stuck in his back, and he pulled it out with a painful wrench. He tossed it to his opponent.

  “You die here, boy.” He did his performative twirl of the weapon, wincing at the fresh pain in his back.

  Krav tried to speak, but all that came out of his foaming mouth were guttural roars.

  The fight in the VIP room was continuing. Jerod even let Ulrich land a few blows, purpling his handsome face. He spat a glob of blood onto the floor and his smile lit up. “No wonder you don’t fight in the Pit, you hit like my mother!”

  “She should have hit you harder. Put some sense in that big head of yours.” Ulrich was back in his element, reopening Greenblatt’s handiwork and earning some new injuries. His chest ached, and he was almost certain that his cheekbone was broken. One eye swelled shut, and his left knee shook like it was a piston about to blow off. He relished that pain, especially against someone like Jerod.

  “Look at that! You can banter. And this whole time I thought you were just a quiet imbecile. I have to say, Brother Bear, I like this side of you. So much anger and passion!”

  Ulrich roared and grabbed one of the broken halves of the table. He swung it into Jerod, but he blocked it with his metal arm, splintering it in the air. Jerod responded by leaping and winding up a punch. Ulrich rolled aside as it fired downwards. The arm hit the concrete floor and sent cracks spiderwebbing.

  “Oh, come on! Not the damned floor!” Loken complained.

  Ulrich clasped his hands together and brought them down hard on the back of Jerod’s head. He slammed the imposter warlord into floor, and his head smacked against it hard. His delicately styled hair fell away as strands of spikes around his ears and eyes. Jerod stood, a freshly open wound spilling blood from his forehead. He stumbled before passing a hand through his hair. The blood from his forehead made it slick and shiny.

  “Nice one,” Jerod said. He snorted, plugged one nostril, and shot a glob of red mucus onto the floor. He raised his arms again like a boxer. “Keep at it, Bear! Hit me!”

  Ulrich roared and continued to hail punches into Jerod. They were lightning quick, a boxer’s guided missiles. Jerod rolled his shoulders as he blocked them, then his arm hissed as it powered up again. A plume of smoke chugged from it, and he sent a jab into Ulrich between his barrage of fists.

  Ulrich felt his collarbone shatter. The blow was a canon shot at point blank range. It knocked the wind out of his chest and sent him sprawling onto the floor. As he struggled to his feet, Ulrich watched Jerod with a determined gaze. “You aren’t him, Jerod.”

  “Neither are you.”

  They watched each other for a long time. Ragged breaths heaved in both of their chests. Ulrich felt like a sandbag as he slowly moved to put his fists back up. Another clash like that could kill him, but death was a better outcome than submitting to an imposter.

  Talin the Great wasn’t dead. All of them knew that. A man of his stature didn’t die so easily. Jerod was drunk on his own power, a power he owed all to the augmentation her wore. That was it, Ulrich realized.

  Jerod made his way to Ulrich. His movements were slow and cumbersome. The augment was sagging at his shoulder, as if the muscles he still had there were getting sick of holding it up. Jerod’s nostrils flared with something like desperation, and Ulrich saw it. Years spent in the wasteland had given him something that Jerod could never replicate. He had battled with all manner of creatures, and it had taught him much.

  The augmented arm wound up, and Ulrich recognized it as the striking barb of a mega scorpion. It retracted high in the air, then sailed downwards. Just as he had done with every mega scorpion, Ulrich moved to the left and grabbed it in the air. He spun, rolling Jerod to the floor and pinning him there.

  “What in the-” before Jerod could finish his sentence, Ulrich bent the arm back until it gave. The VIP room was filled with the imposter warlord’s shameful cries of pain, and all of his underlings looked on as Ulrich snapped the augment. With a roar, he pulled, and sparks fell away from it. Oil sprayed like lifeblood, staining both combatants in a mix of black and crimson. With the arm gone, Ulrich flung it away.

  “Submit dammit! I beat you!”

  Jerod held the twisted metal protruding from his shoulder like a bomb victim. There was a look of shock plastered on his pale, sweat stained face. He couldn’t look at the rest of them.

  Ulrich planted a boot on his back and raised the arm high over his head. “I win!” he yelled, and his voice was like the roar of a chugging steam engine.

  The Executioners of the Pit Lord’s all looked on in shock. From the window, Mac cheered, but not for Ulrich. Krav had just put his axe into Douglas Grave’s back.

  “So dead! So dead!” she screeched.