Consciousness returned slowly, dragging Velrith back from the dark void where pain could not reach her. The transition was gradual and unwelcome, marked by the creeping awareness of her body and the various agonies it contained. Her head throbbed with a deep, steady ache that seemed to originate from the center of her skull and radiate outward in waves. The side of her head where the wooden sword had struck felt swollen and tender, the skin tight and hot.
She tried to open her eyes but found the task surprisingly difficult. Her eyelids felt heavy and stuck together, crusted with dried blood or some other fluid. She worked at them slowly, blinking repeatedly until they finally parted enough to allow in light. The brightness was painful, causing her to squint and turn her head slightly to the side.
The movement sent a spike of agony through her neck and shoulder. The infected brand on her left shoulder blade had worsened significantly. She could feel the heat radiating from it, the flesh swollen and tight, and when she shifted position even slightly, fresh pain bloomed across her back. The fever that had been building for days was now fully established, making her entire body feel hot and shaky.
As her vision slowly cleared and adjusted to the light, Velrith began to assess her surroundings. She was no longer in the training yard where she had been beaten unconscious. Instead, she found herself in a new location, one she had not seen before in her brief time at the Arena.
This was the medical pen, though calling it that seemed almost generous. It was a large, rectangular room carved from the same volcanic rock as the rest of the underground structure. The ceiling was low, perhaps eight feet high, crossed with thick support beams that were stained black with age and smoke. The walls were rough and unfinished, showing the tool marks from whatever process had been used to carve them from the stone.
The floor was dirt and compacted sand, stained dark in many places with old blood that had soaked deep into the ground. Unlike the cells where slaves were housed, this room had no iron bars or cages. It was simply an open space, lit by a dozen torches mounted in brackets along the walls. The torches burned with a smoky, orange flame that provided adequate light but also filled the room with a hazy, acrid smoke that made breathing uncomfortable.
The room was filled with wounded slaves. There were perhaps fifty of them, lying on the dirt floor in rough rows. Most were unconscious or semi-conscious, their bodies broken in various ways from training or combat. Some had obvious injuries—limbs bent at wrong angles, deep gashes that had bled through crude bandages, burns that had left skin blackened and peeling. Others showed less visible damage but were clearly in severe distress, their faces pale and sweating, their breathing labored.
Velrith was lying on her back near the middle of the room. Beneath her was nothing—no blanket, no mat, just the hard dirt floor. Her body was positioned awkwardly, one arm twisted beneath her, her legs splayed out. She carefully adjusted her position, moving slowly to avoid aggravating her injuries.
As she moved, she became aware of the bandages. Someone had wrapped cloth around her head, covering the area where she had been struck. The bandage was crude and already stained with blood and other fluids, but it served its basic purpose of applying pressure to the wound. Her ribs, which had been kicked during the beating, were also wrapped with cloth strips that had been tied tightly around her torso.
But these were not magical healing bandages. They were simply strips of rough cloth, probably torn from old garments or rags, wrapped around injuries to keep them somewhat clean and compressed. There was no healing magic here, no divine intervention, no potions or salves that would accelerate recovery. This was basic, primitive first aid applied to keep slaves alive just long enough to be useful again.
The realization was cold and sobering. The Arena had expended the minimum possible effort to prevent her from dying immediately, not out of any compassion or concern for her wellbeing, but simply because a dead slave was worthless. As long as she could potentially fight again, she had some value. The moment she became too damaged to be useful, that value would disappear.
Movement near the entrance to the medical pen caught her attention. A figure entered, silhouetted against the brighter light of the corridor beyond. As the figure moved further into the room, details became clear. It was a demon, older and thinner than most of the guards, with grey-streaked hair and deeply lined face. This was presumably the medical attendant, the individual responsible for keeping expendable slaves barely alive.
The attendant carried a wooden bucket in one hand and a leather satchel slung over one shoulder. He moved through the rows of wounded slaves with practiced efficiency, stopping occasionally to check a bandage or prod an unconscious body to gauge responsiveness. His expression was one of complete detachment, the look of someone performing a repetitive, unpleasant task that had long ago ceased to evoke any emotional response.
When the attendant reached Velrith, he paused and looked down at her with critical eyes. He set down his bucket and crouched beside her, his joints cracking audibly with the movement. Without warning or gentleness, he reached out and grabbed her head, turning it roughly to examine the bandage covering her injury. His fingers pressed against the swollen area, testing the damage beneath, and Velrith hissed in pain.
The attendant grunted, a noncommittal sound, and released her head. He then moved to examine her ribs, pulling aside the cloth wrapping to look at the bruising beneath. His touch was clinical and impersonal, fingers probing the damaged area without any consideration for the pain it caused. Velrith gritted her teeth and endured, knowing that resistance would accomplish nothing.
Apparently satisfied that she was not going to die immediately, the attendant reached into his leather satchel and withdrew a small clay jar. He unscrewed the lid, revealing a thick, greenish paste that smelled strongly of herbs and something bitter. Using two fingers, he scooped out a portion of the paste and smeared it roughly over the worst of her rib bruising. The paste was cold against her feverish skin and stung sharply where it contacted abrasions.
The attendant did not bother with the infected brand on her shoulder. Velrith realized with growing dread that he either had not noticed the infection or, more likely, did not care. The brand was on her back, not immediately visible from her current position, and the attendant was clearly only addressing injuries that might prevent her from fighting in the near future. An infection, while potentially fatal, would take days to kill her, and that was apparently time enough for the Arena's purposes.
Without a word, the attendant stood, collected his bucket and satchel, and moved on to the next wounded slave. The entire interaction had taken perhaps thirty seconds. This was the extent of medical care available to expendable slaves—minimal intervention to prevent immediate death, and nothing more.
As Velrith lay there, trying to process the cold brutality of her situation, voices reached her from near the entrance to the medical pen. Two guards were speaking in the demonic language, their tones casual and conversational. Velrith's body automatically processed the sounds, extracting meaning from the guttural syllables.
"How many in today's batch?" one guard asked.
"Fifty-three wounded from training," the other replied. "Twelve won't make it through the night. The rest will be back in rotation within three to five days."
"The new ones always drop fast. Soft meat, no training, no survival instinct. Master Volgath gets what he pays for—cheap and expendable."
"Arena slaves are expendable," the first guard agreed, the phrase clearly a common saying or official policy. "Survival equals entertainment value only. They fight well, they live longer. They fight poorly, they feed the disposal chutes."
The conversation continued, but those words stuck in Velrith's mind, repeating with cold clarity. Arena slaves are expendable. Survival equals entertainment value only. This was the fundamental truth of her existence now. She had no inherent worth as a person, no rights, no protection. Her only value was her ability to provide entertainment through combat. If she fought well and survived, she would be kept alive to fight again. If she fought poorly and lost, she would be discarded like trash.
The realization should have been crushing, but instead it crystallized something in Velrith's mind. The rules were clear and simple. Strength meant survival. Entertainment meant value. Everything else was irrelevant. If she wanted to live, if she wanted to eventually escape this nightmare, she needed to become strong enough to win fights and entertaining enough to be worth keeping alive.
The afternoon passed slowly. Velrith drifted in and out of full consciousness, the fever and pain making sustained awareness difficult. The medical pen remained active throughout, with attendants occasionally entering to check on the wounded and guards periodically dragging in new casualties from training or removing those who had died.
It was during one of her more lucid moments that Velrith witnessed something that drove home the true horror of the Arena's system. A commotion near the entrance drew her attention. Several guards entered, dragging three slaves between them. These slaves were all missing limbs—one had lost an arm at the elbow, another was missing a leg from mid-thigh, and the third had lost both hands at the wrists.
The amputee slaves were clearly in extreme distress, moaning and crying out in pain. Their stumps were roughly bandaged, the cloth already soaked through with blood. They were being dragged not toward the rows of other wounded slaves, but toward a different section of the medical pen that Velrith had not paid attention to before.
At the far end of the room, partially hidden in shadow, was a large metal grate set into the floor. The grate was perhaps four feet square, made of thick iron bars spaced a few inches apart. Below the grate, darkness suggested a vertical shaft dropping down into the depths of the Arena structure.
This was a disposal chute. Velrith understood immediately what she was witnessing. The amputee slaves were being discarded. Without limbs, they could not fight in the Arena. They had no entertainment value. They were no longer expendable assets but simply liabilities, consuming resources without providing any return. The Arena's solution was brutally efficient—eliminate them.
The guards dragged the three amputee slaves toward the disposal chute with mechanical efficiency. The slaves realized what was happening and began to scream, their voices raw with terror and desperation. They tried to resist, their remaining limbs flailing weakly, but they were far too injured and weak to offer any real opposition.
The first slave, the one missing an arm, was positioned at the edge of the grate. Two guards grabbed him and, without ceremony or hesitation, shoved him through the bars and into the shaft below. His scream was loud and piercing, filled with absolute horror. The sound lasted for several seconds as he fell, then was cut off with terrifying suddenness. The silence that followed was somehow worse than the scream.
The second slave, missing a leg, fought harder despite his injury. He managed to grab onto one of the iron bars with his remaining hand, trying desperately to prevent being thrown into the chute. A guard simply stomped on his fingers, the sound of breaking bones audible across the medical pen. The slave's grip failed and he was pushed through the grate. His scream was shorter, cut off almost immediately.
The third slave, missing both hands, could offer no resistance at all. He was simply lifted and dropped through the grate like a piece of garbage. His scream started the moment he began to fall and stopped just as suddenly as the others.
The entire process took less than two minutes. Three lives ended without trial, without mercy, without even a moment of consideration. The guards walked away from the disposal chute as casually as if they had just completed a routine chore, leaving behind only the bloodstained grate and the terrible knowledge of what lay below.
Around the medical pen, the other wounded slaves who had witnessed the disposal lay in silence. No one spoke. No one cried out in protest. This was normal. This was expected. This was the reality of being expendable.
Velrith lay on the dirt floor, her body shaking not just from fever but from the horror of what she had just witnessed. Those slaves had been alive, conscious, and aware. They had been killed not because they had done anything wrong, but simply because they were no longer useful. Their screams had stopped so suddenly because whatever was at the bottom of that shaft—whether it was a pit of spikes, a pool of acid, or simply a fall long enough to ensure death—had ended them immediately.
This was her future if she was seriously injured. This was what awaited anyone who could not maintain their entertainment value. The Arena was not a prison where inmates served sentences and might eventually be released. It was a meat grinder, processing lives and discarding the broken remains.
As the day faded toward evening, Velrith's condition worsened. The infection in her shoulder continued to spread, the fever intensifying to the point where her thoughts became fragmented and confused. The pain from her various injuries seemed to blur together into a constant, background roar that never diminished. She could no longer tell where one source of pain ended and another began.
The fever dreams started as the light in the medical pen dimmed with the approaching night. Her mind, pushed beyond its limits by pain, infection, and psychological trauma, began to slip away from the present reality and into memories and hallucinations that felt equally real.
She was back on Earth, in her childhood home. The walls were familiar—faded blue paint, family photographs in mismatched frames, the old couch with the torn armrest. Sunlight streamed through the windows, warm and golden, nothing like the harsh red light of the demon realm. The air smelled of cooking food, something with garlic and tomato, a scent that made her chest ache with longing.
Her mother was there, standing in the kitchen doorway. She looked exactly as Velrith remembered from Joseph's last visit—middle-aged but still energetic, her hair showing grey streaks, her face lined but kind. She was wearing the blue apron she always wore when cooking, and she was calling out.
"Joseph! Joseph, dinner's ready! Come eat before it gets cold!"
The voice was so clear, so perfectly real, that Velrith tried to respond. She tried to say that she was coming, that she would be right there, but her throat was too dry and her tongue too swollen. The words came out as a weak, rasping sound that did not carry.
Her mother's expression changed from cheerful invitation to concern. "Joseph? Are you okay? You look sick. Come here, let me check your temperature."
Velrith wanted to go to her, wanted to feel her mother's cool hand on her forehead, wanted the comfort and safety of that familiar touch. But she could not move. Her body was paralyzed, stuck on the cold dirt floor of the medical pen, unable to bridge the impossible distance between the demon realm and Earth.
"Joseph, please," her mother's voice took on a desperate edge. "Don't leave us again. We've been looking everywhere. Your father is so worried. Just come home. Please come home."
The scene began to fragment, breaking apart like a reflection in disturbed water. The kitchen wavered and dissolved. Her mother's form became transparent, her voice fading into distance. Velrith reached out with one trembling hand, trying to grasp something, anything, of the vision before it disappeared completely. But there was nothing to hold onto. The fever dream collapsed back into the dark, painful reality of the medical pen, leaving behind only a profound sense of loss and longing. She lay there in the darkness, tears running silently down her feverish face, her mother's voice still calling in her mind even as the infection spread deeper through her shoulder and the night settled over the Arena's wounded and dying.