to your cage, outlander!” said the guard. “Maybe after your next fight, your friend will have his freedom, eh?”
Sinbad met the ground with a harsh thud, followed by the slamming of the cell’s door.
“Sinbad!” Azrak yelled in worry. He offered Sinbad his hand, but the sailor waved it away. “Let me help.”
“I’m fine, Azrak,” said Sinbad, slowly rising. “Just a little winded.”
“There’s no shame on showing humility, my friend,” retorted Azrak. “You have fought a great battle. You must not strain yourself. You have to rest and keep up your strength.”
“I cannot rest, Azrak. I have to be on my guard at all times. It has kept me alive so far.”
Azrak gave him a dubious look. “You are making a dangerous habit on confusing bravery with arrogance, Sinbad. You will not make it through the next fight unless your wounds are treated and fully recuperated.”
Sinbad knew his friend was right. He was not of use to anyone while being tired and bruised. He felt disappointed in himself for not fulfilling his promise to gain Azrak’s freedom. Sinbad had achieved his share of the given terms, but Akhdar decided to renege on his part.
“You were right about Akhdar,” Sinbad humbly admitted. “I tried playing his game and he decided to change the rules.”
Azrak put his hand on Sinbad’s shoulder. “You had no choice, Sinbad. You did what you had to do. You are not the one in blame. This is all on Akhdar.”
Sinbad paused for a moment. He lifted his head to Azrak and gave him a smile.
“At least you did not say, ‘I told you so.’”
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The sound of the battle conch shell filled the arena. The spectators roared wildly as the primus was about to commence. Sinbad and Azrak turned around to look between the prison bars to see what the disturbance was about.
Sinbad could only make out a guard wrangling a horse. Sinbad had never seen any horses running through Mars before. When the horse advanced further into the arena, Sinbad discovered this creature wasn’t what he thought it was. It wasn’t a wild stallion at all. It was a man.
No, not a man—a centaur!
Sinbad couldn’t believe his eyes. This creature had the upper body of a man and a horse’s lower half. But he did not have the hooves of a horse, but three toes on each foot that resembled those similar of a gorilla. The centaur had a powerful frame. Broad heaving shoulders, massive chest, lean waist, and heavy arms. His skin was grey with a hue of purple, he had brown eyes, and a shock of tousled black hair crowned his balding forehead. Every time it swayed its head, its long ponytail would crack like a whip. The centaur was given a weapon from the guard, a kunai—a sharpened blade attached to a long piece of rope.
Astounded, Sinbad asked Azrak, “What is that?”
“A Kurwani,” Azrak replied implausibly. “I thought they were all dead.”
The elderly Azurian got off his perch and stared at the centaur.
“He is Kar-Tyr,” he said, “the last of his people.”
“Amazing,” Sinbad softly said in awe. He hadn’t seen a creature like that since his Golden Voyage years ago. But the one he encountered was a cyclops, and there wasn’t a griffin to swoop in to attack him as well.
“Kar-Tyr’s race, the Kurwani, valued combat over all things,” continued the elder as Sinbad heeded to every word he said. “They lived to fight and fought to live. For years they were the personal guard of the Dozhakian zhar—never asking for more than to prove themselves in
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battle. When Akhdar gained power, he feared they would revolt.” Then the elder’s voice descended into despair, “He had them hunted and executed one by one. All except for Kar-Tyr. And now the once proud warrior merely serves as entertainment for Akhdar.”
The conch of battle sounded again. The crowd gave out a laundry list of cheers and jeers when the guards pulled open the giant door under Zhar Akhdar’s terrace. The thing that emerged was far greater in height and more horrendous than the moktar.
It was at least two stories tall and its body was transparent. The people in the viewing gallery and Kar-Tyr could see the creature emitting some sort of electric charge inside its body. Its arms were two very lengthy tentacles with hundreds of suction cups on them. And enough force to pull a man’s face clean off. Unless its long ragged teeth would gnash them first. The jellyfish-like monster had an extensive jaw that could swallow a man whole, bones and all. Fangs, the size of swords, protruded through its receding gums. It had no legs, but it got around with six small tentacles on the bottom of its bulbous base. The strangest thing was it had no eyes. It relied mainly on some sort of radar sense, which was being produced by sound. It was receiving a clear view from all those cheering spectators.
Kar-Tyr speedily galloped towards the monster, whirling his kunai in coercion. The giant monstrosity screeched and began to flay its stretched appendages at him. Kar-Tyr dodged its devastating blows, while the aftershock sprayed sand all over the fighting circle. Kar-Tyr was trying to find the beast’s weakness. He knew the rope attached to the end of his kunai wouldn’t be long enough to reach around its swollen neck. He had to find another way to take this enormous fiend down.
Kar-Tyr was biding his time. Allowing the monster to make attacks so he could catch it off guard. It lashed its
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tentacles, now crackling with electricity and the centaur barely evaded the assault. But several guards weren’t as prompt as the gladiator. A tentacle shot down from above, clamped around one guard’s torso, and lifted him off his feet. With a casual flip, the tentacle tossed him aside as if he were a rag doll.
With growing dread, Kar-Tyr watched as the airborne guard came crashing down to the ground clear on to the other side of the arena. He didn’t move.
The monster grabbed the other Thulian guard with its suction cups and with all its might it backhanded the captive’s partner across the arena.
The doomed guard saw the bioelectric energy surging through the bulk of the gigantic creature. A beast-like snarl was the last thing he heard in his life, as the monster pulled him in closer to its mouth.
The monster shocked its prisoner with an electric impulse. The guard gave one gasping cry, and slumped down limply in the creature’s tentacle, and then was eaten voraciously. Bits of flesh and chinks of the deceased’s armor flew out of its mouth while some of the bloody bits had gotten stuck between the beast’s teeth. The crowd gave an outburst of merriment, knowing anything can happen in this fight.
Kar-Tyr kept his bottom four legs steady. Then he noticed the creature’s small tentacles on its lower body. Kar-Tyr unraveled his kunai and spun it to distract the beast. The monster’s use of echolocation could see the small parasite of a life form. It gave a wrathful shriek and brandished its massive limbs in rage.
Kar-Tyr threw
