Pain was a familiar art to Amina. It had always been Isra's primary instrument of teaching: how to cause it, how to escape it, and—most importantly—how to take it and keep fighting, without tears or complaint. The final lesson was by far the hardest to master. Amina had been slapped and kicked and thrown to the ground more times than she could count, most often for running her mouth on topics Isra deemed inappropriate.

Spite had sharpened Amina's tongue after years of back-and-forth. She hated her mentor for her callousness, for her ruthless teaching, yet she could feel a begrudging respect rising within her core at this moment. Ruthlessness was keeping her alive.

Blood and dirt streaked her cheek, an ugly red smeared in the corner of her eye that burned thrice as much as sand. The same shade scrubbed the stone beneath her like warpaint. Teeth bared, she shoved up off the ground to fire a snarl at the Feralites, shrinking inward as they closed in as a semi-circle of claws and scraggly fur.

They crawled over the benches and tables with bowls cracking underfoot, smearing their contents across the ragged wood, all inclinations of civilised behaviour forgotten the moment Amina had been thrown from her seat. Shards of her own half-empty bowl traced an arc across the grimy floor. The handful of minutes for which this room had been a dining hall were only a faded memory; now, this place was nothing but a fighting ring, a lawless reflection of the arena she should've earned her mage's cloak in. Her side ached, an undercurrent to the race of her heart, but it was easier not to fear now.

Practice drove her to her feet. She wiped the blood from her face and spat. "Is that all you've got?"

A growl thundered in her ear, too little warning to act on before a kick to her knees sent her sprawling once again. Thick, smokey fur lined the face that loomed over her, seamlessly blending with the Feralite's matted curls and spreading much further and wilder to coat his bare chest. Bile singed the back of Amina's throat. As he crouched to snatch her arm, she ducked, stomach pressed flat to the stone, then lunged for the silver tail protruding from his patchwork shorts. It was greasy beneath her palm. The sensation grated and slithered under her skin like an acidic slime, difficult to ignore, but she fought a shudder and yanked hard.

He toppled with a yelp, kicking and squirming so fiercely it was hard to tell how he landed. His claws whistled past her ear as she rolled. Streaks of silver flashed at the edges of her vision, blurred by endless movement, until she flung a kick that connected with something hard and hairy. There was a whimper, and the pursuit stopped.

She had perhaps a second to recover her breath. Then a foot slammed down on her chest, much too heavy to be human. She wheezed and snapped at the air, lungs dented, folding into a barely-effective dodge on instinct alone. Her knees pulled underneath her. Get up, her mind berated, slippery fingers picking at her limbs. Get up.

She raised her head only to have it smacked back down. A dissonant thud met her skull and drained the world of clarity. Tall shadows loomed above, figures blending to clusters of faded colour, strung together by laughter and the furious ringing in her ears. She couldn't hear herself shout. The sound popped anyway, satisfying and enticing, as she clawed at the stone.

Get up.

She flipped onto her back and kicked out, grinning when she heard a sound of pain echo, then onto her side to rise again. She got halfway up this time before an arm swung into her face and a hand yanked her skirt until it tore and she was back where she'd begun, slipping in her own blood. She swung a punch that met air. Someone caught her arm instead. Another gripped her opposing wrist, and though she wrestled and dragged her heels raw across the relentless sand-covered rock, she could not break free.

They hauled her up higher than she wanted to be, with her toes scratching helplessly at ground too far away to stand on. She squirmed anyway, buzzing inside, still gasping for air. A face puzzled together by ashy flesh and hard yellow scales appeared in front of her, showing off a pair of curved, discoloured fangs. A narrow tongue slid across them, dripping saliva.

Amina jerked in her captors' hold, her eyes stinging from the noxious stench. "Let me—"

A fist swung into her jaw. Another soon followed, rough and bony and enough to snap her face to the side. Jeering voices shouted words she didn't recognise. There was more laughter, and then the blows were upon her like waves kicked up in a river, rushing, roaring, giggling away as they sought to drag her beneath the surface. She felt like a tiny, slippery beast caught in their net. Even as the world smeared, she kept squirming, legs flailing in every direction as kick after kick found purchase, but none of it was enough. Something warm and wet ran down the curve of her shoulder, her skin freezing cold beneath it. Feeling dripped from her ankle. She yelled out and snapped her teeth and twisted, blood hot as dying cinders and pounding.

She wanted this nest destroyed. She would fight them all, every one, and she'd win. She had to. She could keep fighting, if they'd just let her go, let her move.

Weight flung to the side, she strained, and finally the grip on one arm slid away. A midair kick backwards sent her crashing back to the ground. Her knees weren't ready to support her and so they folded; she slipped, hands flying blindly out at nothing as someone took a strike at her shins. Her head cracked against the sharp edge of something—the bench, the stone, bone itself—and she fell headfirst into the river, swimming in thick, thick water. The nest turned out its lights.

She was moving, though, walking through the dark, on her feet, though her feet were numb and too light. Distantly, she thought of Zephyrine, of her promise, of the pride in her shiny new mentor's face when Amina returned with Feralite corpses in her wake and with this dirty cavern to show off, its walls wet with blood. They'd give her a mage's cloak then. The thought wrapped her, silky and soft.

Reality snapped back with the grating shriek of a door dragged shut.

She flung herself against it, scrabbling to get it open. Her nails dragged over rusted bars, bent and forced into an uneven lattice, rattling under her impact. She slammed her shoulder against the door. A cry shredded between her teeth, and she stumbled back without wanting to; pain lanced the bones in her arm, sharp and throbbing. Laughter bounced around her newfound cage.

The crowd of Feralites cackled and pointed at her from beyond the bars. The nearest one was the man with the silver-furred chest, now speckled with a few drops of red. He grinned at her. These creatures did love to display their disgusting teeth. In a step that nearly fell from beneath her, she returned to the bars and gripped them hard enough to sting her palms. Her breaths scraped in and out, raw in her throat, her voice reduced to a shaky rasp she hated. "Let me go."

The scaled Feralite leaned their head over the man's shoulder. Stubby horns stuck up from their hairless head, poking at the fur lining his face. Their eyes flicked to their companion and back again, full of strange, slitted mirth. "Cute," they giggled.

Amina bristled. "If I had any dust, I'd destroy you," she hissed. The Feralite rolled their eyes and slid away, tugging the others along with them, but she kept shouting even as they disappeared into the dark. "I would! I'll get out and I'll kill you! I'll..."

They were gone. Her voice crumbled to dust, and she staggered back, still breathing hard. Her chest hurt and her shoulder screamed and her left leg was weaker than it should be. She stomped it, head shaking to rid it of its loose, smokey feeling. "No," she muttered. She paced across the tiny space, listing to the side until she was tracing a circle. "No, no, no. I'll get out." She dragged a hand up across her face, tangling in her curls. Her headpiece was missing. Her breaths grew faster, chest heaving, the world paling. She gripped her shoulder. The blood had leaked easily through her dress's torn sleeve, sticky on her collar and now between her fingers. A curse fell small and limp from her tongue. With her eyes fixed on the back wall, she forced herself straight, then paused. Ice trickled down the back of her neck.

Someone was watching.

She whirled around with a gasp, every aching part of her tensing up. The Feralites before had been noisy, growling at each other, laughing endlessly on, so she wasn't prepared for the total, absorbent silence of the figure standing on the other side of the bars. It wore the darkness well, like a fine shroud. Plated armour inked in dark mahogany ran all the way down one arm, concealing the flesh in hard shell, the hand at the end indistinguishable amongst the sharp edges and the long silhouettes they cast. Amina could barely tear her eyes from the unreal, glossy perfection of it; she couldn't make out the seam where the armour ended and the creature's skin began, but she was distinctly aware that there was skin, with nothing at all to cover it. It stunted her thoughts, rendered her utterly still.

The other Feralites were monsters, without question, but they played at some imitation of humanity: a few recognisable words, a smile or a blink, tattered clothing. This creature's similarity to Amina ended at the number of limbs and appendages. It had a nose and a mouth, both too small and flat. It had eyes, but they were narrow grey on jet-black, and they stared.

Any residual warmth in Amina's core dribbled down to her toes, leaving only a wispy chill to pump through her blood. "It's you," she breathed.

She struggled to reconcile the faint imprints she had in her memory—the creature watching her from the shadows of the battle, coupled with the charcoal sketches she'd found scattered across yellowing pages of books she'd been driven to dig out from Isra's collection. The sight of it awoke the same feelings it had the first time. Fear rattled through her fierce and strong, gusting alongside the same drive to act, to do something, though the latter sensation ricocheted and shook her up all over again. She couldn't fight nor could she tear down those bars. She could only stare back, licking her lips as she searched for something, anything to say.

The silence was leeching, like teeth eating away at her lungs, but neither she nor the creature filled its void.

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