The Endless Solvent

Nilda plummeted from the second floor platform onto the dirt fighting ring below. She didn’t bother trying to soften the ground. Dirt seemed to be a different kind of substance, the granular nature of it much less responsive to her abilities than solid stone. Midge was the one who shoved her over the edge and she saw his glittering black eyes when she painfully lifted herself up and craned her head to face him.

Adlo and the auburn hair woman joined him, all of them looking down past the tip of their nose to her.

“Why did you kill the boy?” NIlda asked. In her fall, her cloak hood fell to reveal her head. She no longer cared about keeping it on. There was barely anyone at the fighting ring at that time of day - it was mid afternoon and no fights took place until later that night. There were a small group of men watching in the stands, one of the markedly more well dressed than the rest. Nilda barely paid them any heed.

“He was making too much noise,” the auburn haired woman sniffed. “And he was diseased.”

Nilda narrowed her eyes at the woman, still well dressed, still clinging to Adlo. Was she capable of murder? Then again, Adlo frequently spent time with dangerous people.

“The boy didn’t do anything wrong,” Nilda hissed.

The auburn haired woman gave her a smirk. “Don’t you think I did him a favor? He gets to enjoy death instead of being a homeless, sickly urchin.”

Enjoy death. Nilda felt her mouth grow dry at the words. Would she have been better off if she died back when she was an urchin child? There would have been no pain; she would never have met Aldo or Mallon or Mallon’s sickly son. Meaningless deaths, meaningless suffering - she could have left it all behind like her mother tried to.

“If you cared for the boy, perhaps you should have fulfilled your duties?” Adlo spoke up, his voice light.

Nilda stared at him.

“Now they’re both dead and you’re in trouble, little knife. Why did you think betrayal was a good idea?”

Adlo’s beautifully angled face seemed even more angular in the torchlight underground. Beautiful, yes, but Nilda thought he looked disgusting then. They way she had thought about him before made her stomach churn. Why was it that she wanted to work for him?

“I can finish her off for you,” the auburn haired woman murmured.

“No,” Adlo said. “I am quite fond of our little knife. I wish to give her a chance.”

The woman settled on giving Nilda a cold look. Shame, Nilda wanted the chance to stab rocks into her.

“Midge, is Lord Leton’s champion ready?” Adlo said.

“Yes, sir.” Midge’s beady eyes never left her, hatred clearly radiating out of him. He hadn’t expected her to lie to them. She never did in the past.

“I will give you a chance, my flint knife,” Adlo continued. He reached down and showed her a large hourglass with bright green sand settled at the bottom chamber. “If you survive our newest applicant until the sand runs out, I will forgive your mistake.”

“Sir…” Midge started to protest.

“If our newest fighter does what he’s told, we will put him in the main fights without having to go through our vetting process,” Adlo interrupted. He lifted his head and seemed to be speaking to one of the men in the stands. The well dressed man in the stands nodded at him - Nilda assumed that to be Lord Leton. “Two birds with one stone, no?”

Nilda’s head spun, her mind still filled with the dead glassy look of Mallon’s detached head. The man she assumed was Lord Leton nodded and Midge made a sharp whistle as a signal to his men. She had no choice in the matter.

The gate separating the north passageway and the fighting pit groaned open and a man dressed in rags stalked into the arena. He was reminiscent of Mallon and Dol the Deep-Eye: burly with fists made for punching, scarred, and barrel chested. He took one look at her with a cursory glance and snorted derisively.

“What do you expect me to do with this twig?” he said.

“Kill her,” Midge spat down from his platform.

The fist fighter narrowed his eyes at her in suspicion. “I don’t murder women or children. She looks to be both.”

“If you do it before time runs out, you’re immediately in the main fight,” Adlo said. He had taken his seat and drew the auburn haired woman on his lap. He had settled like this was just another one of his fights. He turned a cool look down at the fighter. “You can start winning money immediately.”

When the fighter’s eyes widened in interest, Nilda knew it was over. He may not have murdered women or children before, but at the right price any man could be driven to do anything. It was one of the few things she learned working with Midge and Aldo. And from what she knew from glances at Midge’s record books, there was a lot of money passing between men in and around the ring. The fighter cast a glance to Lord Leton on the stands, then looked at her uncomfortably. Nilda flinched back as he rolled a shoulder.

“Sorry,” the fighter rumbled. He towered over her, huge and terrifying. “I gotta do this. Nothin’ personal.”

Midge gave her one last disdainful look and reached to flip the hourglass around. The moment the sand hit the tapered glass junction, the fighter lurched towards her. Nilda scrambled back and threw herself down to the ring of stone lining the fighting pit. Her hand touched the stone and it turned soft at her fingers, like clay. Then it solidified again after she grasped a chunk of it.

The fighter reached for her and she swung the hunk of rock at his temples. It hit his head, creating a gash that bled into his eyes. The fighter swore loudly and caught her cloak, the tie at her neck strangling her as he hauled her back.

“A Part-fucking Solvent twister,” the fighter spat, finally realizing why this was put as a test for his abilities. Nilda managed to struggle out of her cloak and reached for more stone. She threw handfuls of it at him, the fist-sized rocks bouncing off his thick arms he threw over his face to shield it. She snarled - she wasn’t strong enough for the rocks to do damage.

He caught up to her again and grabbed her tunic and dragged her to the center of the ring where she couldn’t reach the stone. Her arms flailed, trying to smash the rock in her hand into his head. The fighter deflected it and backhanded her face, his huge hand cracking across her face. She tasted blood in her mouth and for a few moments that was all she could think about as she lay dazed on the ground. The rock in her hand was knocked out of her hand.

Then his hands wrapped her neck and squeezed. Nilda flailed, Solvent churning around her Solute desperately. Her face felt like it would burst as the fighter squeezed and squeezed and squeezed. His heat surrounded her and she could smell the stench of his rancid breath. Darkness closed in the edges of her vision and all she could see was his red, sweaty face.

Survive.

The Being in Smoke’s voice drifted through her mind. Her eyes rolled up to the platform to the hourglass, three quarters of the way spent. The green sand shone in the torchlight, like the green emerald eyes that watched her years ago.

In the Solvent, she found the rock that was knocked out of her hand and it shot to her open palm. Then like slime, it coated her hand in a rock-glove and she rammed her arm into the side of his face. He kept squeezing. She punched him again. And this time his hands loosened.

She took in a huge gasping breath and punched him again, blindly. This time he staggered back and she struggled to her feet. His fists swung to strike her and she tried to block it with her rock-gloved hand. The force knocked her back to the edge of the ring.

The fighter, now with a bloodied face, approached her with the intention of dragging her back to the center of the ring. She tried to punch him again so he had to block her instead of grabbing her. His fist came down first, faster and glanced off the side of her face. Pain exploded from her as she feebly tried to kick. She reached to collect more rock onto her hands but they had stumbled too far away again.

He reared up again to punch her and then, screaming, Nilda clenched her fingers together and a huge spike of rock shot out from the stones closest to them and pierced the fighter’s head in a deafening crunch.

Horrified, Nilda could see how the stone spike warped the man’s skull. For a full ten seconds, they froze in their positions until she could see the light leave his eyes and his body slumped, his head still speared onto the stone. Rivers of blood streamed down the stone, along with something more solid.

Nilda turned and retched dryly into the sand when she realized it was the fighter’s brain matter. Splatters of spit and blood spotted the dirt under her.

“Apparently your ‘champion’ wasn’t sufficient, Lord Leton,” Adlo’s amused voice drifted down to her. Nilda looked up incredulously to the man she once admired.

“I see,” the finely dressed man in the stands stepped up right next to the ring and looked up to Adlo’s platform. “However I wasn’t expecting your ward to kill him off.”

“Many apologies, I will have Midge compensate you,” Adlo shrugged.

Nilda’s hands clenched in the dirt. The fighters in the pit were not humans, she realized - people like Nilda who worked for Adlo were not people. She doubted he even considered the pretty woman on his lap or Midge as people. He had been calling her a flint knife for months, and today she felt it: she was an inanimate object, a tool that should do what she was created to do or not exist at all. It was the same with Mallon, it was the same with this fist fighter that was now speared on the stone spike. They were a means to an end.

The anger, the pain, the humiliation nearly distracted her enough from hearing the nobleman speak again.

“How about you compensate me by giving me that girl?”