“New recruits sit up front,” she says simply.
Up front. At Crixus’s feet. I see the noxiors from my last Sleep—the Fears—quivering on their benches, hardly touching their food.
“I’m good here.”
“Not for long.” She nods to three beefy guys who lumber toward us, each holding his own bowl of breakfast. They stop at our table.
Two sit, but the largest glares at me and says one thundering word. “Move.”
I don’t want to pick a fight. Really, I don’t. It’d be foolish. But something about this cliché bully who is no older than me causes my temper to flare.
“This seat’s taken.” I mean for the sentence to come out casual or even kind of cocky, but instead it’s a growl.
“Ooh, another Anger,” the woman says, and she almost sounds happy. “It’s about time. Just sit, Rolf. We’re not here long anyway.”
“But, Helene . . .”
“Sit.” She gives the command in what I can only describe as a mom tone, leaving no room for argument.
But I don’t want some lady to defend me. I want to fight. Crixus is going to train us, so it might as well start here. I start to rise, but to my surprise Rolf sits across from me, and the woman, Helene, slides her own bowl of breakfast my way.
“Eat. It’ll settle your emotions.”
Eat? What a joke. This is a dreamscape. What good will food do? I eye the bowl of stick-to-your-bones oatmeal anyway. As confused as I am about my body’s relationship with the Nightmare, I am hungry. I take a bite, and it actually feels filling when it hits my stomach. Energy returns. It may not be real food, but my brain processes it like real food with the same mental benefits.
So I eat.
It has about as much flavor as the leather on Crixus’s sandals. Now that I look around, everyone is wearing sandals. Leather. Roman regalia. They’re too busy embracing this bizarre world to realize it’s killing them. Killing us.
I’m the only one still in jeans and a T-shirt. I’d like to stay that way. Crixus isn’t going to get me in any Halloween garb. I’m not going to feed his fandom.
For now, I’m in the Nightmare to study it. I entered several hours ago in the middle of the night, trapped in that room of snoring people until some soldier let me out. I spent that time working on keeping my emotions from swelling.
Nothing irritates me more than wasted time.
My emotions may still be on the edge and heightened—a side effect that never existed in original dreamscapes—but I try to keep them contained so I can learn more about this world I’m going to override. The only problem is the fog rolling into my memories, blocking details and clarity the same way disturbed silt obscures the vision of a scuba diver.
And I should probably try not to die.
“The Arena is where you earn your place in our world,” Crixus says.
He doesn’t seem to care if we live or die, and that’s a problem for me, especially when I have so much riding on my survival. I can’t let myself die—not even if it’s in style.
“If you want to live here and start a life, you need to prove you can survive.” Crixus flips his gladius, then expertly slides it into his belt. Roman fandom or not, he’s Level 99.
I’m Level 1. Okay, with my Draftsman knowledge maybe I’m Level 2.
“So it’s a vetting system but with slavery,” another noxior says. He has short, curly black hair and hasn’t touched his oatmeal. “Who made you Caesar?”
“The Emperor. And if you make it to the top, Skyler, you can meet him.” Crixus folds his hands behind him like a centurion at ease. “You’ll train every day and you’ll compete every day. The battles will progress in intensity and opponents until you’ve earned your citizenship.”
“Compete?” a shaky noxior asks. “Battle? What are we fighting for?”
“Fight for yourself, first and foremost.”
“We don’t have time for this!” I tighten my grip around my wooden spoon as my anger spikes like fuel on a spark. The utensil cracks beneath my knuckles. “While you play your gladiator games, some of us are trying to survive in the Real World. We need to learn about this Hell, not turn it into some role-playing fantasy.”
“This is how you learn about it.” Crixus eyes my spoon, almost bored. “Your first fight is tonight. Since you’re new to Tenebra, you’ll be opening acts in the Games. The real noxiors will fight later . . . when people actually care about watching.”
Across from me, Rolf snickers. Helene merely rises and leaves the mess hall. Her three cronies follow.
Doesn’t Crixus see what a waste of time this is?
“I’m not going to be some puppet of entertainment.”
“Then we’ll kill you.” The statement drops like a kettlebell on concrete. “And if you die in Tenebra, your body dies in the Old World too.” He raises an eyebrow at me. “Or did you not realize that?”
“I know it.” From the paling faces of the noxiors around me, they didn’t know this fact. Lucky them. I’ve seen it with Nole and here in the Nightmare with James. I will not go down the same way. I have too much to do when I’m awake. “So we either fight in your Games and die—or you’ll kill us.”
“Or, if you stop being a cocky meathead, you learn to fight, to survive, and you earn your citizenship.”
I throw my empty clay bowl at his face.
Crixus cuts through it with his gladius before I see him draw the weapon. The severed pieces of the bowl smash against the wall behind him, but he doesn’t blink. In fact, he turns his attention to the other noxiors.
“Weapons through that door.” He points behind us with his free hand, then to the archway at his left. “Training after meals through that hallway.”
I hate to admit it, but I kind of like him.
