“Relax,” Rhys said to his travel companion.

    “Easy for you to say, you’re a Protected.”

    Rhys didn’t feel protected. He hadn’t felt right in more than a year, since the unholy attacks on the city which he had played a part in thwarting. He prayed nightly for his nightmares to fall into remission, but daily they returned. Dustin’s presence had helped, but Dustin had gone north, confident as ever, to deal with other problems.

    “The city is safe, Frank. Safer than it’s ever been. The Gifted are more likely to hug us than hurt us, and the people who have flocked to the city have been generous, and fruitful. Besides, after all we’ve been through, what’s a few bumps in the night?”

    He didn’t mean it the way he said it. Sure, the Gifted, the word he used to replace Abnormals, would jump to defend the pair, but he knew what other things the dark places harbored, had seen their eyes, and stood before them. Rodents and flies had rolled forward in waves, their ten thousand glowing red eyes tried to envelope him, as they had enveloped his friends…Tingles worked up his arms, and his hair stood on end. He rubbed himself to push away the chill.

    Franklyn bristled at past threats’ memories, and his eyes darted to old warehouses, businesses and massive buildings set back from the weathered road, now partially covered by overgrown trees and grasses. Every moving shadow demanded his attention as a breeze cut down the street and set the moonlight dancing.

    “We could have at least worn our regalia.”

    “I’m not sure they would welcome even the two of us at an after-hours event wearing our robes, Frank. Wait till you meet Pete. If unwelcome people come knocking, he’s as good as a brick wall.”

    “Pete?”

    “Just relax. Try to enjoy the show, ok?”

    Rhys wasn’t sure why he had brought Franklyn. He had considered asking Kendrick. He thought of him as a closer friend because they spoke on deeper things, but he never forgot Kendrick was his senior. Add to that, Kendrick could never agree to attend a fight, as someone from the Production Guild would recognize the him. They recognized Rhys too, but they had accepted him as a regular and had welcomed the gruff Dustin Langley with open arms. Now, Rhys had a permanent pass by association.

    Being alone reminded him of the shadows in the corners, and he had avoided it more over the last year than he liked to admit. He wondered how Dustin dealt with it so calmly.

    He paused for a moment when the old stadium’s red brick facade came into view. It resided in the old Ohio State fairgrounds complex, and he felt an odd nostalgia pangs for a world he had never known. Sunday sermon crowds talked during the afternoon lunches about the way things had been. Shoulder to shoulder people, so thick that when one person moved, the crowd shifted like a wave in the sea of humanity. 

    Great diggers and mechanized shovels as tall as houses from the world before gradually drifted from vibrant yellow to golden orange rust in disuse, but one had never moved in his presence. Understanding how one person sitting in a chair dug a hole in a single scoop bigger than a team could dig in an hour was as much magic to him as any pyromancer. Kritarchy’s masons made concrete, with shovels and buckets, and two men mixing the materials. The gray and white powders came together with water in just the right balance. The thick slop dried over several days. Pre-Fall people made bridge spans and buildings which dwarfed his cathedral home.

    The Stadium remained a testament to those who had built before even though the north-end roof had collapsed in on itself several winters back. They made the best of it in the daytime, and used the gap to light sanctioned events. At night, when the sun went down, it let in night air for less official proceedings.

    “Hey, Pete,” Rhys said to the doorman.

    He pronounced it “Peti,” like the first half of “petite.” Rhys still marveled at the bouncer as he approached. Few men looked down on the priest, but Rhys barely made it to the door man’s shoulder.

    “Who’s the unrobed, robed one?”

    Eyes, spaced slightly too wide on his head, stared at Franklyn without blinking.

    “Why would you call me a priest?” Franklyn said, falling over every other word.

    “Father Franklyn, meet Pete. Pete, don’t worry he’s with me. He was there on the day. Have some respect for the priest that saved you.”

    “No problem, Padre, you know I need to ask. Can’t have too many snooping eyes.”

    “Besides,” Rhys said. “We’re just out for a walk tonight, heard some commotion, thought we should pray over whatever is happening.”

    “Pray for Anderson then. Odds say Hammer won’t give him three rounds.” 

    Rhys patted the big man on the shoulder, handed him the entry fee for two, and received back two candles, and two tickets with handwritten numbers. He strode past the doorman and into the arena with Frank in tow, looking nervously back at Pete as he took a candle from Rhys.

    “Snooping for what?” Frankly asked. “There’s hundreds of people in there...I don’t have any matches.”

    “Relax,” Rhys answered. “Just stay close to me, and hold your candle out to the side.”

    “But how am I going to light it?”

    They continued in through the main doors, Rhys not answering his friend, and down the center aisle directly to the arena floor covered in neatly leveled dirt, thinly spaced rake lines still visible where footsteps had not yet trod them down. Rhys’ footfalls landed confident and even. He had walked this particular stretch enough times to know they always kept it free of anything to bark a shin on. Franklyn leaned over and peered down into the darkness. On the arena’s far side, under late fall’s cool night air, dozens of candles cast light for the lower stand’s spectators. Large torches posted at four corners of a fifteen-foot square roped off ring did the same for competitors.

    Rhys held his candle up to his side while he strode forward into the relative darkness, and smiled at Frank’s startled yip when a hand clap off to the side ignited both candles simultaneously with puffs of sulfuric white smoke. The sudden light and flickering flame illuminated a young woman dressed in a bright red leotard with flames stitched across it, looping up around her breasts in a manner deliberately alluring.

    “They are using pyromancers to light candles,” Franklyn whispered harshly while transfixed more with his candle than the woman to his side.

    “And the Kritarchy uses Orandimancers,” Rhys said. “Beware the log in your own eye,” he added. “We wouldn’t be here today if not for all the help the Gifted had given us this last year.”

    When Dustin had brought Rhys for the first time, he had been pleasantly surprised by the pyromancers’ simple fire display meant to surprise and delight. He’d thought to replicate the experience for his friend, but if anything, it frightened Frank as he squinted left and right into the dark to watch for more magic users. He frowned but hid the expression in the dimness.

    “How do we know where to sit?”

    “Anywhere we fit in,” Rhys said.

    “Then what are the tickets for?”

    “They’re betting stubs,” Rhys said.

    “You bet?” Frank staggered to a stop.

Rhys stayed silent to enjoy the slight stress the idea of his gambling caused Frank.

Franklyn stuttered looking for words before some finally spilled out. “But… But. The love of money is the root of all evil!”

    “Pipe down,” Rhys said as he turned and clapped Frank on the back to get him moving. “Of course, I don’t bet, I am just here to watch. Haven’t you ever wanted to see how they do all this? The show, the pyromancers, the spectacle?”

    “Break the law? With ease by the look of it.”

    “Pyromancers aren’t against the law, Frank.”

    “Use of the stadium without consent is.”

    “Everyone knows. Some things are easier to just turn a blind eye to for now.”

    "This isn’t a blind eye,” Frank complained, and waggled his ticket stub at Rhys.

    Rhys rolled his eyes and pointed at a seat and he took the one next to it. They arrived later than he liked and Rhys looked down the ten rows to the floor-side seats and his usual space.  Near the ring the sweat and earthen floor filled his nostrils and set his heart pounding with each fist thrown. He took consolation that the view from this angle would be like picture screens on old phones and televisions.

    He had nudged Franklyn to finish his duties sooner to no avail. Not keen on the entire endeavor, Franklyn had walked at half the speed Rhys tried, but failed, to adopt. He pushed the small annoyance aside. Franklin was his friend. They had come up through the priesthood together, studied together, took their exams together, and had lived and worked in the same city for more than a decade together, and faced… No. Better to not think about it. Rhys still clung to hope that when the night got going, Frank would come round to seeing the fun side.

    Rhys threw his arm up, waggled his fingers to get attention, and woman, walking the perimeter, nodded at him.

    “How many?” she shouted.

    “Two!” Rhys answered, and thrust two fingers into the air.

    He leaned across his friend just in time to catch two small bags, pitched with expert marksmanship, which shook like old world Styrofoam packing peanuts inside. He had a coin passed down to her through the crowd and handed the second bag to Frank.

    “Popcorn!” Rhys said excitedly.

    Frank gently grasped the top open with two fingers of each hand as if contact with the bag proved harmful. He nearly dropped his candle twice. The candle, looped by his pinky finger, dripped wax precariously close to the spectator’s shoulder in front of him. He tilted his head and looked inside with one eye before he stuck one hand delicately inside so as not to touch the bag’s edge. Frank pulled out a kernel which he rubbed between his fingers.

    “It’s kind of greasy.”

    “It’s butter, Frank, not grease.”

    “Popcorn at the clergy house isn’t greasy.”

    “Popcorn at the clergy house is boring,” Rhys answered.

    He heartily tore the top off his own, leaving just a flap dangling at the side and loudly chomped at several kernels, aiming each bite’s crunch at his friend for emphasis.

    Teams escorted the fighters out to the ring, one from each side of the arena. Their faces, like cast stone, stayed stoic and no smile, no fear or angry sneer marred their features. By day they baked bread, laid stones, tilled the earth, but under a torchlit arena, they became someone else’s heroes. Conversations stopped and hands were brought together in cacophonous applause for the men about to do battle.

    The energy and cheer Rhys loved rolled over the crowd. The feeling of belonging to a group, something he had felt oddly absent from at the church since… since fear and death itself had come to conquer the Kritarchy. He shook it away again. Here people who rooted for opposite sides found a common ground in the love of the sport. He marveled briefly that they were even allowed to call the couple hundred people a crowd. For every seat that held a warm body there were ten vacancies, with nothing but wind blowing through them.

    A man wearing an old-world pinstripe suit, playing to the pre-Fall announcer stereotype, stepped to the middle of the ring. In the torch light around him and the moonlight through the ceiling, his suit’s long white stripes sparkled and swayed against the stark black cloth, even when he stood still. He wore a matching fedora hat which cast his face into dramatic shadow. 

    “For the opening fight this evening, I present to you, two middle-weight fighters! Scott The Short Fuse Anderson! With a record of twelve wins and no losses. He will be facing the up-and-coming challenger, Luke the Hammer Hand Price! With a record of seven wins, all by knockout, and no losses!”

    Half of the crowd rose to its feet when the man spoke and the clapping and cheering drowned out the latter half of the announcement. Announcements remained part and parcel of the theatrics, but everyone already knew the paired fighter arrangement for the evening.

    “I know the main event is the heavyweights, but I love the middleweight fights,” Rhys said. “They are so much faster, so much more skill than the heavyweights. Not that I’d tell them that!”

    He looked at Franklyn who sat as still as a proper priest in a Sunday sermon. He leaned to the side to peer between peoples’ trunks and legs, and while he didn’t furrow his brow or narrow his eyes, he certainly didn’t share the excitement. Rhys sighed and stayed on his feet as the fighters prepared to start. He rooted for the perceived underdog, Short Fuse. He got angry when he got hit hard, and he tended to come out swinging, but Rhys had seen Hammer put a man down with a single well-placed hit.

    Both men erupted like pressurized water to the ring’s center as a flurry of fists and shrugging shoulders opened the fight to a level of applause few men could galvanize. Each man tried to rapidly overpower the other, and time and again punches glanced off shoulders, went wide over a ducking head or fell short from a retreating face.

    A round passed, and Rhys became acutely aware of Frank, still as a sleeping babe at his side, who still hadn’t stood to watch. Other spectators around them started to periodically turn to look at Franklyn instead of the fight as he calmly and almost indifferently leaned between the bodies and legs to see as he picked at his popcorn, his fingers and hands still miraculously free of greasy sheen.

    “He’s been lucky so far,” Rhys said.

    “That he is alive?” Franklyn answered. “I completely agree.”

    “You can stand, you know. Makes for better viewing.” Unless you are in the front row, he thought but pushed the comment down.

    Franklyn looked at his old plastic seat bolted to the floor and then looked back to his friend.

    “Fuse looks like he lost some weight since his last fight, makes him faster maybe.” Rhys said.

    “You really follow this stuff.”

    Rhys sat down as did several others between the rounds for the moment it took the pugilists to catch their breath and the spectators to cast their bets. “It’s a sport.”

    “It looks like they hate each other. How can you watch a sport where men are trying to beat each other for no reason?”

    Practice, Rhys thought, but he didn’t say it. Would Frank even understand? What would he think if he knew Dustin had spent some time teaching Rhys how to throw a punch, or that he shadow boxed in his own room at night now?

    “They don’t hate each other,” said Rhys. “Well, I mean, maybe sometimes they do, but usually it’s just a sport. I’ve seen them pick each other up after a knockout, hug and congratulate each other. There was one famous fight maybe a year ago between two brothers who legitimately loved each other… what?”

    Franklyn’s eyes had lit up.

    “The Frallen brothers? The Frallen brother are fighters?” His eyes bulged wide and his voice rose louder than the local chatter. Frank’s stutter returned when he spoke again and his breath came in short gasps so severe Rhys considered handing him a popcorn bag to breath into. “They lied! They lied! They said… they said…”

    “Calm down, Frank. It’s just an outlet for some people, and you know the brothers, they love each other. I mean really watch the guys down on the floor. Look how few punches even land. Watch their feet, and how they are constantly moving. It’s an art, not a fight.”

    Franklin’s energy deflated and he did look down to the ring. Three men with large heavy wooden rakes walked the ring’s length, leveling the earth and wiping footprints, long scuffs and gouges in the soil where the fighters had battled, clear. Meanwhile the two fighters hunkered down in their respective corners, surrounded by men who sprayed them down with mist from bottles and yelled things inaudible from such a distance.

    “It’s only a few more rounds, maybe you will like the heavy weights more. It’s usually a slower pace fight.”

    He didn’t want to go back to the church, to the dark empty rooms, and relative silence. Not yet. 

    Rhys stood back up as the bell rang, bidding the men return to the fray. With a round behind them, their real skill would start to show. He loved to see how they performed under pressure, and how they executed their training when fatigued with lead arms. That was what Dustin said made the art special. Its practitioners felt the pressure, the pain, discomfort and attack, but under controlled circumstance. They could learn how they would behave later, when the world threw something less controlled at them, and they would have experience with real threat.

    Rhys had lifted the gloves they wore once, amazed they were able to keep their fists up round after round at all. Rhys had no doubt exhaustion would crush him after a few minutes of stepping into the ring as a challenger, even though he could claim several inches reach on any middleweight fighter.

    Franklyn finally rose at his side, and Rhys’ hopes sailed. Frank’s balding head led the way over and over again as he kept dodging toward Rhys, not to watch the fight as much as avoiding being jostled by the man to his side, who waved his hands in the air and screamed about the farm riding on it. Franklyn crinkled his brow at him, and a downturned set of lips further drained the Rhys’s enjoyment.

    His pronounced reaction pulled Rhys out of the moment. He stopped paying attention to the fight and looked at the people around him. Other than the exclusively young female workers selling snacks and taking bets, men comprised the crowd. More than a few had the same glazed over, wild-eyed look as the man to his right. Their unblinking eyes never wavered from their respective fighters, their fists clenched betting stubs, and brows beaded with sweat, though the coliseum air blew a decidedly chill evening breeze.

    Rhys lowered his own hands and sighed. He nearly missed as Hammer shot over a long straight punch with a devastating hook, and sent Fuse to the ground face first with a flop that Rhys’s mind filled in with a wet thwack. Fuse impacted the soil like a rag.

    The crowd around them jumped for joy and cried frustration in equal measure.

    Franklyn craned his neck to watch how it ended.

    The referee counted loudly, his hand waving up and down to tick down the seconds, but Fuse didn’t struggle to rise. He didn’t move to writhe in pain, and by the count of six, a white towel, bright against the brown earthen floor, had already landed and his crew moved quickly to get him upright and to a seat, tapping his cheeks to wake him. Though still gloved, unable to grip, Hammer hooked an arm under an available armpit and helped his opponent to the stool, as the announcer declared him the victor.

    “See,” said Rhys.

    “Ok, so he isn’t a monster,” Frankly admitted. “Maybe.”

    “Thank you.”

    “It’s still barbaric.”

    Rhys flopped his down dramatically and blew air out his lips, flapping them around loudly. He leaned toward Franklyn, speaking in a low voice so it wouldn’t carry.

    “We have no confessions to hear in the morning, we have no services. Let’s just try to enjoy the next bouts, ok?”

    “Bouts?” Franklyn emphasized the plural nature of it.

    “Yeah, there’s usually three.”

    Franklyn’s slumped down, back into his seat. He reopened his popcorn bag, and reached his fingers in again and riffled around looking for what Rhys assumed was the least buttery kernels. Rhys watched him for a few seconds and then he nudged Franklin with the toe of his shoe.

    “What?”

    “Let’s go,” Rhys said. “Quick, before the next match and we have to push the gentlemen next to you out of the way to get out.”

    That gentleman in question, seated, completely unmoving, stared at the ticket in his hand, mashed, folded and covered in sweat, like it was going to magically transform into a different number. Rhys felt Franklyn’s scorn hit home, and then nudged him again and gestured with his head to get moving.

    The pair were out the arena door before the next match announcement finished, and Pete called after Rhys as they passed him.

    “You lose all your money, priest?”

    “My guy had a glass jaw.” He turned on his heel to face the bouncer winked at him and waved goodbye before he turned back around to continue walking.

    “Glass jaw?”

    Rhys shook his head. “You need to get out more, Frank.”

    “I’m sorry.”

    Rhys angled his pace to get a half step closer and put an arm around his fellow priest and gave him a friendly squeeze.

    “It’s ok. It’s an excuse to take Sister Stacy next time.”

    Franklyn stuttered for half a block before Rhys let him off the hook.