It had been expensive. But the lust monkey in my mind had won out over the greed-demon in the end. Messily. What Esme wanted with such an outfit… Well, I knew what she wanted. And I was both pleased and slightly disturbed. In a good way.

  Having returned to the Horn, I’d passed the evening drinking. I had subtly kept topping off my glass with booze stashed in my belly pouch rather than buying more. Greed was still surly, in addition to being sticky, and I needed to be on my best behaviour tomorrow. Throwing him a bone like this was a simple way to manage my impulses.

  When I awoke, I heard a cock crowing outside, followed by Seb’s high-pitched and foul-mouthed cursing as he chased the animal back toward its roost. Breakfast was a simple affair, but tasty. I had a few hours to kill and no idea what to do with them.

  “Beville, is there something worth seeing in the city?” That imaginary ‘Lonely Planet Guide To Ankmapak’ would be really handy about now. “Something cheap?”

  “What interests you, sir? There are a variety of art houses, museums, and fantastical architecture to inspect.” He was polishing that same glass again, only looking up briefly from putting a shine on it as he spoke.

  “Art.” My tone made it clear what I thought of that word. “What’s exciting? Something to get the blood pumping.”

  “Ah. If it’s excitement you want, the arena is the place to be. Man versus monster! Monsters versus monsters! Giant sliding machines of doom versus–”

  “I get the picture. So the fights are the big thing in the city? What about… I dunno, horse races or something?” I sipped from the glass of watered-down ale that was served with breakfast and smacked my lips.

  “There are some, but it’s a modest affair compared to the arena.” He sniffed. “Scoundrels bet on horses instead of the fights.”

  “You’re a gambling man?”

  “Sweet Bulb of glowing goodness! Not at all, sir! Such a thing is far beneath a devotee of the light. The Umbrati control the fights.” That glass was either going to shine like the sun or wear away with the sudden intensity of his polishing.

  “The Umbrati, eh?” They were potentially my enemies, according to all the not-so-subtle hints various gods and assholes had dropped. “Might be worth a look.” Agatha seemed ok, for an immortal vampire assassin with a crush on me, at least. She’d been quick to agree to my request to liven up the ball… had that bitch ripped me off? High on my newfound ultra-wealth, I’d been an easy mark, even for a greedy dragon. That blood sucking sack of– Revenge would be mine!

  Keeping a lid on my rage, I got directions from Beville. Would a city map really be too much to ask for? The streets I followed led me to the edge of the Gloom and the army of outremonde urchins that seemed to constantly patrol it, then swung right and skirted around the rundown neighbourhood until I turned a corner and found… yet another shitty-looking street.

  Mentally going over the instructions, I confirmed I was in the right place. The only thing that stood out was the queue of people waiting outside a nondescript semi-detached home. Of course. Prenderghast the Insecures work, as bloody usual.

  Queuing was a strange feeling. It had been a while. Soon enough, I reached the door and was confronted by a grizzled man, scarred and bored-looking.

  “Five Bronze.” The voice was flat and uninterested. I expected he could benchpress any three members of the crowd, judging from the way his tunic strained to contain his biceps. I counted out the coins, grateful that bronze coins seemed to be beneath the greed-demon’s concern at the moment.

  Stepping through the open door was once again like entering a whole new world. A long, dark corridor stretched ahead of me, and at the end, a portal of light glowed. I followed the crowd as we made our way towards the glow, the sound of the wider crowd building to a semi-constant roar that ebbed and rose as we did so.

  Blinking in the light, I found myself in the Colosseum. Or some magic version of it anyway. Ranks of seating rose in circles around the sandy pit in the centre, but floating platforms hovered above with mammals leaning out and shaking their fists as they screamed at the fight going on below. I shuffled to one side and found a seat, carefully avoiding stepping on any toes as I moved down the line of spectators to the empty space.

  The fighters were hard at it. Two men worked together to face six long, scaly, cat-like monsters. Back to back, their swords flashed as they deflected raking claws with scarred shields. They were constantly turning, slowly rotating around some invisible centre of mass where their armoured spines met.

  One landed a lucky blow as one of the monsters got too confident and left its flank exposed for half a second before it ducked away. Amber scales flew, and blood stained the sand. The volume of the crowd ticked up. He didn’t get away unscathed. Another of the beasts flashed past as he broke out of his position to try for a killing blow, sharp claws leaving a long line of red down his left leg.

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  “Get in!” I roared to celebrate the animal's victory. My voice was lost in the hubbub of so many people screaming at once. It was an auditory assault, making my ears hum and all sound blur into one. Part of the herd. Something rebelled in me, an arrogant thing, full of anger. Greed and Lust found themselves in a three-way battle in my mind with Wrath.

  The internal conflict mirrored the one in the arena below me. Circling, striking, looking to turn opportunity into death. Gradually, the men below began to slow, too many cuts, too much blood lost. Half the beasts were dead, but those that remained smelled the blood in the air. That of their kin enraged them, that of their enemies… also enraged them, from the look of it. They were tired, but the attacks increased in tempo.

  In my mind, Wrath, a glowing thing of red flames, gradually succumbed to the glancing blows of the greed-goblin and the lust monkey. Kept at bay and it's back to the wall of my sanity, it dimmed and finally surrendered. I could live vicariously through the cat-monsters beneath me as they finally finished off the warriors. A hush fell across the crowd for a moment before a new roar, louder than before, erupted. The mammals in the audience didn’t care who won, only that something died for their entertainment.

  “WHAT A BATTLE! BROTHERS AND SISTERS! THE BRAZEN TWINS HAVE FALLEN AT LAST!” The announcer's voice blared out around me, seeming to come from everywhere at once. “Now bear with us for a hot minute while we reset the arena for the next match! This is one you won’t want to miss! The odds-on favourite is Brigitte the Bouncer! But can she hold against the one an only Kelly Krimsonscale? One to two says she will! But where will you place your money? The next fight is just minutes away! Please thank your food vendor, and don’t forget to get your ticket stamped if you’re part of the repeat customer program! Every ten deaths, you get one free!”

  “That happen a lot?” I asked the slim woman sitting next to me. She had been frantically waving a flag emblazoned with ‘BT4EVA’ until the twins had died so brutally. Teams had come out to chase the beasts back into cages, and others were scattering fresh sand and raking it into the now-stained surface of the arena. The partially eaten bodies were hurried off stage in stretchers.

  “The twins losing? How often do you think people can be eaten?” she snapped, cheeks flushed with some mix of rage and sorrow.

  “Only once, in my experience at least.”

  “Seen a lot of folks eaten have you?” she sneered. Probably more than you, and much more up close than the cheap seats.

  “A few. You?”

  “Bolrux’s Bastard got et by a Jalnipper t’other week. That was a fight! Nearly punched his way out the fing’s froat. Could see the bulge from all the way up here!”

  “Charming. Did you win? On the betting?” I asked, raising my voice slightly to be heard over the rising noise coming from the mob. Something was happening below.

  “Don’t gamble. Against the gods. Oh yeah, this will be good! That’s Brigitte there!” She pointed excitedly and began screaming like her favourites hadn’t just been turned into cat poop. Or at least begun that twenty-four-hour process.

  A woman strode out onto the sands with her arms in the air. Plates of some shining metal, a dull orange in colour, covered almost her entire body. She held a short spear in her right hand and a gleaming net hung from her left.

  “AND HERE SHE IS!” yelled the announcer, right into both my ears. I was going to find that prick… “The Bouncer once again takes to the sands of death! Undefeated by man and beast! Brigitte has a seventeen for nought record! Place your bets as quickly as possible because you’re about to meet her adversary!”

  I leaned forward. The woman was big and muscular. Hammering out her aptly-named breast plate must have taken days. She spun around and fell into stance, spear tucked under her right arm, ready to thrust. The net was swept out to her left, ready to hurl on whoever this poor Kelly Krimsonscale was.

  The crowd fell silent as her foe was led into the arena. Thick chains bound beautiful leather wings to the red scales along the flanks of a dragon. Her snout was similarly bound, and all four limbs were attached to teams of heavy-set men who sweated as they hauled each leg forward to shuffle the dragon towards her enemy.

  Ah shit.

  When she had been dragged most of the way to the middle of the arena, the chains on her legs detached, and the mammals who’d dragged her out ran for the exits like diners who couldn’t pay the bill.

  “Time to die, lizard!” Brigitte bellowed, her voice surprisingly light and feminine in comparison to her build.

  With a thud, the bindings around Kelly’s snout fell away to throw up a small crater in the sand where they landed, and she roared, stunning the crowd for a moment. Her snout swung down, and I saw the muscles above her shoulders tense in a way I recognised. Time to cook this bitch! The beast's wings remained closely chained to her sides; there was no escape in flight for my fellow dragon.

  No breath attack emerged. She hiccoughed and went cross-eyed as she stared at her traitorous red nostrils in shock.

  “None of that in here, scaly. We fight as the gods intended! Hail, Umbra!” Brigitte raised her spear and prepared to charge as the crowd roared in approval and repeated the phrase.

  The net shot forward and tangled the red dragon's jaws as she snapped forward to chomp the mammal in half. Her spear flicked out and dug in behind a scale on her shoulder. Brigitte used it as a pivot, swinging on it like an armoured poledancer, using her momentum to ping the scale away onto the sand. Thick draconic blood started to flow slowly down Kelly’s right forelimb.

  At this particular moment, the ongoing battle between Greed, Lust, and Wrath in my mind was joined by another contender. The newcomer looked like my human self, but more heavily built and slower. The expression on his face could, at best, be described as gormless.

  Greed and Lust fell back as Stupidity joined Wrath and offered him a hand up from where he had sagged to his knees. In a blur, the pair charged down Greed and Lust hand in hand. They clotheslined the other aspects of my personality. Wrath started putting the boot in to the downed Greed, and Stupidity just sat down on top of Lust, who squirmed desperately, possibly in pleasure.

  “Probably going to regret this,” I grumbled.

  I rose to my feet and leapt towards the arena.