Markul smiled. He had this Pit battle all lined up. His opponent, a slight girl with short black hair, was leaning against the wall; her breath coming in short gaps. A thin line of blood was trailing from the corner of her mouth, and burns and scrapes covered hr lithe body. She was in bad shape, and the crowd was clearly was anticipating a fatality.

He smiled feraly, dark red electricity beginning to gather around his clenched fist. Suddenly, the girl looked up, a fierce light burning in her eyes. Startled, he lost focus and the energy dissipated. In one palm, she displayed what her hands had been buissily doing behind her back- a perfectly folded origami glider. She raised it up to her lips, mumuring something Markul couldn’t hear. The glider shimmered with a rainbow hue, which finally settled into the edges of the wing. Staring him in the eye, she threw the glider. It flew in a long, lazy arc. Markul raised his hand, to knock the glider away, but the eyes of his unnamed opponent mesmerized him, like a mouse staring at a cobra. As the edge of the glider’s wing brushed by his throat, he did not feel the expected pain, but instead a feeling like a fingernail tracing a slow line against his skin.

As his life dripped slowly down onto his chest, the last thing Markul saw was the girl grinning demonically, and one of the myriad of Pit sponsors, all watching the terrible carnage in crisp suits and dresses, raise a hand with a bronze dragon that he knew to be enclosed in it. His life was over. She had won. She was to be sponsored.

---

Senna smiled. She had easily taken him out. Even as she performed the Ritual, the removal and imbuing of her fallen enemy’s soul into a piece of origami paper, she heard footsteps in the branch of the Catacombs, the underground tunnels that were under the Pit and were said to be dug by children desperate to escape from their prison, The footsteps stopped outside the room she has always used for her Ritual.

She stiffened, and grabbed a glider. The door opened, and she prepared to throw, but promptly dropped I in shock. The woman in the doorway was the woman who had agreed to sponsor her in the Pit. “And just what are you doing with that?” asked the woman, her nose wrinkling as she nudged the body of Markul. Senna kept a tight face, but was not prepared for the slap she received. “You, you undergroomed whelp, will answer me when I talk to you!” Senna winced, and then replied, “I am imbuing his soul into a piece of origami paper, m’am”. Contrary to what she expected, the woman looked pleased. “And do you know that I am to be your pit sponsor? “Yes m’am.” I will expect you to be in all the battles I wish you to be in?” “Yes, m’am.” Then dispose of that-“she wrinkled her nose again-“thing, and follow me.” Senna felt a flash of alarm, and said “But, m’am, -“ She was cut of when the sponsor knifed her hand into Senna’s neck, and she keeled over.