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Chapter Nineteen

When the sun rose beautifully over the walls of the arena, it filled the sky with bright colors, like purple, red, orange, and yellow, like a fire. And it filled Glory with a twinge of freedom as she stared at it, but that feeling was ruined when she saw it through the bars of her cell and the sound of the oncoming crowd of people that were waiting to watch her fight. And her fight was the very first one, so that was peachy. She glared at every human being that shuffled to the rows of benches at the top of each wall and looked through her bars at the other prisoners. They were all ragged-looking through their bars across the way. It filled her with pity to look at.

She watched them scrounge through their stale bread and dirty water, like true prisoners. She didn't even get any food, and she got very little water for the past two days. She was surprised that none of her friends mentioned how incredibly skinny she must be. She was so hungry that she heard her stomach grumbling and it hurt her torso.

Glory laid on the ground with her hands under her head, and she was wide awake, despite how tired she looked. She couldn't sleep, and she felt like crying, but no tears came. She waited until the sun came before she whispered a prayer-like song to herself.

All of my struggles are my scars

And there are people behind bars

And they're tryin' to get out

But they can't find their way

So let me run away, run away

Watch me run away

From this war

Let me run away

So you don't have to fear the dark

I will fight with you until the end

But afterwards, I will leave, my friends

Let me run away

From this world

She sat up and faced the guard walking into her cell and grunting in anger at the broken door. Glory narrowed her eyes at him, and he unlocked the cuffs around her wrists and neck, then he dragged her up by her upper arm and tore her out of her cell and down the hallway. He threw her into a new room with several racks that held many different shaped weapons. Glory looked back at him before walking over to the racks to survey what weapons to use. There was a spiked club she could use, but she looked around more to see if she would change her mind. When she kept waking around and still had three racks to go, she spotted her sheathed swords in front of her and she sighed in relief.

She was glad that nobody got rid of them. She picked them up by the shoulder straps and buckled them over her chest so the swords were behind her back. There was a tall mirror in the corner, so she looked at herself before the guard tore her out of the room again.

She looked extremely skinny, so skinny that if she didn't have her t-shirt on, she would probably see her own ribs. And her jeans felt too big, but just slightly. She walked back over to the weapon racks again and quickly grabbed two pairs of leather knee pads, a black vest, and elbow pads, and she strapped them to her skinny limbs. Then she grabbed a rubber band and tied her white hair into a tight ponytail. Now at least she looked like a decent fighter. She also noticed the faded scars all over her arms, but she ignored them. If she took a few more scars, it would just mean she was used to it and she wouldn't care at all.

The guard grabbed her again, and she let him. There wasn't anything she could do to avoid this fight, so she'd just go with it and hope not to die at the end. Her friends needed her. Giddy needed her. The Sydney Nation needed her. So she had to pull through, for them. And if she ended up dying at the end of this, at least these prisoners would be free. And everyone would move on and find a new Moonshadow Elf to replace her, it's not like she was the last one. At least, not that she was aware of.