Hunted- Old and unedited!

Six

Kayan was led back through the tunnels and thrust back into his cage. He began to pace back and forth. What could he do? He thought helplessly to himself. He didn’t know what he’d done to deserve Amala’s hate. He decided to forget about her. Now he just needed to either figure out a way to escape and a way to do well before he escapes. The Indian man came in with Ketut and uncle. “You’ve upset my daughter deeply you filth. All she wanted was to keep you from being a killer but I guess your heart’s set on it.” Ketut unlocked the door and Uncle stepped inside. He sighed. “Amala left his mussel on.” He muttered as he tore it off, dropping it to the ground. The man flipped Kayan over his shoulder. Carrying Kayan was a small labour but not too bad because Kayan was still little more than a cub.

Uncle brought him down the hall and through one of the closed doors. Ketut rushed in front and opened the door of an empty cage. It was much smaller than Kayan’s first cage and was built with a cage on either side of it. The difference was that this cage had a soft bed of hay. Kayan noticed that in some of the cages around him the hay was soaked with red. Kayan was half placed half thrown into the cage and the door was slammed shut. Turning around, Kayan swatted at Ketut and managed to leave a long deep gash from the underside of his wrist to the underside of his elbow.

The men left quickly however Uncle left him a very small bucket of scrappy food. Kayan realized that it was probably the offcuts of the human food. He dug in though and once he was finished he looked at the animals around him.  On the right of him were two wolves; one was pure white the other pitch black. On the left of him was a beautiful animal. It was a bit smaller than an adult tiger. Its fur was chrome yellow with brown and black spots. Kayan concentrated deeply until he knew the word, leopard. “What’s going to happen to us?” Kayan said loudly. The leopard raised its head and looked straight into Kayan’s eyes.

“You have been touched by Sapienti.” He said it as a statement that required an answer.

 “Yes, I have.” Kayan spoke in a mystified tone. “You will be trained to fight then you will fight.” The leopard said in a simple tone.

“What is your name?” The leopard laughed softly at the tiger’s innocence. “I am Shadow, the black wolf is Star and the white wolf is Bell.” The wolves looked up at the sound of their names but otherwise made no move to welcome Kayan.

Kayan looked at them for a second before he asked another question. “What will I have to fight?” His voice had a hint of fear in it.

“Whatever they want you to.” Kayan hesitated before asking a follow up question, “Will I have to fight men?”

The leopard cast his sad eyes onto the small cub, “Sometimes.” Kayan sighed slightly; he hated two legs and would hate fighting them even more.

“How do they train me?” The leopard felt admiration and grief for the cub. He realized the cub was special not just because of Sapienti but because of the clever questions he was asking.

“Well, they start by evaluating you.”

“Evaluating?” Kayan interrupted.

“Yes evaluating, they test your strengths and weaknesses and work from there. They do this so-“

“Why do they need to?” Kayan said in an innocent tone, unaware that he had found the old leopard’s sore point.

“No more interruptions. Understand?” he said with growing anger.

“Sorry…” Kayan replied.

“What was I saying? Oh yes, they evaluate you so they can match you with opponents that have similar abilities. If you all have similar abilities it puts on a better show.”

Kayan thought for a few seconds, allowing the information to roll around in his head for a moment.

The room fell silent as every head turned towards the door. A key was heard scraping in the lock. After that, Kayan could here there were more than one set of steps. Three men appeared around the corner. Kayan hadn’t seen them before. They came to his cage and opened it forcefully. One grabbed him brutally on the scruff of his neck while another opened the door to the wolf cage. They grabbed Star and Bell and had left the room just as quickly as they’d arrived. They hadn’t even bothered to close the doors which swung on their hinges making a creaking sound. Shadow closed his eyes and bowed his head slightly. He had given up on Gods and had decided they didn’t exist. He hadn’t completely stopped believing. Kayan was proof of that. With all of his wisdom the leopard knew that Kayan’s destiny was more important than he could imagine. He knew the cub could very well die in training. So he prayed. He prayed to all of them including Sapienti. He hadn’t prayed since the first week in his cage.