| Briar Wolf |

1-Briar

There isn't a soul alive who can enjoy a dogfight. That's why these people are soulless.
- Briar

   Headlights and cheap gas lanterns illuminated the red clay of the ring. Chain-link fence topped with barbed wire kept the fights contained within a 50ft diameter. The area beyond was a crowded mix of trucks, trailers, and patchwork cars scattered as far back as the woods surrounding the clearing allowed. Spectators and gamblers alike were pressed up against the fence, cussing at how slow the fight was going. Money flowed like beer, but neither of the two bets was showing much promise at this point.

   The wolf circled the ring slowly, muscles in her haunches and shoulders straining from fatigue. Clods of dirt clung to thick smoky fur, and the open wounds from earlier matches were smarting beneath the adrenaline and clay that streaked her like warpaint. She was heaving for breath, mouth open and tongue quivering between white canines.

   It was the final match of the night.

   Her last opponent was a massive tosa inu that was nearly even with the wolf in size. He didn't growl or snap, unlike the other dogs who had been intimidated by her. Light brown fur covered the dog in uneven patches, made even more obvious in the dingy lighting. Thick scars zigzagged the expanse of his ribs and flanks, twitching like worms with every step he took.

   But beneath the ragged appearance, the wolf could see the intelligence and wariness that only the survivors held.

   "Attention! Attention ladies and gentlemen!" A speaker mounted to a post outside of the ring crackled. Neither the tosa inu nor the wolf took their attention off the other.

   "By popular demand, this last fight will be to the death! Make your bets before the killing blow, folks, and remember to try the discount beer!-"

   The wolf stopped listening. The tosa continued to circle her, unaware of the announcement that had just decided their fates. And even if he had understood, she knew he was only a slave to whatever his master held over him. And slaves obeyed, even if they paid with their lives.

   The wolf felt pity for the survivor before her who had gone through so much to get to this moment. But that didn't mean she was going to die easy.

   She moves first, darting towards the tosa in a blur of smoky-grey and warpaint clay. He jumps back, barrels into the wolf's shoulder, and throws her off, snapping blindly as guttural sounds rip themselves from the canine throats. The wolf twists, landing hard on her side and raising clawed rear legs to hide her soft underbelly.

   The tosa rounds on her, going instinctively for the stomach. The wolf's heart jumps when jaws snap shut inches from her flesh, growls rising to a fever pitch as clawed hind legs catch the skin of the tosa inu's throat.

   Her opponent jerks away with shreds of flesh missing and red welling up slowly within the wounds - her claws didn't go deep enough to kill. The wolf rises into a defensive stance. Deep gauges in the red clay of the arena mark her moment of weakness, and she steps over them carefully as the tosa inu watches with raised hackles.

The lights are too bright. The wolf blinks away reflex tears, backing up during a moment of temporary blindness. The tosa doesn't care for the filmy fluid that leaks from both his eyes.

The wolf gazed at him through the haze of her thoughts and the panic of her mind. The dog looked like a sick old man, tired of the world's cruelty and waiting for the day when he could finally rest.

But this was a death match. The tosa inu could not lay down and surrender just as she could not let him.

To the wolf, it seemed that night was both eternal and nonexistent — because there was no rest here, not in the fenced off rings that reeked of blood and fear. There was only the slow stalk and stumble of her opponents, the heaving breaths that tore through her chest, and Hell.

   Raucous cheers of anger and delight rose around them like a swarm of hornets. The smells of beer, blood, and mud were overpowering, bitter as betrayal to the wolf's sensitive nose.

   Her opponent snarled violently, with lips pulled back on a frothing muzzle.

   Metal tainted her tongue, and errant sweat dripping down from her snout added spikes of unwanted flavor to the growing miasma.

  Her thoughts wandered once more — her pack, her pup, the last time she had screamed at the moon, and the human shuddering behind the facade of the beast.

   The wolf lunged.