The crowd was hushed. Around the arena people were holding their breath-even toddlers stared enraptured and quiet as they waited for the fight to begin. With a ring of a gong, two M&Ms rushed out of their stalls and ran towards each other. There was a sickening crush as they collided, and Brown Devil's exoskeleton shattered like a crystal cup as he went down with an agonized scream. Liquid chocolate poured out onto the jade fighting ring. Golden Tiger-Death screamed triumphantly, jumping on the remands of Brown Devil, claws crunching the shell. The first piercing red streak of dawn peeked over the high stone wall surrounding the grounds. The M&M Death Tournament had just begun.
The M&M Death Tournament was an ancient event; the nobles of old had written of its beginnings in the Sacred Texts, when wild M&Ms were pitted against each other in pits while village peoples looked on. The sport gradually evolved, as all things do, until it was recognized throughout the Kshalya Empire as gory entertainment for the nobles and commoners alike. Packs of M&Ms were captured and bred. They were bred for strength, for speed, for viciousness, and for intelligence. Within a thousand years the cultivated M&Ms were twice the size and thrice as violent as their wild counterparts.
It was the 37th day of the 2nd moon of the 12th year of the Red Stag. The Red Stag was a hero throughout all of Kshalya. He had been fighting in the Death Tournament since he was five years old, quite young for an M&M. If left to live their natural lives, M&Ms matured at 7 years and died at 30, their limbs decaying and their chocolate festering while they were still conscious, if you can call an animal conscious. Red Stag was well into his 17th year and still a stronger fighter than most of those in their prime.
It was the last day of that year's M&M Death Tournament. Red Stag knew it, and he snorted in his free box, flaring his nostrils and scuffing the hay around with a steady stream of hard, raw, barely contained energy. Dust and the small biting kaatna flies filled the air, but Red Sag didn't notice them. He wasn't breathing AIR, he was breathing anticipation, the stench of it almost making him sick. He WAS sick, sick with the desire to break through the door of his stall and rush into the arena, to fight any other M&M in his sight. The buzz of the crowd talking was like music, he could hear it above him, to the sides, everywhere. His loose box was directly under the stands in which the audience sat, ready to burst open and watch him charge out into the fighting ring like a gaping black eye socket until someone tore their eyes from the action long enough to flip a switch and close the door.
Then the fight... The fight! Red Stag stopped his pacing, freezing in his tracks. Like a distant breeze on a clear day in the mountains where his ancestors had roamed, he heard chimes muffled by the ancient wood of the stands. The crowd fell silent; you could have heard a babe blink in the soundless void that followed. Red Stag turned towards the door, the only thing keeping him from the utter delight and ecstasy of battle. An announcer droned in the background, but he wasn't listening. Every cell, every molecule, was focused on the door. He could see a tiny kaatna larvae crawling through the grains, smell the dusty wood. There was a creak, then another, and Red Stag rushed at the door before it even moved. It snapped up at the last moment and he was home free, rushing towards his next win.
Chital (Deathblow in the tongue of the Kshalya) was not nervous. This was not his first fight, and he had a feeling that it would not be his last. He was dimly aware that he was going against a worthy opponent, one that he had play-fought against when he was newly hatched, before he was old enough to be put in solitary confinement. He knew that his opponent would be strong the strongest he had yet fought, but still he was not nervous. He stood in his stall, eyes closed, stamping his feet impatiently. This was his way of priming to crush the life out of someone, standing still and letting the adrenaline build up in his system until he felt he was ready to explode. When the warning chime sounded he didn't really hear it; it caused him to open his eyes and gaze calmly at the closed gate in front of him, but it never really registered. To someone who had never watched an M&M, tending one day after day after day as their keepers do, one might think that he was waking up after a nap, or perhaps even drifting off. But a trainer would know better. He would be able to see the slight tremor in the flanks, the quiver in the nostrils, the slightly glazed eyes.
Suddenly the gong sounded, and Chital's door flew up. He was running almost before it happened, out into the last light of the setting sun, yellow shell glinting evilly and feet pounding into the hard-packed dust. He could see Red Stag coming towards him full speed, ears back, lips pulled up in a cruel snarl. He hit the jade fighting ring and was dimly aware of the clack of his claws upon its cool surface. In front of him Red Stag was looming larger by the second.
So this was whom he was to fight. Chital. He remembered with distaste wrestling the fool to the ground, new from the egg. This would be easy. He dug his claws deep into the dust; with each long, graceful string, thinking how good it would feel to rake those same claws through Chital's soft chocolate innards. That was, of course, the entire idea of the designers of the arena.
"Anything that makes them think violent thoughts," a designer said.
"Yes, anything," replied the Emperor.
Suddenly Red Stag hit the jade center, and time slowed down. Violent thoughts were no longer racing through his head-only instinct. Instinct to kill, to slam his body against Chital's and watch with delight as his outer shell cracked and his insides were left open to the attack of Red Stag's metal tipped claws. Running was swimming through water, time was nothing, the world was a black hole with only one purpose in it: a spark of death about to be ignited into a fight.
There had been 37 long days of fight after fight, and they were all tired, but no one wanted to go home. Some had fasted for the whole time, risking death and illness so they could watch every single fight around the 18-hour clock. This was the last one, and some were crying in their seats; most were placing bets, risking property, slaves, and even their own children over the fight about to take place.
The crowd silenced and sat down on their benches, the same benches their fathers and grandfathers before them had sat on. The soft sound of the warning chimes faded out and a pall fell over the arena, everyone holding their breaths. When the Emperor was ready, he gave the signal; a deep booming gong rang, echoing off the many walls of the arena, and the two doors sprang open. With an almost painfully loud chorus of screams and whistles the crowd erupted to their feet. Most of the arena fell into chanting Red Stag's name, the rest Chital's, and the borders between the two groups quickly degenerated into lively brawls.
It seemed like years, but it was merely a matter of seconds before the two M&Ms clashed. Both cracked, neither shattered. The crowds doubled in volume, stomped their feet, clapped their hands. Never before had two M&Ms run at each other so viciously, so violently, and not immediately appeased the crowd with a gush of warm chocolate entrails onto the spotless green stone. Chital leapt back snarling and spitting, clutching at the small crack in his abdomen. Red Stag roared and leapt at him, ignoring the slight ooze from a matching crack on his side. Chital was ready. He jumped up and smashed into Red Stag, claws grappling for a hold on his shell. And it was all over. Red Stag, champion for 11 consecutive years, the only M&M who had ever won more than 2 years in a row, lay in a million pieces on the fighting ring, like so many shards of broken glass. His hard red bone had deep gouge marks in it from Chital's talons, and his entrails were splattered everywhere. Chital wiped a stray drop of chocolate from his eye and let out a deep-throated primal roar. The heavens shook as he declared his supremacy. Finally, he, not Red Stag, would have sole mating rights to the females in the empire's packs, and he would father a new generation of killing machines designed for one purpose: entertainment.
