The Forsaken

I’m trying to come to terms with the awfulness of our predicament.
    I notice that a large crowd has started gathering around our clearing, lit by the fire. Drones leer at us like we’re animals in a zoo. Did the Monk lie? Are we going to die here tonight?
    “What if I refuse to fight?” Gadya asks.
    She gets her answer immediately. The crowd starts to boo and jeer. A rock flies past her head, smashing into a tree behind her. She spins around, trying to see who threw it.
    An object hits the ground near me, kicking up dirt and splattering my face. For a sickening moment I think it’s a firework, about to detonate. But then I see it’s just a moldy coconut. The mob gets louder.
    “We don’t like it when heathens refuse,” the drone hisses. “The crowd will tear you to pieces like hoofer meat.”
    Gadya looks at our group, eyes wide.
    “Choose! Choose!” an anonymous male drone in the crowd begins yelling. Soon his words are taken up as a chant. The chant picks up steam. Drones begin pounding their spears on the ground.
    “Choose! Choose! Choose!”
    I hear the anger and excitement of a thousand deranged kids. The expectation of delight, and the frustration of pleasures being thwarted. They really are going to rip us apart with their hands unless we do what they want. The Monk must be permitting this as a way to demonstrate his power. But why? He’s already won.
    The drone presses the sharp tip of his spear to Gadya’s throat. “Choose now, girlie,” he says beneath the roar of the crowd. “Or I’ll make you kneel in front of me—before I slit your throat!”
    “Choose! Choose!” the crowd keeps screaming, like one giant hive-mind.
    I know that Gadya’s choices are limited if she picks a girl. There’s only me and Rika. And I’m the one she has a grudge against. That’s why I know exactly what she’s going to say before the words leave her mouth.
    “I choose her!” Gadya yells, her roving eyes finding mine. She points directly at me.
    The crowd roars its approval. Drones rush up behind me and grab my arms, dragging me forward. Everyone is screaming in my ears. The sounds just run together, becoming a deafening sonic blur.
    As I’m pushed and pulled, I catch glimpses of individual drones within the crazed mob:
    A one-eyed girl clutching a hairless baby.
    A boy with scars across his neck, wielding a barbed club as he shrieks and wails at the moon.
    A grotesquely fat boy with raw meat in his hand, bloody juice dripping down his slack jaw.
    Then fireworks start exploding above us again, and these impressionistic images get burned into my mind forever.
    I’m yanked forward in front of a fire pit, and placed directly across from Gadya. She stares at me with a cold expression I can’t read. I stare back. The crowd is still screaming, pleased with Gadya’s choice.
    I realize that here, we are the monsters. We are the different ones. The infidels, the heathens. Reduced to entertainment for a mindless mob.
    Markus, Sinxen, and Rika are watching nearby. I know they want to intervene. Yet if they do, they’ll instantly be struck with arrows and spears.
    Gadya’s face tenses as a drone hands her a spear. She’s going to bring everything she has against me because she doesn’t have a choice.
    I know that my feelings for Liam are partly what brought me to this point. Anger has been building inside Gadya for a long time, and I understand why. But I don’t regret anything I’ve done. If I have to die now at Gadya’s hands because I ended up falling for Liam, then so be it.
    A spear gets thrust into my hands. I hold it for a moment.
    Then I look at Gadya, and drop it onto the muddy ground. The crowd pelts me with stinking garbage and roars its displeasure.
    “Pick it up!” Gadya yells.
    I stare back at her. Foolishly, I decide to try reasoning one last time. “We don’t have to fight! Maybe they won’t kill us if we refuse.”
    Before she can reply, a skinny drone darts forward and picks up the spear. He shoves it into my hands and snarls, “Drop it again, and I’ll carve up your pretty face like prime rib!” There’s enough menace in his voice to let me know he means it.
    I clutch the spear nervously. Other than the day Liam sparred with me, most of what I learned about combat, I learned from Gadya. There’s no way I can defeat her. The crowd is in throes of ecstasy.
    “Heathens, begin your death battle!” the drone with the psychedelic face paint screams. The volume of the crowd