What the Arena Chose

The records for this day begin with Bren, which is the first time in some while that they have had him to begin with.

He had not been in the cells when the others woke after the rift. He had not been in the lava tube, or the antechamber, or in the fight with the three who came through the portals. On this day his name returns at the top of Taeon's notes, and the line is set down with an exclamation mark, which Taeon did not use often: Bren woke up in the middle of the arena.

The notes do not say how he came there, or who carried him, or how long he had lain on the floor of it. They do not say where Taeon was standing when he learned of it. They say what Bren met when he opened his eyes.

First, a sound. Two creatures, snarling. The records then name them, almost in passing, as akatas, and note that they were chained up. Taeon had met akatas before, years earlier, in the holds of the Acreon. They are void predators, about the height of a child and as heavy as four grown men, built to sleep in cocoons on dead rock for centuries and wake hungry. They breed by putting their young into living hosts. Someone had brought two of them into an arena and chained them where a man would wake up next to them. I do not know what Taeon felt, reading that word in his own hand. I know he wrote it down.

Second, above. Two cloaked figures, watching. The notes give no faces and no names.

Third, a figure that stood up. It was large, about twenty feet tall, and when it had risen it said that Bren was chosen. The notes do not say what for, or by whom, or whether the crowd heard it. Then one of the cloaked watchers dropped from above into the arena, landing hard and upright in the way that people land when they want to be seen landing. When the cloak settled it was a vesk.

Everything after that is a fight, and the records keep it the way Taeon kept fights: short, in order, mostly a count. An early strike found its mark through armour. When the akatas came into it, still in their chains, a shot went wide. The next strike landed again, and by then the wounds dealt amounted to a good deal. A later shot missed. The notes do not say who struck whom, or whether the vesk fought beside Bren or against him.

The last line on the page is the only one that reads as a plan. A swarm of microbots was set loose, not to tear at anything, but to harry the enemy and cover the others while they moved. The notes do not say whose swarm it was. They stop there, with the fight still going.

There is a Reading the order teaches on kept animals. It predates all of this by a long way, and it is not about him, but I have never been able to read the notes for this day without it.

Note the animal kept for show.
It is not the animal of the wild. Do not read it as one.
Its hunger is fed on purpose, and fed again.
Note the chain, and note who holds the other end.
Note who sits above the pit and does not go down.
The watcher is also in the ecology.
Ask what the keeper is feeding: the beast, or the crowd.
Do not pity the beast so loudly you lose your footing.
Do not hate it. It did not choose the chain.
When one is chosen to go down into the pit,
ask first who did the choosing.
Then ask what they are hungry for.

— the Observances, from the Readings on Captivity

Novitiates tend to remember the last two lines and forget the middle of it, which is where the work is. The akatas on their chains were not the danger that day, or not the only one. Someone had arranged the floor, the chains, the watchers and the word chosen, and the records do not yet say who. Taeon, I think, would have started with the chains.

The Field Canon is less patient, and its oldest entry on the subject is shorter.

A chained carrier is still a carrier.
Measure the chain before you measure the beast.

— the Field Canon, on Predation