Characters: Queen Isabella, Aisha, Rachelle, Kendira, Kim, Siarra
“Ladies and gentle lesser beings, welcome to the twenty-second annual Tournament of Champions! As the proxy Queen in my mother’s absence, I’d like to personally thank all the strong, powerful, and beautiful Women for making this the number one tournament in all of Ellewyn for over two decades. And I’d like to thank the Men, too…for making such excellent battle fodder. It’s just further proof that this land requires both predators and prey to maintain its greatness.”
The crowd laughed. Of course, the crowd was only full of females. All the Men were trapped in cages below the stadium seats or, worse, in the barred cells surrounding the arena. They knew it was their turn to die.
Queen Isabella went on with her speech, standing high and proud on top of the royal box section. “In accordance to our tradition, we will begin the tournament with the famous Last March of the Munchkins. Will all female contestants please line up behind one of the four points of entry? I repeat, will all female contestants please line up behind one of the four points of entry? We will begin shortly.”
Meanwhile, Siarra leaned over to the rest of her clan. “What’s the Last March of the Munchkins?”
Rachelle giggled.
“Remember how I said that the tournament was a ritual used to lower the population of Men?” Aisha asked. “That’s how it always begins…with a massacre of all the male sacrifices. They’re released into the arena with nowhere to run and all the female contestants are given five minutes to ‘warm-up’ by killing as many as possible in any fashion that they wish.”
“Do any of the Men survive?” Siarra asked.
“Sometimes. There’s usually about a thousand of them and only forty or so girls… At the end of five minutes, they collect the bodies, dump the dead in the river, and turn the rest over to slavery or food if nobody wants them.”
Siarra didn’t respond. She looked at the empty arena. It was as big as a football field, surrounded by stone white walls that would be hard for an average-sized girl to scale and impossible for the Men of this world. The arena was perfectly round with hard, grainy sand for a ground covering and four colossal doors set in equal distance from each other. Each of the doors had a flag the size of a wall hanging down it with a symbol etched onto its banner. The green flag had a symbol of a great maple leaf, the blue flag had a fish with its tail in the air, the yellow flag had a picture of a dove silhouette, and the red flag had the darkened, scowling face of some mysterious female figure with impossibly long hair.
“Each of the elements that make up the Sacred Beetle,” Kim pointed out.
Kendira nodded. “Yes, very observant.”
“It’s only the most clichéd theme in all of fantasy.”
“Shhh, it’s about to begin!” Rachelle said, leaning forward in her seat. “I love this part of the tournament because I always know who’s going to win. It’s like a comedy show!”
“You’re a really sick person, Rach,” Aisha muttered.
“Aw, come on! We don’t have to pick up bodies this year. You should be having a good time!”
“I can’t have a good time when others are getting hurt.”
“By Dai Celesta’s hand, Aisha, they’re just Men!”
“Watch your mouth!”
“No, you watch yours! This is part of a sacred female tradition. If you aren’t willing to celebrate it, maybe I should report your act of perfidy to the Seven and a Half Apostles.”
“You wouldn’t dare.”
“Of course I wouldn’t,” Rachelle sighed with a wave of her hand. “But come on, Aisha, you’re being ridiculous.” She turned to the rest of the girls. “She’s always been like this, you know.”
Kim looked down at her lap, Siarra tried to smile, and Kendira said nothing.
Rachelle sighed again and put down her bucket of popcorn. “I’ve waited a whole year for this day and you three aren’t going to spoil my fun. If you want to wear your sad panda faces, I’m going to go sit somewhere else.”
“What is your problem!?” Aisha snapped. “I asked for your help on this journey because I thought you cared about the lives of others! Isn’t that the pledge of a Priest!? Isn’t that what you vowed to uphold when you dipped your hands in the sacred water!?”
By now, Rachelle was on her feet with her back to them. She dug her fingers into her white locks of hair and spun around in a mad fury. “Has it ever occurred to you why you haven’t been promoted to a Priest!? You don’t understand the very religion that you preach! Men are nothing, Aisha! NOTHING! They’re not worth the specks of dirt in the spit in the gum in the mud on the bottom of my shoe! It’s in Dai Celesta’s teachings! Maybe if you read it some time, you would understand that Men are vermin that need to be eradicated. That’s why we have this tournament. That’s why we’re about to watch a thousand Men die at the mercy of a handful of girls. And you know what? I’m happy! I hope they all die this time. If they don’t, I’ll be the first in line to finish off the survivors. Because I, unlike you, believe in tradition! I know where Men belong! And by Dai Celesta, I will see them remain there.”
“This won’t end well,” Siarra whispered.
“What!?” Aisha screamed, jumping to her feet as well. “Has it ever occurred to you that maybe some parts of our religion are wrong!? Where is the part where you speak for yourself, where you realize that you can’t believe everything you read, that real people are dying because of the words of a goddess!?”
“Are you saying that you don’t believe in Dai Celesta!?”
“I’m saying that I believe in life, in the Light, in the goodness that I stand by! Men can’t be so bad that they have to die like this. Look at this, Rachelle! There are thousands of girls here, watching in amusement as lives are taken as freely as leaves from a tree! This ‘tradition’ has become a joke, something little more than a merry show to all those watching the innocent lives of Men stamped into nothing! Have we forgotten that Men and Women used to exist as one!?”
“You need to stop living in the past, Aisha! This is the future of us, of our kingdom, of our people.”
“You’re the one living by old ideals! We have to stop this madness. Rachelle, this world can’t go on like this. Look at the smiles on everybody’s faces!”
“You’re going to question smiles?”
“When they’re smiling at the misfortune of others, yes! I will question it. And what are you going to do? Are you going to stand by and watch?”
Rachelle’s fingers tightened around her hair and she nearly yanked them out by the roots. “Yes, yes, yes, I am! And I’ll smile too—twice as big as ever—every time a Man gets squashed. One smile for me and one for you.”
“You two need to stop this, right now!” Kendira hissed, grabbing each of the girls’ robes in one hand. “People are staring at us. We’re trying not to attract attention, remember?”
“Yeah!” Rachelle said, pushing Aisha back. “Have a seat, Cleric. Stop trying to hold up everybody’s fun.”
Aisha shook her head. “I’m sorry, but I can’t stand for this another moment. I’m stopping this tournament right now.”
She tried to move forward, but Rachelle widened her stance and blocked her path. “You’ll have to get through me and we both know you can’t do that.”
She was right. Aisha was a few inches shorter, a few years younger, and a few pounds lighter. She also couldn’t match the holy power of her friend, especially without her scepter.
“Don’t do this,” she said. “Even if you don’t believe in the rights of Men, I know you’re against the Dark Lady Sorena. She wants this to happen. She wants Men to die. If you truly want to see her fall, then you’ll stand down.”
“You know that’s a lie,” Rachelle said. “Sorena or not, this is a tradition. If we begin changing our ways now, it will only make it easier for her to change them forever. We have to be the people who we are. Please, Aisha, I don’t want to hurt you. You’re not my enemy.”
“Then who is, Rachelle? Who is it that stands in your way? Who is the evil one?”
Before she could answer, Kendira rose up and put a hand on Aisha’s shoulder. “Sister Aisha, I know how you feel, but we can’t do this. Not here and not now. If you try to stop this tournament, I promise you, I will stop you.”
“But why? Kendira, you believe in Men’s rights, don’t you?”
“Yes, I do. That’s why this tournament must go on. If you stop it now, you jeopardize our chances of gaining the Queen’s support.”
“The Queen’s support!?” Aisha echoed, pointing a finger wildly to the royal box section. “Did you see the way she insulted Men!? She won’t help us in our quest!”
“Regardless, we’re not interfering with royal customs. We’re doing this by the book as Master Luna would want it.”
“And Dai Celesta,” Rachelle said with an arrogant nod of her head. She smirked at Aisha, who knew she was outnumbered.
They turned and watched as the four doors of the arena began to crack open, revealing a dark light within, and the wooden bars of the cages of Men began to lift. The floors underneath the cages were tilted up until all the Men spilled out onto the arena. They were as naked as babies, wearing only rags and loincloths, and looked at each other in bewilderment and despair. They knew what was coming. And still they tried to run.
Aisha looked down at them helplessly.
“Please, have a seat, Sister Aisha,” Kendira said as gently as she could. “It’ll all be over soon.”
Giantess World
