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A week before I died, the night I lost my virginity, I dreamed of a ship.

Its black sails billowed maniacally in a heavy storm, its great wooden bow slicing through massive waves dark as the stormy night sky above it, like the ship sailed on an ocean of liquid obsidian. I flew above the ship like a ghost, unaffected by the torrential rain or blasting winds, as I watched the crew frantically run about the deck trying to batten hatches and draw down its black sails so they wouldn't be lost in the gale.

Standing at the helm, feet planted like tree trunks, was a Lepid woman. Her eyes shown electric blue in the storm, and her white-gray fur was covered in loose-fitting clothing bound to her by colorful sashes. A pair of wicked-looking forward-curved daggers hung at her hips next to a strange metal tube with a wood-paneled handle. Her perky ears held a tricorn hat in place on her head as she shouted to be heard over the storm, barking orders while she wrestled with the water-soaked wheel. From where I floated high above, I couldn't make out her words. I found myself floating down to stare into her face, and my suspicion was confirmed.

It was Nola. But... different. She was older, maybe middle-aged, and much taller, with broader shoulders, and powerful, lean muscle that rippled under her sleek white-gray fur, her build athletic and agile. A scar ran from her right temple at a sharp angle across her left eye, leaving it milky and dead. I absently touched my right eye in the dream, the one which now bore three thin red lines across it from where Nola had gouged me years before, but there was no sensation. I tried to listen to her words, but all I could hear over the din was:

"...sails! Ride.... boys! I'm... for my babies!"

* * *

I woke to my balls tightening in preparation for an orgasm, and opened my eyes just as a muzzle clamped around my cock and drank it up. In my delirious state, I moaned loudly, "Sails... Sailsss.... huhnnn..." Rika's ass was in my face, and I grabbed it frantically, still not entirely in the present, as I felt my load drench the back of her eager throat. She growled happily, wiggling her butt as she drank it up. When she finally turned to face me, her muzzle was sticky with my cum and had a huge grin plastered across it. "Good morning, sweetie," she said. "I thought I'd clean you up from last night, but once I started licking, I didn't want to stop. Now I'm the messy one."

I panted for a few seconds as I steadily got my bearings. The first rays of dawn were creeping across the sky overhead, but almost none of it reached into the Den. Shadows stirred as folks began to wake up. Gods, that dream... Even though I couldn't feel anything in the dream, I had been so fucking sure it was real.

With shaky hands, I pulled her face to me and started licking her muzzle clean. The bitter, heady flavor of my sperm made me a little dizzy. Gods, I loved how I tasted. Did all cum taste like this? I had the sudden urge to grab the first cock I saw and suck it dry to find out, but I managed to calm my raging hormones enough to stop and inspect Rika's face. She was clean now, though she was panting a little. "Fuck, that was hot," she whispered.

My ears spasmed a few times. "Th-thanks. I just... like the taste, I guess."

She squirmed against my belly again. "Think we have time for a quickie before they open the door?"

"Uh," I offered. The door swung open at that moment, and a Scrofa rapped the haft of her halberd against the stone floor before stepping away. Anthropa began getting up and filing outside. Rika harrumphed in frustration.

A Canid, a huge Rottweiler whose name I didn't know, sneered at us as he walked past. "That's who had you squealing last night? A fuckin' pup? Tonight I'll show you what a man's cock can do."

"Eat shit, loser," Rika snarled.

I blinked at her. I'd never heard her talk so violently. The look she gave the Rottweiler was almost feral. He didn't seem to be all that scared, though. In fact, he laughed. "Filthy mouth on a filthy slut. I'll just have to plug it shut with my knot. Dumb cunt." He strode off toward the door, shoving in front of the other Anthropa to get a better spot in line for breakfast. A few other Anthropa watched him go nervously, but no one said anything.

He had to be new. He still had mass on him, even if it wasn't much. The cock he'd bragged about hadn't been out, but his sheath had been enormous. I wondered if the fumes of the Maw would shrink it. That happened sometimes. Regardless, the machismo would die with his soul soon enough in this place. But... maybe not soon enough to avoid trouble.

Rika snarled after him. "He tries it and I'll bite the fucking thing off," she grumbled. "Alpha male pricks." She turned back to me in a huff. "Never be like him, sweetie. Promise me you'll never be that disrespectful."

I didn't really trust my voice, so I just nodded.

* * *

I looked for Nola at breakfast, but she'd already grabbed her wilted greens and was shoveling them in her mouth as she marched toward the line for the Maw to start her first rotation. I wanted to talk to her, but not as much as I wanted to fill my growling stomach. I chewed thoughtfully on the flavorless lettuce and single shriveled radish as I watched her go. She hadn't so much as looked at me. Was she still mad about not sleeping next to her? Because that was dumb. She had no right to be mad!

I chewed as angrily as I could muster on the radish. I hated radishes.

The workday went slowly, and I never found myself working next to Nola. I did wind up next to Rika on the Maw during my second rotation. She gave me a glowing smile, and I felt my stomach rise into my throat and my groin twitch. My ears went nuts again, and she snickered, sneaking in a lick on my arm when she was sure the Scrofa weren't paying attention. She was damned good at that, knowing what was going on around her.

Conversation wasn't something that happened in the Pit, really. The Scrofa usually smacked people with the flat of their halberds when they found people talking, even if they talked while they worked. And by the time we reached the Den at the end of the night, most of us were too tired to do anything other than just collapse into sleep, with the occasional exception of staying up for sex.

Frankly it was a shock to me I knew anybody's name, considering how little we talked. The turnover rate was pretty high, too, which didn't help.

I glanced up at the Scrofa on the scaffolding above us, waiting until she turned away, before I whispered, "How do you do that?"

Rika raised her eyebrows and said innocently, "Do what?"

"You know," I said furtively. "The thing where you--"

"Guard," she muttered without even looking at the Scrofa above us, and bent back down to work at the wall of the Maw. Sure enough, the Scrofa turned around, and seeing me looking up at her, she glared and pointed with her halberd. "Back to work, pipsqueak! Or I'll break your fucking legs. Least then you'll have an excuse not to work, yeah?"

I turned back with a small yelp and started picking away again. Rika was quiet for over five minutes before she risked speaking again. "You were saying?" she whispered, a glint of amusement in her eye.

"That," I grumbled. "You just... know when the guards are gonna do something. Hear you talking or come around a bend. And... and you knew Nola was watching us."

Rika's nose wiggled. "Yeah. I would have noticed sooner but you had me preoccupied. Makes it hard to do."

"Do_what?_" I asked exasperatedly.

She sighed. "I've got Faidh," she said.

"Faith in what?" I asked.

She rolled her eyes in a way that made it clear she'd been through this before. "Not faith, Faidh. Some Vulpin have overclocked senses. Some think they're divine gifts, others think they're some kinda weird holdover from before the Awakening. Only Vulpin have ever been known to manifest Faidh. We can sense movement by miniscule vibrations, or smell approaching creatures before they can actually see each other. Not everybody's Faidh presents the same way. Mine is a little weird. I can sense lines of sight. I'm not the first that's had it, but I'm the only one with Faidh I've met that can do it. I can see where people's attention is, sorta like... like an itch, I guess? It's hard to describe. I..." She trailed off, and it was almost half a minute before I realized she was done talking.

"Wow," I whispered. "That is the coolest thing ever." I said it partly because it was true, and partly because I wanted to keep hearing her voice.

"No," Rika said with a vehemence that startled me. I looked over to see she was crying. "No, it's not."

I didn't know what to say to that, so I put my head down and kept working.

* * *

At dinner, I tried to sit next to Nola, but the moment I got within ten feet of her, she took her meager handful of food and walked away, hardly glancing in my direction. I sat down defeated and chewed mechanically on nearly flavorless greens. When I looked up, I saw the Rottweiler from this morning, staring at Rika the way a feral wolf looks at... well, a rabbit. For her part, Rika was glaring right back at him, as if daring him to try something. Two other males sat near the Rottweiler, a Vithis and a tall, gangly Equus colt not much older than me. He was new, too; I think he arrived in the same transport as the Canid. Both the other males watched with equal parts nervousness and excitement as the unspoken duel went on between Rika and her tormentor. The Equus cleared his throat, and I just barely heard him mutter, "Hey, Edge--" The Rottweiler (Edge, I guess) just raised a hand, and the colt shut up.

Fuck, who names their kid "Edge" and expects him to turn out to be anything other than an absolute douche canoe?

Eventually Rika turned her nose up and away, eating her jerky meat nonchalantly. The Rottweiler snarled at her, but she made no indication she'd noticed. My heart fluttered. Fear? Apprehension? Something... something else? I didn't know. I just shoved another leaf into my mouth and stared at the dusty ground.

As we shuffled into the Den, Rika grabbed my wrist before I could pick a direction and pulled me down next to her. Her face looked determined. I saw why immediately: the Rottweiler was approaching. If she thought my presence would be a deterrent, she was absolutely wrong.

Everyone in the Den could sense what was coming. The second the bar dropped on the outside of the door, Edge was hovering over us, his two cronies in tow. Something about his second lackey being a Vithis stung particularly hard. This one was a viper, short and sinewy. No hood, but every time his mouth opened, his oversized fangs dipped forward. No venom dripped from them, of course; vipers had their venom sacs removed long before they landed in the Pit, but they were still long and sharp. He aught to have been more menacing than Edge, honestly, but the Rottweiler was wide and muscular, with an air of arrogant confidence that practically oozed off him like slime.

He sneered down at us. "What is he? Your bodyguard? He probably weighs eighty pounds soaking wet. Fuck you gonna do with him, throw him at me?"

"Get the fuck out of our faces, douchebag," Rika growled.

Edge ignored her and looked down at me. Quick as a whip, his big, meaty hand shot down and grabbed me by the neck, yanking me off my feet. He hefted me up to his face, and I could see a small trail of slobber dripping out the side of his lips as he bared his teeth at me. "Go ahead, little pup. Do something."

I tried to think back on Van's training, everything he taught Nola and me over two years, but my mind was blank. I was absolutely still and rigid, that gods-fucking-damned instinct screwing me over yet again.

I'm sorry, Van, I thought. Please don't be disappointed.

But of course he would have been. He died disappointed in me, after all.

* * *

Ollivander's last days were ugly. He swam in and out of lucidity. When he was present, he was bitter, angry, and more taciturn than ever. He rarely spoke to his pupils, and when he did, it was to tell us we weren't ready, and we were in for some absolute shit, and we were going to die here because he failed to prepare us. Honestly, it made about as much sense as when he wasn't lucid. The only way I was really able to tell the difference was that when he wasn't lucid, he also screamed at phantoms and clawed at his face, his chest, his arms, screaming and screaming to make them stop. Van didn't get thrown into the Pit alive like Ma, but he did die screaming. Shrieked bloody murder in the middle of the night and then just... stopped. Stopped moving, stopped breathing. He clutched his chest and his eyes stared at nothing ever again.

Before he died, though, during one of his lucid days, he watched Nola and me spar in the bright light of a full moon, in our secret spot behind the Den. He wasn't paying much attention to us, staring off into the starry sky with an intense but inscrutable look. Nola pinned me with a one-two of a leg sweep and an armbar, and I was slapping the ground to communicate my silent surrender before she'd applied much pressure to my shoulder joint at all.

Normally this was where Van called me a flat-footed idiot and told me what I'd done wrong, but he just kept staring off at the sky. We thought maybe he was about to drift into one of his manic fits, but instead he muttered, "Sit your asses down. We gotta talk." Nola and I glanced at each other nervously and sat near him.

"I know," I muttered sheepishly, "I never watch my footing. That's why she was able to sweep me."

"Ayuh," he grumbled. "Now shuddup. I'm dying."

We already knew that, but it was the first time Van had said it aloud. I swallowed hard, frustrated and scared. I didn't want to lose Van because I knew I was still a lousy fighter. Nola was way better. Faster, too. How was I ever going to be good enough to escape like Van wanted?

He seemed to read my mind (he certainly hadn't read my expression, seeing as he was still staring at the stars). "You ain't ready to get out," he said flatly. "I failed you. I thought I could be strong enough to resist this place until you had another year or two of training. If I coulda trained you through puberty, that would've been ideal, but..." The old otter sighed, shrugged, and finally turned to face us. His eyes were hard and cruel. "You ain't ready. And now I don't think you'll ever be ready. I failed you. I failed to live up to my promise."

"We'll be ready!" Nola piped in, her face determined. Ever the optimist. I always loved that about my sister.

Van didn't find it endearing in the least. "No you won't. No teacher, all you can do is practice the same damn katas over and over. No new information. I never even got to train you with weapons. You got no way out of here, barring a fucking miracle." He stared at us for a long, awkward minute of silence before speaking again. When he did, he seemed resigned. "Wasn't gonna say anything until you were older, but... the two of you is special. I knew it in the first month of your training. You both got gifts. I don't know what they are, exactly, but I sense 'em. Takes one to know one." When he saw the looks on our faces, he waved a dismissive hand. "Don't get no ideas. Doesn't matter if you're gifted. Without someone to teach you, them 'gifts' are useless. Sometimes dangerous. So it don't matter. I only tell you in case some day it _does_matter. Take a gods-cussed miracle, but who knows. Stranger things."

He turned his face back up to the stars, and I could have sworn his bottom lip quivered, making his whiskers dance in the moonlight. "One more round, then off to bed."

"Yessir," we said in unison, and squared off against each other once more.

* * *

Of course that's what I thought about as the Rottweiler squeezed the life out of me. "You're special, but it doesn't matter." Story of my fucking life, I guess. My vision tunneled as I struggled and failed to suck in a breath, and all the while, my body remained rigid with that dreaded ancient instinct. How had this saved a single fucking feral rabbit once in the history of the universe? All it seemed to do was get me in trouble, and now it was going to kill me.

As if in response, the Universe unleashed my sister.

Nola launched herself at Edge with a speed and grace that immediately made me flash back to the dream. My oxygen-starved brain envisioned her in the loose blouse and poofy pants, strapped down to her lithe form with sashes of all the colors in the rainbow. She was beautiful. Edge saw her coming and swung with his free hand to try to backhand her out of the air, but Nola twisted and latched onto his wrist instead. Edge snorted with amusement and lifted her off the ground like she was dead weight attached to his forearm. I dimly realized what Nola was doing, and I would have laughed hysterically if I'd had any breath in me.

Man, let me tell you about Lepids.

We didn't do much well. We weren't super short, but we never got much in the way of mass, generally speaking. Lepids didn't have particular skillsets where they excelled like Ysoki or Equia. We kind of just existed, to be honest.

But one thing we rarely talked about that we did spectacularly well was kick. I mean, for the average Lepid it probably never came up. Even in the Pit, fights were pretty rare--it took aggression and most of us didn't have any in this place. Too much effort. But us buns had large, flat feet, holdovers from before the Awakening I suppose. If we put our minds to it, we could do some damage with those feet.

Nola swung off Edge's wrist like a pendulum and did some fucking damage. She mule-kicked Edge in the knee. In the side of his knee. A sound like rock cracking burst through the Den, and Edge fell to one knee screaming bloody murder. He dropped me in the process. I fell to my back, rubbing my neck and gasping air into my burning lungs and throat.

Nola followed up her attack with a second mule-kick right to Edge's sheath, and his deep, rumbling bellow turned into a falsetto screech. He collapsed into a ball of whimpers and groans. Nola ran to me and threw her arms around me, squeezing hard. "I've got you," she whispered fiercely. "I've got you, bro."

I didn't realize until later that I was crying.

The guards finally came in, took one look at the Canid, and snapped, "What happened?"

Rika glanced at Edge's quivering form, then turned back and shrugged lazily. "He fell."

The Vithis glared at her back, but the teenage Equus nodded vigorously, stepping away from Edge. "Yeah. He fell. Hit his knee."

"And balls," Rika added helpfully.

The Scrofus sighed exasperatedly and waved one of her coworkers in. Together, they hauled Edge out of the Den and closed the door behind them. The sun finished setting, plunging the circular room into dim shadows. Rika looked at me with something like reproach as I sat hugging my sister and sobbing. She didn't try to come to me, just curled up into herself and turned away. Nola laid me down on the floor, my head still on her bosom, and stroked my ears. "I've got you," she repeated. "You're safe now."

Gods, I wish that had been true.