The door shuddered violently under the force of repeated blows. The terrible cries of the imprisoned creature echoed deafeningly down the corridors.

  "Is he always like this?" Patrick shouted in order to be heard over the loud braying of the donkey.

  "I told you we should let him come with us!" Wikwocket yelled.

  "There's no way we can fit a donkey into a seat in the audience!" Al bellowed.

  "This is a prison cell, but if he keeps that up he's going to damage the door! This cell wasn't built for this kind of abuse!" Patrick continued to shout. Gruntle folded his ears back at the noise.

  "All right, all right! Stop it, Haunch!" Al yelled, taking his key from a pocket and fumbling to get it into the keyhole while the door shook. The donkey desisted the moment Al pulled on the door to open it, meeting Al's gaze with the donkey's usual look of boredom. Haunch clopped out into the hallway, pushing past Al and ignoring his objections to stand near Gruntle.

  "What's gotten into you?" Al demanded to know. Of course, being a donkey, Haunch's only response was a stubborn stare.

  "Ha! You folks are really great," Patrick laughed, "but we really don't have time to deal with this, they'll be waiting for your gnoll at the executioner's entrance already. You've got until we get there to figure out what to do with your donkey. Let's go!"

  Al pushed the door closed again and re-locked it. "The other donkeys are going to think there's something wrong with you," Al told Haunch, who clearly didn't care. Patrick led them down the halls, smiling and shaking his head to see the donkey clopping along next to the gnoll. Gruntle loped along behind Patrick, his jaw slightly open in a relaxed toothy grin in anticipation of the events to come. Haunch snorted as Wikwocket vaulted up onto his back.

  "Is there, I don't know, a stable or something where we're taking Gruntle where we could put Haunch?" Al asked.

  "I do not think that would help," Bote suggested. "Perhaps there is somewhere Haunch could watch, so he does not feel isolated?"

  Patrick considered this.

  "The space behind the executioner's entrance is actually blocked off from the hallway by a set of iron bars. Keeps anyone from getting out of the arena early that way. I suppose he could watch from the hallway, or we could tie or chain him to the bars," he eventually answered. "Back when we used animals as executioners, we sometimes had to chain them to the bars to keep them in place until the doors were fully opened and the cue to release them was given."

  "Will that be sufficient Haunch?" Bote asked the donkey.

  "It'd better be," Al added, "since those seem to be our only options if you're going to act up like that. Wait... great. Now I'm talking to a donkey."

  "He does not need to understand the meaning of what we are saying in order to appreciate the attention."

  "Besides," Wikwocket said from her perch atop the donkey, "as the loyal hauler of our stuff and fellow slayer of goblins we owe him some consideration, right?"

  "I suppose so. This adventuring business is weirder than I expected when we started," Al said.

  "That's what makes it exciting!" Wikwocket insisted.

  The group soon arrived at their destination. As Patrick had described, a door of iron bars blocked off the last ten paces or so of the corridor before a heavy wooden door at the end. Two guards with spears stood to attention as Patrick approached them. One raised an eyebrow at the donkey.

  "Thanks for volunteering, Clyde," Patrick told the skeptical guard, "Go find me a length of rope, and be quick about it, it's almost time."

  The guard saluted and hurried off. Patrick took up his ring of keys and used one to unlock the iron-barred door. Although the bars showed signs of rust, the lock mechanism turned smoothly.

  "All right, big guy, you wait in there until the other door opens, then you're welcome to do whatever you want to the criminal on the other side. Go wild, enjoy yourself!"

  Lightly panting, Gruntle shifted his shield down to his hand, unhooked his flail, and stepped inside. He regarded the wooden door to the arena beyond for a moment as though expecting it to open, then turned around to look back at the others.

  Al regarded the demonic, bestial thing he'd been traveling with. The gnoll seemed like a potential avalanche, waiting to break loose and rampage down a metaphorical mountain to bury everything in flesh-rending savagery.

  Even a few weeks ago, this would have been terrifying. I'm still not sure why it isn't. I'm not even sure what I'm feeling now. Maybe envy? Letting all that violence out seems like it feels really good to him, Al thought to himself.

  "Magnificent!" Patrick breathed with obvious admiration.

  Haunch ruined the moment with a loud snort, looking back and forth between Gruntle and the others. Wikwocket jumped down off of his back as the donkey stepped into the space beyond the bars to join Gruntle.

  The guard who had run off returned with a short coil of rope. "Will this do, sir?"

  "That should do nicely, Clyde, thank you," Patrick answered, taking the rope. Haunch brayed in surprise as Patrick got the rope around his neck and tied it off with obviously practiced swiftness.

  "Now, quiet down," he told the donkey, "we can't have you running out there and distracting the crowd or getting hurt." He looped the other end of the rope around one of the iron bars of the door and tied it as well.

  Patrick looked up at the sound of a jeering crowd working its way in through the thick wooden door.

  "Oh, that'll be Second-Story Sidney. City council sentenced him to be beaten with a sack of everything they caught him with last time. He's the last one before the main act! We need to get to our seats so we don't miss it! Have fun out there, you beautiful brute, we'll be opening the door in a few minutes!"

  If you spot this narrative on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.

  He closed the iron-barred door and locked it. Al noticed Gruntle's confused look.

  "You can have this one all to yourself, but we'll be watching from the other side," he explained to the gnoll, "Maybe don't actually eat him, though."

  Gruntle huffed, and crouched down to wait.

  A burly guard with a sack over his shoulder was dragging an unconscious, slender young man towards the open door at the far end of the arena while the crowd shouted and jeered when they arrived to take their seats in a cordoned-off area directly above the executioner's entrance. A small group of workers rushed around setting bright torches into sconces around the arena.

  The well-padded seats weren't quite luxurious but they were certainly a step up in comfort from the common benches that appeared to supply the seating for most of the audience. The arena space appeared to be large enough to host a fight between rival street-gangs or small militia units. Varied shades of dark-brown stains covered most of the sandy ground inside. A somewhat familiar-looking oversized stone statue of an elven woman looked down upon the grounds from halfway around the top of the arena wall. Its shadow stretched out across the arena and the audience on the other side as the sun sank towards the horizon behind it.

  "Looks like we made it just in time! Good thing, too, it'd be embarrassing if I missed announcing this after all of that effort hyping it up last night. Oh, I probably don't need to tell you, but don't try to help. It's illegal to enter the arena by any means other than the criminal or executioner's entrance, so anyone that does is immediately volunteering for corrective punishment by the guards for the amusement of the audience. Throwing things at the arena or anyone in it is also illegal, unless it's part of a prescribed punishment. It might surprise you to find out that spellcasting is not illegal, but that's because the goddess Respublica is watching and won't allow any magic to work inside the arena unless it's part of an officially sanctioned punishment. If you know any magic to help you watch the action, you're welcome to use it. Any questions?"

  "Yes, actually," Al asked, "What's that?" He pointed to the object sticking out of the floor in front of Patrick's seat. It resembled a walking-cane, topped with a cast bronze ball with a human-like bronze ear on the back.

  "Ah, that's for making the announcements!"

  Patrick lifted it out of the hole in the floor that it was mounted in and turned it around for Al to see. A cast bronze open mouth decorated the side opposite the ear.

  Al fidgeted while the workers finished setting the torches and then left via the criminal's entrance door. "It looks like someone could grab one of those if they wanted to," he observed.

  "Ha! Yes, they try that sometimes. It's true you can give someone a nasty burn with those, they're alchemically enhanced to make them brighter. They're not very sturdy at all, though, they tend to fall apart if you try to swing them at someone. Usually gets a laugh from the crowd."

  Al looked around. Few empty spaces were visible among the benches around the arena. The audience was settling down, some conversing with each other, some waiting patiently. Most watched the criminal's entrance door in anticipation. Wikwocket stood up on her seat, grinning and paying more attention to the audience than the arena, and Bote sat quietly.

  An indistinct face appeared briefly in the small barred window in the door, and a bell mounted on the outside of the door jangled as someone tugged a rope attached to it that was threaded through a hole to the inside. Patrick smiled wider and stood up.

  "Showtime!"

  The door opened partway, and a badly-scarred, wiry-muscled man in torn, dirty clothes strode defiantly into the arena. Someone inside pulled the door closed behind him.

  "Oh, he's looking feisty today!" Patrick observed. "This ought to be good." He held the ear of the announcement-device near his face, and spoke.

  "Jonathan Curminder, the Puppycrusher!" he announced, his voice spread by some magic to cover the entire arena. Scattered jeering in the audience quickly grew to a cacophony of demands for violence. "Today you pay with your life for the crimes of running an illegal gambling establishment, flagrant, vile abuse of innocent animals, and organized animal-fighting! Today you will fight and you will die like a hunted animal, just as your victims did, and in serving as an example for anyone else considering your life of terrible crime, you will finally do one good thing before your end!"

  "I'll fight and kill your executioner, and live another day!" the scarred man roared, loudly enough to be barely audible over the excited crowd.

  Patrick chuckled and held the announcement-device away from his face. "Oh, he has no idea what he's dealing with," he said, then spoke into the bronze ear again.

  "Not this executioner, scum! He's hey!" Patrick said, the magical amplification of his voice cutting out as Wikwocket leapt off of her chair, snatched the device from the surprised Patrick's hands, and rushed back to her seat. She nimbly dodged Patrick's attempts to snatch the device back. A few members of the audience near enough to see what was happening began to laugh. Wikwocket spoke into the ear herself.

  "Hailing from a far-off realm of unrelenting fury, the teeth of vengeance comes for you!" Wikwocket's voice rang out over the arena. Patrick's smile returned. Apparently liking what he was hearing, he motioned for her to continue. "The bestial violence you so love returns to you tenfold! Your crimes shall be paid for in the rending of your flesh and the flowing of your blood! May the gods have no mercy upon you as they watch you smashed, broken, and torn asunder by one who has smashed bandit gangs! Who has terrified the goblin hordes! One who bit the Demonic Flesh-Beast of Henhaven! Gruntle, the gnoll!"

  She finished with a startlingly realistic imitation of Gruntle's bark-laugh.

  Patrick gestured urgently to a guard a little further along the top of the wall who held a rope. She pulled it, and Al heard the latch of the executioner's door below him click and the door creaking open. The screaming crowd went quiet.

  The rampaging beast Al expected to see rush out did not, in fact, do so.

  After a moment some scattered laughter and booing started up in the audience. Al stood up and looked over the wall down at the doorway.

  Gruntle's head slowly stuck out, unexpectedly wary. He seemed to be looking for something.

  "What are you doing?" Al called down to him, "That's him over there!"

  Gruntle's ears twitched and he looked up at Al. He grinned. No longer wary, he focused on his prey and loped out.

  The urge churned. Violence called. Gruntle waited, uncomfortable in his self-restraint. Like an itch in his guts. Like being confined in too small of a space. Like hunger, like thirst.

  He understood, consciously, what was happening, but that didn't help much. At least part of his clan was there with him, even if he knew Haunch would not be fighting alongside. No matter. More violence for Gruntle.

  Gruntle listened as Patrick's voice came through the door before him, invoking the name of the one Patrick had said Gruntle was invited to kill. He seemed to be giving reasons for the prey to be killed, as if reasons were necessary. Had Gruntle been a more sophisticated being, he might have found it funny for violence to be the punishment for violence, but he wasn't, so he just waited.

  Wikwocket's voice took over, sounding just as nearby as Patrick. She promised wonderful things. Then, she called out to fight. The door clicked and swung open. One unfamiliar man stood in the arena, while a crowd of strangers watched from above.

  Where was the rest of the clan?

  Did something happen to them? A trap? An ambush?

  Gruntle cautiously looked outside. They weren't there.

  Then, the shaman's voice came from above. Ah, the clan is here. The shaman gave him explicit permission to prey upon the one in the arena.

  A door behind the prey opened for a moment and something was tossed out. An axe. The prey picked it up, and threatened Gruntle with it.

  Like an itch well scratched.

  Like a long stretch after being confined.

  Like hunger sated with meat and thirst slaked by fresh blood.

  Muscles tensed and excitement burst through all restraint. The world brightened, purpose beckoned, and an avalanche of raw flesh-rending savagery descended towards its prey with harsh barking laughter.

  The 5.2 SRD is finally out. The initial parts of the new rules that I'd seen up to this point gave me a pretty bad impression of it, but so far now that I can see the whole SRD, it feels like a lot more is improved than has been degraded (don't get me started on Arcanist's Magic Aura). I'll probably be sneaking some bits and pieces of the new rules into the hidden layer of the story as we go along.