Free Dragonfly: A Tale of the Counter-Earth at the Cosmic Antipodes by Raphael Ordoñez Page B

venturing it all on you. Don’t disappoint me.”
    The guard came to my cell later on. The mirror caught my eye as I rose. “Can I take this?” I asked, holding it up.
    “What?” the guard said. “To use in the fight?”
    “Yes.”
    He shrugged his shoulders. “You know the rules. You get two arms in there. It’s up to the old lady to decide.”
    “But will you at least let me take it?” I didn’t know why I wanted it, exactly; the girl-creature’s insistence had simply made an impression on me.
    “I won’t stop you,” the guard said.
    They led me in chains to the bench room behind the pit. I sat and waited as usual, watching the slayers come and go. At one point I saw two guards whispering in a corner. One of them gestured at me. The other glanced my direction and saw me looking. “You’ve got a rare prize tonight,” he chortled. His mate gave him a shove. They both went out, laughing.
    Granny usually came to see me before a fight, but this morning she never showed up. That meant I was able to choose my own arms. I held on to the mirror and took up a double-headed pike. When it came to be my turn I strode into the pit and waited placidly while they chained me to the bolt and unshackled my limbs.
    The handlers withdrew. Drum beats rolled out of the darkness. The spectators started to chant: “Anak! Anak! Anak!” Their voices were like an evil incantation.
    The gate swung open. For a long time nothing came, but I could feel invisible eyes watching me from the darkness, like a funnel spider peering from the black hole of its lair. The helots felt it, too, and fell silent. Together we waited with bated breath.
    A tall, pale shadow emerged. It had the form of a man but was twice a man’s height. Short white-gold hair covered all but the palms of its hands, which were dark gray. In its forehead was a single round eye, or rather, two eyeballs pressed against one another in the same socket, sharing iris and pupil. Hairless ears stood out on either side of its head, with long earlobes that hung down to its shoulders.
    I looked into the great eye. That was a mistake, for, though I knew it not, the Cheiropt had begun to shrivel my being. It drew on me like a vampire even as I fought for my place in it. The eye before me was like a well dropping to a blank infinity, and I fell into it. My arms hung limply at my sides. The screams of the helots faded into nothing.
    The cyclops rushed me, its mouth wide open, its yellow teeth bared. I hardly knew it. It grabbed me with its soft hands and tossed me bodily across the pit. I struck the floor and rolled. It wasn’t a hard fall, but I was unprepared for it. I struggled to my feet.
    The giant was watching me, waiting for me to look again. The round eye was like a magnet. Desperate, I looked into the mirror instead. It was a relic from a time when man still lived in the midnight moss-forests, and the infinite was a nightly visitor snuffling at his doors. Its true vision was for the eye of the spirit, that sees unseeing. In its window I saw myself, a solitary figure set against the pit and the shadows. It captured me not as I was in my mind’s eye, but simply as I was. For an instant I felt as though I stood in the Wabe of the Pillar.
    I twisted the mirror toward the cyclops. The giant was outlined against the darkness, put in its place in the order of things. I brandished my pike and advanced. The creature shrieked. It tensed for a spring, but I was quicker. I leaped beneath its snatching fingers and stabbed its foot.
    Before I could bound away, though, it caught my chain and lifted me into the air. The pike was jerked out of my hand. I took hold of the chain to keep from being strangled by my collar. The cyclops was trying to tear me with its tushes. I lashed out with one foot, kicking it in the eyeball. It dropped me and clapped its hands to its face.
    I began raining blows on it with my fists. The cyclops’ body was surprisingly flaccid for one so large. Soon I had it