A Kingdom of Ash and Bone

The Grandmaster’s tower was a needle of light and noise piercing the perpetual twilight of Sakaar. From my apartment, I could see directly into his pleasure gardens, a sprawling balcony several levels down where he held his parties. I leaned against the cool glass of the window, the bottle of Xandarian synth-ale cold in my hand. Below, the orgy was in full swing.

The neon signs of the city painted shifting stripes of magenta and cyan across the floor, across my skin. They did the same to the bodies writhing in the gardens below, turning them into a mass of slick, colorful limbs. The sound was a low thrum that vibrated through the window, a bass-heavy beat overlaid with shrieks and laughter. It was the soundtrack to my life here. A constant, buzzing reminder that I was somewhere else. Anywhere else.

I took a long drink from the bottle. The ale was sharp and bitter, and it burned a clean line down my throat.

Below, a Xeeran male, all sharp angles and blue skin, had a woman bent over a sculpted fountain. He was fucking her from behind, his hips a steady, pistoning rhythm. Her fingers were digging into the stone, her knuckles white. I watched his thick, ridged cock slide in and out of her arse. A thin sheen of sweat or something else coated his back, catching the light. He wasn’t looking at her. His eyes were closed, his face a mask of concentration, as if he were solving a complex equation. The woman’s face was turned away, so I couldn’t see her expression. Maybe she was feeling the same thing he was. Maybe she was feeling nothing at all.

Nearby, a group of three were tangled on a pile of velvet cushions. Two men and one woman with iridescent scales on her shoulders and back. One man was on his knees, his face buried between her legs, his tongue working methodically. The other man was behind him, his own erection pressed against the first man’s buttocks, his hands gripping his waist. He was just watching, for now. The woman’s hips rocked in time with the music. She reached back, her hand finding the second man’s cock, her fingers wrapping around the shaft. He shuddered, his mouth falling open.

I watched them for a while. The mechanics of it. The push and pull, the friction, the exchange of fluids. It was all very biological. There was a time when the sight of bodies moving together with such purpose might have stirred something in me. A memory of warmth, of skin against skin in a quiet room on a world that no longer existed. Now, it was just movement. A problem of physics and endurance. I finished the bottle and set the empty down on the floor beside me. It clinked against the others.

The noise from the party swelled, a wave of manufactured ecstasy. I could smell it, even from here. The cloying scent of sweat, perfume, and spilled liquor. It smelled like forgetting. That’s what they were all doing down there, in their own way. Forgetting their names, their debts, their miserable lives on this garbage planet, for a few hours at least. I was doing the same thing, just with more solitude and less physical exertion.

It’s a good life. That’s what I told myself. There are no duties here. No allegiances. No one looks at me and sees a fallen warrior, a failed protector. They see Scrapper 142, a reliable bounty hunter who drinks too much and keeps to herself. They see a commodity. There is a simple honesty in that. You buy, you sell. You live, you die. You forget. Forgetting is the real currency on Sakaar. And I was very, very rich.

A flash of light from below, a reflection off some polished piece of chrome on the fountain, caught my eye. It was sharp and thin, like a freshly honed blade. And just like that, the memory was there. It didn’t ask for permission. It simply arrived, tearing through the thin veil of synth-ale and apathy.

The sky above Asgard wasn’t blue. It was the color of a bruise, a churning vortex of green and black that she had pulled down from some dark corner of the cosmos. The air was cold, thick with the smell of ozone and something else, something metallic and sweet. Blood. The air tasted of it.

Her necroswords didn't clang like real steel. They appeared out of nothing, silent, obsidian blades growing from the air, from her own body, from the very shadows she cast. They made a sound like tearing fabric when they found flesh. I saw one sprout from the space right behind Lyra, punching through the back of her silver armor. There was a moment of surprise on her face, her mouth forming a small ‘o’. She looked down, at the black spike protruding from her sternum, then back at me. Her eyes were wide. She didn't even have time to scream before she was gone, dissolving into a puff of golden dust that the wind immediately scattered.

The screams of my sisters. That was the worst part. A chorus of the strongest women I had ever known, their battle cries turning into shrieks of agony. Rian’s scream was cut short with a wet gurgle. I saw her on her knees, her winged helmet knocked askew, trying to hold her own throat together as Hela stood over her, impassive. Another blade, long and thin as a needle, slid into the back of her neck. Rian’s body went limp.

I felt a phantom pain slice across my own side, a memory of the wound that had sent me tumbling from my pegasus, down into the pile of our dead. I had lain there, buried beneath the bodies of my sisters, listening to the silence after the last scream had faded. The only sound was her laughter, echoing across the battlefield as she walked among the carnage she had wrought.

My hand tightened on the bottle. My knuckles were white. The noise from the orgy below was gone, replaced by the ringing in my ears. I could feel my heart hammering against my ribs, a frantic, trapped thing. The cool glass of the window against my forehead wasn’t enough to stop the burning.

I brought the bottle to my lips and drained it. The last of the ale was a raw, chemical fire in my throat, a violent scouring that momentarily erased everything else. The pain was real. It was present. It was not a ghost. I held it in my throat, welcoming the burn, letting it sear the images from the inside of my skull.

When the bottle was empty, I lowered it, my breath coming in ragged gasps. The apartment was silent again, save for the distant, muffled throb of the party. The neon lights continued their slow, indifferent dance across the floor.

I looked at the empty bottle in my hand, at the cheap, printed label. It was just glass. An object. I pulled my leg back and kicked it. The bottle skittered across the smooth floor, a high, rattling sound, before it clattered into the small mountain of other empties I’d accumulated in the corner. It settled among them with a final, hollow clink.

The past is a corpse. It’s best not to disturb the grave.

A shrill, electronic chime cut through the quiet. On the far wall, my comm unit pulsed with a holographic projection of the Grandmaster’s face, rendered in garish gold and blue. The insignia spun slowly, a monument to bad taste. I stared at it, letting it chime a second, then a third time. It was a sound that always meant the same thing: someone else’s problem was about to become my job.

I thought about letting it go, letting him scream into the void. But the pile of empties in the corner was a testament to my dwindling funds. Forgetting wasn't cheap.

I walked over and swiped my hand across the receiver. The hologram solidified into a life-sized projection of the Grandmaster’s head. He was wearing a new streak of gold paint down his chin, which did nothing to distract from the manic glint in his eyes.

"One-four-two!" His voice was a reedy synth-pop melody that grated on the nerves. "There you are. I was about to send my personal guard to check if you’d finally dissolved in a puddle of your own melancholy. You know, you have a terrible response time. Terrible."

I said nothing. I just looked at him, my face blank.

"Anyway," he continued, waving a dismissive, jewel-encrusted hand that wasn't actually there. "I have a task for you. A glorious, glorious task. My last contender… well. He didn't quite have the… stick-to-it-iveness I look for in a champion." He paused for dramatic effect. "He melted. All over the arena floor. It was a dreadful mess to clean up, and frankly, the crowd found it anticlimactic. They want a fight, not a fondue."

He leaned closer to the projector, as if he could see into my apartment. His holographic eyes scanned the room, and I knew he was taking in the mess, the darkness. I felt a flicker of irritation.

"I need a replacement," he said, his voice dropping to a conspiratorial whisper. "Someone with… grit. Panache. Someone who won't turn into a viscous puddle when poked. The Contest is the centerpiece of my little society, 142. It needs to be spectacular. And my current champion is getting bored. A bored champion is a destructive champion."

I knew who he meant. The big green idiot. The only thing on this entire planet that I actively avoided.

"So," the Grandmaster clapped his holographic hands together, the sound tinny and fake. "A new wreck just tumbled out of the big hole. Fresh fish. I want you to go fishing. Find me someone who can put on a show. The pay will be… substantial."

He named a figure. It was ludicrously high. Enough to keep me in top-shelf liquor for a standard year. Enough to buy silence for a long, long time. The memories of my sisters, of Hela’s laughter, receded just a fraction. The number was a wall, pushing them back.

"Don't bring me another scavenger with a sharpened pipe," he warned, his tone hardening. "Bring me a warrior. Bring me a monster. Bring me something that will make the crowd scream for all the right reasons. Do you understand?"

I thought of the Xeeran male in the garden below, his face a mask of concentration. The mechanics of it. A task. A reward. Simple. Clean.

"I understand," I said. My voice was rough from disuse.

The Grandmaster’s painted lips curled into a smile. "Excellent! I knew you were my favorite for a reason. Don't dawdle. The smell of melted contender is starting to fade."

The hologram fizzled and vanished, plunging the room back into the shifting gloom of the city lights. The silence that rushed in was heavier than before, filled now with purpose. A hunt. A paycheck. A way to keep the past buried under the weight of credits. It was better than sitting here, watching ghosts dance in the neon. It was something to do.

I moved away from the wall, the purpose settling into my bones like a familiar ache. The first step was the armor. It lay draped over a low bench, where I’d dropped it after my last run. It wasn’t the silver and gold of Asgard, polished to a mirror shine before every battle. This was thick, dark leather, scuffed and stained, reinforced with plates of scavenged ship plating. It smelled of ozone, engine grease, and stale synth-ale. It smelled like my life.

I pulled the tunic over my head and began the ritual. The chest plate settled into place with a familiar weight, a comforting pressure over my heart. I cinched the straps tight, the motion automatic. The vambraces on my forearms, the greaves on my shins, the twin holsters for my daggers on my thighs. Each piece clicked or buckled into place, a slow, methodical encasing. It was a second skin, one that didn't feel the phantom pains of old wounds. When I was done, I was no longer the woman who sat drinking in the dark. I was Scrapper 142. A tool for a job.

My ship, the Warsong, was docked on a private landing pad extending from my apartment block. The name was a bitter joke I’d thought of a long time ago. The ship was small, agile, and ugly, a mishmash of parts from a dozen different models, but the engines were powerful and the weapons systems were my own design. I dropped into the pilot’s seat, the worn synth-leather conforming to my body. The cockpit was spartan, all function and no comfort. Switches, screens, and a single joystick worn smooth by my hand.

I flicked a series of switches. The engines whined to life, a low thrum that vibrated up through the seat. The lights of the console flickered on, casting a green glow on my face. Outside the viewport, the gaudy lights of Sakaar’s main city glittered. I keyed in the launch sequence, and with a jolt, the magnetic clamps released. The Warsong lifted from the pad, hovering for a moment in the thick, humid air before I pushed the throttle forward.

The city fell away below me, a riot of color and noise shrinking into a contained circle of light. I pushed the ship higher, breaking through the thin, polluted atmosphere into the relative quiet of near-space. Here, the chaos was different. This wasn’t a party; it was a graveyard.

The space around Sakaar was choked with the detritus of countless realities. The planet was a cosmic drain, and the wormholes that dotted the sky were constantly spitting out new garbage. Shattered hulls of forgotten star-freighters drifted silently next to the skeletal remains of organic leviathans that had died in the void. Asteroid fields, thick with rusted metal and frozen waste, tumbled in slow, lazy orbits. It was a treacherous place to fly, but I knew it better than anyone. I knew its currents and its eddies, the safe paths and the ambush points.

I steered the Warsong towards the largest of the wormholes, the one the locals called the Devil’s Anus. It was the most active, a constant source of fresh wrecks. The thrill of the hunt began to sharpen my senses, the lethargy of the alcohol burning away under a familiar wave of adrenaline. It was a poor substitute for the glory of a real battle, for the song of swords and the roar of a worthy opponent. This was just pest control. But it was the only thing that made my blood move anymore. It made me feel something that wasn’t an echo of a memory.

My eyes scanned the sensor displays, my gaze flicking from the main viewport to the readouts. I was looking for energy signatures, signs of a recent crash, anything that wasn't cold, dead junk. My fingers were light on the joystick, weaving the Warsong through a dense field of debris with an instinct born of a thousand similar flights. A section of a ship’s wing, big as a building, drifted past my port side, its surface scarred with weapon-fire. I ignored it. Too old. The Grandmaster wanted fresh meat. He wanted a fighter, and fighters rarely arrived on ships that had been dead for centuries. I pushed deeper into the debris field, my eyes narrowed, scanning the chaos for a prize.

A flicker of light on the edge of my sensor screen. It wasn’t the slow, predictable pulse of a dying power core or the static of a cosmic storm. It was a sharp, frantic spike of energy, moving too fast, too erratically. I looked up at the main viewport just in time to see a streak of white-hot plasma tear through the void. It was a ship, or what was left of one, small and clearly in distress, tumbling end over end on a collision course with the scrap fields below.

I pushed the joystick forward, chasing it. This was it. Fresh.

The vessel, some kind of high-end escape pod by the looks of it, didn’t slow down. It hit the upper atmosphere of Sakaar and became a fireball, screaming towards the surface. I followed its trajectory, my hands steady on the controls. It slammed into one of the largest mountains of junk on the outskirts of the city, the impact sending a plume of rust-colored dust and twisted metal shards into the air. The sound reached me a moment later, a deep, shuddering boom that vibrated through the Warsong’s hull.

I circled the crash site once, my scanners mapping the unstable terrain. The scrap heap was a precarious mountain of collapsed starships and shattered infrastructure, and landing on it directly was suicide. I found a relatively flat, stable plateau of compressed metal a few hundred meters away and set the Warsong down with a heavy clang of its landing gear.

The engines whined down into silence. For a moment, I just sat there, listening to the tick of cooling metal. A plume of black smoke was rising from the crash site, acrid and chemical. I grabbed my helmet, but then hesitated, leaving it on the seat. The air here was toxic, but I was long past caring. I needed my senses sharp.

The ramp lowered with a hydraulic hiss, the sound loud in the sudden quiet. My boots hit the surface with a crunch of rusted plating. The ground was a mosaic of decaying metal, shifting slightly under my weight. I drew Dragonfang from the sheath on my back, the familiar weight of the sword a comfort in my hand. The blade, forged in a dragon’s breath, seemed to absorb the dim light.

I moved towards the wreckage, my steps measured and quiet. The air smelled of burnt fuel and superheated steel. The silence was unnerving; a crash that violent should have been followed by screams, or at least the groan of dying systems. This was just silence and smoke.

The escape pod was wedged deep into the side of the scrap mountain, its hull torn open like a can. The pristine white alloy of its chassis was blackened with soot and scored with deep gouges. It was a miracle anything inside had survived at all. I circled the wreck, sword held ready, my eyes scanning the shadows for any sign of movement. Nothing.

I climbed onto a twisted girder to get a better vantage point, peering down into the exposed interior. The cockpit was a disaster of sparking wires and shattered control panels. And then I saw him.

He was tangled in a mess of containment netting and emergency strapping, pinned against the back wall of the pod. The first thing I registered was the color. A swatch of brilliant, almost offensively red fabric was caught around his shoulders, a stark contrast to the grimy metal and scorched wiring. Then, the hair. It was long and thick, the color of polished gold, even matted as it was with dust and what looked like blood.

He was large. Even constrained by the netting, I could see the sheer bulk of his shoulders and chest. His head was slumped forward, so I couldn't see his face, but the body was that of a fighter. A powerful one. He wasn’t moving.

I stood there for a long moment, the wind whipping a strand of my own dark hair across my face. I didn’t see a person in peril. I didn’t see a warrior, or a prince, or a man. I saw a commodity. I saw a mountain of credits. The Grandmaster wanted a show. This man, with his ridiculous cape and god-like physique, was a spectacle all by himself. He would make the crowd scream. He would make my account balance swell. And for that, he was worth more than his life. He was worth the trouble of cutting him out.