The Proving Grounds

Intense dry heat, cordite, and the stench of vaporised flesh. The titanium security doors have run like candle wax, and every mark on them says the heat came from the cells rather than the arena.

The room itself was built to be modified — an enclosure where the opposition could be changed at will and watched. Beyond it, the containment block, and past that a door still shut and still lit with blue runes.

Three surviving subjects sit among the dead in uniforms that have not been changed in months: grey, waxy, jaundiced, non-verbal. They will not be approached and will not be helped, and they are not interested in anyone who leaves them alone.

Two of the bodies were dressed as Rust Tide pirates and were not Rust Tide pirates. Both were burned through the front.