It was a clearing about thirty feet across with a pit, wood-walled, in the centre of it. The pit was about three feet deep, but the walls extended another eight into the sky. Luna hadn’t seen anything like the animal in the cage opposite her before: it was reptilian, with rending teeth and many limbs. It extended a forked tongue and tasted the air with a rattling hiss. Luna was held between two guards, each one holding a wrist in a long claw contraption.
A handler fiddled with the lock on the cage, and then stepped aside. Luna saw that he held two ropes woven together in his hand, the fibrous strands separating and connecting to the top and bottom of the cage door. He nodded to the High Priest, who was watching from a platform above the walls of the pit. Looking down, the priest nodded back. The Handler tugged on the rope and ran, leaping up and catching the hands of two sturdy-looking men who reached down to pull him out of the pit.
The cage door swung open and the reptile… did nothing. The guards on either side of Luna followed the example of the Handler and leapt for freedom, leaving her alone with the animal. Gradually, it extended a probing hand – or foot? – and padded at the air where the cage door would have been. Luna realised it was blind. She sidestepped, moving as silently as she could to try and get on the other side of those teeth.
The beast’s head snapped around! It let out a hellish roar like a piece of industrial machinery, revealing rows of long, sharp teeth. It smelled like rotting meat even from where Luna was standing. Not so blind. It began to move, its dozen-or-more limbs moving in perfect harmony, seeming to pass over each other as though its skeleton was more of a suggestion.
“The omens of the heretic must be purged!” cried the high priest over the roar of the crowd. “So says Tol-Foroth! So say I!”
Luna dove out of the way of a swipe from the monster’s powerful paw. It had hands like a chameleon, without claws, which was a small mercy since they were large enough to break a femur without straining. It hissed, its tongue flickering out into the light, and turned to track her as she ran behind. Luna suddenly remembered something she had read on an idle interplanetary journey, about animals that hunted by reading electromagnetic signals from the nervous systems of their prey. With the amount of wiring inside her body, she probably looked like a meal twice her size to this thing.
Interplanetary journey. She used to fly. She almost laughed, remembering it. It hadn’t been so long ago.
No time to laugh. The thing was coming for her, half-turned around but running at full tilt anyway, giving her a broadside. She ran for the wall.
“What does she hope to achieve?” murmured the High Priest to an aide. “There’s no escape!”
Luna jumped, and when she hit the wall she hung there for half a second, held up by her own momentum. It was just long enough. The charging thing crashed sideways into the wooden wall and staggered as Luna pushed off from the wall and landed on the other side of it. The creature snapped its mighty jaws, swiping at the air, reeling from the impact. Here, Luna saw her chance in that snarling, snapping mouth. She kicked the beast with her heel and the great black head whipped round to face her, its rattling tongue probing the air for her electromagnetic signature. She began to back away.
The beast pawed the ground and charged, all limbs pounding the dirt as it sped towards her. Luna leapt once again. Something was different in the atmosphere, this time. She could sense the murmurs from the people watching her. As the beast crashed into the wall a second time and she leapt again, the aide bowed his head and said quietly, so just the High Priest could hear:
“She’s fighting back, Excellency. And I think the people want her to win!”
Luna kicked again, and again. The beast was dazed. It snarled at no-one in particular, and Luna reached out with both arms-
And clamped its jaw shut! She had finally realised what the great snapping head reminded her of most – the crocodiles in the swamps of Arkoth, that she had spent a year of her life hunting long ago. Those were a little larger than this, but the same principle seemed to apply. Based on the shape of the head, the muscles that opened that hideous jaw could hardly be stronger than a few pounds of lifting force. She held the jaw shut with one steel-muscled arm and pulled a strip off the remains of her dress, to gasps from the huddled, hushed crowd. She tied it neatly, silencing the creature at last, to a roared approval from her audience. She stepped back, throwing her arms wide as she addressed the High Priest:
“You want to explain to me what all this is about?” she yelled. The man and his aide, cowering beside him, conferred briefly. She saw the high priest raise his hand and almost strike the other man, but he caught himself, took a sharp breath inwards, and turned to face his congregation.
“The woman,” he said, pausing to compose himself as he raised his hands to the sky. “Has been cleansed by the ritual of combat! No longer… no longer brings she the false omen of the heretic! The favour of Tol-Foroth is with her!”
There was a cheer and a general sense of relief from the people, and two of the guards reached down and helped Luna out of the pit, while the handler went down to lead the whimpering beast back to its cage.
“Come with me to the Cathedral,” said the High Priest in a low voice to Luna as she waved to the people from the shoulders of the guards. She looked down at him and tilted her head to one side.
“Why?”
“Because I can help you. I hear you want to return to your ship.”
Luna tapped one of the guards on the arm, and the two of them put her down on her feet with some reverence.
“You know where my ship is?” she said.
“I know who will,” said the High Priest. “But we must move fast. I’ll explain at the Cathedral. Come,” he said.

Two young men were waiting for them at the Cathedral. Both were wearing the same stripped-to-the-waist scouting garb as the young man who had found her. Actually, one of them was the young man who had found her. He waved.
“You remember Vil-Odek,” said the High Priest. Luna nodded. He gestured to the second man, a shaven-headed bull-necked specimen. “This is Toridd.”
Toridd nodded. His arms were sternly folded across his broad chest. Luna got the sense that the only thing that could shift him from that spot against his will would be an explosion directly between his stout legs, and then only maybe.
“They will take you to the Arboreal Heretic,” said the High Priest. “Our old leader, who turned his gaze skyward in the hopes of catching messages from the heavens. He lived in a treetop refuge. He saw your ship crash.”
Luna shook her head. “First I need to save Asta – my friend,” she said, feeling her body rebel at the word. “She’s being held in the city, in the Philosopharium.”
“Your friend is lost to us,” said the High Priest. “And you must go to the refuge immediately if you are to learn anything from the heretic.” Vil-Odek and Toridd began to make their way towards the door at the Priest’s urging. “They will show you the way. Waste no time!”
“Why are you helping me?” said Luna. The High Priest’s face contorted in a strange pained expression that she realised was a sort of smile, and he spoke:
“I’m helping myself.”
Then the hand of Vil-Odek on her shoulder gently guided her out into the light. She looked back through the open door into the dark of the Cathedral, and watched as the High Priest lit a candle. His kind had ruled Tond not so long ago, she thought. Strange to imagine. People waved and cheered as she was lead through the village. Evidently seeing someone beat the lizard-monster and survive the ordeal of combat was a rare spectacle.
“Is it far to the Refuse?” said Luna.
“Refuge. Not so far,” said Toridd. “Hour, two.” Luna could see that this was about all she was going to get out of him, so she turned to Vil-Odek.
“Listen, I know what he said, but I really need to go back to the city.”
Vil-Odek glanced over his shoulder and, waiting til any suspicious-looking characters were out of earshot, whispered: “I know people inside who can help you. But we should go to the Refuge first,”
“Why? Why can’t this Heretic guy wait for a couple days?” Vil-Odek looked sheepish.
“Because he’s nailed to the tree,” he said. “We don’t know how long he has left.”