a/n: Hey guys! Again, I'm super sorry for the huge gap between chapters, but this one is a lot longer than the others. I wish I could post them more often, but it takes me ages to write anything because I want to make sure it's the best it can be and you guys aren't disappointed. Enjoy!:)

To her dismay, Merla soon found out that the Hobbes had, in comparison to the rest of the 'game', only been a warm-up. The mercenaries were easy enough - most of them seemed to have flour for brains, if there was anything in their heads at all; after finishing that round, the wheel then declared she would fight hollowmen. Again, she did not find it a huge challenge to defeat these beasts; she had encountered them many times before, and was well experienced in how to best outwit them. She was well and truly out of breath when she returned to the central chamber this time; she hoped that Reaver would take this opportunity to share his opinion on her progress - or indeed anything at all - so she could have a few precious moments to breathe. Unfortunately, Reaver was uncharacteristically quiet and the wheel clunked into action without a word being uttered.

As it ground to a halt, Merla heard a delighted chuckle sound from the balcony above. Her head snapped up to look at the source of the noise and saw Reaver grinning at the wheel. Confused, Merla looked back at the wheel; it had landed on - well, she wasn't sure what it was. Some sort of masked bandit, perhaps?

"What's that?" she inquired, her eyes meeting Reaver's.

"Those," he replied, the smile on his face widening, if that was possible, and a gleam entering his eyes, "are Sand Furies! Terribly hard to get hold of, I must say, so I just hope they're worth the effort. Not that I collected them all myself, of course, with all the," he paused, debating which word to use, "business I do these days."

"Never heard of them." Merla challenged, raising her eyebrows as if to ask for an explanation. Reaver laughed, shaking his head.

"Well then, this will be even more interesting! In you go, don't want to keep me waiting now, do you?"

Merla pursed her lips; this was most likely the closest to an explanation she would get. Taking a deep breath, she headed towards the newly opened gates, not knowing what may lie beyond. The first thing that she noted when she entered the arena was that she was surrounded by sand - not really that surprising, given the creature's name. There were also crumbling stone obelisks towering out of the sand; Merla could vaguely make out time-worn marks chiseled onto them; she squinted, trying to see if she could make out what they meant. They seemed to be characters from an unfamiliar alphabet which she could not read, however she had seen them before - they were on a strange manuscript she had found after her mother had passed away. Oddly enough, the orphaned girl still had the manuscript in her possession - it was one of the only memoirs that remained of her mother, the other being a pendant that hung loosely on a silver chain around her neck.

Recently, Merla had begun to wonder more and more just who her mother had been. Yes, she was the woman who had raised her, earning just enough as a barmaid to get by and so that her daughter need not take up factory work, and the woman who had died - Merla had presumed of illness - when her daughter was only 10, leaving her orphaned and unaware of who to trust or where to go; but Merla had no idea of who she had been before that, and no-one else seemed to know, either. Of course, Merla did not blame her mother leaving her when she was but a child, or with such little information about her past; she was sure that, had her mother still been around when she had come of age, she would have filled her in on her past and - another thing that had been on Merla's mind recently - who her father was.

At the moment, however, Merla knew that she should not dwell on these subjects. No; what mattered at the moment was winning the game. She turned her thoughts again to Eddie and focused on the arena with as much of her concentration as she could muster.

She glanced around her as the gates she had entered through shut; there was no sign of any of these 'Sand Furies' - at least not yet, anyway. A few seconds passed and still Merla saw nothing of the creatures. Just as she was about to look up at Reaver to see if anything had gone wrong, she heard a slight noise behind her. Whipping out her pistols, she spun around to face a completely unfamiliar yet human-like creature - the basic anatomy was very similar to hers, however the creature was covered head to toe in sand-coloured, worn bandages and had an eerily robotic look about it. The eyes - or what she assumed were its eyes - were hidden behind two identical, round, metal-rimmed lenses which gave it an extremely sinister quality and almost looked as if they could actually be built into its face.

Merla couldn't tell whether these creatures were simply humans in costume, part-clockwork or something different entirely; she had never seen anything of the sort before. There was one thing she was sure of, however: they terrified her, although she was unsure of why. Perhaps it was the simply the unknown that surrounded these creature like a thick, wooly blanket.

During the brief moment that Merla had been analysing the Sand Fury, it had raised its arm, brandishing a blood-stained blade, let out a small outcry and pelted itself in her direction. As it ran toward her with astounding speed and agility, its blade caught the light - only for a second, but for long enough for Merla to see that it could easily pierce her skin with almost just a touch. Keep away from their knives, she thought, making a mental note for later. The creature had almost closed the small gap between them; without further hesitation, she dispatched of the miserable creature with a single shot from one of her trusty pistols.

More of the Sand Furies began to jump out of the sand around her; she twirled gracefully to face each one, planting bullets into them before they could so much as scratch her with their lethal knives. They were extremely nimble and quick on their feet, but Merla was quicker. Soon, she got into the rhythm of the fight, her almost inhumanly fast turns and dodges weaving an elaborate pattern through the air, becoming a brisk yet beautiful dance that, to many an onlooker, would have merely seemed a frenzied blur. Even as the Sand Furies began to appear in denser hordes, Merla sustained her fast-paced dance; when they began to wield pistols, her dance simply upped tempo as she wove her way through the air to avoid bullets. Reaver truly was amazed this time; she had fought valiantly through the first three rounds, and was fighting just as valiantly this time, not seeming in the slightest out of breath or worn-down by her previous battles. The thought that maybe she was something more than just another silly contestant surfaced again in his mind.

"Well, bravo, that was an impressive performance indeed!" Reaver exclaimed as Merla emerged into the main chamber once more, "Most people are dead by now - I think I've said that before, actually - so again I must congratulate you on being alive. You know, you might even be the first person to get this far,". Merla wasn't sure whether this was a compliment or merely an observation, but as Reaver rarely so much as uttered something in her favour, she took it as one.

"In that case, I'll be the first to win it," Merla replied confidently, placing the pistol that she had previously been studying back into its holster before raising one eyebrow and looking up at Reaver. He replied with his now-famillar smirk.

"Ah, such spirit," he shook his head, "I'm sure you'd be excellent between the bedsheets," Merla pursed her lips and rolled her eyes, returning her gaze to the wheel. This time, it selected wolves; she breathed a sigh of relief, knowing that this round would be easier than the last.

"Wot you in here for then, lad?" Eddie jumped at the sudden, rough voice that had sounded from his right, groaning as his pains returned from the sudden movement. He turned his head to the source of the noise; his vision had developed somewhat, however he could not see who had addressed him.

"Wh-where are you?" he mumbled, his voice hoarse from lack of use. He squinted, thinking that somehow that might help him see the man in the dark.

"Still can't see? Would 'ave fort you could by now, but then you were out cold fur quite a long time. Fort you were dead, fur a while," The voice replied, "but yer not, and tha's what matters, I guess. I'm over here, to yer right. I've come as close as I can, so yer vision must be coming back slow." Eddie blinked, taking in what he had just heard. His head hurt as he tried to put it into context; his body still hurt all over.

"Yeah… where are we? I don't even know why… how…" He trailed off, trying to connect his thoughts.

"Ah, yer must be in a bad way.." The voice paused for a moment, "you really 'ave no idea where ye'are?"

"N-no?" Eddie inquired, unsure of whether he really wanted to know.

"Well, laddie," The voice became kind and slow, "hate tah break it to you, but… yer in the Royal Prison."