The brass echoed through the big top. [i]Entry of the Gladiators, Op. 68[/i] was the comical march that played through the circus, setting the mood for the proclaimed greatest show on Earth. Jugglers and clowns. Acrobats and freaks. And somewhere in the middle of all of them was a boy named… “[b]TORO, the Fire-Eating Kid!”[/b] Balancing precariously atop the back of an elephant, the scruffy-haired boy from London juggled great balls of fire while, around him, his adoptive parents jumped through rings of fire and twirled batons that were ignited on either end. It was an ordinary day in the extraordinary life of an orphan brought up in the midst of the circus, putting on a show in King’s Lynn or Peterborough or Sheffeld. The shimmery blue of his foster parent’s leotards reflected by the blue shorts that hugged the waist of the soot-marked boy. The air seemed to shimmer as heat radiated from off his body. His hands were moving too fast in the juggling routine for the audience to have noticed, but his actual hands were engulfed in flames, the fire rolling from the tips of his fingers back to his wrists. Yet, the flesh beneath was unmarked. As the parade of the performers marched slowly on, through the cheers and gasps of the crowd, Toro settled into the rhythm of the routine. It was, after all, an act. Something that they practiced time and time again on the road. He hadn’t started out juggling atop an elephant. [i] No one started out juggling atop the elephant.[/i] A few had broken their necks juggling atop the elephant. It was practice, practice, practice. Until it was nearly perfect. Until it was nearly perfect each and every time, because it had to be perfect. Because there couldn’t be any mistakes in front of the audience. No surprises. Surprising an elephant was going to be a bad day for everyone, the elephant included. Then the music seemed to go off-track. The world spun. Vertigo set in, everything turned upside down and inside out, until Toro found himself standing in a stadium like no other that he had ever seen before. Under his feet, the ground gave way to a sea of magma. Fires leapt up, wrapping around his feet, traveling up his legs, until the fire had covered him from head to toe. A human-shaped flame. The cheers twisted into jeering. As he turned his head, to the left and the right, Toro found himself confronted by a multitude of tiny windows in mid-air. Screens featuring what looked like pieces of an audience watching him. [i]Watching him burn[/i]. From out of the sea of lava, a large, serpentine monstrosity seemed to form from out of the liquid, molten earth. As the firey dragon bared its dripping, flaming fangs, the sound of the cheers increased while the supple fire-monster seemed poised to tear into the child-sized Human Torch… [b]...a splash of water snapped him awake.[/b] Flailing, the young Toro gasped as he came to. In a fog, the boy was grasping at the last straws of his sanity. He didn’t know where he was. Freshly healed scars on his body gave witness to what they had done to him. It was a minute in which he questioned whether he was who he was. [i]Was this real life?[/i] Then the minute passed and Tomás felt his mind returning. This wasn’t a dream. This was a [b]nightmare[/b]. Curling into a fetal ball, the boy slowly pulled himself up from out of the puddle of water to stand in the stark, spartan cell where he’d been held inbetween the experiments and the gladiatorial show. He could feel the collar around his neck. Whatever it was, it seemed that when it was on that the fire wouldn’t come out. Head down, he could only see the feet of the guard. Feel the rough hand that seized him and pulled him from out of the cell. Pushing forward, the disheveled and damp child stumbled out into the hallway. Then, he walked. For how long? He wasn’t sure. A hand reached out to stop him as they arrived in a room of some kind, before the same rough hand pushed him down into a chair. All the while, Toro just looked down at the floor. Staring somewhere past his own feet, as though willing for all the world to simply vanish in flame. A sound, that of a door or passage opening, prompted the youth to dare to steal a glance. His eyes were low, catching only a glimpse of legs and feet. The usual escorts or guards, but there was another. Someone being pushed around. Another prisoner? “Toro?” The voice seemed female, though not one that he knew. Turning his head up, the boy was confronted by the sight of a creature whose angular features were distinctly inhuman. Alabaster skin. Red eyes. But the look on the creature’s face was humanized by the expression that was so relatable. She knew him. Or, thought that she did. The boy’s mouth opened, as did hers, though the sudden flash of the collar around her neck made them [i]both[/i] re-consider what it was that they were about to do. For now, it seemed that they waited.