A massive shadow passed over Iris, snapping her to attention. As a guard’s job was preparation for the worst, this hypervigilance had already tread circles into her brain. The human reached down to the horn on her belt with one hand, eyes shakily rising to the cloudy sky from her guardpost. They narrowed at a tempest of a downdraft, refocusing on its source and causing iris’s heart to flutter. The massive shadow belonged not to a giant beast or mountain of bad weather, but a massive wooden ship on its trajectory to land just outside the city walls. The silver and green sails caught her gaze, drawing it to the winged snake insignia. She recognized the motif easily as the Zephyr clan, remembering their many trading runs from the nagadel isles. Iris’s posture straightened. Her job as a guard was routine- up with the sun for two hours of repetitive yet rigorous training with the worn-out night shift, sight hours of waiting, and then two more hours of training alongside the annoyingly eager evening shift. While her muscles ached every night, her coinpurse did not. These airships landing were a fine break to the monotony, always containing the promise of interesting beings within. The smaller, house-sized ones contained eccentric travelers, full of stories and all too willing to tip generously. The larger, gym-sized ones were mostly military, bearing soldiers from more advanced parts of the world, their unorthodox glowing weapons a testament to relative advancement. They sought to purchase prisoners for their worst legion and hire soldiers for their second-worst. This ship however, sat right in the middle of the two sizes, measuring up to her guardpost in length and width. As part of the hull opened to expose the trade goods inside, Iris hatched a plan. As the airship’s diplomat descended from the deck to meet someone higher up the chain than her, Iris hung up her armor early to sprint to her bunk in the barracks. She had enough to buy passage off this expanse of rock, see places of the world far more magical than this, and she knew it. Ignoring the more inappropriate comments from younger, more eager guards resting from their end-of-shift training, Iris knelt by her bed. Her strong arms grasped the chest bearing her belongings, heaving it out from under the tough bed. She jammed her key into the lock with shaking fingers, twisting it to the side to a satisfying set of clicks. The lid opened with ease, letting iris fill her pack. Her Coinpurse went right to the side to make itself hard to find and steal, spare clothing filling out the rest. She slung it by the rope over her shoulder, turning to go outside when she almost ran into a higher-ranked guard, built like a shed and smelling twice as bad. The larger guard blocked the door with his torso, solid enough to be used as a door should the need arise.
“Going somewhere, f-?” He started to slur, but Iris cut him off, fierceness standing up to his bulk.
“Tell sir nico I won’t be here tomorrow.”
The larger guard stammered something about loyalty, having never personally seen someone quit. Iris stuck her arm through the hole between him and the doorframe, wrenching herself through to the sound of a choice handful of curses. She picked up speed towards the ship, having no desire to stay around for the aftermath, and approached the solid wood with resolve.
Iris practiced the words in her head, turning the line over and refining it like a sword on the anvil. “How much for passage aboard? I’ll man the ship as needed.” made it halfway to her throat, before the eccentric-looking diplomat raised an eyebrow under his cylindrical hat. “You must be one of the new gladiators”
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Iris stopped, words knocked out of her with the sudden change in tone. She had no plan for what to do on arrival, but seeing as she was only good at physical work...
“Yes, I am.” Iris spoke, in words that would change her trajectory through life. This job won over mining or farming any day.
“Excellent! Then take a seat in the sword cabin. We didn’t expect gladiators to arrive so soon, so feel free to help out around the ship.”
“Much obliged” Iris said with an overly formal burst of gratitude, rising to the deck. She wouldn’t even have to learn a new skill, just apply violence entertainingly.
Iris found the sword cabin easily, the door emblazoned with a sign of an iron sword over a bronze star practically inviting her. She swung it open with a wide arc of her arm, an avalanche of warm air pouring out onto the cooler deck. Rust-brown cushions lined the seats, and softer-looking ones lined a second higher deck. A few others were already inside, mostly men of some level of muscle lining the half-full cabin. Where Iris would have seen listless boredom in a guardbox, she felt excitement radiate. She took her seat at an edge, catching the eye of a
“Who are you?”
“Iris brimstone, former guard” she answered, before conversation absorbed her
“A guard?” another sneered. “You’ll need to be more than that if you’re from the barrens.”
“Calm down, she’ll be out of them soon”
“Bet you can’t handle the manaflood”
Iris let the words slide off her, circling the feeling of freedom within her gut. More guards joined over the next few hours, with the last opening of the door heralding food and hope in the form of a green-clad ship attendant.
“The Takeoff will occur in seven minutes. If you have any business on the ship, perform it now.”
Three of the bigger candidates tripped over eachother leaving, and in the absence of space the ship attendant reached into an unusually round scabbard. His hands moved like lightning, dropping a paper-wrapped cylinder into everyone’s lap- or by their head, for those who rested on the deck above. The long sandwiches, full of dried meats and hardy plants, vanished like smoke into the guts of the gladiators. Barely a minute after, the ship departed from the soil, newly-filled stomachs lurching downwards. Everyone’s spirits rose with the aircraft, inspiring the swapping of stories. It began as a dubious tale of tricking the examiners at one of the many mage-towers, countered by another’s hunting trip to bag an emerald serpent, until the ante crescendoed in a superfluous tale of a new star being thrown into the sky. Iris added her own, of her and her allies fending off a cerulean owl, only to be deflated by the casualness of an offhanded comment.
“A cerulean owl? Those were my warmup opponents.”
Conversation moved on, and Iris felt the air grow stuffier, likely not helped by the mass of bodies in it, but felt a blanket of warmth and contentment fall over her. At least for now, she was safe, she was free, she was full, and she was about to earn the awe of a crowd. Feeling her eyelids slip downwards, Iris put up no resistance to a well-deserved sleep.