50 YEARS AFTER LANDING

Grandmother dropped over the edge. She landed lightly on her feet in the sand of the coliseum floor. The arena felt larger than she expected now that she was down in it. She walked over to the center where the skeleton lay.

She was wearing worn leather armor. Her leather belt held a knife from the Speedwell and a small pouch that contained her lunch. She forgot to remove the pouch when she’d set her water flask aside. Other than the knife she was unarmed. She left her travel pack above with the rest of her team.

A video camera was embedded in the pendant necklace she wore. Hopefully it would record everything that actually happened here, for review back on the ship. The camera system would not record the augmentations that Control used, since those were projected directly onto a player's vision by nanobots in their corneas.

The skeleton was dressed in armor constructed out of transparent glass. Grandmother wasn’t certain if all the little bits were there since she never wore plate armor. It appeared to be full set, except for the helm. The body, arms, legs, hands and feet were encased in glass. Looking down she realized a helm was laying beside it in the sand.

Grandmother reached down and tapped the center of the skull's forehead. The bones turned to dust, sinking into the sand. The dust seemed to drag the armor with it. Grandmother made no move to try to grab any of it. Instead her eyes were up, sweeping the walls of the enclosure.

On the wall directly across from her, the outline of a figure appeared in the stone. It was a little too tall and thin to be a human. The stone in the outline stepped forward onto the sand, becoming a three dimensional moving statue of stone. The stone was the same near white color of the wall, all except its weapon. In its hand was a tall black wizard’s staff.

Something in Irene snapped. She’d planned to cast a series of tier zero spells at the figure in order to determine if Kai’s description of the automata being immune to your strongest skill was true or not. All memory of the plan vanished when she saw that staff. She carried a staff very similar to that one for thirty years through the structure. She lost it just last season when she shattered it in defense of Todd. It felt to her like Control was mocking her.

She shot forward and grasped the staff below the automata’s hand. “Mine,” she said with absolute conviction. She pulled the staff back, breaking the automata’s hold. At the same time she struck the automata’s chest with the flat of her other hand, pushing it back.

The automata flew back, crashing into the wall behind it. Cracks appeared in the stone of its body. A black smoke or dust began to ooze from the cracks.

Irene lifted the staff and cast light blade with it. It was one of the tier zero spells that was on her list to try. She cast it less than ten times in her life. Most of those casts were done when she was learning it. The black staff exploded with light. The crowd above her in the stands cried out as they were blinded. Before this the silence of the audience was so complete Grandmother almost forgot they were there.

Irene squinted against the light. She watched as the dark smoke vanished. The stone automata collapsed turning into dust just as the bones of the skeleton had.

Grandmother stepped back away from the wall, dismissing the light spell. Alert, her eyes swept the arena as she waited for what happened next. A blur of motion on the ground caught her attention. She spun and studied the sand. The glass armor was emerging back out of it.

Instead of the two or three pieces Kai described, the full set emerged, including the helm. Grandmother looked up at her audience above and found them blinking away their blindness.

“Is it over?” Todd called down. His higher tier allowed him to be one of the first to recover their sight.

“It appears so,” Grandmother called back. She reached down and picked up the glass helm. As soon as she touched it, the clear glass became stained with a dark, dark violet. A wave of sound exploded from the audience as everyone’s sight returned. Three steps slid out from the wall, near the bottom. This was the beginning of the exit stair.

“Toss down my gathering bag will you?” Grandmother called up to Todd. “After I load up my reward, you can come down and give it a try, since I didn’t give a very good show.”

“Will do,” Todd responded. He pulled a bag from where it was tied to the back of Grandmother’s pack and dropped it to her. It was one of her larger bags, but it was clearly too small to hold all the armor. She slipped her new staff through her belt at her back, before picking up the bits and pieces of armor. She packed them into the too small bag with no difficulty. She discovered an oddly shaped stone amulet on a silver chain inside the armor. She stuffed that into the pouch with her lunch.

With all the loot secured she stepped onto the first step. As she climbed, new steps slid out of the wall in front of her as the steps behind her slid back out of sight. She arrived at the top to another round of thunderous applause. Grandmother handed the bag to Ellen. The bag began to churn unhappily. Ellen carefully aimed the top away from everyone before cracking it open. The bag promptly expelled out its entire contents. Ellen picked up an item and examined it closely before handing it to Kai.

“Here,” Ellen said to the glass crafter. “The closer you examine it the better your chances of revealing the pattern.” Kia accepted the piece of armor from Ellen with a touch of awe. As the armor left Ellen’s hands the trace of green in the glass drained away.

“Have you checked your tier lately?” Grandmother asked Ellen.

“What?” Ellen responded. Grandmother pointed down at the bracer Ellen held.

“That looks green to me,” she observed, pointing to the area closest to Ellen’s hold. Ellen turned her attention back to the bracer, holding it up into the light. She studied the sleeve of her green cloth armor, a puzzled expression on her face.

Laughing internally, Grandmother turned her attention back to the arena floor. Todd was exchanging his spear for Sarah’s bow as they waited for the arena to reset. A wave traveled across the expanse of sand, erasing any signs of Grandmother’s presence, including her footprints. A skeleton, wearing clear glass armor rose from the sand.

Alex tossed a rope over the edge and braced himself to serve as an anchor. Todd slung his borrowed bow, grabbed the rope and rappelled down to the sand. Alex retrieved the rope, not wanting it to be severed when the match started.

Todd tested his footing before crossing to the skeleton. He readied his bow, before following Grandmother’s example and tapping the skull.

Todd gave a much better show. The automata was armed with dual longswords. Todd fired off arrows imbued with fire, electricity, ice, force, sound and finally light. The fire arrow did almost no damage. The screaming arrow induced a series of cracks in the stone. The light arrow visibly weakened the automata. Todd accomplished this while dancing around the sand, not allowing the automata to get close. This was a serious departure from Todd’s usual position of holding the line between attackers and the rest of his party.

After the light arrow, Todd slung the bow and began casting thrown spells. He started with fire. All the cast magic did damage to the automata. The automata fell to its knees and began transforming to gravel after the force spell. Todd pulled the knife from his belt. He danced in close and knifed his slowed opponent in the back.

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The automata fell into dust.

A cheer ran up from the crowd. The glass armor re-emerged from the sand. It was less than a full set, but more than the two or three pieces Kai told them to expect. Grandmother wondered if it was related to tier and experience. Grandmother received the full set because she had not previously won items. She was tier six and unlikely to challenge the coliseum again. Todd received a larger amount, because he too missed winning at earlier tiers. He didn’t receive the full set because he still had tiers ahead of him where he could challenge it again.

Kai was staring down at Todd in clear shock. The piece of glass armor in his hands was forgotten. Kai thought of Todd as a rather one dimensional warrior, carrying a spear and imbuing it with fire. To see such a display of wizardry from a warrior was shocking to him. His people in the far northern square of Peking shunned almost all wizardry, relying instead on physical skill and equipment. They struggled against the coliseum there for generations. Many people went to their deaths, while many more were maimed.

Kai himself lost a hand in the coliseum. Flexing his newly regrown appendage, he was happy with his decision to invest in magic books from Ellen and Sarah’s shop.

Todd tossed his loot up to Alex, who caught it and set it in a separate pile from Grandmother’s. Todd’s touch stained the glass red, which cleared before Alex caught it. When the sand was empty again, he climbed the exit stairs. Arriving at the top he returned the bow to Sarah and accepted his spear back from her with some relief.

“Alex, Alex, Alex!” The cheer was rising up from the crowd, as the hunters, guards and crafters made their desires known. Alex was only tier three. He would be the first real example for most of the observers of what they could expect.

Grandmother set a hand on the young man’s shoulder. “Are you ready?” she said to him.

“If I lose a limb will you regrow it for me?” Alex asked her with some cheek.

“Of course,” Grandmother responded.

“No worries then,” Alex responded with a smile. “Companion, can I borrow your ax?”

Companion was a selkie. He looked a lot like a walking walrus, with a whiskered face and long tusks. His body was heavier than a man and was covered in a brown gray fur. He was designed for the water. On land he was short and squat, but in the water he lengthened out into a sleek form. His flipper-hands were split into two fingers. His people lived in the structure far longer than the humans. They called humans newcomers, because to them, they were.

“Take care of it, my friend,” the selkie said to him as he handed the ax over. Alex unbuckled his sword belt and handed it with his sword still in the scabbard to Companion to hold. He accepted the heavy war ax and hefted it in his hands.

The arena reset.

Alex’s challenge took longer. The automata stepped out of the wall armed with a long sword and shield. Just when it looked like Alex might be in trouble he surprised everyone, even Grandmother, by singing a sixth magic tree spell and increasing his speed.

Alex received the expected three pieces of armor. Grandmother was worried her party was making the coliseum look too easy. She turned her ears to the murmurs of the crowd. Alex’s use of the sixth tree spell was giving other tier three warriors second thoughts. Grandmother was pleased with that result. The crowd was looking at Todd with new eyes, impressed at the variety of spells the warrior displayed. It sounded like Sarah and Ellen’s magic shop was going to get a lot of visitors soon.

As Alex walked triumphantly up the exit stair, carrying his loot, Ellen stood. She handed her crossbow and quiver to Alex and took Alex’s sword and belt from Companion. As she belted on the sword, Alex handed Companion back his ax.

After the reset, Ellen slid down the wall without the help of a rope. Her automata was armed with a bow. It used magic to try and keep Ellen back. When the match was over, Ellen stood panting in the center of the sand, waiting for her loot to appear.

It didn’t, instead an oval appeared on the wall of the pit. The oval filled with the same kind of light animation the transportation system’s doors used. Ellen redrew Alex’s sword and held it in a guard position.

A robot stepped out of the light. Grandmother was calling the stone fighters automata. She’d chosen that name to avoid the name Kai’s square used, which was golem. A golem was a creature made of mud brought to life by magic. Although the coliseum warriors looked like stone, Grandmother did not believe that was what they were actually constructed out of.

What walked into the arena now was clearly a machine. Its frame was built out of steel. Its abdomen hosted a spinning heart with a tank attached. Grandmother suspected this was a hydraulic pump. Tubing and wiring ran down to actuation cylinders of different sizes. It boasted six fingers on each hand. This could only be the Tinkerer. Its shape was nearly identical to the automata, but slightly smaller. Grandmother could visualize how this structure could be hidden under a thin skin layer in the fighting automata.

It paused for a moment just outside the portal-door. The door was to Ellen’s right, but it was directly across the pit from where Grandmother sat watching the event. The robot lifted its face up to look at her. Its face was featureless except for the two glass lenses that served as eyes.

Grandmother looked down into those glass lenses and knew that the intelligence behind this construction was Control. The robot pointed at Ellen and beckoned her to follow. The robot turned and stepped back through the light curtain. Ellen’s eyes went up to the rim. Her eyes swept her companions. Grandmother nodded at the young woman. Whether she was urging Ellen to go or promising vengeance if she didn’t return, even Grandmother wasn’t certain.

Ellen slid the sword back into its scabbard and followed the robot through the light. The light went out, revealing an unbroken stone wall.

The arena did not reset.

“What did we learn?” Grandmother called out into the silence. She spoke in a louder tone than she usually used for communications within her own group.

“The opponents were all quite similar to our normal fighting styles,” Todd commented, also in a loud voice.

“That isn’t always true,” Kai commented. “I’ve seen opponents come out that were the direct opposite of the fighter's style.”

“When did you see that?” one of the audience called.

“Aren’t these the first attempts?” another voice asked. Kai glanced at Grandmother. She gave him the advance signal the party used to coordinate their actions without sound.

“I saw it in my youth,” Kai explained, “in the northern arena outside of Peking.” A murmur of voices rose up from the audience.

“The first two seemed weak to light spells,” Sarah observed. She turned to Kai, “Was that because we rarely use them and never in combat?”

“My father told me the gol…automata are immune to your strongest skill. I don’t remember it ever being mentioned that they were weak to your weakest skill,” Kai responded.

“That is an interesting theory,” Grandmother commented. “We should figure out a way to test it.” Grandmother wanted all this information to be public. She thought most of it already was.

“What was that last thing?” someone called.

“That is the Tinkerer,” Companion fluted in his own language. “If it is impressed with your crafting, it will trade with you. It teaches new crafts.” Alex translated the selkie’s words so that everyone would hear them. “Its visits are rare, I know of it only from legend,” Companion concluded.

The mood of the audience shifted. The crafters in the crowd came for the entertainment alone. Now they started exchanging looks with each other as they considered if they too should try the arena.

More and more of the audience called out questions or made observations. Grandmother steered the conversation back to the fighting in the coliseum and the lessons they learned, when the topic wandered. This was a larger version of after action debriefs Grandmother liked to run with her party in the field. She held them after they saw or fought something new.

Todd answered an audience question by explaining how Grandmother’s party cross trained with each other's weapons in preparation. Sarah commented that this was really an extension of Grandmother's belief that a proper adventurer was half wizard and half warrior.

The group broke out food and drinks and conversations shifted into smaller groups. Sarah approached Grandmother, sitting next to her on the tiered floor.

“Do you think Ellen is alright?” Sarah asked.

“Yes,” Grandmother responded. “I think she is incredibly lucky to catch the Tinkerer's attention.”

“Companion’s legend says the Tinkerer turns up when it is impressed with your crafting. She didn’t even craft Alex’s sword. Only the hunter’s greens were a product of her own work,” Sarah observed.

“Hmm…” Grandmother murmured, as she thought about the comment. “I think the Tinkerer is an avatar for Control. Perhaps it is not what you carry into the coliseum, but the entirety of your work.”

“That doesn’t seem right to me,” Sarah commented.

“Me neither,” Grandmother admitted.