We stood in the arena, on a raised platform that hadn't been there the previous day. The priests had been busy, increasing the Order in the arena so that workers with machinery and electric tools could create a vastly different setting than before. Now, six of us remained on the raised stage: Lance, Gideon, Katya, Lauren, Zara, and me. Most of the chaff had been shed from our grouping, and only Zara seemed like the obvious next one out. The tension soared in me, knowing that soon real competitors would start to exit the competition. Any of us could be ejected any day; one slip could even see Lance out. So far, it had been the more deserving of defeat who found themselves leaving the contest each day. Once Zara was ejected, in all likelihood today, the real competitors would start losing their places.
I mused, a little disbelieving, on how I now counted myself among the true competitors. Only a few days ago, I saw myself as a joke, and so did my classmates and my city, placing me last even among those who never really stood a chance. How much can change over a few days.
We stood unsuited still. The priests were arranging the cylinders of Mystorium, berating their servants to hurry, to be careful, to compose themselves.
I awaited the suit with a deeply visceral anticipation. Life outside the suit was becoming every more hollow compared with the rush of power and awareness that came from being within it. I should, perhaps, have had some concern for the passion I was gaining for the armor. As I watched the Mystorium being prepared, I anticipated the suit with more excitement than I would have had for a private moment with Lauren, somewhere in the dark, with out bodies close.
What they had done to the arena in a single evening and night was breathtaking. The entire arena floor, a vast space more than 100 yards long and 100 yards wide, had been transformed from a dusty, empty expanse into something incredible. We stood on a wooden stage at one end of the arena, and in the center rose a towering structure made of timber. The platform at the top of the tower was flat with no railings or protection, a precarious perch that hinted at the challenges ahead. Beneath our stage and the tower, a maze of wooden walls and barriers stretched out, forming narrow corridors and larger spaces. Fiends barked and screamed from the recesses of the timber warren. As I watched, I caught glimpses of the spiny backs of nightmare creatures pacing around. Above the arena floor, the stands stood high behind imposing walls—a necessity, as the fiends employed here would otherwise quickly turn the audience into victims and meals.
The stands were packed. A sea of humanity churned like waves in a storm. The noise of the crowd was a constant roar, nearly toneless with its blend of voices. Nobles and commoners alike filled every seat, their cheers and shouts blending into a cacophony. There was excitement for action, and a thirst for blood up there. Groups of drunken men held banners made from old bed sheets, with names of competitors crudely painted across them. No name was more common than mine as I looked around.
I was the people’s champion.
I heard a sound from the priests and turned my head back to the Mystorium. The cylinders began to disintegrate. Streams of particles fled their old forms and raced towards each of us. I had eyes only for the particles that flowed toward me.
The sensation of the suit forming around me was indescribable. Each time it was like something new, something exciting, but increasingly it was something comfortable and safe. The particles coalesced, wrapping me in the suit. Their liquid nothingness became hard plates and sharp edges. I felt a surge of ecstasy. It was as if every nerve in my body was being electrified, every sense heightened to an almost unbearable degree.
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SIGHT and HEARING returned to me. The sensory torrent that had been the arena became both more and less at once. I could experience it all the more, every sight and sound and odor amplified. But I could filter as well, tune up or down the volume of every sense.
As the suit settled around me, I felt truly alive. This was the prize. Maybe it was the problem as well.
This was what I was really fighting for. A chance to own this. A chance to claim it. To never have it taken from me again.
As I stood there, the crowd's roar echoing in my ears and the suit's power thrumming through my veins, I felt invincible. In moments like that, the doubts and fears were banished. I felt like I could conquer the world.
Mario strode across the stage, clearly enjoying the crowd and the attention. His eyes cast across the stands, it was easy to see how he despised most of the onlookers—commoners, in his view, were beneath him. I suspected Mario had been common-born himself. The priesthood was mostly a destination for the sons and daughters of noble houses who were too far down the line of succession to have a place on their estate, but common men could find their way into the ranks of the priesthood as well and could climb the ranks. I thought Mario was probably one of these men, his disdain for me and the rest of the peasantry a vile reflection of his own inflated sense of self-importance.
He preened for a moment before the screaming crowd. Then he bellowed, "SILENCE." His voice filled the arena, drowning out the thousands of voices, amplified in some manner I couldn't understand or appreciate. His voice emanated from the far corners of the massive space. The crowd hushed, and Mario reveled in their singular attention. He began to pace back and forth before me and my classmates, arrayed in our glorious half-suits. He said, his voice booming, "Today's contest has no defined number of ejectees. Today, it will be possible for all of these worthy combatants"—I noticed how, in front of a crowd, we were no longer hopeless worms in his description—"to return on the morrow, or we could see one, two, or even more of these hopeful youths return defeated to the arms of their families, their aspirations of holding the Sword of Boston crushed and discarded, their lives to be lived out far from that glorious potential."
He paused, letting the crowd murmur, the murmur building, soon becoming a drowning din once more. He spoke again, the crowd hushing. He pointed to a wide open space below the stage, where there were six pots with narrow necks and openings, seemingly made of cast iron, immensely heavy-looking. My SIGHT revealed bolts driven into the ground, fixing the pots to the floor. The pots were spaced across the width of the arena, with more than ten yards between each pot.
"In this maze of death and danger," he continued, "are orbs, representing the orbs that our Griidlords strive to gain for our city during each Falling Season, the lifeblood of our homeland. Today, the contestants must struggle in these corridors, overcoming one another and fearsome fiends brought from the wilds, to gather orbs of their own. There are thirteen orbs, in far corners of the arena, affixed to the collars of monsters, behind barriers of elements, and it is our contestants' task to gather them. At the end of the day, when the last orb has been retrieved, those without an orb in their bin will be ejected."
I nodded to myself, understanding. As I looked on the cast iron pots, I could see names on placards hanging from the necks of the pots. From here, I could see Lauren's name printed on one such sign, on the pot at the furthest extreme from where we stood.
He continued, bathing in the attention and excitement of the gathered thousands above him. He boomed, "And today our spectacle is enhanced further, by the presence of the Gods of the Field, the Lords of Order, the Hands of the Prophet itself! Today, we are joined by Griidlords!"