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Chapter 27: Imprimis
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“What would I tell you of her? Foreign, alien, unknowable… beautiful, far too beautiful, far beyond my grasp. Strong and stoic, moving in a world all her own, yet warm, like a campfire in the dark, comforting like a familiar presence, yet all the while out of reach. Hers was an allure unlike any other I’d known before, and I fear I’ll know it not henceforth. Her loss left an unfillable hole in experience, a pit that tears at me even now, millennia later.” ~ From: “Transcripts of Transcendence” by Corio, 3 L.E.
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Arwen stood in the line, gnawing on a butt of bread. No one seemed to pay her any attention. It had taken her two full days of travel to reach the base of the tower, and in that time, she’d managed to find scraps of food abandoned in dump piles behind taverns, and even a forgotten pale that’d gathered dirty water from the rains in days prior. With it she’d washed her face and hands; making it to the tower wouldn’t mean anything if she was turned away without getting even the chance to register.
The guest entrances were on the opposite side of the wide circular base, facing the central plaza of Gillataria and its fantastic springs, fountains, statues, and cathedrals: facing the Azure Mountain and Gillat’s great castle. The peasant’s entrance and the fighter intake windows were on the back side of the tower, still a more elaborately constructed scene than Arwen was used to seeing, but nowhere near the lavish opulence of its main entrance. Where Arwen and the hundreds of other unfortunates stood was the city’s entrance. The underbelly of the Tower, known to those who served it, not to those whom it served.
A large man, easily seven feet tall and with brawn to match his height placed a hand on her arm and roughly shoved her out of the way. She choked on the bread, stumbled, and fell to the cobblestones. Noticing the commotion, the pair in front of her, a man and a woman, both dressed in commoners' drab shirts and trousers, turned around. Seeing the oncoming brute, they quickly moved aside, scurrying out of the way. The hulking intruder was pale of skin, bare of chest, and had two cruel axes strapped to either hip. A long brown beard grew from his grizzled face, and his thick, full muscles rippled as he shoved aside those in front of him too oblivious to move.
Arwen slowly got to her feet and reclaimed her position in line, looking around for the guards. They stood in pairs, two on either side of the seven lines, evenly spaced, the central the largest, leading to the tower’s entrance, and the three to either side, still swelling but smaller, leading to the six intake windows. The guards wore intricately carved metal helms that extended downwards to cover the top of their necks, their cheeks and the sides of their jaws, and their foreheads. A nose plate ended above their upper lips, leaving an opening for their eyes and face. They wore fine embossed plate that shone in the sunlight, the silver metal glinting. It covered every part of them, from wide shoulders to bulging chest pieces with the Gillatarian crest, a depiction of the Tower against the backdrop of the Azure Mountain and the sun above standing out in ridges on the shining surface their plate. Light blue capes lined with white embroidery flowed from their shoulders, and their gauntleted hands rested on the hilts of long side swords sheathed at their waists.
The soldiers guarding the tower stood out from the rabble of commoners in line, and stood their posts lazily, seeming not to care at all for the hulking, shirtless barbarian tearing through the others on his conquest towards the front. Surprised at herself, Arwen realized that she was angry. Having the energy to generate and sustain emotion was still such a novel experience to her that when she recognized it, the sensation shocked her. Who was he to cut in front of everyone? They were all going to die anyways, he might as well wait his turn. Well, perhaps he wouldn’t die quite as quickly as she would.
Miraculously, the swelling of her gut, legs, and feet had reduced almost to nonexistence over the last several days since eating the mysterious man’s dried jerky, and her body felt stronger than it had in months. She still ached with hunger and her skin cracked and itched from exposure, but she had somehow overcome starvation with only the few scraps of food and some dirty water. She remembered the man’s signet ring with difficulty; something about it stuck out to her, its pattern simple yet powerful, but its shape eluded her. She was sure now that he was no ordinary man, and the effects of the food proved it.
She watched over the shoulders of the grumbling pair in front of her as the man reached the front of the line. He would’ve been out of view if it weren’t for his towering height, and her eyes tracked his shoulders and head as he spoke to the attendant at the window, then after several minutes made his way inside the tower through the door at the window’s side as it was opened from inside. Strength rules the tower, after all.
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She thought of the stories her parents would tell of the tower, the matches they’d watched when they were younger, newer to Gillataria. Bloodshed, inhuman feats of strength, godlike champions, foreigners from every stretch of Tiris and beyond, all come to battle for glory, fame, money, or fun. The city state thrived on the tower, and the tower thrived on its victims. She craned her neck, looking up at the titanic construction. It rose into the sky for what seemed like miles, reaching for the heavens themselves. It was said that the gods themselves watched the matches at its highest reaches, entertained by the contests of their mortal creations, and none but the most powerful and prestigious were permitted to watch those fights in person.
The line was slow-moving, and she lowered her eyes to the large, rectangular rei-plates centered above each intake window, her gaze focusing on the biggest of them above the main entrance. Each plate, scryscreens, her parents had taught her, showed a different fight. The smaller ones above the windows showed fights from the lower floors, fights that she herself might soon be participating in, indicated by a glowing blue number in their top right corner. The highest of these was 3, which made sense, as each of the lower ten floors was home to hundreds upon hundreds of arenas, each running night and day. The central, largest screen showed prizefights from the fifth floor. These had live audiences of several hundred viewers, far more than the handful of avid talent scouts and dedicated fans that sat in on the lower tier fights.
She watched the main screen. Inside a large, slightly elevated square arena encircled by stands of cheering fans, a boy no older than twelve, brown hair pulled pack and tied in a single ponytail that hung to his middle back and dressed in a tight-fitting white and orange long-sleeved two-piece athletic suit faced off, unarmed, against a dark skinned Dura, its six arms held out wide, jagged, glittering black-bladed swords in each hand, its long, cord-like tail swinging back and forth behind it, a twisted grin on its slender, alien face. They sized each other up, the boy smiling and waving to the crowd, bouncing from foot to foot, the Dura making intricate, weaving cutting patterns in front of him, the swords following one another in a mesmerizing display.
“Hater (17-0), Versus Sanataurauk Kaelalnonatu (23-1), Elimination Ring Match! First to Three Outs, Accepted Forfeit, or Death! Place your bets now!”
The words appeared at the bottom of the screen in bright red letters and scrolled past, repeating themselves as the two faced one another, waiting to begin the fight. She sidled forwards, shifting with the line’s slow progression, moving closer to the tower, and the window that would determine her fate. The sun shone directly down upon her, the tower’s shadow only extending a few inches towards the south. There was no shade for the lines, and she licked her cracked lips, feeling the parched skin that hadn’t known water for over half a day. She nibbled more of her bread, forcing it down her dry throat in small bites, crumb by crumb.
The referee, a tall, slender man in a pale, light red cloak, matching colored hair, and bright blue eyes approached from the edge of the square ring and took his position between them. He smiled, and even through the screen Arwen’s attention was pulled to him, as if his presence drew one in and dampened everything else. He beckoned to the two fighters, and they walked towards him. The man in the red cloak said a few words to the fighters, smiled again, then lifted his hand. A glowing white orb appeared in his palm, then floated there when he removed his hand. He strode away, his cloak flourishing behind him, and exited the ring.
The boy, still smiling widely at the Dura, crouched low. The Dura likewise lowered his weight, his many swords held at the ready. This was the first tower duel that Arwen had ever witnessed, and she was unsure what they were waiting for. The white orb flashed brightly then vanished, and the two launched towards each other. The dura swung its three right arms one after the other in a sweeping, downwards diagonal flurry of black metal, but the boy was faster. He shot under the arc, ducking under the first arm, and whipped his left leg into the Dura’s right knee. The Dura’s leg collapsed inwards, the knee obliterated by the kick, and he was sent reeling to the side, his arms flailing ineffectually.
The boy spun with his kick, following the momentum of his left foot, landed on it, lifted his right leg, and delivered a spearing side kick to the Dura’s thickly muscled abdomen. The kick landed with the force of a hydraulic piston, and the Dura went flying through the air, dropping several of his swords. He hurtled through the air like a projectile launched from a cannon, eventually slamming into the far wall at the bottom of the stands, which indented and cracked from the impact with a billowing plume of dust and debris, leaving a crater with the mangled Dura at its center. The screen lingered on the crater, then flashed to the boy, standing in the center of the ring, waving to the crowd. Though the screen produced no sound, Arwen could see the crowd roaring, screaming, standing and applauding their approval. Spittle flew from their mouths, their fists pounded the air, their faces were ecstasy. The text scrolling along the bottom of the screen froze and was replaced with “Hater 1-0 Sanataurauk.”
Arwen stared dumbly at the screen and noticed that many of the others around her were looking on in like shock. That’s the fifth floor. I won’t have to fight anyone like that for a long time. I’m okay. I’m okay.
Thoughts of her parents flitted through her mind. Is this how they’d died? Overwhelmed by powers far beyond them, led like lambs to the slaughter for the entertainment of the masses, splattered on the sands of some lower arena, helpless and terrified? Her attention was arrested by a sound directly in front of her. The woman, her shoulders hunched, and her head pressed firmly into her husband’s shoulder, cried profusely. Her whole body shuddered, shook with her sobs, and the wails rose and fell like waves, the litany of the poor, the lament of the unfortunate. Her husband’s face was a cracking wall, a crumbling fortress of failing resolve. It contorted, and tears streaked down his skin into his wife’s hair as he cried silently, fighting to control his breathing, to not let on that he was just as scared, just as hopeless as his lover.
Ahead, a guard leaned his back against the tower, fingering the hilt of his sword. He tongued a bit of cartouer in his lower lip, a popular stim-root among the guard, then spit out the brown phlegm onto the cobbles at his feet.