Chapter 43
The Other Flame
Xael really didn’t need to worry about Kalon today. The pair of dog boys from Saffron are honestly terrible, I think either of our pitters could probably beat them solo. That little kid Gori is friends with might be able to beat them solo.
I let out a genuine laugh as I lean back and watch the team from BloodRock basically bully their opposition. Raising a hand to shade my face from the setting sun I shoot another look over at the Saffron cage. No monstrous lion cursed anymore. I do see Velorn though, the blonde flame blessed is pacing back and forth as he waits for his own match to begin. Whoever pulled that match tonight is probably going to have a rough time. I can't imagine the cocky jerk can stomach losing in front of Cuirass, especially with the beating the other Saffron team is presently taking.
Once the frankly hilarious farce is over, the high-pitched lady declares the untouched Kalon and Tota winners. A group of servile slaves dash out to light the torches built into the arena wall around the pit floor. I still don’t understand how it's done but the torches do an amazing job of lighting up the area we fight in without blinding the people in the stands.
“Good job” I call to the returning pair. Prompting a sort of helpless shrug from the two of them. It almost feels like it's not worth saying anything, but a win is a win and as requested they ensured we will have spices for our food tonight.
Right from the start the next match is a lot more interesting to watch. Since Velorn’s partner didn’t make it through the melee Saffron has of course paid the fee and substituted in a new pitter to fight with him. I’m not the only one surprised to see that it's a girl. Women fighting in the pits is far from unheard of, but they are pretty rare and utterly absent from the BloodRock roster.
Both Tota and I sit up and lean forward to get a better view. Xael and Kalon are uhh less interested I suppose. She has long brown hair tied back in braids and is armored in that same metal cuirass basically every Saffron pitter wears. Her weapon of choice is.
‘Of course.’
A pair of short swords, one curved and one straight. Velorn on the other hand is armed with a scimitar. Like a proper fully metal scimitar, with fancy golden writing along the blade. I really do hate Saffron pitters, it's impossible not to with how good they have it.
Their opposition is a pair of cursed. One is covered in multicolored scales, the other is a hairy clawed thing that reminds me of Morean’s partner Task.
What’s interesting is that while the announcer lady goes on about how great the four pitters are, how Kawloc spits venom, Velorn can make balls of fire in his hands, and how Sorsha is the unbeaten daughter of some warlord. The two Saffron pit slaves are arguing? Obviously, I can’t hear them but you don’t need to be some expert on body language to tell they are getting into it. The brown-haired girl is right up in Velorn’s face, her surprisingly broad shoulders tensed up and ready for violence.
Not ready enough apparently as after a few moments she sulkily turns and storms off back towards the viewing cells, leaving the grinning flame blessed to face the two BreakWill pitters alone.
He clearly wanted this outcome so I guess it doesn’t matter. I might think I can beat just about every youth that fights in the whole city, but gods above and below you have to be a cocky fucker to actively seek being outnumbered. Obviously, I could if I wanted to. I forced Morean to run from me, I have no reason to be impressed or intimidated by this display.
“Convincing,” I mutter to myself.
“Huh?” Asks Kalon.
“Nothing. Don’t worry about it.”
Below us the match starts, and Velorn’s blonde hair ignites around his horns as he dashes towards the pair of cursed. The snake boy is armed with a mace and the…mole? I’m going to say Mole is backing him up with a long spear.
The flame-blessed ducks under a spray of venom without missing a beat and launches into a blitz intended to overwhelm the snake boy. It works pretty well, the scimitar slipping past mace with contemptuous ease more than once. At least till the spear gets involved, coming in from behind the snake boy and over his shoulder. That manages to drive Velorn back for a moment.
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Unfortunately for the mole cursed Velorn baits a thrust from the spear, twists aside from it, and throws a ball of flame right into the spear wielder's chest. When it hits him the magic ball explodes spraying the mole boy with fire that drips like a liquid. He is covered in fur, or at least had been prior to the little blast. Now he’s covered in fire and screaming.
“Fuck I hate magic so much,” I say with a little snort.
No one disagrees with me as we watch Velorn proceed to torture the snake boy, blinding him with quick flashes of fire before dashing in to slice at him from all sorts of non-lethal angles like a malicious version of Xael.
Eventually, Kawloc, or whatever his name is grows desperate enough to attempt a sort of berzerk rush. He tries the venom spit again but not to cover the rush as I would have expected. No, it's a part of the combination of mace swings he launches at Velorn. That is honestly pretty smart, covering the wide spray with regular attacks first makes it a tricky proposition to counter.
None of it matters, the snake cursed hits nothing but air, unable even to force the flame blessed into blocking. The poison spray comes pretty close but sizzles away in Velorn’s hair as he ducks his face away from the attack.
I’m not sure if the flame blessed notices a specific opening, or if it had always been there and he is just bored of playing with his food. Either way, he steps back and to the left of a swing at his head and slices his scimitar up one-handed, hacking into the snake boy’s face with the heaviest part of the curved blade.
I’m pretty sure the entire crowd, present company, and myself included wince at that. He might survive but I doubt it, either way, that would have hurt like nobody's business. But I guess that’s the price you have to pay when they send you onto the sands against someone you can’t beat. It's a position I swear to myself every day I will not end up in again.
There is blood and screaming, and a few more pointless half-blind swings, but anyone can see the fight is over. The flame-headed boy offers a series of bows to the various directions of the crowd and then hacks the snake boy’s legs out from under him.
Surprisingly Velorn lets out a celebratory scream as if he had just won a difficult match and points his sword at someone in the Saffron viewing box that I can’t see.
‘No. Not intimidating at all.’ I tell myself one more time
It's when we are leaving the arena that the question I have been expecting comes. Anyone who knows I fought Resh almost to a standstill eventually asks any time Cuirass rears his main covered head.
“Who would win if Resh and Cuirass fought?” I give the same answer I always do, which is The Rush would take him. It's honestly more out of solidarity than anything, I might be right but It's impossible to say. As good as Resh is, the Lion boy is right up there. We might find out for sure one day. In the meantime though both Saffron and BlackMist are going well out of their ways to make sure the fight doesn’t happen.
As much as it goes against what the fans want I understand why the Houses would go to such lengths to keep the two boys apart. I didn’t used to, in fact, it used to annoy me to no end.
Looking at it from the HouseLord perspective It's obvious why they don’t want Cuirass and Resh to fight, if they did one of them would lose, the mystery ends and someone’s ability to pull a crowd would drop. Probably either one of the undefeated prodigies would still have large fan followings after a defeat, but they risk the other taking a huge chunk of those numbers. Considering each boy is already worth more than their combined weight in gold, what would be the point?
The next day of the tournament will be the last two fights of this round, I’m once again obligated to return to the arena for fan interaction and so bettors can inspect me and all of that other annoying shit that is apparently the real way they make money off of us. I had hoped to avoid it this time as no one from BloodRock was fighting, and my sternum hurt exactly as much as it did two days before.
I had been hopeful that Illexa could get me some of this ice stuff from the city and apparently, she can. Just not before the next time I have to march through the city and spend all day in a fucking cage. Granted the BloodRock compound is just a larger cage, but I earned the right to move around it. Also when I’m at the compound I don’t have to piss in front of literally thousands of people.
I spend most of this day napping in the sun and ignoring the continued prisoner tournament on the pit floor. I already know they are all going to die so the novelty has quickly worn thin. Several times, I overhear Xael and the two other slaves interacting with the fans, but I don’t bother stirring, continuing to doze and enjoy the sun. Actual sleep inside an arena filled with screaming fans is of course impossible but it's still kind of nice to try.
It is one of the times that I get up to piss in the jug set aside in the far corner of the cage that I notice that dog kid…Mor something? Is leading a small group of kids his own age over to us. I finish my business, repress a groan, and make ready to greet my first and most annoying fan.