Many of the last second recruits for the Tornetum weren’t as horrified as others. They seemed eager to have the opportunity to take part as they readied themselves with the weaponry and armor offered to them in the ready room under the vorago arena.These would be individuals from the fighter’s guild, VGA—Veteran Gladiator’s Association, and the security and defense factions.
Susi didn’t care either way. She saw at least fifty people vying to purchase better weaponry and armor from the quartermasters behind the counters. The prices were exorbitant down here as no one thought to bring a weapon.
This was the first time anything like this had ever happened before. The consensus one got from the audience was that the decision was mostly positive. It wasn’t altogether surprising to Susi as she knew the Aallandrons loved their blood sports.
“Ma’am,” a guard said, grabbing Susi’s quarterstaff. “Lose the stick and go buy yourself a sword.” He tried to take it from her to throw it away, but couldn’t.
“I don’t have any money.” Susi shook her staff from the man’s grubby fingers.
“No armor and no weapons? You won’t last long in the Tornetum.” He said.
“That’s none of your concern.” Susi turned and made her way to the gate that led to the upper vorago ring to wait with the others who were already armed and ready.
Several fights broke out between different faction members. Many people protested profusely to guards who remained stone-faced to their arguments.
“It was the chancellor’s will,” some said. “He is acting king at the moment, so we must do as we’re ordered, and so must you.”
Susi didn’t know how the Tornetum was supposed to work. Only one person was required to represent a faction, so usually it was Averal who sat in the stands for them to watch how it went.
All factions were required to attend, especially those with tax exemption status. They could lose that status if they were to skip the Tornetum.
Regardless of how it worked, Susi wasn’t afraid. Most of the people around her were very afraid, but Susi maintained adhi by focusing on her breath.
As the crowd by the gate grew, a number of people gaped at her audacity to take no weapon or protection. Even leather armor was provided so that all contestants would have a fair chance.
Unless one practices Talea Macto, most don’t understand the different outfits or garb for the uniform in regards to rank. Talea Macto practitioners have many ranks. It’s hard to say specifically how many there are, with all the additional amended titles and honorary titles.
The standard thirteen ranks include three particular changes to the uniform. Apprentices—classified as ranks one through four—wear only the student tunic, pants, and slippers.
They’re allowed a telum, or weapon, but only a bamboo stick. One can be extraordinarily lethal with a bamboo stick if they’re knowledgeable as Susi knew from her apprenticeship test that cost her tester the proper use of his left hand.
The second tier of ranks—five through ten; molkar—allow the initiate to wear the private’s koromo over their pants and shirt. But the third tier, ranks eleven, twelve, and thirteen: they’ve proven that they’re serious. They get to wear the black one piece uniform, known as a ki, under their Ulkindar koromo.
Susi always thought it was a bit pretentious to name the top three tiers after the sought after awareness in battle, but she didn’t make the rules. The Ulkindar koromo had black trim and an additional collar. It just made the higher tier look really cool, in Susi’s opinion, which is why she advanced to tier eleven as quickly as she possibly could.
She still hadn’t reached Clarus Dominium status yet, but it was unlikely that she would ever get that far. After rank eight, practitioners stop thinking about rank and uniform, and that’s kind of the point. Many students had been denied rank eleven for being too eager to acquire the cooler outfit.
Susi couldn’t help feeling a minor sense of pride at having reached rank eleven in the organization at such an early age, but she made sure she didn’t boast her position. However, now that she was an adult, she carried the full weight of that rank in her outfit, uniform, and status within the community.
So then, was she afraid of brutes in chainmail with swords, maces, or flails? In her mind it was all of them who were at a disadvantage.
As almost everyone had joined the group by the gate, a gong thrummed through the vorago. The perpetual thrum of it reverberated her heart in her chest. The gate above them slowly slid up into its narrow slot in the ceiling high above.
The guards began to corral the faction members up into field. Susi followed them up the sandy incline and onto the sands of the Narcuss Vorago Arena.
At the lower floor of the vorago, amidst the dozens of new contenders in the arena, Susi looked up to the crowd to see thousands of cheering and screaming patrons ready to watch her blood stain the sands of the battlefield.
They knew not of what they wished if they could be so ready for violence. Beyond the top of the vorago stadium, Susi could see a menacing storm cloud rolling in from the west. People continued pressing her on from behind.
At the top of the ramp, a line of guards began separating everyone out. Susi followed the direction of the guard on the right. Her group funneled into a line that marched along the right side of the vorago arena.
Susi glanced up into the stands as people from all over the country celebrated. They jumped up and down while excitedly cheering for what would inevitably be the demise of those on the field. Almost everyone was wielding a mug of alcohol. Susi could smell the barbecued drumsticks many of the patrons waved.
How could her life of discipline and faith contrast so vastly with those who paid money from their hard-earned jobs to be here so they could act like fools and take satisfaction in her death?
It wasn’t fair. It wasn’t right. It was not equal.
She looked down at the sand in remembrance, waiting for whatever it was they were supposed to do next. She thought of Tharsa and the day she met Grobeche.
During a trip to Scerasa, Susi and Tharsa were getting supplies from the general store when she met Grobeche for the first time.
Bored of listening to Tharsa talk to the general store owner’s wife, Susi walked out onto the dusty planks of the deck that rounded the buildings of Scerasa’s cobblestone central square. The dark sky overhead threatened bad weather, so a sensation of haste was universal between the citizens of the city.
Horse-drawn carriages by the dozens filled the streets as merchants passed through with their wares and supplies. Everyone wore similar clothing: the regular tunics, cloaks, and boiled leather garb to insulate oneself from the harsh, cold winds. Large skins were thrown over shoulders as the fall weather turned the air cool.
But one man wore only a thin navy blue robe and sandals. He greeted travelers as he made his way to the seed supply store. He carried only a wooden staff, and had a waterskin laced over his shoulder that he drank from as he scanned the crowd.
The man had a brown beard and goatee with gray-blue eyes. He met Susi’s attention, winked at her, and continued down the street.
Rain began to fall over the wooden overhead above the plank where she stood. Three men in expensive black equipment entered the weapons store on the opposite corner of the intersection. Susi watched as a dusty beggar followed them inside.
She looked down the street, seeing the other travelers make their way through town. The traffic in the middle of the road thinned, leaving a relaxing quiet in its wake.
One of the men yelled as the beggar charged from the steps outside the weapons store. One boot got caught behind the other and he tripped, falling face first onto his arm with a sword in its scabbard clasped in his other hand.
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He looked up and saw Susi gaping at him as the three men emerged and descended the wooden plank to the street. Two of them had drawn their swords.
Before they could reach him, the man in the blue robe stepped between the hardened men and the beggar. He kicked the sheathed sword from the beggar’s grasp into his hand, turned, and gave the victim his sword back.
Having his stolen blade returned didn’t eliminate the man’s desire for blood. He tried to shove the robed man away, but was maneuvered to the ground with his outstretched arm shoved into his back as the robed man pressed his knee into his backside.
The man in the blue robe had drawn his staff and aimed it at the comrades of the fallen man. “Take your sword and go.” the man ordered, hoisting their friend from the ground and shoving him into them.
He kept his staff at the ready as the three men scoffed, backing away. One of them spat on the beggar’s back. The three turned the corner and left the intersection as the robed man helped the beggar to his feet.
“That was amazing.” Susi said from the steps.
The robed man glanced over at her with a small smirk playing on his lips. He touched his staff to his temple and gave her a bow with his head.
Before Susi could say anything else, she was tugged into motion by Tharsa. “You shouldn’t speak to beggars and strangers.” Tharsa chided.
Susi was six years old at that time.
She came back to the moment as the cheering of the crowd amplified. Auctor Ralvese had returned to the speaker’s podium. Susi stood about ten yards between the other candidates from her line as an adjacent line of candidates stood on the other side of the sandy arena floor beyond the terrain of the field.
“Excellent, excellent, excellent!” The auctor raised his fist. The crowd all around reciprocated.
Ralvese relished the ongoing cheer as he nodded with a charming smirk. “One-hundred and twenty-nine different candidates. Those are the tributes we have today. It seemed a little unorthodox at first, but thanks to our benevolent, Chancellor Damius Marks—” Ralvese waved up to the Chancellor’s box and the crowd drowned out the rest of Ralvese’s statement.
Susi looked up to the Chancellor who raised a full glass of wine that a waiter had just poured for him. His eyes met Susi’s and a hateful sneer played through his face.
It was as though all of this had been set up to disenfranchise her specifically. She couldn’t see how that could be possible, but that was the distinct feeling she received when their souls met in that momentary eye contact.
Her focus shifted to a young man who was presumably the Chancellor’s son. He was handsome—perhaps too handsome for his own good. And his girlfriend or partner played the classic wealthy duchess. She looked sophisticated in her dress and mannerisms, but it didn’t take much to see that she had the mind of a house cat that has no need of its claws.
The future prince of Narcuss next to the duchess watched Susi with a different kind of interest. He was the only one of everyone from the royal boxes who observed the unfolding game with eagerness. Everyone else was too busy schmoozing, flirting, or trying to get loaded as quickly as possible.
No, the way Marcellus Marks was watching Susi reminded her of a ten year old boy excited to see a horse race. He looked far too innocent of the abuse and rigorous training that went on behind the scenes. He embodied the joy that the entire attraction was meant to generate without realizing that his happiness came at the cost of life. He was so enthralled, so disconnected that it was almost difficult to blame him and his entire ruling class for allowing the event to take place.
“Almost.” Susi whispered and shifted her gaze to her opponent opposite to her.
“In an effort to cut through the riff raff,” Ralvese continued, “we’ll begin with our classic Death Match! Contenders! Face your opponents! AND LET THE GAMES BEGIN!” He raised both hands into the air as a gong reverberated throughout the arena.
The crowd was louder than the gong. Everyone rushed forward into the large arena floor, entering the manufactured terrain throughout the field.
Susi didn’t know what was happening, but everyone ran toward the center. She ducked right into a craggy canyon that channeled between two large stone platforms that composed an upper part of the arena.
Susi heard screams behind her. Using her staff, she vaulted herself up onto the stone shelf-top as several people were chased down the channel by a burly man with a large mace.
She looked ahead to see a man with a sword and shield mount a stone ramp adjacent to her. He saw her as a target and went for her. Susi lowered her staff and waited for him. He ran directly at her like a dog running after a chew toy.
Just when he was within staff range, Susi launched the tip of her staff up into his throat while propping the stick at a forty-five degree angle to hook and anchor the opposite end to the side of her soft shoe. It happened in an instant, and the effect was devastating.
The man’s neck crooked painfully as he continued moving while the blunt staff did not. The crowd gave a sickened but euphoric cheer of approval. Susi sidestepped the man who had neutralized himself upon her telum as he went down.
Susi paused upon the elevated stone overlooking the center of the arena between eight large conjoining stone platforms. Within the center of the arena, a bloodbath was taking place.
Everyone who was ushered forward from before was cut down if they didn’t know how to fight. Susi had thought that the games were one-on-one, sometimes two-on-two, but this was a mass slaughter, a free-for-all for anyone who knew how to access their bloodlust, rage, and hatred.
Susi could do no more than she could as a spectator in the stands as old men of odd factions like the Archaeologist’s Guild were mowed down by lanky young barbarians who were looking to make a name for themselves.
A woman of the Women’s Knitting Association was literally ripped limb from limb. It was a nightmare, and the audience surrounding them were in an orgasmic uproar of approval over all of it.
She knew the man was approaching her from behind: she could both sense his gaze and hear the loud crunching of grit beneath his boots. She waited until he was almost upon her, then lifted her right hand that clutched her staff upon her right shoulder, allowing the staff to level.
She calculated where the man’s skull was in space based on the echo location of his breathing, then pistoned the blunt tip in such a powerful but momentary instant that the man didn’t even know what happened as the staff clocked him directly in the forehead. The man collapsed behind her, unconscious.
Susi dropped between the stones into the central arena. The giant hulk of a gladiator bounded between the stones of the field that was made to look like battlefield terrain. He grinned eagerly as he clutched an axe in both hands as easily as Susi held her staff. He bent his knee, raised the axe over his shoulder, and darted for her.
Susi spun the staff from the middle between her fingers so rapidly that the staff became a blur. The gladiator didn’t stop, he swung the axe directly into her being—except Susi raised the whirling staff over her head and helicoptered out of the trajectory of the swing.
Landing a few yards away, the man frustratedly charged again, this time intending to bullrush her. She was so small, he didn’t even need to strike her with the axe.
The man was stopped as Susi jabbed him in the stomach, then whirled and slapped him across the face with the blunt end so hard that teeth flew from his lips and scattered across the sand.
With an unsettling knowledge of the human nervous system, Susi then pegged eight different spots on the man’s body within seconds, and he was rendered fully paralyzed throughout his entire form. She was so calm and motionless when standing still, but when she moved it was like a frenzy of speed and conviction.
A huge monstrosity of a man lunged from between the stones nearby with a double-bladed battle axe in hand. Susi ran up the side of the stone just in time to avoid the swing of the axe that embedded itself in the rockwall. She planted a toe on the axe handle before kicking off the man’s face.
He lulled as Susi landed and jogged away. She hurried to the sandy soil of the sand pit on the south-east side of the large arena, and came upon the skeletal remains of a wooden stable just beyond the stones.
A man with a chainmail sleeve and a bladed helmet emerged from the stable. He wielded two claymore-sized swords that were supported by his burly physique. Big Swords. Susi smiled to herself.
Big Swords marched toward her, spinning the swords in the motion of his wrists coolly. Susi jogged at him and launched herself into a somersault, slipping between his raised blades to land a kick directly into Big Swords’s beefy chest. He dropped one of his swords and reactively tried to grab her ankle as her inertia continued, but his hand met nothing as she planted her right toe on his cheek to thrust all her leg muscles left. The man’s neck snapped painfully as his whole body was flung unnaturally to the side.
Susi landed gracefully to the roar of the crowd. He wasn’t dead, but he writhed as the bones in his neck had been dislodged from their position.
Her win was cut short as the man from earlier jogged from the stones and kicked one of the claymores into his hands. A large chunk had been taken from his shoulder that was weeping blood down his big chest.
Susi saw Big Swords’s other claymore in front of her. Just to make things interesting, Susi used her staff to fling the sword into the air where she stopped it with the hilt of her stick as it was propped upright in the sand. Her eyes met her opponent’s, she raised her eyebrows, intimidating him into action.
He charged for her. As he came close, Susi masterfully manipulated the claymore in air with back and forth strikes from her staff. The sword seemed to deflect and defend against her attacker within mid-air of its own accord.
When the man became frustrated at his lack of ability to gain ground, Susi whirled the hilt of the sword so the blade’s point could hit the sand and she could rest her staff upon the hilt guard of the blade. She was taunting him. He wouldn’t be able to touch her in a million years.
Whatever was happening, the crowd was in a frenzy over it. In a fury, the man threw the sword aside and bull-rushed her. Susi dropped the claymore and whirled, slamming the staff across the man’s face painfully before whirling again to repeat the process. He fell to the ground upon his back and she slammed her staff into the man’s chest to press him against a stone.
The crowd was on its feet as Susi kept him pinned like a bug being tortured. He clutched the staff, but couldn’t rise. His breath fell to a sputter. His eyes rolled into the back of his head as she heard his rib cage give way and collapse.
She released him as the man wheezed, clutching his chest while struggling to breathe. He gasped uncontrollably, unable to collect enough oxygen to offset his adrenaline rush without immense pain.
There would be no more surprises from this contender.