Ss'edrak Ni'ekas and Chai'uz Tribeless rode into West Grebel to little fanfare. They were locals, which meant they were known, and so was their preference to let home be a quiet place. Make no mistake, the guards stood a little straighter at the gate when they rode through, and the children in the street looked on in wonder before running off to tell their friends. But there was no official welcome party, no parade, and no escort: Just a ride to the stable to return their mounts and a walk home through the waning light of the desert evening. Well, after they visited a local crafter's workshop and haggled for their scorpion parts. Sed handled the talking, while Chai just stood there looking intimidating.

"Come on, my friend, you know these carapace will make fine armors. Why are you wasting your time acting otherwise," Sed demanded of the buyer, an alferi woman of more than middle age, wrinkles prevalent on her tanned face.

"It's not that they aren't worth the money, just about whether the money is available. An elephant for three shields is a great bargain, but only if you have three shields and need an elephant. I could use your elephant, assuredly, but I have to consider how many shields I have to spare," the woman hedged.

Sed scoffed, "You talk about copper shields when this carapace is worth at least one hundred stars."

"I have even fewer of those," she objected. "I might be able to scrounge together a half dozen gold crowns..."

"If you make it nine crowns, you have a deal," Sed retorted, "But try to swindle me and I can find another customer."

"Nine?! I couldn't possibly," came the predictable response. "I could maybe pay you seven crowns and five stars for the carapace."

"For just the carapace, that would be enough. But you know there's value in the innards as well. Another three crowns worth, at least," Sed pivoted, driving the price up by letting the woman know he understood the worth.

"Fine, I'll give you nine crowns for the lot, and throw in a cup of tea as well."

"Nine crowns, eight stars, seven shields, and a half dozen parcels of tea for my friend's wife."

The woman threw up her arms, "Ayyy, you're trying to put me out of business, Sed. Fine. But just two parcels of tea for Liandre."

Sed grinned. "You're the best, 'Ruthie."

"It's Arutha, to you when you drive me up that high. Any higher and they'll start calling me Arutha the homeless, 'cause I'll be sleeping in my market stall."

"You shouldn't have taught me to haggle if you didn't want me to learn, Arutha. Besides, they'd definitely call you 'Ruthie if you were homeless," Sed protested with a (mostly) straight face.

"Stop antagonizing her," Chai grumbled. "I don't want her charging extra for the tea. Liandre spends plenty on it already."

Arutha pointed to the orgeri, "See, listen to your friend. He speaks sense."

"Fair enough," Sed raised his hands conciliatorily. "Really though, thanks, Arutha."

The older woman smiled. "Not to worry, boys, I'll make out just fine on the deal. You left me a bit of margin on the carapace, and I'll wring the rest of my profit out of the alchemists guild." She bustled about, pulling coin out of hidey holes and plucking packets of tea from a large jar. "If you have the bad luck to run into these crawlies again, their poison sacs and eyes alone can fetch what I paid you, to an alchemist worth their salt anyway. But you have to be careful with how you harvest them. Best to bring the whole thing back rather than risk it." She pressed the coin and the tea into their hands and said, "Welcome home, and tell Liandre I said hello."

****

Sed had known Arutha a very long time. She'd been one of the only people he recalled being kind to his mother before her death. They had been little things, like some coin for help around the shop, or a few extra sweets after a trip to market. Even so, he had fond memories. The woman was an artist, turning the bounty of the desert into weapons and protection for many in the city whose jobs required them. She even wove a little magic into her products sometimes, though it wasn't common. And she made a tea from the flowers of the spiked desert plants that Sed had always enjoyed. He'd introduced Chai to her when they were training for the Staves. Some years later, when the orgeri met Liandre, he'd brought her to Arutha's for a cup of tea and a sweet pastry from her neighbor's shop. Apparently it had gone well.

When they left her workshop, it was an easy walk to Chai and Liandre's place. As they got into the more residential neighborhoods the smell of spices and cooking food filled the air. They bantered about what Liandre might be serving for dinner, and whether she'd let Sed stay, though they both knew she would. Liandre had understood before anyone else just how inseparable the two of them were. Though they might not look it, she had always known they were brothers. The peace of coming home enveloped them both as they turned onto the narrow boulevard. One which was abruptly shattered by a high-pitched scream.

"DADDY!!!!" came the cry as Chai's youngest, a girl named Idri threw herself down the steps of their home and into Chai's arms.

"Hello, my sweet," Chai cooed. "Have you been good while I was gone?" Idri nodded earnestly before launching into a wandering recollection of the last three days. Chai grinned and shifted her so she was seated on his shoulder, then crouched so he could fit through the door with her there.

A beautiful half-elf woman stuck her head out from the kitchen of their home, and a grin spread across her face. She ducked back into the kitchen and Sed could hear pots and pans being moved about before she strode out to greet her husband. She had just begun to show her pregnancy, but it did not slow here as she took two quick steps and threw herself at the orgeri man. He swept her up in a spinning kiss before letting out a rumbling, "I love you."

She wrinkled her nose as she glanced at Sed. "If you really loved me you'd have taken him to the baths before you brought him home." She sniffed at her husband, "yours is nice, but he just smells like wet snake."

"Good to see you too, Lia," he said. "I brought you some of 'Ruthie's tea."

"In that case, Ss'edrak, I'll forgive the smell." She plucked the packets of tea out of his hand, then said, "I'm sure you expect me to feed you, too," as she strode back toward the kitchen.

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Chai chuckled, "Seems the least we can do for a poor lost soul like him. Plus, he has some coin for you too."

At the mention of coin, Liandre's head snapped back toward Sed so fast she almost walked into the doorframe. "Gorlahn! Throw me to the sands why don't you Chai," said the copper-haired man. "We haven't even talked about how to split it."

"Sixty-forty, obviously," the half-orc said, "since I did the hard part."

"Honestly, I was thinking more seventy-thirty. I wouldn't have thought to drag the scorpions home."

Liandre's eyes followed the conversation before she stepped in. "First of all, I think seventy-thirty is more than fair. Second, what's this about scorpions, boys? I'm not feeding you until I'm out of questions."

****

As it turned out, she did feed them before she ran out of questions, but that was because her children interceded on the poor gladiators' behalf. Discussion of their encounter with the scorpions had been relatively brief, but it had led to Chai breeching the subject of adventuring. That had caused a significant delay.

"Are you mad? You must both be mad."

Chai tried to sweet talk his wife, "Lia, it isn't that much more dangerous than --"

"Don't take me for a fool just because I married you, Chai'uz," she snapped, cutting him off. "In case you've forgotten, my parents were adventurers. I had a lot of aunts and uncles that never came home."

Sed tried to divert her, "Liandre, I can go at it alone. I'll get the arenas to start giving Chai top billing and then --"

"Not bloody likely, snake boy," she hissed. "If he's top dog all the up and comers want to fight him for the glory of it, and that's when the arena really is as dangerous as adventuring. You've only held the top spot safely because you earned your reputation early and then climbed slow. Everyone is used to that order of things. Start pushing him forward and they'll think he's a puffed up bird they can pluck."

"... Lia," Chai murmured, "I won't do this if you don't want me to."

She'd glared at each of them in turn before walking over to the great slab of a man and resting her head on his chest. "I want a plan," she sighed, before turning and walking to a writing desk in the corner of the room where she pulled out quill, ink and parchment. "In writing. And no matter what they claim to have taught you at the church, neither of you is worth a damn with a quill. So let's get to work."

After that, it had been a long back and forth discussing what supplies they'd need, what sorts of jobs they would take, if they would have others in the party, how they would divide any treasure and rewards they accumulated. Many of the things Liandre insisted they would need had never occurred to Sed, even with the training he'd received from the Staves. Antitoxins made perfect sense, but it wouldn't have occurred to him that they needed holy water. Good armor and weapons were a necessity he'd always understood, but never once had the quality of their backpack seemed like a real concern that an adventurer might have. Eventually, they paused for dinner when Idri and her older sister, Jaqui, had told Liandre they were starving. After dinner, the adults went right back into it, while the girls cuddled up on the sofa near their father.

Eventually, they had a document several pages long in Liandre's small, neat handwriting, and the alferi declared she was satisfied. Sed looked through the pages then back up at his friend's wife. "This is written like a business agreement."

"Aye, I suppose it is. If you're borrowing my husband for this foolishness, I'll have your guarantee you're doing everything you can to bring him back. Think of it as the terms for leasing him."

****

Sed would eventually be very grateful for all the things that Liandre insisted on, but the next day as he and Chai set about gathering them, he was mostly irritated at the dent it put in his savings. He'd been fighting long enough to know that he would someday have to stop, and he'd planned accordingly, tucking away a fair margin over the last ten years. Of the three hundred forty gold crowns he had managed to save up, they spent three hundred four. Chai and Liandre contributed as well, though not as much: New, high quality backpacks, as well as assorted belts and pouches; glass vials of antitoxin, blessed water, healing potions, and even oil; crossbows and bolts, torches, sleeping rolls, water flasks with a purifying enchantment. It seemed like the list never ended. Their alferi taskmaster even insisted on the kinds of equipment used by those who harvested eggs from the cliff-birds' nests to secure themselves on the sheer faces. It made no sense, but if it meant he could face new challenges with his oldest friend, he'd take it.

Chai'uz was even more reluctant to part with coin than Sed, but he knew that it was his wife's right to worry and to set terms for this career change. She came from a family of those who sought danger as a profession, and it was no wonder that made her cautious. It filled his heart with pride that the fierce woman he had married believed in him enough to let him risk this. It even made him believe that it was the right choice. Before Liandre had gotten involved in planning, he'd worried that he and Sed would simply blunder into a rookie mistake and waste their lives for nothing. Now he felt like they had a chance to get their feet under them properly.

The last thing she'd insisted on before they returned home was a visit to the temple of Gorlahn. It had risen from a small provincial church to a temple of regional importance, in large part thanks to Sed. If he wasn't tucking his winnings away for retirement, he was donating them, it seemed. Even a quarter of a successful gladiator's winnings added up over ten years, and as he became something of a local celebrity, other locals donated as well. They were well liked by the priests there, even Iskar, the retired Stave that had trained them. The older human had been irritated for a long time when they ran off to join the arena, but he'd forgiven them eventually.

Iskar, coincidentally, was why Liandre wanted them to visit the temple: something about getting the old man's blessing, since he had trained them both to fight. She'd told them to tell him about the scorpions and pray with him. To be honest, Chai had never been much of a believer, but he would follow his wife's instructions. Sed was the religious one. He really bought into Gorlahn's mystery. Probably, Chai thought, because of how his mother had been treated. He had never met the woman, but Sed's stories painted a picture of a true outcast. She had been pushed to the bottom of the social ladder because of her appearance and the stigma of serpent-touched as duplicitous and conniving. She could not hide what she was, so few had ever taken the time to learn who she was.

****

Sed was apprehensive about seeing Iskar. There was no real reason for it, but just like waiting for the doors to open, he could feel the nervous energy rising in him. Iskar had taught the boys how to use weapons, how to put on armor, how to ride a horse when it was necessary, even how to dress a wound and fight infection. The old man was as close to a father as Sed could remember having. So it was painful to have a little voice in his head saying, he won't think you're ready.

They found Iskar in the small yard near the orphanage, listening to the children play. His sightless eyes turned to them as they approached, and a smile might have danced across his face, quick as a whisper. "Well if it isn't the gladiators. Stomping back to see the old man you left behind, eh?" His voice was raspy, but they both knew it was from being little used, more than any ailment. Iskar never spoke if he felt a gesture would do the trick, and never gestured unless he had to. It had made learning from him a study in body language as well as all the other lessons. "What brings you?"

When they had trained with him, twelve years ago, Iskar had still had vision in one eye, but time had clouded it. Sed leaned against the fence next to Iskar and said, "We aren't going to be gladiators anymore." The old man closed his eyes for a moment, and when they opened, for a moment, one seemed clearer, almost focused even, and he let it rove over them. He grunted. Sed continued, "We're tired of the pageantry. We want to feel like we're doing something real."

"I taught you to do real things," Iskar replied slowly, like he had to drag the words out of himself, "And you both went off to chase the fleeting adoration of a stadium's crowd. So why now?"

Sed opened his mouth, but Chai spoke first. "'True glory must be hard won.' It's from Lesser Mystery II, chapter four. And I heard it on the desert wind after a scorpion's tail missed my lung by a finger's width." The orgeri took a deep breath before continuing. "I looked over and saw Sed fighting. I mean really fighting. And then I heard the voice and watched as his spear and shield flared with more light than they could possibly have reflected from the desert sun."

Sed's mouth remained open, baffled that Chai had heard the voice as well, even more so at what he suggested. Iskar simply nodded, then began walking away. That part of their training had certainly stuck, so both of them followed. He led them through the temple complex to a small chapel dedicated to the Staves and their patron. He retrieved a book from a stand in the corner and placed it on the chapel's tiny altar. His fingers moved slowly over the edge of the pages, and then he opened the book and stepped aside. "That passage, right little orc? Read the rest of it."

So Chai read, his basso rumble echoing slightly in the stone chapel:

"True Glory must be hard won, else pride will take its toll," spake Gorlahn the Protector. "If you truly wish for glory, you will need another god, but I am jealous and will not allow it. For you, my child, I will change." Then there was an awesome noise, like unto thunder from within the cloud, and a flash of light seen even through closed lids. "Arise, Gloryseeker," spake Gorlahn the Warrior, "Your time is come."

When he finished the passage, they looked to Iskar and saw tears welling in his cloudy eyes.

"Your time is come, boys. Put your pride aside and seek only True Glory. The Protector will no longer shield you, but the Warrior will be always at your side."