"Every Plane and every World inside the Plane of Creation is made by Life. This is actually not entirely true, the Faery Castle, our home, was made by our Mother, the Faery Queen. The Faery Castle is... We don't talk about the Faery Castle.

There is actually a Plane made by Gods, it's called the Arena. They think it's a secret, only Gods and Overgods can come in and only with direct invites. Life and Death are busy so they might not have found it yet. (Probably Death knows about it.) But us faery? We live for secrets, we discovered it the moment they formed it. An ever changing land, where Gods create their fighters from pure divine will. The Gods then bet divine energy on their fighters, a bloody place the Arena. Every single fight is to the death, there cannot be any divine intervention. The fighters are dropped on an unknown land with no memories to call their own other than how to fight, when they find another fighter they are compelled to fight. When a fighter kills another one, the God that made the losing combatant will have to give a boon to the winner. There are usually three choices for the winner: become of the race and/or species of the defeated fighter, merge the loser inside the winner and gain some of their unique skills/traits, or the last one, the smarter fighters always choose this, a gift form the losing God in knowledge or power."

-Bee May, the faery of knowledge

"Oh, those young Gods think they are so sneaky."

The gladiator was a fighter in the Arena, the three Gods that joined hands to make the Arena were being challenged. The winning fighters were always animals or monsters. No God made a winning humanoid, their weak body, their nakedness, not having any tools, not having other humanoids for support, they were just too weak to survive. So, they made the gladiator, they made it strubborn, it would never surrender, it would struggle and it would amuse the other Gods, even if it died early it did not really matter, they were challenged and they had to answer to the challenge. All the Gods were surprised, the first fights, the gladiator did not fight but fled. It ran for days, for weeks, hiding, observing. At the start the three Gods were angry, but the other were amused so they let it do its own things. Then something changed, it found two other fighters, it did not join the fight but stayed hidden. When one of the fighter was heavily weakened it moved, it tackled away the more healthy one, it started hitting it hard and fast, the enemy warrior tried to fight back but the gladiator dodged every attack, it observed them long enough to know how they moved, how they thought. That day the gladiator got its first two kills and its first two boons. That day started the reign of the gladiator, it had struggled, it had amused, now it was strubbornly taking what was his. In the beginning the other Gods congratulated the three, they were really the masters of the Arena, they could create a humanoid and make it a winner too.

As time passed and the gladiator became an unstoppable killing machine, the other Gods were not amused, why would they need to spend their hard earned belief energy to make a fighter that would die in seconds in the presence of the gladiator. Why would they bet on any other fighter than the gladiator?

The three Gods were losing their betting partners, the Arena was failing. They had to do something and so they imprisoned the gladiator, they made it, made it fight, used it when it was needed and, now they let it to rot and forgotten in a secret place inside the Arena. After a couple hundred years the Arena was back on track, new fighters filled the Arena, new champions were born and died. One day a boisterous God, drunk on its prized champion successes asked if the masters of the Arena kept their humanoid still, he wanted to see how its champion would compare to theirs. Everyone thought the gladiator would be rusty or wasted, even the three masters. But it was made strubborn, had struggled, it did not surrender to his prison or his masters and, it did not amuse, it used his gifts and knowledge that the Gods had to give up to train, to get better. The gladiator demolited the champion, it took around a minute, or better it took fifty seconds of dodging and prodding the enemy and ten extremely long seconds to dismantle it. The gladiator made waves, it had a new role now. The Gods would hone and sharpen their champions and when they thought they were ready they would challenge the undefeated champion, and lose.

The gladiator was not happy to be a slave, a puppet of the Gods. It tried to escape but, no knowledge, no gift the Gods gave it had any use other than increasing its fighting prowess. Then after so many fights, so much time passed, it felt a strange energy accumulate around its body. It could barely feel it, it did not know what it was, none of the knowledge the Gods gave it could help it identify that energy either. Every time it fought back, every time it won the energy would soar. Every time it got stuck in its prison it would diminish but, every time it did not give up, every time it got up after a hard blow, that energy became clearer and clearer to the gladiator. It could move it, attract it to a single place and compress it, from gaseous, to liquid, to solid. When solid its form was that of a little circle, almost anyone else could tell it was a coin but, the gladiator only knew how to fight, it had no needs for coins. The gladiator could feel the power that single coin emanated, it did not know how to use it yet but, it did know that more power was always good.

"Hey, you need to throw it in the air and ask it for something." -???-

The gladiator did not even hesitate, it punched the voice, the air roared and what appeared to be a little blue winged girl exploded in water dropplets that then joined togheter again.

"That's kinda rude you know? There is no way you can hurt me. I just wanted to help you a little." She pouted.

The gladiator punched again, harder this time, the prison it was in rattled by the strenght of the hit. This time the little girl raised a hand and stopped the fist with her tiny little arm, she did not even budge.

"Whatever, I told you what to do." And she was gone.

The gladiator trained and trained some more, if the Gods made it fight the watery girl it would lose, it did not want to lose, it did not want to die. The coin totally forgotten. The gladiator was forgotten again, no new challengers appeared for what appeared to be an eternity. It found itself play with the coin more and more as time passed by. The gladiator remembered what the little girl told it ages ago. It spun the coin around its fingers, on one face there was a tree and a living being, on the other side there was a dead tree and a skeleton. It threw the coin in the air asking for a way out, for an opportunity, for vengeance. The coin spun in the air, it stopped, the skeleton was facing the gladiator, it looked like it was grinning. The gladiator smiled too and crushed the coin with its hand. The coin and the energy that it possessed disappeared. Nothing happened for a while then, finally someone rememebered the gladiator existed. It had a fight, it fought a real monster this time, a bear with a wolf's head and ten tentacles that came out of its back. Its range of attack was massive with all those limbs, the wolf's head could spew a toxic inky cloud, the bear paw's had lightning flowing through them, the tentacles could explode with fast almost istant movements. The fight was hard, the gladiator was actually excited. But after a while of studying its enemy, the gladiator understood its tricks, the beast was powerful but, it won every fight easily and became even stronger, it never trained, it never got better, it never tried. The gladiator did, so in the end it just needed to adjust a little and it demolished the enemy champion. The gladiator was back to its cage, something new filled it, hope. The boon it received form the God this time is the knowledge of Essence, if it could leave its body behind, as Essence it could escape the grasp of its jailers.

Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.

It did just that, after years of practice it left its powerful body behind and left the Arena as an Essence. The Essence of the gladiator felt itself stiffen, something was gripping it, the grip felt wet.

"You finally decided to leave that boring place, uh?"Asked the watery little girl with a smile. "Oh right, you cannot talk as an Essence yet! Come with me! I'll show you Mother's Dragon!"

After a couple hundreds years inside the Faery Castle the Essence of the gladiator learned how to move better and finally how to speak, it talked with the faries that roamed through the castle. They taught it a lot, mostly what they saw and how to live as a normal being and not a slave fighter. Then the watery one was back.

"Hey, I have an offert for you. You want those Gods gone, I need this child protected. A gift for a gift?"

"Nothing can get hurt here, what does a child need protection from?"

"Weeeelll... He can't stay here. And you cannot stay here either, I saw you, you are getting restless, all this time and your vengeance is not even closer than when you came with me that day."

"What do you offer?"

"I have a world in mind, really young. I got a trick to get over the barrier made by Life and Death, I send you and the baby over there, you find a body to possess and grow the child for me, when the child is strong enough to survive on its own against most of the dangers of the Plane of Creation. I will personally help you in your revenge."

"That's it? Grow a child, train him and then you come in and destroy the Arena?" The Essence said with rage.

"Oh no, I won't destroy the Arena, I will help you but revenge is a personal matter, you will need to face those Gods."

"I'm in, when do we go?" The Essence said eager.

"Now."

A newborn appeared, then both the gladiator's Essence and the baby were enveloped by a watery prison, the bubble disappeared from the Faery Castle.

The bubble traveled through the Plane of Creation, it rushed to a little world, hit an invisible barrier and popped. The child and the Essence found themselves on the other side of the barrier, in free fall. The Essence and the child were separated. The Essence needed to find that child fast, but it needed a body faster. It looked around until it found a woman crying over a dead child. Good, the Essence of the child was gone, it could seize that body as its own.

The young child, maybe four years old was dead, sadly the kingdom they were in was fighting a brutal war, the men were killed, the women had to work the fields and hunt to eat, many could not eat enough for themselves, Mira had left her child to try to find something to eat for both of them, she was so famished. When she found something and came back home, she found her sweet child dead. It was not breathing and the body was cold. Desperate she hugged the little malnourished body. Mira wanted to cry herself to death, she lost her husband to war, she was hungry but she had scounged some food and rushed home to feed her daughter. Now nothing had more sense, she was hallucinating, she felt her baby move.

"Noisy."

Said the little child and with a movement of her little hand the woman's neck snapped. The child's energy was spent so she fell asleep. When she woke up she started to circulate the little energy this body possessed to reinforce it, the Essence of the gladiator choose a really poor body. She took the little food the woman brought with her, then she looked coldly at the dead woman. She did not know why but she knelt by the body, closed her eyes and took a necklace from her, on it the world MIRA was engraved on a silver pendant.

"Mira, uh?"

The child said while putting the pendant on her own neck.

The child roamed around the warring kingdom, killing, eating and sleeping while searching for the child she was put in charge of. She knew that the child was stronger than even the adults she saw around but, she hoped to find him fast. Her body was growing, her knowledge gained by her time spent inside the Arena made it grow faster, stronger, her fighting techniques polished and powerful. It took some time to adjust to her new form but she could work with what she had. After six years of searching she found nothing yet. The kingom was in ruin and it was hard to travel without fighting something or someone. She forcefully stopped her own growth, as a ten years old she could pass as a male, if she got older her female bits would reveal her. She joined a mercenary company as a child soldier, it was easy to join one, a hungry child that would slave for them to then be used as a meat shield was a good pick for any mercenary company.

They traveled a lot more quickly as a mercenary group, traveling from city to village to city, when her companions would get suspicious of her sex or when too much time was gone by and she was not grown yet and there were rumors going through the mercenary camp, Mira just killed them all and joined another mercenary band.

Fifteen years were gone by and Mira had not found the child yet. The water faery did not show herself until that moment, it meant that the faery could not or that she was happy with how things were going, if Mira did not train the child the faery did not have to help her with her vengeance. Now that she appeared it meant that Mira needed to find the child fast, something was happening and the water faery thought the child could be in danger.

Mira traveled a lot in those fifteen years, she mapped the world she was in, she helped conquer nations, helped defend kingdoms and helped found a federation. She joined a mercenary band from the Federation of Blades, their puppet, the fourth prince of a neighboring kingdom wanted the throne, he called to arms any man coin could buy. The Federaration of Blades wanted to conquer the Arthus kingdom but they were always a step ahead. Dumping an idiot on the throne and then destroying the kingdom from the inside was an option they were thinking about.

The forest they were marching in was strange, there was a smell in the air that reminded Mira of the Arena. There were wolves that snatched any man that left far enough away form the main army, she could feel the droppers that were closing in, they were silent, observing, following the flow of what would happen. The army came to a stop near a village, Mira was seething, she needed to find the child and she was stuck with idiots, maybe she should ditch them, she grew enough, she should be faster on her own. Then something funny happened a spear fell from the sky, it killed the messenger and made the puppet piss his pants. No one could have thrown a spear from so far away, maybe she was on the right tracks. The frenzied charge, the fight, she tried to keep a low profile, if the one that threw the spear was the child, it was strong enough to eliminate this group of walking meat. The sun was going down, the village was on fire, the fight was still going on, then something happened. Something it should not have. She heard a howl, a howl she heard before, the gladiator killed a champion of the God of the Hunt that used a howl like that. As Mira was distracted she saw something move really fast and jump over the village walls. She found the child! And it fled her grasp, as she was about to follow, an army of wolves attacked the humans from behind, slamming them to the walls and trapping them inside the flaming village.

Mira yelled in frustration. Her yell so powerful the humans started to bleed form their ears, the wolves cried in pain. She lashed out, when the sun was down and night came, the flames of the village were the only light that could show the massacre that happened. The wolves were all dead, the humans were dead too. Only a heavy breathing, covered in blood Mira was standing just outside the village, she felt icky, she knew the child was around somewhere in the forest, she punched a tree, it was hard and heavy but it broke and fell anyways. She felt something sticky inside her shirt, she got out the silver pendant with MIRA incised on.

"Today is the day we came in this world. Sixteen years already... But I found you."