041 - The First Hero of Great Pines
Throughout the day and the following night, the sounds of the Arena shifting, moving, and changing rumbled as a constant background noise to Conrad’s recovery. It seemed to give voice to the movement of his bones, grinding back into place after being shoved slightly aside, organs moving back into the space made by Cataphract’s sword, and through it all the repair of muscle tissue adapting to strenuous, to-the-brink-of-death exercise.
His stats had improved considerably despite losing three points for each with the loss of the Guild Pin, and Conrad took in the result of the previous days spent in battle:
Conrad Dren
Race: Human
Level: 15
Classes: Officer, Fighter, Warrior, Merchant
Stats:
Agility: 18
Dexterity: 29
Endurance: 32
Intelligence: 25
Strength: 20
Toughness: 31
Poison Resistance: 35
Mana: 12
His stats were nearly what they would have been a few days prior with the help of the pin, and in the case of his Endurance and Toughness even a bit higher. Still, the extra day of recovery had been enough for the healing potion to do its work, and, with Troy by his side, the sense of hopelessness that had threatened to overcome him before had begun to dwindle.
He tightened up the straps of his Contender’s Armor and gave a few practice swings of his sword. Troy was in his own space working through a dual-bladed sword form at a slow, meditative pace. His backup sword, a simple but well-made weapon of steel, was in his offhand, the twin of his main-handed weapon having been given over to the dungeon as a sacrifice.
But backup or not the man looked deadly clad in form-fitting, somehow more pliable than steel chain mail with pauldrons and greaves of hard, studded leather. Conrad remembered how he had cut wave after wave of lizardkin to pieces as he gave time for his bandmates Mara and Karl to fall back, a veritable grinder against which the enemy could find no way past.
“What happened to Karl, anyway?” Conrad asked.
Troy continued gracefully through his warmup forms as he answered, “Too smart to come out here going after you. Signed on to another outfit.”
Conrad grunted in acknowledgment. Too smart by half. Loyalty was a value, sure, but to a fault? It was a liability and Karl seemed to know that intuitively.
Liability or not, however, Mara and Troy had come. They had seen the danger, walked into the jaws of death, and stayed with him day after day, training him, healing him, coaching him, and reassuring him. And now Troy would be entering the Arena with him, prepared to fight and die by his side - there were no half-measures available.
That kind of loyalty required a certain kind of animal dumbness, a blind or perhaps even willful disregard of the consequences of holding to the course. And even as he thought it, Conrad realized that maybe he too was infected with that animal stupidity because the sense of loyalty and gratitude he felt for the two adventurers of The Shards of Order welled up in him so strongly he felt he would burn whole towns for these people, dying if he had to.
In this world, where the path to power was beset on all sides not just by the forces of Chaos, but by the most ruthless people conceived of by Order, to be so lucky as to gain friends the likes of Troy and Mara was a fortune beyond value - and he’d be Chaos taken before he let either of them down.
The crowd above them rumbled, louder than Conrad had ever heard it before, the Announcer booming welcomes to the throngs as they took their seats.
“You ready for this?” Conrad said.
“Ready?” Troy said, throwing some slow swings of his weapons at Conrad initiating a gentle play-fight, “Mate, I can hardly contain myself!”
“Forget the crowd tonight,” Mara said, “End it quick, and let’s get the hell out of here.”
She was also garbed and ready for battle, prepared for whatever might come after the fight. They weren’t going to take any treachery from Barrett lightly, and Conrad figured the three of them together could likely take him if it came down to it.
“No spin moves,” Troy said, tossing a sword up in such a breathtakingly fast set of spins and rotations that Conrad reached out in concern before Troy reached up and caught it by the hilt as if the maneuver was only natural, “Got it.”
“PLEASE WELCOME TO THE FIRST EVER, TWELFTH TIER BATTLE -”
Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon.
“Show time,” Conrad said, and he and Troy stood together shoulder to shoulder at the entrance to the Arena. The door began its slow ratcheting motion and the light of the Arena, this time almost white with magic, spilled in and cast long shadows of the two men behind them.
“THE GAMBLER! THE HIGH STAKES NEGOTIATOR! THE ARTIST OF ELEVEN TIERS OF CARNAAAAAAAGE! IIIIIT’S THE MERRRRRCHAAAAAANT OOOOOOF DEAAAAAAATH! CONRAAAAAAAAAAAD! DREEEEEEEEEENNNNNNNN!”
“After you, then,” Troy said, gesturing, and Conrad strode forward into the Arena. The lights were magical, still flickering somewhat like torches but all of a white fire that cast harsh shadows across the sands and made every one of his motions, even simply walking, seem exaggerated and grand.
He looked around at the crowd, huge in its thousands, and realized that not only had Great Pines been growing exponentially while he had been trapped down in the depths of the dungeon, but that the people who had come to see him fight were only a fraction of those who had wanted to.
The Arena had expanded both upward and outward, with layers upon layers of tiered seats and, at the center of the audience section, opposite where he entered the sands, an announcer’s box had been constructed, lavish with ornamentation and banners which, at a glance, Conrad figured represented the town, the gladiators who currently had some fame, and the arena monsters they fought against.
He spotted one that must be his own, a black outlined figure with obviously slicked back hair and piercing eyes with artfully drawn-in sword and shield to either side all against a background of golden-yellow fabric.
In the box, he was surprised to see the Announcer, human form on display and shouting into some sort of hand-held device that amplified its voice to the surrounding crowd.
And just behind it, in a raised, private seating section, sat Barrett.
“Finally made it to a fight,” Conrad mused, making eye contact with the man. Barrett smiled back, expression pulling at his scarred throat, noticeable even at this distance.
Conrad turned to each quadrant as he always had and saluted. The crowd thumped their chests in unison as the whole of the arena saluted back and called out, “A-heuh! A-heuh!” grunting the second syllable as they struck their chests.
The excitement of it, the spectacle, the glory of the moment filled Conrad and he turned to share it with Troy.
But Troy was not there.
Conrad turned, but Troy hadn’t moved around him while he was lost in his excitement. But then he saw him, back at the entrance to the Arena. He was furiously beating at an invisible barrier, Mara beside him swinging for all she was worth as well. In the final moment before the door closed and they were lost from view Troy shouted out, voice drowned in the roar of the crowd but words still visible for Conrad to read on his lips, “I’m sorry!”
Mara crouched down below the lip of the gate and called, “Stay alive!”
And they were gone.
Fear and rage boiled together inside Conrad. Betrayed!? They had had a deal! The Announcer had followed every rule, been an honest counterparty in every trade they had engaged in. It had the pin, it had the crowd, there was little left to gain and only more to lose in killing Conrad here - what game was it playing?
“PLEASE WELCOME TO HIS DEBUT IN THE ARENA!” The Announcer boomed, “A WARRIOR WHO HAS WAITED PATIENTLY AT THE TWELFTH TIER FOR A ANOTHER WITH THE STRENGTH, THE COURAGE, THE INDOMITABILITY TO COME TO FACE HIM! A WARRIOR WHOSE REPUTATION IS YET UNKNOWN, BUT WHOSE RAW POWER SPEAKS FOR ITSELF IN HIS EVERY MOTION.”
“THE TITAN, THE KILLER OF CHAMPIONS, IT’S THE BUUUUUUUUUUUTCHEEEEEEEERRRRR!”
The creature that walked onto the sands was unlike anything Conrad had ever seen. To this point, the Arena seemed to have crafted its champions as hybrids between men and beasts, but what beast this was fused with he didn’t know. It had the appearance of a man but was muscular in an almost grotesque way. It had four arms, in each a different weapon, a sword, an ax, a shield, and a smaller shield with a blade protruding like a punch knife. It stood perhaps two full meters in height, dwarfing Conrad, and in armor it had the appearance almost of a warhorse the way it was draped with chains and plate metal.
The crowd moaned in collective disappointment. The sheer physical matchup of the two was so uneven the fight seemed to be lost already in their eyes. Conrad had beaten larger opponents before but they had all been unbalanced - too strong, not fast enough. Perhaps it was the light adding grandeur to every motion, but this thing seemed to be balanced in speed and grace with its massive strength. And everybody could see it.
“Fuck it,” Conrad said, he spit into the sand, eschewing even the temptation to feel despair. He activated his Marching Aura to keep him from draining his stamina too quickly while he got the measure of his opponent, “WE LIVE!” he shouted and banged his sword against his shield, ready for the call to begin.
Then the Announcer did something unexpected. It raised its hands in a calming gesture, urging the crowd to seat itself and quiet down. It took some time, but eventually, the noise of the arena died to the point that Conrad could hear his opponent breathing across the Arena.
“Tonight,” The Announcer said, voice musical but not booming, enhanced by the device it used but much more normal, the way it sounded when it spoke to Conrad in the dungeon, “We come to the conclusion of a saga that began with not one-” it held up a finger, then a second, “but two murders. Before you stands a man condemned to die, and not one of us here believed that this day would come.”
The Announcer’s voice lowered, rumbling with passion, “That this man, a criminal, a murderer whose death would have pleased us all. Who we would have gladly relegated to the forgotten realm of the ignominious dead, would not just ascend beyond all of our expectations to the final tier of the Conquest,” it paused and put a fist over its heart in imitation of Conrad’s gladiator salute, “But would capture our hearts so fully that we would wish to see him triumph!”
“But such is the magic of this place,” the Announcer held his hands out gesturing to the Arena around it, “That even one such as he, brought to us in chains and seemingly with nothing left to offer this city, could rise from the lowest depths to the grandest height! His name on all of our lips! His deeds, his triumphs, his struggles made to be our own!”
“And so it is in the light of this that I bring to you all a question,” it paused dramatically, “At what point have we seen justice served?”
It looked sternly across the stands, all eyes glued to it and breathless in anticipation of its next words, “The law as written required that a debt be paid and, deep though that debt was, it has been paid! But the law also tasked him with a duty - to ascend past the highest level of the Arena Conquest and to take back his freedom through force of arms!”
“Conrad Dren has fought bravely, and before him stands the final opponent of his freedom - for with such daring, such charisma has he earned our love that there are no foes left for him to face among our audience!
“But against such a thing, against the true master of this Arena, and in the knowledge that this man has already paid his debt to society, do we as Great Piners, as men and women, allow him to take the chance of a trial by combat, to lose the possibility of his freedom and to rob us of yet another of our, yes our, beloved sons in the violence of combat?”
The crowd became animated then, shouts and calls for mercy, freedom, to let the merchant go!
Could he mean it? Could the Announcer be making a case to allow Conrad to walk away from the Arena? He looked beyond him to where Barrett sat, expecting to see the man shifting uncomfortably but saw only the cool calmness of assured command.
And Conrad remembered. Nothing happened in the Arena that was not this man’s will.
“But we are people of the law!” the Announcer intoned above the crowd, once again bringing it to silence as they listened, rapt, “And so we cannot simply ignore what the law has decreed in favor of our hearts’ desire - for justice is not a thing of the heart, but a thing of the mind!”
His voice rose, triumphant, exhorting, “And so it is to justice that we must make our appeal! For by justice he was brought in, so by justice he must be delivered!”
“Enough poetry, just start the fucking fight!” Conrad growled, enhanced stamina mingling with adrenaline.
The announcer continued, voice and cadence rising, “If HE believes that justice has been served, that The Merchant of Death should have a finger of life put upon his own scales, then let he who brought him to face justice then face the consequence of that same system! Let the first hero of Great Pines step in to see the exonerated defended! LET THE TOWER ENTER THE ARENA! AND LET HIM BRING LIFE TO THE MERCHANT OF DEEEEAAAAAAAATH!”
The crowd exploded into applause and unrestrained cheering, with not a single man, woman, or child among them left seated. They shouted, they stamped, they roared and clapped their approval as a chorus of them began, first scattered, then coherent as it bellowed into the echoing space of the Arena, “TOWER! TOWER! TOWER! TOWER!”
“Oh,” Conrad muttered as the stomach dropped out of him, “You mother fucker.”