Boom, boom, boom.

The heavy drums of the arena pounded high above Takarn.

Boom, boom, boom.

He had come to know those drums over the several days he had been trapped here. After the murder of the Slave Master and then the subsequent beating Takarn had been sentenced to solitary confinement. But today that ended, today was his debut.

Takarn currently sat against the wall of his cell, it was small dank and cold. Made of roughhewn stone walls and had an almost constant drip coming from the roof. The floor was made of packed dirt covered in straw and had a generous amount of filth littering it, understandable as he hadn’t been gifted a toilet and when an orc had to go, he had to go.

A scrappy looking young man waked up to the bars of Takarn’s cell and gestured for him to stick his arms through them.

Takarn stood stiffly before working out all the kinks in his back, he then walked to the small opening in the cell and stuck his hands through the hole.

Thunk.

Takarn heard the heavy clank of shackles locking against his arms. The man slapped him on the arm, a cue to pull his arms back, the man then opened the cage and slid the heavy slave collar around Takarn’s neck before attaching it to his hands and then pushing him forward toward the arena.

It was a short walk through halls filled with blood, piss and many other substances. Neither he nor the slaver talked for its duration. There were many reasons for this, the main two being that Takarn had nothing to say and that he had killed the other two slaver assigned to him before this one.

The man opened a heavy wooden door and led Takarn into what had affectionately been called, ‘The Loading Bay’ it was a rectangular room filled with weapons and armour and in it were 4 other gladiators.

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Takarn examined the others in the room and much to his surprise, for the first time in a long time he wasn’t the only non-human here. In fact, they all were.

The world is comprised of 76% human’s with the rest being inhabited by the so called, ‘lesser races’ in the room with Takarn was a centaur, a man who was half horse and half human, the centaur was currently arming himself with plate armour and a lance.

Next was a lithe looking elf woman, she was wearing tight form fitting leather armour and had long waist length chestnut brown hair reaching down to her waist.

Leaning against a wall was a dwarf, currently outfitted in full plate armour and carrying a war axe.

Finally there was a dark elf female currently giving the full elf one hell of a death stare.

Takarn took his tried and tested method of dealing with problems. He was going to ignore all of these people and focus on surviving the next few minutes, for with this many monsters in here nothing good could come.

Takarn put on a heavy leather doublet and pants, finally covering his shame and reached out to and picked up a massive Warhammer.

It was at about this time that the new owner of the arena, the son of the man Takarn had killed to come into the room.

He was a slight, wily looking man, with slimy looking skin and a group of beautiful human women wearing slave collars clinging to him.

“Welcome, welcome.” He spoke in a devilishly mischievous voice.

“Today is a glorious day,” he continued. “For today the king of our fair land of Belandier has come to this very arena.” He said finishing his statement by grabbing the behind of one of his slaves, causing her to yelp in fear and surprise. He grinned as he kept talking.

“As you may have suspected this will not be a normal event as this spectacle.” He said while gesturing toward the non-humans and then to the arena. “This is all being done in commemoration of the failed Orcish invasion of Belandier.” He said while sneering at Takarn. “And as such we have a very special opponent lined up for you.” Takarn didn’t like the smile the man had when he said ‘special’ one bit, he was made even more nervous when the man looked toward the dark and regular elf before turning away and muttering, “What a waste.”

Nope, Takarn didn’t like this at all.

He was saved, for better or worse, from worrying further by the doors to the arena swinging open, well then, guess there is nothing more to do than find out exactly what is going on here. He thought as he adjusted his armour for the last time and stepped out into the sandy field.