Chronicles of Pietro Ludvigs (original fantasy)

[White Haven]

Make Pietro fight alongside an elf/several elves in the group battle. THAT degree of internal conflict should drive him absolutely berserk.

[Alferd Packer]

I was about to say: Pietro should fight an elf, beat him to a pulp, and kill him before the audience can voice their judgement on the matter.

Also, a notion, in the vein of everyone vs. nameless horror of the deep: have such a match, but the goal isn't to defeat the beast, but be the last person alive (the beast is then restrained/dispatched). This could serve as a way assuring obedience ("If you don't respect the crowd's wishes, you get put in this match!") as well as a way to thin out the ranks of combatants every once in a while.

[LadyTevar]

I was about to say: Pietro should fight an elf, beat him to a pulp, and kill him before the audience can voice their judgement on the matter.

That does go along with the "not die, but screwed over worse"

[Academia Nut]

I was about to say: Pietro should fight an elf, beat him to a pulp, and kill him before the audience can voice their judgement on the matter.

Stop stealing my thoughts!

Also, a notion, in the vein of everyone vs. nameless horror of the deep: have such a match, but the goal isn't to defeat the beast, but be the last person alive (the beast is then restrained/dispatched). This could serve as a way assuring obedience ("If you don't respect the crowd's wishes, you get put in this match!") as well as a way to thin out the ranks of combatants every once in a while.

You do realize that if I do such a thing I will first introduce a sympathetic and friendly character so that he might die. Or do the same thing only pit them against each other and have the crowd choose death so that Pietro must kill his friend. Or...

Yeah. The main character might have his shields up, but there is no guarantee for the secondaries. I'll try to make sure you really love them before ruthlessly crushing them.

[Alferd Packer]

Stop stealing my thoughts!

Fine, I'll stop. But I'll say this: just what do you want to do with that much meatloaf?

You do realize that if I do such a thing I will first introduce a sympathetic and friendly character so that he might die. Or do the same thing only pit them against each other and have the crowd choose death so that Pietro must kill his friend. Or...

Yeah. The main character might have his shields up, but there is no guarantee for the secondaries. I'll try to make sure you really love them before ruthlessly crushing them.

I also thought it would raise some interesting moral issues; like does Pietro attempt to merely avoid the monster long enough to survive, or does he actively attempt to cripple/kill the other participants to ensure his own survival?

Oh, I also thought of another gimmick match: Pietro and the other combatant are forced to get really drunk/high/fucked up on whatever substance makes them the most wasted. They then have to stumble around and fight each other with outrageous costumes on, something like a comedic slapstick-type fight while the next (real) fight is prepared. I envision it being something like the cat urine episode of South Park, where Kyle's dad and Kenny are lazily fighting in the sandbox. Only in a massive arena, while slaves clean up the slaughtered effluence from the previous fight.

[Darth Smiley]

Since we have a whole race based on arachnomancey, how about having a bug hunt - whoever kills the most spiders wins. Only the spiders are basketball sized. And poisonous. And haven't been fed in quite some time...

[LadyTevar]

If they LIKE spiders.. why would they want to see them KILLED?

Think a bit, Smiley. Come back when your brain is working.

[Enigma]

If they LIKE spiders.. why would they want to see them KILLED?

Think a bit, Smiley. Come back when your brain is working.

That is going to be a long long time.

I can also think of another way for Pietro's life to be much worse. He becomes her consort and then she miscarries again forcing Pietro to defend her when the Duchess or her minions attacks her.

[Academia Nut]

No mass spider squishings. That said, there will be at least one spider fight. Imagine if you will a wolf spider... the size of a horse... with a metallic carapace... and legs like swords... and acidic venom capable of dissolving metal bearing ores. Yeah...

And when Pietro wins, I would have something much worse in store for him. Much worse.

[Darth Smiley]

If they LIKE spiders.. why would they want to see them KILLED?

Think a bit, Smiley. Come back when your brain is working.

They USE spiders. I guess they might LIKE some spiders...but being (kind of) related and using spiders != treating spider life as sacred.

We are about as related to cows as they are to spiders. That doesn't stop us from eating hamburgers, now does it?

[Academia Nut]

Unless you're in India

Remember that it is considered good manners to not smash cleaning spiders even by accident, despite the fact that they are in such huge swarms that they could easily be replaced. And considering that the domestic spiders have been bred for cohabitation, their poisons are pretty much non-effective and non-painful against large mammals like the vanver (and more specifically vanver children that don't know better), so its not even a caution towards not being bit.

Still, they will pit some species in a fight to make a good show, but a spider smashing contest is out of the question.

[Darth Smiley]

Guess that makes sense - I was thinking more specialized attack minispiders than domestic spiders, but I guess a monster spider would be more dramatic.
Maybe a fight against one of those black dudes on a thin beam over a pit of ravenous mini spiders...

One thing I'm trying to figure out - does Pietro get to use his iron gear in the arena? If he does, than he probably curbstomps everyone in the lower tier.

[Academia Nut]

Chapter 17: Arena

Once Pietro was fit to stand he found his limbs bound and an armed escort leading him away. Apparently they were going to waste no time in transferring him out to face what would essentially be an extended form of trail by combat. Pietro did not look back as they led him away. He did not want to see the pain on Cherach’s face from the pain he had caused her with his actions. He could not bear it.

The trip was long and boring, the four guards flanking Pietro leading him out of the palace, out across the bridge over the river of fire and the industrious spiders tending to the vertical harvests, although this time Pietro could vaguely recognize some of the things being collected and harvested as foodstuffs he had eaten at the palace, confirming that this was some sort of farming program.

Entering into the city, Pietro could hear the same chatter and murmur from the first time, but now his ear could pick out meaning in the babble. As he expected, they were all talking about him and his actions, unsurprising considering that he was the only human in the city, and thus the only human who had recently stabbed and killed the son of a duchess in front of the queen.

It was eerie how empty the streets were, but he supposed that might have to do with the royal escort being enough discouragement to make sure everyone stood well back, remaining in the shadows where only their whisperings could intrude on the procession. Pietro still had no idea why these people had no wheeled vehicles or mounted transport, but that probably fell under the same unexplained category as why they seemed repulsed by the concept of footwear. A pity Cherach had kept his boots, he would have liked to have them.

As they wound their way through the streets of the city, Pietro soon identified what had to be his new home. In the middle of the enormous cavern there was a massive structure that stretched from floor to ceiling. Seemingly natural, originally at least, it had been carved into in numerous places and Pietro had no doubt that the interior had a significant hollow space.

The guards led him up to a small door at the base of the enormous structure and stopped. Almost immediately someone on the inside opened it up and the guards gestured for Pietro to head on through. Complying with as must dignity he could muster in a loincloth, Pietro marched through the now open portal.

There was a sort of finality as the door shut behind him and was barred closed.

There were more guards on the other side, their gear significantly less impressive than that worn by the royal guards, but still more than a match for an unarmed man in a loincloth with his arms and legs bound. Not that Pietro had any intention of trying anything stupid with them; he was here for a purpose and trying to escape was not it.

The guards led him through a labyrinth of corridors that split and branched in seemingly random patterns, leading to a plethora of rooms, most of which had their doors closed and thus their contents obscured. But then they walked past a corridor that led to what had to be the main theatre section and Pietro was left awestruck.

The main arena was a round pit that had to be at least two hundred paces across, if not more. The sides of the pit were sheer, vertical walls taller than four or five man standing on each other’s shoulders, and it was lined with shining black stuff that Pietro concluded was obsidian glass to prevent the gladiators from trying to escape via scaling the walls. Not that it would get them very far as there was an enormous web-like dome over the entire fighting area that would prevent escape. It also held numerous large glow crystals, bathing the entire area in soft luminescence.

By far the most impressive part though was the viewing stands. Pietro could not even put a number to the actual size, but they could easily hold tens of thousands of spectators, with viewing boxes just above the pit for important visitors. The entire thing screamed wealth and power beyond anything Pietro had ever seen before.

That brief glimpse did not last long as Pietro was led away, but he knew that he would be seeing more of it soon enough.

Eventually they reached a door that was barred from the outside, indicating that it contained things that the people in charge wanted kept in. Opening it up, Pietro found that the inside was populated with a large variety of vanver men, and a few women, either freely moving about and practicing with wooden weapons or resting in cages.

A tall, wiry vanver covered in scars approached them, his blue irises marking him as an elf hybrid, something that earned him Pietro’s immediate hatred, but he would refrain from attacking as he would probably get his ass kicked, which would get him nowhere.

“Huh… never seen one like this before. What’s he here for?” The man said, and Pietro was temporarily struck by the fact that he was speaking his language perfectly. It then dawned on him that if Cherach could inherit dreams from her human sire, then it seemed reasonable that with an elf sire a vanver could acquire their gift for tongues. Admittedly, a rather useful ability to have.

The guard gave a brief summary, Pietro only half following along as he already knew the story but trying to pick up new vocabulary. Eventually the elf-hybrid nodded and said, “So you’re the one that has everyone buzzing. My name is Alech; I’m the den master for these barracks.”

“Pietro,” Pietro replied, trying hard to conceal his disgust at the ‘elf child’, as his name translated out as.

The guards unbound Pietro and then left him to get to know the others on his own, closing and barring the door as they left. Rubbing his wrists slightly to get the circulation going again, he asked, “So how are things set up here?”

Shrugging, Alech said, “We sleep in our cells but during the day they’re unlocked and we can do what we want, which is practice mostly. We have a bigger training area that we use most days. Fighting isn’t permitted, but the occasional blow here or there is usually ignore as a ‘training accident’ if things don’t get out of hand. Generally though if you follow the rules you’ll do fine.”

“The rules being?” Pietro asked.

“Rule one: keep it to the arena. We’re here to fight for the crowds, so if you’ve got a bug up your ass about somebody, save it for when live bronze is used, or at the very least when you’re in the training pit. Rule two: someone goes limp, surrenders, or otherwise gives up in a fight, you don’t finish them off unless otherwise ordered by the bitch in charge of the games. We all have to live together, so if you piss someone off by killing one of their buddies unfairly in a match it’s a great way to get a shank in your kidneys. Rule three: you do what the guards or head bitch says, they like to make all our lives a living hell if just one guy annoys them. Think you can follow all that?” Alech explained.

Nodding, Pietro said, “Pretty much.” The second one would be a bit sticky if he happened to be fighting any elves though. He then added, “Actually, are their any elves in these barracks? I’m kind of under an obligation to kill any elf before me even at the cost of my own life.”

Alech looked at Pietro like he had grown an extra head before he asked incredulously, “What?”

Pietro glowered darkly and said, “They know what they did, and what my people did. Bit of a blood feud between us, I expect that they would try and kill me on sight too.”

Shaking his head, Alech says, “No, just people with elf blood.”

“Good, I can tolerate them for now,” Pietro replied without a trace of sarcasm or humour.

Shaking his head, Alech said, “Whatever. Anyway, I have to ask, do you know how to fight?”

“I have some training with swords, long thrusting spears, and crossbows,” Pietro said.

Alech raised a platinum blonde eyebrow and asked, “What the hell is a crossbow?”

“A kind of projectile weapon, used primarily for war,” Pietro explained.

“Okay, well, we don’t have any of those down here. Most projectile weapons are used by people we trust not to throw them at the audience, and are limited to darts, throwing spears, and slings. Thrusting spears are good, used on all tiers, but swords are hard to come by unless you’re on the top tier,” Alech explained.

Pietro shrugged and said, “The weapons you use are quite different from what I trained on anyway.”

“Oh? What did you train with?” Alech asked, clearly interested in the weapons of humans.

Pietro held his palms about three or four hand spans apart and said, “The blade of my sword was about that long, and my spear was between two and two and half men high.”

Alech looked at him incredulously and said, “How could you have a blade that long, and why would you need a spear that tall?”

Shrugging, Pietro said, “The sword was made of solid steel so it’s more than strong enough for that length, and the spear is meant for ranked fighting. You can get four or five layers in front of your formation, meaning that any enemy has to charge through a forest of points just to get to the first rank.”

Alech goggled at the thoughts put there before he shook his head and went over to the door, asking, “Did the human get anything sent with him?”

Pietro did not hear the reply through the door, but Alech just shrugged and said, “Nothing got sent with in terms of equipment, so you’re getting the starting gear for tier one.”

“Which is?” Pietro asked.

“A simple wooden club,” Alech replied, a grin on his face.

“I see…” Pietro said somewhat worriedly.

Waving it off, Alech replied, “Don’t worry, you won’t be going up against guys in full bronze armour with just a club. Tier one is for rookies like you. Clubs and short spears with stone points, if that, are about all you’re going to face. You’ll probably just get a daub of paint for your first fight and be told to whack anyone not coloured the same. Losing side typically has to give up any equipment, typically a weapon or a piece of armour, unless someone dies in which case you get all of their possessions. You can also get better gear if your sponsor provides it for you. Thus you slowly get experience and better gear as you work through the tier.”

“What are these tiers?” Pietro asked.

“There are three tiers, each one based on the allowed weapons and armour. Tier one is primitive stuff, worse than even outland barbarians like Duchess Vanach’s lot before they shacked up with Queen Verach. Tier two is better, more like the stuff militia guys will use, and you’ll start seeing some metal. Tier three is heavy metal all the way, and you’ll see a little bit of everything there, even the occasional bit of dwarf craft if you’re lucky,” Alech said.

“So how do you move between the tiers?” Pietro asked.

“You have to beat the tier champion. Beat the tier one champion, you move to tier two; beat the tier two champion and you move to tier three; beat the tier three champion and you can start doing things like demanding your freedom, large sums of money, or to even get the chance to fight for right to be a consort to a member of the nobility, although not many people survive that last one,” Alech explained.

“I see. So I guess I’ll have to climb through the tiers then,” Pietro said musingly.

“Want to get out of here huh?” Alech asked.

“Sort of,” Pietro replied with a shrug. “I kind of got myself into a bit of a situation and now the only way out of it is to become the consort of the princess.”

“You’re shitting me,” Alech said. “The last guy to get that far was Korech, and he’s still the queen’s consort after a year with her.”

Pietro smiled and said, “Then I guess my chances are good.”

“Are you kidding, Korech was like a demon on the battlefield!” Alech cried out incredulously.

“So you knew him?” Pietro asked.

“Yeah,” Alech said with a nod.

“Well then you can ask him the next time you see him whether or not I knocked him on his ass with a single punch,” Pietro said with a broad smile. He then amended, “Admittedly he was rather weighted down at the time and not expecting it, but I got him good.”

Alech gaped at him and then shook his head, saying, “If I didn’t know you were telling the truth I would say that you were bullshitting me.” Obviously he had inherited the ability to detect lies as well.

This sent a chorus of whispers through the room, as obviously Korech was well known at feared by these people. That was good; a fearful reputation could help Pietro so long as it didn’t cause the sort of overestimation that would bring a crowd down on his head. If the fighting was to the surrender then if people did not want to face him early on then that was good.

“So when is the next fight?” Pietro asked.

“Tomorrow actually, although I doubt you’ll do much. They don’t send out rookies like you so early, and even if they did then they would tend to throw you in a mass battle with a bunch of other rookies with clubs and let you have at it,” Alech said.

“Then I must see to my rest and prayers. Where is my cell?” Pietro asked.

Pointing, Alech said, “Down there, least favourable cells. When you prove you’re worth it you can take one closer to the door where it’s less damp from a vacant spot or force someone else out.”

“I see,” Pietro said, setting out towards the back of the barracks where it did indeed become damp, and thus more chilled. Finding a cell void of recent habitation, he set himself down and began praying for strength. Sometime during this a guard came along and put a bowl of gruel in front of him and locked the door tight. Pietro quickly finished down the meal before he lay down on the simple straw bedding and went to sleep.

He was awoken in the morning by the guard opening the door to his cell and telling him to get up and get out. Stretching out his cold muscles, Pietro followed behind as the gladiators were all filed out to a small armoury where they had lockers opened for them to get their equipment. Pietro was handed a hard wooden club with one end shaped into a large, bulbous knob for smacking people.

Once he got the club, Pietro was quickly escorted to a small observation area just outside the main fighting pit. Already he could hear the rumble of the crowds starting to gather. Slowly other members from his barracks began to filter into the room, the order a sign of seniority as the higher tier members had more armour to put on. Alech was one of the last members into the room, wearing full bronze armour with a sculpted breast plate, helmet, greaves, and vambraces, and carrying a large round shield and a short sword.

“Huh… looks like they’re opening by letting old Slasher warm up,” Alech noted while looking out the slit in the stone next to the door that led to the arena.

“Slasher?” Pietro asked.

“Old elf warrior, right bastard. He’s the champion of the first tier because they don’t trust him with better equipment. Watch,” Alech said before turning away, obviously not wanting to witness it himself.

Peering through the slit in the wall, Pietro saw an elf standing naked in the centre of the arena, surrounded by six vanver warriors. The elf was armed with what looked like a club but seemed to also be a bit sword-like in that there appeared to be rows of thin obsidian blades on either side. The vanver gladiators were wearing thick quilted silk armour and had stone axes and small wooden shields.

At some unseen instruction, Slasher raised his hand into the air and the air above the arena exploded into roiling elf fire, glowing bright green and blue. Immediately dozens of copies of the elf began to move about in random directions, merging and flowing and hopping and dancing. The fighters surrounding him immediately began to fight with gusto, making wild swings that tended to just pass through the false images of the elf.

One by one the vanver gladiators dropped, ragged, disabling wounds cut in their arms, legs, and chests by an enemy they could not see. When the last one fell the elf fire died out, leaving only one image of Slasher smiling in the circle of screaming wounded. The whole thing had taken less than two minutes.

Pietro goggled and asked, “How does anyone advance to the next tier?”

“Mass battles mostly. He can only keep it up for about five minutes so if you get lucky his sorcery wears out while he’s dispatching some unlucky bastard and then he tends to surrender. He puts on a good show and only kills when told to so they haven’t executed him yet,” Alech explained.

“What if you fight one on one?” Pietro asked.

“That’s what we call an ‘execution’. One on one fights with Slasher are always to the death because he gets bored if there’s only one target to play with. Of course, that tends to piss him off because even that isn’t much ‘fun’ for the bastard, so they tend to let him play with a group first,” Alech said with a shrug. “But no one has pissed off the bitches running the show enough for that to happen for a long time.”

As the wounded were dragged away and fresh sand thrown over the arena floor to soak up the blood, a team of guards entered the waiting room and pointed to Pietro.

“You, you’re up next, special orders from the queen,” the guard said.

Pietro felt his stomach sink.

[Alferd Packer]

Oh, Pietro! Will you ever catch a break?

I'd be interested to see Pietro transform as he fights his way up; constant training and sparring with alternate fighting styles is bound to make him a more well-rounded fighter. In addition, he'll probably bulk up even more. I wonder what kind of changes to his personality this would cause, given enough time spent there.

[LadyTevar]

OH dear. The Lucky Guard's got to prove his worth.

[LadyTevar]

Just reread... Elves can speak any language? Or they just speak and those around them hear it in their native tongue?

The second one is weirder

[Academia Nut]

Just reread... Elves can speak any language? Or they just speak and those around them hear it in their native tongue?

The second one is weirder

It's the second one. I'll have to check the first conversation with the full elf, but basically one of their many abilities is that they can speak and unless they intentionally use their own language, they will be understood.

[LadyTevar]

It might be weirder... but DAMN if that's not a great gift to have. The fact that he was talking to the vanver guards and Pietro was hearing in Human tipped me off.

[Enigma]

A straigt up fight with the Slasher? But then again Pietro would probably somewhat look forward to it. *shrugs* This story is getting better and better.

[Academia Nut]

Chapter 18: Slasher

The waiting area went dead quiet, the dull roar of the crowd outside drowning out the small sounds of shock from the assembled gladiators as they stared between Pietro and the guards. Eventually Pietro let out a long, sigh of concession and just marched off towards the door.

He really had to give it to Queen Verach; this was an effective way of eliminating him and clearing the air politically between her and Duchess Vanach. Presumably there was something more in the way than just Cherach’s wishes, probably some sort of law, so that he had to be allowed to compete in the arena. There was just nothing saying that she had to make the fights fair. This was certainly more blatant than say just paying a couple of gladiators to focus on him, but he guessed that so long as she lived up to the letter of the law, if not the spirit, she could do what she wanted to.

The guards flanked Pietro and opened up the door, and moved to force him out if he didn’t get moving himself, but Pietro just swallowed his fear and walked out, pausing to take it all in as the door shut behind him and was barred with a loud clang.

The arena was massive, stretching up all about him, the glow crystals above bathing him in more light than he was accustomed to, blurring out the spectators in the stands to a seething ocean of moving shadows that rained noise down upon him. The high walls next to him seemed to have had obsidian poured over them rather than just chips put into the cracks between blocks, forming long walls of black glass ridged with razor sharp edges and points.

Pietro could see his vague outline in the glass wall, and one particularly smooth area even gave him a vague image of his face. He could see the nervousness and fear there, and he tried to school his features, but it was hard when all he had for reassurance was a rather pathetic looking club.

Still, after but a moment to catch his breath he walked out towards the centre of the ring where Slasher waited for him, the elf checking the edges of his proto-sword with a keen, practiced eye. The spacing between the chunks of obsidian ensured that any wound inflicted would be ragged and ugly.

Pietro stood ten paces from Slasher and waited, an announcer in the high box saying something he could only vaguely hear. It had something to do with his situation, how he was challenging for the top spot, and was thus being given the privilege of fighting the tier one champion early, and so on. Pietro wasn’t paying attention; he was wracking his brain for any bit of lore that might be useful in this sort of situation.

Unfortunately, the prescribed tactics for dealing with elven illusions were mass volley fire with projectile weapons or ranked fighting with vastly superior numbers, both of which relied on sheer numbers to overwhelm the bastards. The only one on one tactics Pietro knew about assumed you weren’t so lucky to have to fight illusions as well. In fact, the need for numerical superiority when fighting elves was what got Pietro into this situation in the first place!

Pietro was sweating profusely now, the air seeming much chiller than before as he stood before Slasher, trying to thick of something to do to defeat the foul creature. Right now all he could think of was to keep ahead of the elf long enough for the illusion to expire, but he knew that he was slower and the elf had better endurance than him, so he would probably just die tired.

Slasher inhaled deeply and said, “I can smell your fear from over here you know. It is delicious. It has been centuries since I last slaughtered a healthy adult male of your kind, so I do hope you don’t die quick on me.”

The elf was trying to throw him off balance, not a particularly hard thing to do really, but Pietro managed to put on a cocky, if false smile, and said, “Oh, I’ll try not to die quick just for you. I do hope that you are less pathetic than the four elves I killed a few weeks ago though.”

That threw Slasher a little off balance. A human would have dismissed him as talking bullshit despite the fact that it was true, but the elven ability to know the truth of one’s statements was a double edged sword in that they had to accept even unpleasant truths spoken by others.

Of course, the fact that Pietro had been lucky for the most part, blind luck on the one kill that actually related to this situation, was left unsaid.

Fear and excitement had quickened Pietro’s thoughts, and he suddenly remembered that fight with a flash of crystal clarity. He had been standing on the road, a poorly beaten dirt path really, trying to get one of the wagons out of a rut that had been hidden under a snow drift when the alarm had gone up. Whirling about, he found the sky lit up with burning curtains of green and red elf fire and what seemed a whole battalion of elves charging out of the woods across a frozen river towards them.

Time froze as Pietro remembered every last excruciating detail of that moment. He remembered lining up at random with one of the shifting and whirling images.

He remembered how the winds had blown the snow clear of the frozen river at points, polishing the ice to a precise flatness and smoothness.

He remembered seeing the image step out onto a batch of bare ice.

Time snapped back to regular speed in an instant as someone shouted for the fight to begin. Slasher’s hand shot into the air, elf fire already limning it in a ghastly light. Pietro did the only thing he could.

His club whirled through the air towards Slasher. The elf easily dodged the attack, but his concentration on his sorcery was broken at the critical moment, ending the spell before it began. He cursed in frustration before beginning again.

Pietro saw none of this for the second the club was out of his hands he turned and ran as fast and as hard as he could. Two or three seconds after he turned away the arena flared with light as the elf’s spell was completed. Pietro had bought himself a few precious seconds of lead time at the price of his weapon. He would need all of them if he wanted to make this work.

Within seconds Slasher was running idly next to him, multiple images flanking him on all sides, the elf’s long legs and powerful lungs carrying him along with a speed and grace Pietro could not match.

“What a pathetic specimen you are. I mean, really! Running? Did you honestly think that this would help you?” The elf taunted.

Pietro’s lungs were burning, so he had not the air to reply.

“So boring,” Slasher noted while one of his images started to run backwards. “How much longer do you think you can keep this up?”

Pietro’s path started to veer to the right so that he was no longer running straight towards the razor sharp glass walls but began to approach at a more oblique, curved vector. Slasher kept pace with him as he ran and said, “Oh, now you go for evasion! I wonder when you’ll get to dodging.”

Pietro was running for all he was worth now. Every breath was like breathing fire and it had spread from his lungs through his blood into every muscle in his body. He was now parallel to the black glass wall. He spared the briefest glance to his left.

He saw his reflection.

He saw Slasher’s reflection.

One reflection.

The real Slasher was to his right and rear, his proto-sword raised above his head for a stroke that would drop Pietro but not kill him. All of his attention was focused on making the strike non-lethal so that he could play, so he did not see that his illusion did not extend to reflective surfaces.

Pietro planted a foot down hard on the packed sand of the arena floor and pivoted. Every muscle and joint screamed in protest, that he did not have the strength or energy to go one, but he bulled ahead anyway. Going by memory, he threw out his hands for the place where the arm holding the weapon should be.

Time slowed.

Pietro was skidding across the sand, headed for the deadly wall. Phantom images of Slasher surrounded him, and his hands passed through them like air. For the briefest of moments he thought that he had missed his mark, but then he felt his palms smack into flesh and he reflexively tightened his fingers about the wrist and arm he had grabbed.

He dropped. Had he more strength and training it might have been more graceful, but really he just let his knees give out beneath him and he fell to the ground, still clutching on to Slasher’s arm with everything he had in him. He was slowing down, Slasher was still moving forward, and now Pietro was acting as a fulcrum. Worse yet, as his legs hit the ground, he was now in the way of Slasher’s legs.

Slasher had no choice but to spin about Pietro. Pietro hauled him in and let the elf go over him while pulling the bastard close.

The two of them slammed into the obsidian wall. Slasher went first, scraping along the jagged barrier for a pace or two before they rolled out, into the centre of the arena. Pietro felt a several lines of fire lance across his left arm and his back, but he ignored them as they crashed and rolled into the sand, tumbling apart.

Pietro’s body just wanted to collapse then and there, to lay still and let exhaustion claim him, but his mind managed to pull out some nugget of reserve power from somewhere and forced him to his feet with agonizing slowness. As he rose, he wiped sand and blood from his eyes and immediately began searching for Slasher.

The light in the arena had dimmed and returned to its neutral tones, Slasher’s spell obviously having been snuffed by the impact. That was excellent news, but unless the elf’s life had also been extinguished then Pietro still had work to do.

He glanced at the wall and that saved his life.

Slasher had somehow managed to either hold on to his sword or he quickly recovered it after the fall and he had swung it at Pietro’s back, just above the kidneys. Pietro threw himself forward, arching his spine into a bow so that instead of getting cut and having bones broken he just took a minor scratch.

Pietro whirled about and got the first good glimpse of Slasher after the impact. The elf was a mess, covered in a blue mud made of sand and his blood. The elf was panting hard, and his swing had been long and clumsy, leaving him open for a moment as he recovered from the momentum of his own attack.

Pietro surged forward with what strength he had and delivered a punch straight to Slasher’s face. The bastard had enough sense left to drop his head forward so that he avoided taking it on the jaw, but he didn’t quite manage to get his forehead in line and instead took it between the eyes. Pietro felt something crack in his hand but Slasher took the worst of it, his head snapping back from the force imparted to his head. Staggering back as he blinked away the stars, Slasher’s fingers loosened from his weapon.

Half drunkenly lurching forward, Pietro grabbed the hilt of the sword before it even had time to reach the ground. Slasher kneed him in the chest as he overextended and bent over to grab the proto-sword, driving the wind from him, but Pietro managed to keep his grip and lashed up as he fell back.

Slasher blinked a few times, looking at the bright blue blood spurting out of the stumps where the fingers on his right hand had been. So distracted, Pietro managed to get in a wild swing with the heavy, oddly balanced weapon at the elf’s legs, catching the left one just above the muscle. The heavy wood slammed into the bone hard enough to break it, while the blades cut deep into the pale flesh.

Slasher screamed and dropped; his leg no longer capable of supporting him. Rolling about, he revealed to Pietro his back, which was lacerated to the bone in places, ragged chunks of skin and blue-green muscle hanging off of his ribs.

Using the sword as a crutch, Pietro rose wearily to his feet. Once he had some semblance of balance, he raised the sword above him with both hands, his muscles quaking with the effort after the run and the tumble and the now getting significant blood loss. Letting out a scream of primal rage, he dropped the weapon on Slasher’s head with the very last fumes of strength he had left in him. The elf’s face exploded in a shower of gore and he ceased his tormented screaming, although his body continued to twitch afterwards.

Dropping to his knees, Pietro discovered that silence reigned over the arena as the crowds watched, stunned by this turn of events.

The first ones to break the quiet were the unlucky bookies as they screamed in financial agony. The odds of Pietro winning were so small that the few people that had bet on him were enough to nearly wipe out their winnings from the masses of people that had guessed wrongly on the time and method of death Slasher would employ.

But then, like a summer thunderstorm that rolled in unexpectedly, the roar of the crowd struck Pietro, tens of thousands of voices all crying out over his victory. Soon someone started to say his name, and it was quickly picked up, the masses instinctively forming a cadence, all shouting his name, “PIETRO! PIETRO! PIETRO!” Each time they said it, it was like a fresh wave crashing into him.

Ever so slowly he managed to rise to his feet and thrust his right hand triumphantly into the air. The very ground shook with the wild cheering of the crowd.

Still, when the medics rushed out to him, he did not protest when they laid him out on the stretcher.

[Alan Bolte]

PIETRO! PIETRO! PIETRO!

[Alferd Packer]

For some reason, I have this image of steam shooting out of the queen's ears, like Yosemite Sam in a Bugs Bunny cartoon.

[Academia Nut]

Duchess Vanach is more likely to have the steam pouring out her ears, while Queen Verach is more likely to be frustrated and annoyed and facepalming.

Incidentally, the guy wailing the loudest would be the bookie Cherach used to bet on Pietro, seeing as she can bet quite a lot without worrying about where the money is coming from.

[LadyTevar]

I was wondering if Cherach made her bet on her Lucky Guard.

Nice idea with the obsidian 'mirror'. That makes 5 elves now

[Alferd Packer]

I'd be interested in seeing an in-depth training session, like, say, for a gimmick fight or some other sort of exhibition. For example, who could do an unarmed fight, but one where punches to the head aren't allowed. So now, Pietro needs to learn how to high-kick, or brush up on grappling.

Or, a training session where Pietro and the other gladiators are just shooting the shit, and comparing fighting styles. A variety of colorful characters should produce some interesting results, if you just let Pietro's personality bounce off them.