by Wolfe Locke
Edd groaned, knowing the monster wasn’t going to be dissuaded. I can do that in the Training Arena.
“Your ability to work with the others will be essential to your success as Champion,” Crixa said. “I will summon you at the proper time.”
The door slammed, and Edd sighed. He had no desire to get to know the other Champions, and he didn’t see the point in sitting at a dining table with nothing, doing nothing, while everyone around him ate. But Zekant’s wish was his command, and Edd knew better than to resist.
When the time came, Crixa returned to take him to the Mess. The other gladiators were already gathered around a table when he arrived. A manticore and a centaur both shovelled piles of flesh and entrails into their mouths, and a hideous gorgon was picking at what looked like a plate of dead insects.
A desiccated revenant sat next to them, grinning and eating nothing. Its yellow eyes met Edd’, and Edd was struck with an overwhelming wave of horror and revulsion. Are they all monsters?
That one looks familiar. He tried to remember the faces of the undead soldiers he’d raised as Xanthus— maybe it had been one among them? But they all blended together, there had been so many.
A spider-monster brought him an elegant goblet of blood. He took a sip. It was sweeter and richer than any wine he’d ever had. He could feel his strength returning to him as he drank, and his half-knitted rib bones finished stitching themselves back together. Even as the blood from the cup landed uselessly to stain the ground underneath him. Having a vampiric aspect came with some unexpected benefits.
Notification: Aspect of Vampirism Gained - Sustenance
Details: Having finally drank human blood, you have achieved level II of your vampiric nature. This will manifest in the future. Currently, you receive a minor healing buff when consuming blood.
He put the glass down. The rest of the Champions had stopped eating to stare at him.
“Who are you?” the manticore said, looking at him with disgust.
“Edd the Conqueror,” said Edd, stressing the word ‘Conqueror.’ “I preceded you to the Arena.” He nonchalantly took another sip of blood.
“I’m Sharkhurz,” the manticore said, turning back to her plate of entrails.
“Deathbringer,” the centaur said with a wince as if uncomfortable with the name.
“An unwieldy name,” Edd said. “I pity you.”
The new Champions looked at each other. The gorgon rolled her eyes, and Edd felt a flash of irritation. Who were they to judge him?
“I am Colubra,” the gorgon said. “In life, I was the Queen of the Eastern Lands and of the Levant.”
“Our past lives are irrelevant, as I’m sure our master will drive into you,” Edd said. “We are all gladiators now, slaves to Dark Lord Zekant.”
The Champions looked at each other again, and silence fell across the table.
“He is ashamed of who he was in life,” the gorgon said finally. “But we don’t have to be.”
It was true— Edd was ashamed of Xanthus’ cowardice. But he wasn’t about to show it.
“I’m not ashamed,” he said definitively. “It just isn’t relevant anymore.”
The cruel-faced manticore smirked. “He’s ashamed. I’m not. I was the wife and mother to Emperors. No one, not even the Dark Lord, can take that away from me.”
The revenant at the end of the table had been silent, but now it twisted its head grotesquely to the side and smiled widely. “Yarrl.”
Edd looked at the revenant, disgusted.
“You look familiar,” it croaked. “Have we met?”
“I think not,” Edd said stiffly.
In response, it turned its head into a rotting dog’s head, skull visible through the flesh. Its long black tongue lolled out of its mouth, almost touching the table.
Edd looked at the other Champions, appalled. They just stared blankly back at him. Swallowing the rest of his blood with a single gulp, he got up and stalked back to his cell. The blood was no longer sweet, tasting only of disappointment and ashes. It will be difficult to work with this group of idiots.
The door swung open, and Crixa appeared, shifting back and forth uncomfortably on its spider legs. “It is essential that you be able to work with the other Champions,” Crixa said. “Antagonizing them will not be productive.”
“They are weak, pathetic things,” Edd said. “Hung up on the past and prior glories of another life.”
“The gorgon took down three satyrs today with her teeth alone. The centaur is a quick hand with a bow, and his healing magic is powerful. The manticore carries a poison that can kill a man in seconds and a beast in mere minutes.”
“What about the revenant?” Edd said.
Crixa grimaced. “The revenant is… a formidable adversary. I did not stay to watch his fight. It was uncomfortable, even for one such as I.”
Crixa doesn’t like it either.
“You will continue to dine with the other Champions at the Dark Lord’s command,” Crixa said. “You will all train together for the rest of the week. Once seven days have passed, you will face your next battle in the Arena.”
Edd sighed. “If that’s what he wants.”
The door slammed, and Edd was once again alone.
Chapter 7: The Magic Within
The door slammed, sealing him within his cell. Edd spent the night working with his ice magic, trying to gain better control of it. He had mastered the sideways twist of his torso that allowed him to summon it in the first place and was working on fine control, forcing ambient black ice to move up and down his arms and from one finger to the other.
This week of training would hopefully allow him to master applying the Frost Nova to a ranged attack. If he did it right, the skill would let him shoot icy bolts at an enemy or sweep them up in a glacial whirlwind.
The next morning brought Crixa back around. This time, the monster came holding a wooden practice sword and shield in its spindly arms. “Dark Lord’s orders,” it said, handing the weapons off to him. “It’s to be drills first then one-on-one battles in the afternoon.”
Edd sighed, his thoughts turned towards focusing on honing his magic. This was a waste of his time. He was already as good with his sword and spear as he wanted to be. Perhaps he could use the drill session to scope out the other Champions and see what they could do.
The rest of the morning was spent surreptitiously watching the others as he moved through formations with the wooden practice weapons. Crixa was their drill sergeant, and he was surprisingly commanding as he ordered them to move from pose to pose. Between this and the monster’s unexpected healing magic, Edd was gaining a grudging respect for it.
The centaur and the gorgon seemed to have made a tentative alliance. They handed weapons off to each other when the group switched back and forth from spear to sword, and Edd caught the centaur correcting one of the gorgon’s poses out of the corner of his eye.
The manticore limped around, a bleeding sore visible on her back left paw— a casualty of her first test in the Arena, he assumed. Yarrl, the revenant, was loathed and feared by all of them. He trained alone, separated from the others, trailing the cloying scent of rot and decay behind him.
By mid-morning, they had switched to working with their magic. Each of the champions used the practice dummies at the end of the Training Grounds as targets. It required more concentration from Edd, but he remembered part of what he was supposed to be doing. Watching the others and learning their strengths and weaknesses as best he could.
The manticore’s tail could shoot darts of poison at her opponents, although her aim still needed work. She hit her dummy only half the time. The gorgon could shoot bolts from her hands that turned her targets to stone but needed a lot of time to recharge her power between attacks. The centaur had ranged healing magic— once the others had destroyed their dummies, he went down the line and restored them to mint condition.
Finally, the revenant stood at the end of the line, working on its shapeshifting.
It could become any man or animal, although all its forms were dead, and some of the forms were in worse shape than others. Edd saw it at least once become a small dragon with wings so tattered from decay they were more hole than wing. Edd wondered if Yarrl’s magic would allow it to fly even with a body in that condition.
Edd worked on his own ranged ice magic, striving for both accuracy and power. By the end of the morning, he was able to hit multiple training dummies consistently with the splash damage from Frost Nova, although his attacks still weren’t as strong as he wanted them to be. He hoped he could get them up to his standards by the time he faced the Arena again at the end of the week. Out of the corners of the ambient flame that doubled as his eyes, Edd saw the others watching him. All of us are meant to kill each other in the arena, I’m sure of it. I need to become stronger than the rest of them.
The afternoon was spent on the one verse one duels. Every Champion expected to fight, every Champion pitted against the other. Edd took on the manticore first. Despite the injury to her back paw, Sharkhurz was a formidable opponent. She had been forbidden to use her poison in the first round of practice battles, but her barbed tail stung just the same, and her teeth were sharp.
As an undead, Edd was unconcerned with the poison in her barb though. Instead, he was more concerned with the destructive force of the tail attached to it. Despite the manticore’s powerful tail attacks, Edd was able to outmaneuver her in the end. However, it was a close match. Once she was fully healed, he might not be so lucky. I should have killed her here and now.
The centaur was next. His bow was fast and accurate, though the blunted arrows used for practice made them less reliable. It would be a poor match against Edd.
Fighting against the Deathbringer’s magic was particularly irritating and challenging to manage. Any time Edd scratched or bruised him, the centaur healed himself immediately.
Despite this, the battle was not overly complicated. Edd’ opponent was better suited to healing than combat. Still, the centaur had a lot of potential usefulness in the Arena. Edd remembered how hard it had been to fight with cracked ribs.
Colubra the gorgon was third. Of the other Champions, she was the most challenging yet. Like Sharkhurz, she was not allowed to use her magic in this round, but her arms were strong. Her claws were sharp, and she fought with a ruthlessness that Edd found both disturbing and impressive. Her snake hair carried a nasty bite, and their fangs dripped with acidic venom that Edd knew was just as damaging to his bones as it was the flesh of the others. More than once, it drove Edd back from what might have been a match-winning blow.
The bout ended in a draw without a clear winner. Both gladiators had each other pinned on the ground. Edd left the fight impressed. The gorgon would be a powerful ally.
With a disgusted shudder, Edd realized the revenant was the only opponent left. The only Champion he hadn’t already fought or beaten. It was already climbing over the wall into the practice arena without waiting for the arena to be reset, its yellow eyes burning with hate.
Edd strode straight towards the monster with his practice sword, but Yarrl walked toward him undaunted. Edd watched as the monster changed, transforming into a solid mass of scar tissue and muscle, and kept moving forward. Completely unhindered and uncaring, Yarrl stalked towards Edd as the skeleton hardened his resolve.
Relentlessly, Edd attacked. He refused to slow, and with the stamina of the undead, he didn’t need to. Over and over, he lunged and hacked at the revenant with his sword, but nothing worked. A Frost Nova exploded uselessly against the chest of the monster. No damage at all, With a wide grin, the revenant wrapped its narrow fingers around the bones of his neck and started to squeeze until the sword clattered from his hand.
“Champions, Champions!” Crixa said, butting in to separate them, the monster being more forceful than Edd was familiar with. “This is a practice bout. Save yourselves for the Arena.”
Edd glared at the revenant, trying to put all of the loathing he felt for it into his eyes. Yarrl just smiled mirthlessly back at him.
“Looks like I won,” it laughed in a low raspy voice.
Edd could hear its dry cackle echoing in his ears as Crixa escorted him back to his cell.
For him, Crixa had only one thing to say. “Don’t waste this opportunity. I won’t be able to interfere next time.”
Chapter 8: The Lingering Power
The rest of the week progressed in much the same way, with individual drills in the morning and one on one battle practice in the afternoon. Though, not once did Edd or any of the others have to fight against Yarrl.
Meals were awkward, and tension was thick between them. The gorgon, centaur, and manticore bickered amongst each other while Edd sipped his blood in silence, staring directly ahead of him until he was allowed to return to his cell. Periodically, Yarrl tried to antagonize him, but Edd ignored him. I can’t be goaded into fighting that corpse until I’m sure I can kill him.
Edd was pleased with his own progress in training. His magic was getting stronger, and his physical skills were improving as well. He always beat Deathbringer, but both Sharkhurz and Colubra consistently challenged him. Sometimes he won, sometimes they won, and sometimes Crixa called the fight a draw. Edd refused to spar with Yarrl as did all of the others. Crixa did not force the issue, neither did their dark master. The revenant fought dirty, and he found its ever-present smile unsettling.
Meanwhile, other Champions began trickling into the training grounds. Not all of them passed their first test in the Arena.
More than once, Edd saw the spider-monsters dragging the body of a failed Champion from the elevator. Off to the pit or whatever oblivion awaits us. He pitied them but did not dwell on the thought too long. Crixa divided those that survived into groups of four or five as they came in and forced them to follow a training regimen similar to Edd.
More than once, Edd had seen Yarrl stalk some of the new champions into dark rooms and corridors. A scream of pain always followed, and Yarrl would return alone. Word of the Champions and their absence was noted, though nothing was ever mentioned. Edd only noted that with each kill, Yarrl appeared to get stronger. The thought made Edd uneasy. I’ll need to start doing the same, or I’ll fall too far behind and be killed by him too.
Contact between the groups was actively discouraged. If gladiators from different groups tried to speak to each other, spider-monsters intervened and hurried both of them away.
“They’re trying to keep us divided,” Colubra said, observing one such interaction.
Edd looked at her in surprise. The gorgon usually didn’t make a habit of talking to him.
“So we don’t band together and riot,” Colubra continued. “We outnumber them. And with our training and these bodies of ours, we’re stronger, or at least we will be soon. I used the same tactic with my slaves when I was alive.”
Edd rolled his eyes. The others were constantly talking about the things they’d done or hadn’t done when they were back on earth. Why couldn’t they see that it didn’t matter?
Besides, my minion, what could you possibly do to a God like me?
“What would be the point of rioting or rising up?” he asked, sensibly. “Where would we go even if we won? We would still be in the Dark Lord’s kingdom with no escape. Zekant would just kill us all.”
“If I could just make it back to my kingdom, I would be worshipped as a Goddess forever.” Colubra hissed at him and stalked off with her snake hair twitching.
“Better to fight honorably in the Arena!” Edd shouted after her. “It is only through battle that we can prove our worth!” But a thought lingered in his mind, about the kingdom he had once possessed and the power he wielded.
She didn’t turn around. Edd sighed. Why did I have to be stuck with this group of Champions? It had been better when he had been the only one.
Things had been more peaceful, if it could’ve even been called such, back when he had first been remade. As he sat alone at the table, the thought l
ingered and grew as he pulled at the well of power within, but rather than let Frost Nova spread from his fingertips, he warped the magic, changing it, willing it to change, and guiding it along arcane paths that he knew from another life. From a plate on the table, a piece of meat began to move. Edd smiled.
Notification: You have unlocked “Flesh Crafting Level I.”
Details: A lesser-known school of Necromancy, Flesh Crafting animates flesh and muscle. While not as strong as a zombie or easy to raise as a skeleton, minions crafted from Flesh do not require a whole body and cannot be killed through decapitation.
Chapter 9: A Group Battle
All through the night that followed, Edd experimented with his newly rediscovered power. Without access to corpses, he was limited in what he could do but tried to manage as he reached out in his mind.