Our Elven taskmasters realized that Thayer and I were bitter enemies, and today we had made quite a show of aggravating each other. It started in the morning, when he finished his set of squats quicker than I and spat on the back of my head. I tackled him to the ground and broke his nose, again, before the rest of our training partners pulled me off of him. Half an hour later when he was practicing a sword drill against another opponent, I strategically tripped him from behind. When he got off the ground he screamed curses against my mother and they had to pull the two of us apart. We shot fiery hot glares at each other the whole day, but they kept us from training with each other.

There were six other groups like ours, each with about twenty empowered humans. It was Laxile's latest play to assimilate more tribes into their power base. Humans had been used as ground troops for hundreds of years in the Elven squabbles. If properly trained, a team of two or three humans could kill one of the monsters. Other tribes began to create small human armies and moved them against their opponents with as much emotional attachment as a piece on a game board.

We were different. Stronger and faster. We used their magic, only to heal ourselves, but it meant that we could learn combat skills without fear of death. Instead of the two or three humans needed to kill one Elven, it would take two or more Elvens to kill one of us.

As the day faded to dusk, I scanned the hill where our masters frequently stood to oversee their cattle. Once, a few years ago, when I first moved here after my brother and father's murder, I had seen her ride by on a magnificent gray warhorse. Her hair flew behind her like a flag that had been lit on fire by the sun. My heart stopped beating and my vision clouded, but then she was gone. She didn't look down into the training grounds at me, and I never saw her again.

Something hit me from behind and my spine bent backward as I flew forward five feet into the mud. I pushed myself up quickly, spitting dirt and water out of my mouth. It had been Thayer of course, and our training partners had already moved between us. I punched the one in front of me and he screamed as his jaw broke and he collapsed to the dirt. I kicked another one and the air went out of his stomach. Hands grabbed me from all sides and pulled me to the ground. Thayer screamed words about raping my eye socket, but it was hard to hear over the shouts of the other men.

"What is going on here?" the voice of our specific Elven trainer yelled. It was the one that ran me through with his sword. I smiled slightly at the sight of the silver-haired man. I never learned his name but could almost feel my hands closing around his throat and strangling the life from him.

"They are at it again," one of the men said on cue.

"Master, they've been bickering all day," another followed the script.

"We can't train like this. We have to stop what we are doing every half hour to break them apart."

"Very well," the Elven said. His silvery hair laid back in a braid. His cold gray eyes judged each of us. "I've grown sick of both of you. You have been compromising the training of my other slaves for too long. Take them to the Ring."

Hands grasped my arms, twisted me around and began to drag me away from our training site, toward the Ring. I couldn't see Thayer through the crowd but I heard him yell at me still. I looked up on the ridge and saw a group of a dozen Elvens walking down to the other side, to the Ring. Perfect, we would give them a good show.

The Ring was a large semicircle of dirt, mud, and gravel. A shoulder high fence of stacked logs surrounded the circle and observers could watch people battle on the inside while sitting atop the barricade. I saw other groups of humans jogging over from their respective training camps. We didn't have much interaction with the other teams, but Thayer and I were infamous for our combat prowess and hatred for each other. This wasn't the first time we had been in the Ring to fight for everyone's amusement.

"I'm going to fucking kill you this time!" Thayer yelled as the men pushed us into the circle. One of the men that had dragged me over put a heavy mace in my hand and Thayer was given a long sword. We moved to opposite sides of the Ring and stretched a little. More humans approached the Ring. We wanted them all to be here, so we took more time than we needed getting ready. We couldn't start until our masters gave the command.

I looked to my left where the west end of the dirt circle had a raised platform so that the Elvens didn't have to stand in the mud. It was placed on the opposite side of the Ring than the road that led up to the main house and the Elven soldiers’ barracks. The six trainers and their entourage of guards assembled on the dais and exchanged a few soft words between each other.

The silver-haired man that Thayer and I hated so much raised his hand and then lowered it.

I nearly didn't get my mace in front of his first swing and my arm almost snapped out of its socket from the force of the impact. His attack knocked me off balance and I struggled to keep myself upright. I knew instinctively where his next cut would be. We had practiced it enough during our attempts to kill each other. I pushed forward on my stagger and forced myself into a roll, feeling the wind from the sword part the air behind me. Thayer was an incredible swordsman and he stopped the full momentum of the downward swing a few inches before it would have dug into the earth. He didn't want to dull the blade unless it was with my skull. I had to be better or he really would kill me this time.

I came up to my feet and spun to face him. Clouds and mist rolled in from the east. The sun set behind the far mountains and an orange glow turned into a purple ocean in the sky as it stretched out over our heads. The green moon was only a sliver in the sky but the fog would soon cover its half-face like a burial sheet over a corpse. It would be a dark night and a fitting end to our slavery.

My mace swung from my left side and he moved to parry. It sounded like thunder when our weapons met and the impact bounced our arms from each other. I quickly changed the angle of my mace and came down again. This one he blocked as well, but the force pushed his body backward through the dirt and into the wall that protected the observers from our wrath. Hands pushed him off the wood and he charged at me again, driving the point of his sword at me like a spear. It would have split a tree in half, but I placed my mace on the inside of the blade and pushed it out so that it missed my chest by a few inches. We weren't wearing shields, so my right hand came around to jab fingers into his neck. I didn't have to put much force into it, the propulsion of his body did most of the work for me. He lowered his head in the last split second and my blow glanced harmlessly off of his chin. His left arm latched around my outstretched right one and we became entangled.

His momentum started to push me back over my center of balance. Before I shifted back his left foot hooked behind my right and I began to tip past the point of equilibrium. We both went down, luckily for him, I was on the bottom and broke most of his fall. The air hissed out of my lungs in echo to the sound of his sword bouncing out of his grip.

Our legs struggled for position as he tried to get them over and around my hips and I sought to stop him. He didn't quite have a good seat for striking, but he decided to punch me anyway. The blow glanced off of my cheek and I was able to trap his hand with my right hand. Then I lifted my hips and spun him over so he fell off to the side. I attempted to move on top of him but he would have none of it. His knee snapped out and caught the side of my stomach, the blow would have knocked over a horse, but I just grunted as my body started to heal the bruised ribs. He spun around on his back and kicked me in the stomach with a scream. I lifted into the air and my diaphragm contracted from the force of his blow. I tried to soften the impact of my fall, but the back of my head still slammed into the dirt and gravel.

I gritted my teeth and tasted blood coming up from my stomach. He laughed at me and I tried my best to hide my smile, even though the pain in my body was real. I had landed in the mud next to his sword and I picked it up in my right hand. Then I spit out the mouthful of blood and glared at him.

Thayer spit on the ground as well and held out his hand to the side of the Ring. Someone threw him another long sword that he caught without even looking. The movement reminded me of the grandiose way he told stories to us late at night when we were supposed to be sleeping. My left hand tightened around the grip of my mace, but I kept the sword loose in my hand while we approached each other.

We circled each other again and I drove forward with a flurry of slams from my mace and quick cuts with the sword. He had no choice but to give ground and ended up with his back to the fence in front of the Elvens. A light drizzle of tears started to fall from the dusky sky. Before our magic it would have been impossible to see what I was doing. Before I had been changed I would have died a thousand times by now.

He had nowhere to go, so my next combination of attacks would have finished him. I ran at him with the blade and mace chambered at my sides, screaming as the power of the Earth coursed through my heart and veins. Our eyes met and we both understood that this was the end. Or it was the beginning. I raised my weapons when I was two steps from him and watched his hands drop his sword and form a cradle at his chest. My left foot fit into his hands and he lifted me as an explosive grunt left his mouth.

I flew over the fence and into the group of startled Elvens. My sword lashed out and took one of the trainer's heads off cleanly before I landed into the chest of the silver-haired bastard that had been my torturer for the last four years. He gasped in surprise as the full weight of my body anchored atop him and dashed him to the ground. His ribs cracked and split like thin wood from my impact. His face looked shocked. He never imagined that we would fight back, and he must have thought my attack was an odd dream acquired from drinking too much wine. He still wore a look of incomprehension as my mace slammed into his skull, shattering it into a thousand pieces and scattering his eyeballs, brain, and teeth in all directions. Even though he was already dead, I hit the broken skull one more time, turning it into red and gray jelly and breaking the wooden boards underneath him.

The platform wasn't very spacious and the other trainers stepped to the edges to avoid my flying body. They hadn't even drawn their swords yet. Their faces looked concerned as they studied the dead bodies of the two I had just killed. They realized it wasn't a dream when I kicked one of them close to me and pushed the group off of the raised platform. The mass of Elvens tumbled down the eight feet to the ground below with a collective shout of surprise.

The men Thayer and I trained with waited at the bottom with swords and daggers drawn. Starving dogs made less noise fighting over a thickly fleshed bone as they carved the Elvens into little pieces. It was almost over too quickly and the men looked up at me, their faces and bodies covered in blood. The look of hunger made their eyes glow. We had planned this for the last half of a year and it would now come to fruition. The humans in the other training groups stared at me in horror. The drizzle began to change into rain and a flash of light made the sky turn blue to the west, the direction we would be going.

"You all know me as Kaiyer!" I yelled to them from the raised platform. "We have planned an escape from our life of bondage where we can be free men and women. The men in my troop would rather live our lives as our own masters. If you agree, then follow us west through the forest. The way will not be easy. They will hunt us, they will try to kill us, and we will struggle to find food and shelter. I cannot guarantee that we will be successful in our escape. I can guarantee that if you remain here then you will eventually die in one of their petty land wars. They will continue to take your friends, your family, and your loved ones from you until they take your soul."

I paused and looked over them. Their faces were pained as they considered the decision. I knew this would happen. We had been slaves for so long that even our legends told of a time when humans were slaves. Most would never be able to break that bond. We had known no other life, nor had our parents, our grandparents, or any humans. It was like asking a fish to learn to breathe and walk in order to live on land. Even tame horses had their wild counterparts to look to. But no human was free. No human ever had been.

The concept seemed so alien and difficult that death would be easier for some than disobeying our masters, than taking on the risks that came with freedom. It was daunting to imagine making decisions for yourself when your entire life had always been dictated for you, and I was asking them to decide now, with no time to reflect or consider the choice.

“If you come with us, you might die. But you will die in freedom.” I paused again to study their faces. They still looked confused and apprehensive.

"Make your choice," I said as I turned and jumped from the platform. While I understood the gravity of the momentous decision I was asking them to make, I did not have patience for anyone who would struggle for long with their choice. We did not have the luxury of suffering cowards in our ranks. If they could not quickly choose freedom, I did not want them to join us. We needed only those who could confidently walk to a new life, a new era. Though slavery was all we knew, we understood on a primal level that we should be free. One of the men handed me a sheath for Thayer's long sword and I strapped it to my back. My mace didn't have sharp edges, but I continued to hold it in my left hand. I walked to the forest.

"Good speech, Brother," Thayer said when he caught up with me before the tree line. I smiled at him.

"Don't look back," I said to him and the other men in front of me. “We have a plan. It was constructed carefully and we must adhere to it. If we turn around it will seem that we need them to follow us. We do not."

The forest was thick, but we had practiced this run several times in preparation. We knew the small trail to follow that would take us to the river. It was only a few miles, but the tension of unanswered questions made the trek more stressful than any other night we had practiced. Would the other humans follow us? How long would it take for the Elvens to realize we escaped and come after us? How many would they send? I briefly worried, but then I remembered the alternative. I wanted to be free, even if that meant that I died like a starving wolf instead of a well-fed dog.

We hit the rocky beach by the river. I didn't know the name of it; we were not allowed to look at maps or even supposed to know how to read, though most of us were able to interpret basic written words. The distant mountain range hid the remainder of the sun's rays behind its sharp peaks and robe of dark clouds. There was almost no light, but we knew where our boats lay hidden, and our eyesight had been sharpened when we were changed. Within a few minutes we had five of them in the water.

We had made thirty of these canoes, expecting others to follow us. They were roughly crafted, hollowed out logs with paddles for propulsion. Before Thayer was drafted into this elite human army, he had been a woodworker and carpenter along with his father. He instructed the rest of us in the construction and we had spent many dark nights building them with makeshift tools.

"Well, look at that Brother," Thayer said as he glanced back from the boat into the forest. Around eighty humans leaked out of the tree line onto the shore. Most of them looked terrified, so I got out of the boat and walked across the beach to meet them.

"We have boats hidden over there. Four people per boat. Get them loaded into the water and follow us." They nodded and moved toward the watercraft. There was a bit of confusion as the newcomers got situated with the rough canoes, but soon enough we were all in the river and paddling downstream.

We hadn't seen a map, but it was common knowledge that the rivers eventually led into the ocean. Then we could take the ocean for miles in any direction, find a place to hole up, and live free.

"We did it Brother. All this fighting will be behind us. I'll be happy if I never have to see one of their ugly faces ever again."

I nodded. We had accomplished this much. Now I must worry about where we were going, how we would build shelter, get food, and most importantly: how we would elude the Elvens who would be hunting us.

But it still felt amazing to be free. The hard part of the plan was over.