Ch 22

It had been six more days and six more fights since I had fought with the obsidian teka against the man in cloth pants against whom I had had so much difficulty. Since then I had managed to pull off the trick using the sunlight five out of six times and the time it had not worked the opponent fell because they were simply too slow to keep up with my movements and so took a teka to the heart through the back. I was once again laying awake at night, thinking about my coming fight the next day.

A goblin had come to congratulate me after I had won my ninth fight and had told me the details of the coming fight. I would have to wait until all of the other slaves that were fighting today during their first ten days to be finished before it was announced that someone had managed to reach their tenth day in the arena and still lived. Following this announcement, I would walk out into the middle of the arena and wait for an opponent to be brought from the normal ranks of arena fighters, or those who had completed their ten days but had not won glory yet in the arena. I would need to fight someone who had more experience in the arena and had also managed to stay alive in a bad situation. I could not afford to rely on dirty tricks like the one where I used the sunlight to blind them while attacking.

The day passed slowly, each fighter getting called to go and participate in the blood sport one after the other. As they trickled out, I began to feel nervous. I had stopped feeling much of the fear I had initially felt after the third fight where I had discovered that I could hold my own against someone who had some experience fighting but this was different. Depending on how things went I could end up fighting against someone who had much more experience than myself or knew more tricks quite easily. It would not take long for a gap in experience to end his fighting career and his life. There was a chance that his master would yield the fight, this being the tenth day and a fight against a normal ranked fighter who could also request to yield if the fight seemed lost. Unfortunately, my master had not appeared in the stands of spectators during the entirety of the time that I had been here and so I could not count on him appearing now. I would have to win the fight if I wanted to be guaranteed continued survival. Even if my master did show up, he might let me be killed just because it amused him. If Teka had recovered while I was in here, then he would have no real need of me.

Eventually it was time to go. The last fighter had gone a while earlier and the cheer of the crowd had already come and gone following that. The goblins standing by the door looked at him and when they saw that he was looking their way they waved him over. “Is time for fight. Come on,” they said while gesturing for me to come to them. A new fighter’s tenth fight was something that gathered slightly larger crowds because it did not happen often. As a result of this they were eager for there not to be delays that would cause the small crowd outside to become impatient. I walked through the door.

When I went through the door, the usual goblin wearing a leather tunic and cloth pants was there to hand me a dagger, this time though it was not a teka but a proper dagger with a shining steel blade and brass cross guards protecting the wielder from the sharp blade. In addition, it had leather cord wrapped around the handle to keep it from slipping. The goblin also gave me a new outfit, a light leather tunic like the one he was wearing and some simple cloth pants, dark grey in color. With this I felt properly clothed for the first time since coming to this world, with my private bits not hanging in the breeze below my cloth-sack clothes. I grinned at the goblin “Thank you, I mean it.” I said to him, and I did mean it. I may have to fight the most difficult fight I’ve had since coming here but I would at the very least not be going to my death dressed like a beggar.

I walked towards the gate at the end of the hall, already waiting open for me to go through it. When I did, I was met with a cheer coming from the spectators. It seemed that my displays over the last few days were enough to gain myself a few fans and I must admit that I felt a bit of a rush at the feeling of being praised by a crowd. I proceeded out towards the center of the arena where I raised my dagger into the air, catching the late afternoon sunlight on the blade so that it glinted at the crowd. They ate it up and cheered anew chanting “DUNG, DUNG, DUNG!” over and over again. When they started cheering the name I had been given instead of just cheering my praise in general it killed the mood for me and so I turned from the spectators to the open gate at the far end of the arena where my opponent was just making his own entrance.

He was similarly equipped with a dagger and a light leather tunic and pants but he also had a helmet on that covered his face entirely, it seemed to be made out of a combination of hardened leather and small metal plates that had been sewn together with metal wire and coming out of the small of his back was a long slender tail the color of charcoal, it was long and went almost to the ground. Also, his feet were padded and covered in fur like those of a cat. As he walked towards the center the rhythmic drums that always preceded a match began to play. When he was about 15 feet away, he stopped and waited as if for a signal. A moment later I found out what the signal was when a brass gong rang out and he sprang towards me.

The final fight of my entry period in the arena had begun.