That night I dreamed.

I could feel my heart pumping and blood running down my face and over my chest. I was covered in cuts from swords and tridents, along with slashes from the claws of beasts. I was limping on my left leg as I had the head of a stone hound stuck in my armor. It had bitten down and was able to break through but not crush my leg. So when I chopped it off, it stayed. My right arm hung slightly limp from when I caught a trident in the armpit.

I was wearing the odd armor of the gladiators. My left arm, from my fist to my neck, was covered in armor while my chest was wide open. Around my waist, I had a weighted skirt that was much better than the one that I had made. On my head was an open-face helmet, they wanted to see my face when I yelled. My shins had metal wraps that would be connected by a blacksmith. Around my neck was the collar of a gladiator slave.

From the collar, there was a 15-foot chain that ran back to a metal loop at the top of a post. The fight was one that the city loved to watch. There were two versions of it, and you never knew which it was until they told you. Either you fought the other eight people chained to the post, or you all fought the beasts sent in.

It started like every other fight. They blew the horns to let us know to start. However, unlike the past chain fights, there were 16 of us. I should have known something was wrong when I saw the setup. Our arena was too small for something that big. Then when we were about halfway done, they announced it was a death fight. As soon as they blew the death horns, they released the beasts, a pack of stone hounds.

They were vicious magical monsters, either captured or summoned. They were large dogs about the size of a small black bear, but their skin was as tough as stone and gray. They fought like a pack taking out the weakened gladiators first. The only way we could kill them was by teaming up.

However, in a death match, teaming up meant you still were guarding yourself. Blows to the back were common. With the stone hounds, it was even worse as gladiators were wounded and used as bait to finish off other hounds. The screaming was the worst of any of the fights I had been in. The crowd loved it.

I looked around slowly to see who there was left to fight. There on the other side of the arena was the last sanding man, armored just like me but with a closed helmet. However, he didn’t have a single scratch on him, and I didn’t recognize him. More telling was that he didn’t have the slave collar. His chain was attached through a loop on his back. He wasn’t a slave, so his mana wasn’t locked.

My mind went wild. This man was a freeman in a fight that wasn’t normal. I glanced around the stadium for the first time and noticed that it was packed. Even the booth seats where the rich would watch were filled. That meant that the people knew this was going to be special, but they hadn’t told us. Which meant we were the ones intended to die, not this man. This was a game for him.

I was at the full extent of my chain trying to remove the stone hound head. When I looked up, I saw him reach behind himself and toss the chain off his back. The crowd went wild, cheering him as he raised his arms above his head. Then he lifted his helmet off his head and roared.

My mind raced as I put things together. This other man wasn’t a man but an orc. I could see his flat nose and sharp teeth from where I stood. He started to run at me right as I broke the hound’s head off my leg.

“Thank you Chaos!” I growled.

Then I grinned. I hadn’t killed an orc in over 15 years, but my thirst for their deaths hadn’t left me, only the chance. I shifted my sword to my left hand and charged. As I did, I wrapped up the chain around my right arm.

Time around me slowed down, and a voice I hadn’t heard in years sounded in my mind. “My Ash, the time has come for you to leave this place of training and help my Sister’s chosen priestess. Kill the dark ones here and in the stands, and go defend the Daughter of Light.”

My feet stumbled ever so slightly as the collar around my neck shattered and my wounds healed. I felt my magic flow back in. Restored to me when I needed it most. The crowd, who thought this was all part of the show, cheered.

Our first pass was but a moment later when the orc came to my right. He brought his short sword down toward my unarmored arm. He was intent on making this a spectacle. However, I wasn’t just a gladiator. I yanked my right arm up, which was covered in the chain from my neck, and then I activated my dash skill.

The orc had passed between me and the post, and so the chain ran from his left to my right arm. When the skill activated, I shot forward, and the chain came up, snagging under his left arm and pulling back. When I dashed, I crossed the chain and pulled tight, using him as the center of a pulley. Since he wasn’t attached to anything, the chain whipped around him and yanked him to the ground and then toward the post.

I dropped the chain as I tossed my sword into my right hand and activated the sword charge. It had been so long since I fought with my skills. Even when I worked for the Saunios’ as a scribe, my combat skills had been locked. Now, however, the chains were off, and Ash was free.

The orc was the worst warrior of theirs I had ever faced. He should have gotten up or at least brought his sword around, but he just looked at me with shock as I put the whole of my cheap sword into his heart. The crowd wasn’t sure what to do. Some were cheering his death, and others were trying to flee the slave that slipped his collar.

I looked up to where I always did at the end of every fight. The Aururior box where Maria would sit and watch next to her husband. The box next to hers was the governor’s. He would have guests from other cities and regions. However, what I noticed was that in his box weren’t the typical rich. It was full of the gray skin of orcs.

The governor stood up to his speaking platform as I was forming my plans. “Citizens have no fear of one combat slave whose collar is broken! He will submit and all will be well!”

The orc behind the governor bellowed in rage and stood. “He killed the son of the Chief! Was that your plan all along to bring us here and kill him? Are we so little in your eyes?”

The governor turned toward the yelling orc and went to reply when the orc backhanded him out of the box. Then the ten orcs in the box dropped their cloaks and drew their weapons. Maria’s husband stood and drew his sword, and started to back away to his door. The governor’s guards stepped forward only to be cut down by the orcs that were moving out.

I heard shouts from the exits as more orcs started to pour in. This was never about my fight but something more significant. I smiled and began to run toward Maria.

My collar had been slipped, but it wasn’t the collar around my neck that mattered. The sisters said I could fight. I triggered my ability from Chaos, and through my faith, my weapons appeared. The weight of my blessed armor was a comfort after the soft years. My blade was in my hand, and my shield was on my arm.

I blessed my fight as I yelled with a skill-empowered shout, “For Chaos, I give this battle! May those who serve the darkness be purged by her fire. All that will remain will be her Ash! May those whose heart is for the Sister be blessed!”

I burst into flame as I was trying to close the distance to Maria. Around the stadium, I felt the draw of others. Then I saw her blessing show up in a dozen places. No less than two dozen followers of Chaos were blessed. Including Maria’s attendant.

I growled out, “Good, she has some help.”

The orc that had knocked the governor into the arena was glowing a dark green with crackling lines around him. He raised his right arm and pointed toward the crowd, and laughed as a ball of fiendish magic rolled away from him. I had seen such magic in battle before. The highest of the orc shamans used it. Where it went, it corrupted, turning flesh to boils and equipment to sludge. Those who were hit with it would slowly turn into horrors that attacked anyone nearby, friend or foe.

The shaman raked his hand back and forth, laughing until his magic hit one of the blessed. The fire around the blessed turned purple and then pink. A ring of fire shot out from the blessed, consuming the corruption. The orc shouted in rage, and then he gazed around to see the dozens of blessed. When his eyes fell on Maria’s attendant as they tried to escape the box, he pointed and yelled.

Four orcs jumped across from their balcony to hers and attacked. The guards moved forward, but they lacked the understanding of what an orc was. The first orc took a sword blow to the neck as he crushed the head of the one who hit him. The second guard managed to put his sword in the leg of the first orc, only for the second to bisect him from shoulder to hip.

Maria’s husband, Didius Aururior, hadn’t managed to push out into the hall and so turned to face the orcs. He blocked the first blow and activated a skill that turned his one blade into 10 as they flashed forward. The wounded orc fell back as the other three moved forward. The attendant raised her hands, and a bubble formed over the three of them.

Maria had moved toward the door only to stumble back as an orc came through. Then the three orcs on the front all started to strike the shield. I knew from war that the shield wouldn’t last long. A healer’s shield never did, and it had the signs of a one. I was close enough that I could move.

I had spent years working on leveling my swapping skill. When I first got it, I could only trade places with an ally that was a few feet away. By the time I got to level 20, however, I had changed it through my desire. No longer could I swap with an ally. Now I could only swap with an enemy. What more demoralizing of an action could be than to swap places with the leader of your enemy’s army right as you were to be hit by their champion.

When I appeared, I was behind the three who were attacking the shield. I grinned and brought my sword up from below, removing the manhood of the orc in front of me. He would bleed out fast enough that he wouldn’t be a problem. Then I shield bashed the orc on the left, which sent him out of the booth and down to the ground twenty feet below. He would live but not be my problem right now.

Sadly the shield bash put my back to the third orc who chose to attack me. I felt his axe land squarely on my right shoulder. My knees gave out from the force, and my helm slammed against the railing.

The orc roared, “For Xazbus!”

He brought his axe back up over his head to strike me again. I had rolled over, facing up, and smiled at him. Then Didius made himself useful and slid his fancy sword into the exposed armpit of the monster. As his sword went in, I watched the arm supporting the axe fail and drop its blade.

I regained my feet and jammed the tip of my sword up through the open mouth of the yelling orc. Just one more to go, and we could clear through the box to make our escape. Didius glared at me. I could tell that he almost knew who I was, but he was completely startled when I walked through the magic shield.

The attendant, a young lady no older than 20, bowed her head to me. “Ash, you live?”

“Yes, now we need to get Maria out of here. I know the insides of this place but not how to leave. What is the quickest way?”

Didius spoke up as he moved forward, “I don’t know who you are but thank you. The entrance is on the other side. Our box is one of the best.”

I looked at the attendant, “Which way to the closest exit?”

“The left.”

“We must get Maria out the Sister’s demand it. Our lives for hers if need be!”

With that, I stepped back out of the wakened shield and blasted the orc with a ball of fire right in the face. He was expecting my sword, and so blocked the swing that didn’t come. As he fell back, my sword swept out to go into the weak spot where his chest piece ended and his waste started. It wasn’t a fast kill, but it was a sure kill. Then I took his right hand as I passed by.

I turned left as I came out of the box. The crowd had thinned, and we could head away from the battle. There were still some orcs nearby, but they were busy with others fighting. Most of the men carried at least a large dagger in the city, and so the orcs, while better armed, were fighting everyone.

Didius turned toward the grand entrance.

So I called out to him. “Didius we are going out this way. You can either come with us or be on your own.”

He looked at his wife, “Maria, do you know this man?”

For the first time in three years, I heard her speak, “Yes.”

“Is he trustworthy?”

“Yes.”

He closed back with us and looked at me closely. “I know you from somewhere but I don’t know where. Get us out of here safely and my father will reward you.”

I laughed and pushed his head down while bringing my shield up to catch an arrow. “Let’s go this day is young and Chaos herself is watching!”

Then we pushed through the wrong direction to the servant’s exits, fighting with the few orcs that were around. All the time, I was looking for the blessed, calling them to follow. When we got out of the arena, our party had grown from four of us to 17.

The city was in disarray as we came out of the building. Didius took the lead, and we headed as quickly as we could toward the Aururior compound.

* * *