The Arena

For the first time in my life I felt fear. I was going to die.

I lay in the Arena, sprawled across the dusty ground, thrown from my dracoling, my dragon mount, and now at the mercy of my opponent. He was already charging towards me on his own red-scaled dracoling, his glaive (a staff weapon with a curved blade at the end) held high. No. I think.

It was my one remaining weapon, my scimitar, that saved me (I had lost my glaive when I had been thrown off my dracoling). I drew the scimitar out of its sheath just in time to block my opponent’s downward slash; then I grabbed the staff of his glaive with my free hand and yanked as hard as I could. Amazingly, I managed to pull it out of his hands and knock him sharply on the head with the end he had been holding. Disoriented, he directed his dracoling in the wrong direction, giving me time to stand up and charge him, swinging the glaive wildly and screaming like a madman.

The crowd around me cheered at my comeback. The crowd was made up of nobles and laborers, warriors and farmers. They were a crowd of bloodthirsty people, come to watch a fight to the death in the giant wooden structure that was the Arena.

Predictably, he drew out his own scimitar to block my first few swings, but my third caught him on his left arm and knocked his steel bracer askew, while severely bruising his wrist and cutting through the fabric of his red tunic. I jumped back then as his dracoling blew a stream of fire at me.

For the first time in the fight, I saw my opponent clearly. To my surprise, he was quite young, with startling blue eyes and wavy blond hair.

My opponent urged his dracoling forward and slashed at my side. I blocked it with the staff of the glaive and launched into a series of rapid attack combinations that left him dazed and bruised.

He charged me then, his scimitar slashing for my neck and his dracoling prepared to breathe fire once more.

The young die hard, I thought as I ducked the scimitar, dodged the expected stream of fire and cut his dracoling’s front legs off, all in one fluid movement. My opponent was thrown off his saddle as his dracoling reared on its hind legs, howling in pain.

Without pausing to think I brought the glaive down to my opponent’s neck. There I stopped. From this angle I saw his eyes silently pleading with me. I paused and the crowd around me boos loudly. And then from deep in that crowd I heard my master’s voice calling out to me and telling me to kill my opponent and be done with it. I could not ignore my master. To ignore my master would be to ignore the only person who had ever done anything for me.

The young die hard, I thought again. I chopped the glaive down, severing my opponent’s head from his body.

The strong must prevail and the weak must die. It is the way of the Arena.