by David Burke
”Secondly, I need to know how I regained all of that essence or even how my strength and War Essence were both higher yesterday than when you first showed me how to access them. Based on what you have told me, our highest priorities are staying hidden and growing my power, particularly my essence,” Kyle said.
He realized that he might not have enough time to get her answers as he had just reached the arena floor. The guards he was following led him to a side of the arena that was set up with thirty-foot posts in the ground. Each was about one foot in diameter. They formed a grid that was ten poles by ten poles in a square with each placed about five feet apart.
Saber was waiting at the base for him and as much as he wanted answers from Hilde, she had thankfully gone quiet in his head so that he could focus on whatever this was about.
“Well, if it isn’t our war elemental. Hopefully, you slept well last night. Your tutor reports that you are learning the language rapidly. Perhaps soon whatever magical means you have of translating won’t be required and I can get a real sense of how keen your mind is. For now, we are going to work on your agility.
“Yes, I know that most trainers would take a fighter like you and lean into your strengths. But I’m not most trainers. From everything I hear, you are ungodly powerful when it comes to raw strength. This is the big time here, though, and if you want to impress, you need to shore up your weaknesses. More than that, I am hopeful that a true war elemental will be able to develop agility as well as strength and constitution.
“So, with that in mind, I had our mages and slaves set up this little training ground for you. I see that you didn’t put on the new clothes that were provided for you. So if the bare-chested look is gonna be your thing, then we will go with it. It sure as shit will make you popular with the ladies,” Saber instructed him almost as if he wasn’t there, like Kyle was just incidentally hearing the man’s musings.
The head instructor scratched his head and continued, “We will have to get you something… hmm… I know just the thing.” Then he turned toward another of the trainers and said, “Go get two large leather belts.”
Looking back at Kyle, he said, “While we wait, I want you to see how high you can leap, but don’t go trying to escape. If you do, the mages will just have to activate those bands and then we will lose a bunch of training time while you are recovering.”
Kyle nodded and raised an eyebrow to ask if he should jump now.
“Well, get to it, I still have six other trainees to whip into shape,” Saber snapped.
Cutting loose would feel good, so Kyle was only too happy to comply. Saber wasn’t the only one who was curious to see what this body was capable of. Flexing his knees, he leapt into the air. His feet cleared the top of the poles that were near them. And then he was falling.
The fall hadn’t seemed so bad when he was in the quarry fighting for his life, but he felt his stomach clench up and his throat go dry as he plummeted to the ground. Kyle braced for impact and sure enough there was a thud and he sank several inches into the hard-packed arena floor. The light layer of sand that was spread all over, puffed up in a cloud from the force.
“Interesting. You are pretty heavy to do that, and sinking into the ground could slow you down, but maybe it has potential. Try it a few more times,” Saber instructed.
With each leap, Kyle found that it became easier and easier. This body, his body, became something that he was becoming more attuned with. It would still take a great deal of practice, but he was getting excited about it. He hadn’t even realized just how much he missed the precise control and understanding he’d had of his old body.
On the seventh leap, he realized that he could push essence into his leap and probably jump even further than he did now. In fact, a part of his mind was beginning to realize that there were many limitations that no longer applied. It was going to take years for him to undo a lifetime of habits, though.
A few more jumps later and Saber shouted out, “Do a flip in the air.”
Kyle had seen Kierra twisting and spinning in the air as she avoided or caught multiple arrows that had been shot at her. It had been impressive and, honestly, sexy as all get out, but that didn’t mean that he could imitate even a fraction of it. Still, it wasn’t a request, and if he was gonna trust Saber to help him learn to fight, then he was gonna have to trust the man’s methods.
That was another thing that had always set Kyle apart from his fellow players. Once he decided to commit to a course of action, he went all in on it. So this time, he leapt and, on the way down, tried to do a flip.
It didn’t go so well. Instead, he ended up belly-flopping onto the arena floor. Not comfortable at all.
The trainer laughed at him, but when he got up said, “Looks like you have some work to do there. Try again.”
Not one to quit, even after falling thirty feet, Kyle went right back at it. Before he knew it, they had been at it for a couple hours. A slave girl he didn’t recognize brought him water anytime he signaled, and Saber had passed off watching him to another trainer.
She was a lithe elf and clearly knew a thing or two about acrobatics. She demonstrated flips for him, so he could get a better idea about how to move his body. Kyle was very pleased to discover that he was getting the hang of basic instructions in the language. One lesson shouldn’t have helped that much, but then Hilde reminded him that Krig already knew the language and that everything Krig knew was buried somewhere in him. That didn’t make him feel any better, but at least language would be less and less of a barrier over the next few days.
By the time they broke for lunch, Kyle was able to execute a flip going up or coming down. It was a far cry from what Kierra or this new trainer could perform, but it still made him proud. So much so that Hilde teased him about it a bit.
Lunch was eaten, sitting quietly in a circle. The trainers all ate somewhere else and only a group of guards were left with the fighters. Skrug was a bit gross as he ate huge chunks of uncooked meat. In contrast, Gilthan ate delicately and sat as far from the others as he could. The three plain humans sat in a group, and were engaged in talking to one another.
That left him with just Kierra to talk to. He wasn’t sure what to expect from her eating, but while she was eating meat, it was definitely cooked. They didn’t seem to skimp on the food here. He was eating rice and kabobs of some meat that tasted like a top-end steak. He couldn’t complain at all.
Kyle paid attention to how the different people ate. Skrug, Kierra, and even Gilthan were using only their hands, while the other three used a spoon for the rice and their hands for the kabobs. This was just another little way in which things were different from what he was accustomed to, but he’d learned how to eat with chopsticks during some exhibition games they had in Japan, so he went with it.
About halfway through the meal, Kierra started staring at him. Kyle couldn’t help but notice it and wasn’t sure if it was one of those deciding who the alpha was things or if it was just a beautiful woman interested in him. Either way, he decided not to look away.
Eventually she said, “You are odd.”
Not what he was expecting, but at least he understood what she said without waiting for Hilde to translate, even if he needed her help to respond. Understanding a language always came faster than being able to speak it coherently. “Is that a good thing?”
She paused and then replied, “Perhaps. I don’t know yet.”
“Well, let me know when you decide,” Kyle said.
“You look like a normal human, even if you are large. If I had not been in the testing room, I would have no idea you are an elemental. You could pass for normal and sit with the others,” Kierra said as she tilted her head in the direction of the three humans.
Kyle was confused for a second and it must have shown on his face before one of the three men spoke, “You really are odd. She means that pure bloods tend to stick together. Thena is ruled by humans, and even if we aren’t citizens, we a
re still looked upon as a part of the nation. The barbarian tribes are filled with impures.”
He shook his head. It was the same everywhere. Societies always formed ideas about who was lesser just because of their heritage. It was one of the things that he loved so much about baseball. It didn’t matter if you grew up in a grass hut or a New York penthouse. All that mattered was how you played the game.
As the distaste rose within him, Kyle couldn’t help but feel it echoed by Krig. He remembered what Hilde had said about what the old war god, or old version of himself, had believed about judging beings based upon their merit. “Are we not all slaves?”
“Maybe we are slaves, but at least we aren’t dogs,” another of the humans responded. “They shouldn’t even be allowed to fight here. None of you should.”
And there it was. Jealousy.
It killed them that they didn’t have the natural gifts that the non-humans had. The need for translation was still significant enough that Kyle barely had the meaning of the man’s words before Kierra was on her feet and saying something to the men. He didn’t need to wait for a translation this time. Between the words he understood and the body language, he knew this was about to come to blows.
The question was if he should do anything to intervene or if the guards would shut it down. His mind raced through the options. It was his natural instinct to defend a woman, especially against narrow-minded asshats, but he also didn’t know that she’d need his help, or would even appreciate it.
As he watched, the guards all got ready for trouble. Weapons were pulled to the ready and one of them went running into the guts of the coliseum, undoubtedly to alert someone higher up the food chain. Ultimately, Kyle leapt up. He decided it didn’t matter if Kierra asked for his help or not, he would be true to himself.
Once he took a position next to her, one of the men called him a fur lover. He laughed. If that was the best insult they had, then he could just go with it. Kyle assessed the situation in an instant. Skrug wasn’t gonna get involved. All he seemed to want was more food. Gilthan was still sitting. The three humans were up on their feet, arrayed across from Kyle and Kierra.
“This is what they want.”
The words came from Gilthan and everyone paused long enough to look at him, which allowed the elf to continue. “Why do you think the trainers set us together? Why not keep the groups separate? They know that humans don’t like the impures. It would be the same if there were full-blooded elves here. They would look down on me for my heritage even while being jealous of my power.”
“What’s that got to do with anything?” the first human asked.
“They want to see if we will fight amongst ourselves. How we act tells them things about us. They aren’t just judging us based upon our fighting ability. The arena matches are games as much as they are battles. It is a show for the masses, and they need to know who will play nicely together.”
Kyle noticed that Saber was standing in the entryway to one of the tunnels that led out onto the arena floor. Maybe they were being tested, even now. As the humans backed away and their body language implied that they were no longer interested in fighting, Kyle felt strangely deflated. There was a fire in his blood that cried out for expression in combat.
It was like the excitement when going up to bat against a new pitcher. He needed to test himself. But it didn’t look like that was gonna happen. The trainers must have come to the same conclusion because they came running out and pulled each of the fighters off to their own individual training.
His afternoon training started with Kyle being equipped with two large leather belts that he wore crossed over his chest. Saber explained that they would add to his look and at the same time provide him with something to attach weapons to. The man told him that he would come up with a better outfit for him. The way he talked about it reminded Kyle of Gilthan’s words. Maybe there was a certain element of showmanship to all of this.
He was glad to get back into the training, though, as it kept his mind occupied. He was first given a pair of curved scimitars. With his size, they seemed more like short swords and felt ridiculously light, sorta like using a kid’s bat. Saber insisted that he learn to use them.
So, for the first hour, he trained with a different one of Saber’s underlings in not only the use of scimitars but in two-handed fighting. Everything the man said just seemed to click and by the end of the hour, Kyle was able to move the swords around in the flashy patterns that he had been shown. He could instinctively tell how to improve the form, but the trainer insisted that the little flourishes would make the moves more popular in the arena.
From there, he was put back to the jumping and flipping thing, but this time with the scimitars. Somehow having the weapon in his hands made everything feel more natural. When the sun started to set, Kyle realized he was truly enjoying this. He had worked up a sweat by twisting and spinning in the air while delivering practice strikes with the blades.
He knew that much of it wasn’t practical fighting, but trusted that it was more about teaching him to move his body than learning actual fighting techniques. He figured it was like wax on, wax off, and at some point, the purpose behind the motions would all be made clear. Either way, it came naturally to Kyle, more like he was remembering something rather than learning it for the first time.
Just after sunset, the fighters all gathered together again and Saber gave them another little speech. “Not bad for your first day of training. Some of you are making real progress. Others are still fighting the system. You need to know that I am more interested in seeing you succeed than just about anyone else. I get a bonus for training winning fighters based upon which of the teams buy each of you.
“Nothing I ask of you will be beyond you. Some of it may not make sense at the time, but there is always a purpose. I am trying to create not only the best fighters, but also ones who can make a good showing in the arena. You just need to listen to me. Tomorrow, we will increase the pace a bit more. The same every day until we separate the wheat from the chaff and see who is cut out for this and who isn’t.”
With that, they were dismissed. Kyle found a meal waiting for him in his cell. He was too hungry after working out all day to even care that he was put back into a barred and locked pit.
A short time after he finished eating, Nyda appeared again with two guards and he spent the next three hours practicing the common tongue. She seemed quite pleased with his progress. There was no opportunity for him to learn anything about her really, but he realized that he would have worked very hard to get her to smile. She was shy but gorgeous, and there was just a gentleness about her. She definitely seemed out of place in the harsh surroundings.
Of course, when did a slave ever get to pick where they would end up?
Chapter 13 - Training Time
The next few weeks took on a timeless quality. Kyle trained from sunup to sundown every day. Every day, it was a different weapon, and yet he felt he was getting the feel of each. Whether it was daggers or polearms, bows or spears, each weapon just started coming back to him.
That sense of remembering rather than learning continued to bother him, but Saber and the other trainers kept him too busy to worry about it. Each day, they had him lifting and hauling stones that got bigger and bigger as they tried to determine just what he could handle. They gave up when he was able to lift boulders larger than himself and started focusing more on repetitions rather than just a straight max lift.
He would be given flexibility and agility exercises to follow that. The poles course was still challenging for him but not nearly as much as it had been. The extra point he gained in agility was helpful, although he lamented that there was no exact way to track his progress. Hilde would laugh at him in those moments and remind him that this wasn’t a game.
After agility, they focused on his durability. That usually consisted of simple matches with multiple trainers using blunt weapons to beat him black and blue while he practic
ed footwork and dodging amidst the inevitable bruising he took. Or it might be him beating away with weapons or even his fists against obstacles to toughen his grip and experience what real impact felt like.
Some of his least favorite training was reaction training. Kyle was nowhere near as quick as Kierra, who could dodge and twist in the air, all while plucking arrows from the air in midflight with her hands. Instead, for him, it consisted of things like holding his hand out on a board while trying to move it fast enough to avoid having it smashed by a wooden mallet.
Kyle hadn’t broken any bones yet, and honestly his bones seemed to be harder than stone, but he definitely had multiple bruises. That did, however, lead to a pleasant surprise. His heightened constitution was good for more than just taking a blow; it also meant that he healed more quickly, remarkably so. A cut to his flesh might not close up before an onlooker’s eyes, but wounds that would have taken days or even weeks to heal from back home would be healed in minutes or, at worst, a couple of hours.
He didn’t really see the other fighters other than at lunch. Oh sure, he saw them working out in various parts of the arena under the guidance of the trainers assigned them. Everyone was working hard, but that only motivated Kyle to push harder. There was no way that he was gonna be outdone because he didn’t try the hardest.
Many of the days blurred into one another, but there were a few that stuck out in his memory. The first of those was the day that they were finally required to try the poles course.
Each day, Kyle had been staring at the poles. The pattern they formed on the arena floor took up only a small section of the overall space, but the thirty-foot-high poles had a way of capturing his attention. More than one of the fighters had brought up the question of what they would be used for. Kyle was pretty sure he knew, but equally sure that he wasn’t ready. Just because he could survive a thirty-foot fall, didn’t mean that it was any fun.
