Chapter Text
At some point, he must have succeeded in dozing off, because when he wakes, the gladiator- the God-Tamer- is sharpening her weapon, seated cross-legged by the rack with her back to him.
He thinks he is quiet, sitting up, but with barely a tilt of her head, “how are you feeling?”
“Miserable as ever.” He rolls his shoulder with some irritation, mostly at getting caught so easily. “What, have you been hovering over me while I slept, making sure I didn’t sneak off again?”
“You make interesting assumptions about how much my schedule revolves around you, Tiso.” It’s dryly chiding, but reassuring after a fashion. Whatever passed between them earlier seems to have settled.
There’s still a bloodless notch in the chitin of his neck. She’d barely pulled the strike; an inch further and it would have slit his throat. He resists the urge to rub the mark, leaning to get a better look at her whetstone technique instead. She’s not bad, and the quality of the stone is decent, but the weapon itself… “There’s only so much you’re going to be able to do, slaving over that thing. You have better ones.”
She makes another pass with the stone, pauses to check her handiwork. “Call it sentimental attachment.”
A scoff. “You, sentimental?” Having spent several days at the hands of her tender loving care, he begs to differ.
“I have my moments.” She sets the stone aside, and he can hear a bit of a smile in her words, even if he doubts there is any trace of it on her features. “What of yourself? You’re certainly quite attached to that shell.”
He scoffs, running a hand over the surface, more mindful of the sensitive grip. “Incomparable. This took years to put together.” He made a light pass at the air with it. “Heh, not that I won’t have to do better, since it’s broken.”
She doesn’t seem as reverent as he would’ve liked, but after a second thought, she strikes as more distracted than disrespectful. “…You made it yourself?”
“Of course I did. I wouldn’t put faith in something any idiot gave me.” Setting it on his lap, he runs a familiar, methodical system of checks; he doesn’t have the tools to fix it but he can at least make some sort of start. “A real warrior ought to make all their own weapons, shouldn’t they?”
A ruminative pause. Another scrape of the whetstone. “I would not be a warrior by that metric.” She hefts her lance with familiar ease, beholding it in a better light. This is bone- little carved, largely grown in shape. It must have come from a large creature, he supposes, as it’s all one piece, and looks like it might have once been a jawbone.
His path had crossed briefly with some cowardly sort carrying a club made of a broken tooth- he knows this land yields such prodigious corpses, larger than any in Vale’s End. It is still a bit sobering. Subdued, he grunts. “I’m just saying. You won’t find anything better than you can make with your own hands, and a bit of- effort-” the last word comes gritted, as he tries to pry a bit more at a stubborn mechanism, and is then summarily clipped when it backfires, smacking him in the stomach with what’s fortunately one of the blunt panels.
Regardless, it’s enough to bring tears to his eyes, and he hisses, holding the spot and thinking of little except stupid- find a better worktable, while it’s so wretchedly spring-loaded- until he hears a sound.
As if surprised to hear it herself, her short, bewildered guffaw becomes more of a steady laugh, the back of one hand resting against the squat beak of her helmet.
It is one of the things least like a corpse she’s done this entire time, and he finds himself pulling a face but doing little more as she settles, shakes her head. “Of course, it usually works better.” He buries the unfamiliar rush of emotion, and the tangled sentiments now squabbling over it, in further tinkering. “Wouldn’t be surprised if one of the smaller gears ended up in my stomach. It’d explain why the thing isn’t-” holding the shield at a better angle, he wrenched the stuck panel open, and exclaims in small dismay at the interior. “…No, I’ll have to replace all of this. Fantastic. Surprised that any of the blades even manage to retract at all.” The assembly was torn along one of the seams in the outer shell, looking like it had been crushed when the ostensible protective plate had folded inwards.
The Colosseum had to have a forge, somewhere, didn’t it? There was no way its appetite for metal could be sated without the tools close at hand. His mind drifted, looking over what he had seen of the belly of the structure.
…The bodies…
If you’re waiting for a reason to live from me, you’ve chosen poorly.
And another voice, one he’d long thought silenced:
You never pay attention to the right thing, fool boy. It’ll be the death of you one of these days.
The God-Tamer climbs to her feet, and goes to put her lance back on the rack, apparently pleased with its sharpness.
“Why does the Colosseum have cells? I thought people killed for the privilege.”
“Oh, they do,” she says, with lofty contempt that digs its teeth into his pride. “You’ve heard all the stories of this place.”
“That it’s a paradise set aside for the very strongest, to challenge themselves against the ultimate opposition. I wouldn’t have come here otherwise. The creatures in the lands I’d come through were all pathetic, and I’d gotten tired of sharpening my weapon on them.”
“…That’s all?”
“Of course it is. Why would you have come here?” He resents that she sounds faintly shocked.
Silence. He expects, at first, that she is not going to answer him.
Then, with a slow turn of her head, “…I suppose, hardly for a better reason.” Before he can ask anything more, she continues. “There are challengers, of course, and it is important not to dissuade them. To this end, the Colosseum presents a charitable front. But it cannot truly afford to be so discerning. While its challengers are those fortuitous enough to pay its fees, it harvests from the desperate or simply those who will not be missed. They are kept below, unless they earn higher privilege by their performance.”
Tiers of challenges. Your performance, the gate guard had said.
…Well, it makes sense, he supposes. He despises the implications of it, regardless, the idea of perishing in squalor from infection or parasite in the dark. With new eyes, he takes in the airy elegance of this place, the size of the chambers, as little of it is occupied. “Why am I here?”
“I told you-”
“I’m not asking existentially.” His folded arms rest across the tender chitin on his stomach. “I failed your challenge. I didn’t ‘earn the right’ by my performance. You didn’t leave me to rot. There have to be terms on that.”
She pauses, scrutinizing him, and then takes a position leaning against the wall, crossing her own arms in false-casual imitation of his. “Besides what I have already impressed upon you,” (he resists, again, the urge to touch his neck) “not yet. But you needn’t despair for a lack of certainty. There will be consequences for having paraded you past most of the Colosseum.”
“Right. That ‘Speaker’ of yours?”
“She’s not of mine.” Her tone is dry, regardless. “And her attention is a troubling thing to acquire.”
“Troubling even for you?” With a title like God-Tamer, and the ability to offer death to any who’d question her…
The silence that falls is not quite enough to make him regret the question, but it answers it without further input.
“…So the Speaker is a problem.”
“She poses one,” she concedes delicately, “if she chooses. And she will choose. It is not in her habit to leave matters unattended.”
“Right. What are the odds of killing her when she comes to make this judgment?”
“If you can think of a way to achieve that, I would welcome it. Of course, keep in mind if you attempt and fail, if she does not feel charitable, she could instruct me to kill you.”
“Well, isn’t this a charming little world.” His brows draw together. “So much for a dignified challenge.”
She regards him a moment, brows lofted.
“What?”
“You have some very strange ideas about warriors, Tiso. Are all where you come from like this?”
“If they were, they wouldn’t have had the gall to beg me to stay and keep the bandits off their back. There’s a reason I didn’t stick around to prove myself to them.” He drums his fingers on one of the exterior panels of the shell. “Don’t give me that look, I was never their knight in the first place. They just wanted me to replace the one they had, once he up and died.”
“And you didn’t.”
“Of course not. I saw how he went. It was a pitiful end in a miserable little pond somewhere. None of them even dug him a grave, either.”
She is still watching him, illegibly, visor down. Refusing to be cowed, he stares back, stubbornly.
Silence falls.
Finally, she looks away. “It’s good to see you haven’t fared too badly.”
“Besides hitting myself in the stomach with a broken shield? No, I’m doing fantastic.” It’s voiced in scorn, but, reluctantly, he concedes, it actually has a point. He isn’t quite so shaky now.
She isn’t wearing as much of her armor, he realizes; the tasset and gorget removed, helmet retained seemingly out of habit. Like this, he can see that she has more scars, than the one she hides on her face- as much as her weapon is battered and crossed with cuts, so are her arms. Fewer on her legs.
Scars were proof of survival. They were proof something had tested you and failed.
…At least, that was what he’d told himself, before he had a notch in the front of his neck, and a crack across his stomach.
Now…?
A ringing sound catches his attention- three sharp jangles, interspersed with very precise silences.
The God-Tamer, he notices, has gone very still.
Before he asks, she walks to the door, briskly and silently, and draws it open.
The first thing that strikes him is the unmistakable smell of rot.