Ravens of Eternity

122 Pit of Vipers, Pt Szereth slumped down in his seat next to Alevos, and emitted something between a grunt and a groan.

“Not enjoying the view?” asked Alevos. “Or are first level box seats not to your liking?”

Szereth looked around the box seats that Alevos had secured, somehow. It was small, cozy, and most importantly private. A large window in front of them revealed the rest of the arena, both its fighting floor and the rest of the stands.

The surrounding stands were filled with a great many Drogar of all kinds. Tens of thousands, it seemed. There were dozens of levels, each one with multiple box seats scattered all around.

He estimated there was enough room to fill the coliseum with 200,000 Drogar.

They had a complete view of the center arena, which was roughly 350 meters in diameter. Around the edge were ten fighting rings, each 30 meters across. That was plenty of space for the duelists to fight in. Multiple duelists were in the rings while each of their Seed Judges stood just outside and watched.

The fighting ring in front of Alevos’ box seats had two vicious duelists. They had been slashing each other to pieces for the past minute or so

Their blood painted the sand they fought on.

“It’s good,” said Szereth.

.....

Alevos scoffed at his friend.

“Good? Just good?” he said. “Judging from your attitude, things didn’t go well during qualification?”

“Of course Freya qualified!” snapped Szereth. “And she made it look easy on top of it!”

“Isn’t that cause for celebration? Why’re you being such a grump?”

“The issue here is that she’s being extremely careless! She didn’t even power on her armor, and could’ve had her head lopped right off! Twice!! Every coin of our investment would’ve been gone in a swipe!”

Miko poked her head out from the row of seats. She was between Alevos and Doleth, but since the seats were made for Drogar, she almost had enough room to lounge around. She had to comically shuffle herself forward so that she could even be a part of the conversation.

“Freya can be a little reckless sometimes,” she said. “Especially if she is having too much fun. I will talk to her. Perhaps I can convince her to tone herself down.”

“Thank you,” said Szereth. “She needs to understand that she isn’t the only capable duelist out there. With only, what, a week’s worth of training? She needs to be more careful or all of us are gonna end up with a severed ledger.”

Out in the fighting ring in front of them, one of the duelists neatly took off his opponent’s head with a swipe. Both their armors had multiple cuts and punctures in it, and blood poured out from all of them.

The victor raised his blade arm feebly as his opponent’s lifeless body was dragged off the ring.

“Relax,” said Alevos. “I know it’s in your nature to fine tune and optimize, but this time just put the hammer down, yeah?”

Szereth sighed, then nodded in resignation.

“As long as we get results,” he said.

Unlike the fighting rings that surrounded it, the very center of the arena was a metallic platform. On it were a couple of dead duelists, their victorious opponents, and their Seed Judges. The victors waved to the crowd as best they could as the platform descended into the pit below.

It ascended not even a minute later, but with new duelists and their Seed Judges on top of it. A number of EyeCasts circled around the duelists and caught them in all their glory. The arena’s own EyeCasts projected their view straight onto one of the many large circular display screens that hung down from the top of the coliseum.

It afforded everyone a close-up view of whatever the various drones were pointed at. Not only that, but they often showed fight cards, scores, stats, and other interesting tidbits about the duelists.

Most importantly, they showed each fighter’s betting odds in realtime.

As the platform ascended, a Drogar with upbeat and overly dramatic tones came over the announcement system, and introduced the new duelists.

“Looks like we’ve got ourselves a fresh batch of Seventh Tier blood, er... duelists!” she said.

The audience laughed at the announcer’s joke, but it only made Szereth’s eyes roll.

“Not only that,” she continued, “but we’ve got the first ever human to fight in our arena! How exciting! And who would’ve thought? From prisoner to arena duelist, meet the 92nd Seed of the Seventh Tier, Ra’ventrii, the human bladedancer!”

Drone lights hovered around Eva, and lit her up during the announcement. She received a few cheers from the crowd. Most of the others jeered at her. There were also some threats and slurs flung from the more anti-human Drogar. Though they were a minority in comparison to the rest of the crowd, there were still a great many of them. And they were certainly loud.

Eva didn’t respond or react to any of them, but she held her grin

“And her opponent is everyone’s rising favorite,” continued the announcer, “Seventh Tier, Fifth Seed Rezhathii, scourge of the Lower Green Quarter slums!”

The light drones quickly floated over to the Drogar that was near her.

She was a tall and lithe Drogar with granite-colored scales. Her armor looked piecemeal, but was clearly put together professionally. Miko recognized its design immediately – it looked like the armor Szereth had dismantled on his bench.

Cheers erupted in pockets all over the coliseum, but the loudest of them happened to be right by Alevos’ box seats. They could easily hear their enthusiasm through the walls.

Rezhathii looked up at her favored fans and blew kisses to them. This only caused them to become even louder with their boisterous support.

“These two will be fighting in Ring Dresza,” said the announcer. “Bets may now commence!”

The two duelists’ fight cards appeared up on the screens above, and thousands of Drogar immediately placed their bets. The odds against Eva began to stack up quickly, especially compared to the current underdog favorite.

In fact, the numbers revealed almost everyone’s impression of her, and though the odds against her started at 10 to 1, it eventually settled to 42 to 1. Almost everyone believed that a human would never be able to fight against a Drogar, especially one of Rezhathii’s quality.

“Such a frail looking creature,” said someone in the stands. “How could it possible beat any Drogar?”

Other Drogar near him murmured in agreement, and similar sentiments seemed to resonate all around. Well, except in a few spots.

Alevos was laughing heartily inside the box seats. The odds were so very favorable that he happily placed a sizeable bet on his own duelist. He didn’t even find the need to hedge them. Szereth and Doleth joined suit, but their bets were a little more modest in comparison.

“Come on,” he said, “show a little more faith in your own team!”

“I-I’m too broke,” said Doleth. “I can’t risk all my money.”

“You really think she’s gonna lose?”

“No, but I’m trying to be pragmatic.”

Alevos harrumphed lightly.

“We lost all pragmatism the moment we formed this team,” he said. “This is all about high risk and high profit. So chip in and don’t look back.”

Doleth nodded, and upped her bet. As she did so, Alevos turned towards Szereth and jabbed him with an elbow.

“I know you’re far from broke,” Alevos continued. “Chip in something substantial. And no hedging!”

“Fine,” replied Szereth. “Let’s get this show started.”

He went back to his datapad and upped his bet a great deal.

As the announcer continued on to the next pair, Eva, Rezhathii, and their judges walked over and prepped in their ring. Like the others, it was plain, flat, and covered with grey sand. A ring of darker-colored sand marked its boundaries.

Lights swooped back at their ring, and the announcer’s voice filled the air once again.

“Bets for Ring Dresza are now closed,” she said. “And you know what that means, friends – it’s time to fight!”

“How dare you challenge me, filthy ape,” said Rezhathii, “I’m going to crush you with my fist.”

Eva tsk’d in response.

“Honestly I would’ve gone for the First Seed,” she replied, “but he wasn’t around. So I gotta settle for you instead.”

With a grin, Eva grabbed at the chest area of her own robe, and tore it off her body. It revealed Szereth’s beautiful armor underneath. It was a slightly glossy black which gleamed slightly under the arena’s bright lights.

It had sleek flowing lines that resembled razor-sharp feathers. Each one was a plate segment that slid over the others with ease and precision. And as she moved, the armor never once bound up or restricted her.

Hell, it looked as flexible as her own skin.

With a grin, Eva activated her helmet through her DI. Numerous feather plate segments sprang out from behind her head and enveloped her face protectively. Similar to her human-designed helmet, this too had no facial features, save for a few distinct lines.

It had a somewhat aquiline shape to it where its left and right sides were flat and angled towards the front. The top curved downwards on each side, which made the front drop down to a beak-like point in front of her chin.

It somewhat resembled the end of a hawk’s bill, and was in its own way menacing as hell.

Right where her eyes would be, a wide, flat V began to glow a pale lavender. And as it lit up, other sections of her armor followed suit, and thin lines of lavender came on. As though power now flowed throughout it.

She clenched her fist and felt the suit’s energies feed back into her. While it wasn’t going to do anything crazy like double her strength, it was plenty enough to add extra teeth to her bite.

Both of them bowed to each other at the same time before they drew their blades. They closed the gap between each other carefully, and kept their beltknives high. Once they reached attack range, neither played around with distance.

They leapt at each other at the same time, and their blades clashed in midair with a sharp CLANG. Both their arms shook from the impact as they fell back from each other.

But even as Eva was recovering, Rezhathii took the initiative and leapt in towards her, blade at the ready. And just as she entered strike range, she delivered a series of swipes, high and low, one after the other. Each more vicious than the last

Eva did her best to evade, and spun just out of the way while she danced. And in one smooth motion, she parried one of Rezhathii’s wide right slashes, then leapt in close to strike at her abdomen.

Rezhathii drew her blade in and jumped back with alarm – the human was fast beyond belief! And though she tried to keep her distance, Eva barely let up. She continually stayed within attack range and struck out decisively with her blade with every step of her dance.

Rezhathii swung her blade wildly at Eva in an attempt to keep her at bay, but it was barely any use. Eva’s dance combined with her Tiamat’s Transcendence made her impossible to suppress, and ended up with more cuts to her armor than she anticipated.

She suddenly found herself completely on the defensive, which thoroughly baffled her fans. They had never seen her pushed back this hard before! Some even yelled at her to support her.

“Don’t let that sunbleached ape get the better of you!”

“You’re the best, Rez!! Kill that ape!”

“Cut that filthy creature in two!”

Emboldened by her fans, she curled her left arm tightly and leapt forward rather than backwards. She quickly blocked Eva’s strike with her braced arm, and although her blade cut into her armor slightly, it gave her a chance to finally counter.

With all of her strength, she lunged forward with her blade aimed right at Eva’s chest.

Eva quickly sidestepped and slapped the blade away, but didn’t realize that it was a subtle feint. Rezhathii continued rushing forward towards Eva. And while she was unbalanced,the Drgoar spun around and swiped at her with her armored tail.

There was a resounding WHONG as she struck the human across her chest and threw her back a dozen meters.

.....

Eva found her that her breath was knocked out of her, and for a moment saw stars in her eyes. But she gathered her wits as she sailed through the air, and twisted her body and flipped herself around so she landed on her feet. She took a couple steps back, regained her balance quickly, and entered a defensive stance.

She shook the dizziness out of her head then raised her blade up defensively. Then, in between breaths, she taunted her opponent with a sarcastic tone.

“Come now, Fifth Seed,” she said. “You can do better than that, can’t you?”