The night was quiet, and only the slap of the waves and the throbbing hatred of the Lyathatan competed for Calder’s attention. He was mostly focused on the caged man in front of him, who stood and stretched in the yellow light of a quicklamp.
Urzaia was too tall for his cage, his shoulders bunched against the ceiling, but he beamed at Calder. “I have to stand to tell a story,” he explained. “It is not the same if I cannot use my hands.”
“I am your captive audience,” Calder said, his voice pitched low. He wasn’t sure what the two Champions would do to him if they found the Navigator captain interrogating their prisoner, but he didn’t want to find out.
“Are you sure? It has a sad ending, my story.”
Calder raised his eyebrows. “It hasn’t ended yet.”
Urzaia was born in Axciss, the City of Champions. One of the bigger cities on the Izyrian continent, Axciss is known for two things: its gladiator arenas, always popular sport with the Izyrian crowd, and the Champion’s Guild headquarters. Popular legend suggests that fighters are so common there because of the Guild presence, though some believe that the Guild only stays there because of the fights.
His father was a gladiator, a veteran of over two hundred fights that could fill the seats whenever his name appeared. Urzaia grew up in the stadium, sweeping seats and selling drinks as soon as he could walk on his own.
By the time he was big enough to drag bodies out of the sand, the Guild came for him.
His father had died only a few months before, killed by an infection after a victorious fight. When the Guild came through the arena, looking for hopefuls, his mother signed him up for testing. It would be the last time she ever saw him…but the last time she ever paid for his meals, either, so in her mind the scales were likely balanced.
The first test of the Champion’s Guild is a simple one: you’re paired up against another boy, and you have to beat him bloody before he beats you. The strong win, the weak are eliminated. As the Guild only selects the biggest, strongest boys of their age, the fights can get vicious.
Urzaia never thought his initiation was fair; he knew how to fight, and the other boy didn’t. He was pinning his opponent to the ground before the instructor’s shout faded.
Most of the winners went to the Guild, while the losers—and the winners who had been injured too badly—were left in the street. Urzaia spent the next two years working for the Champion’s Guild, doing mostly the same thing he’d done in the arena. He swept up, carried drinks, beat rugs, carried weapons, and dragged bodies either to the furnace or the graveyard. In the meantime, he learned the basics of combat.
He missed those days. There was a certain nostalgia in remembering the first time he drew an instructor’s blood with the point of his sword.
The second test followed his working years. This time, it was a tournament, according to very specific rules. More like a gladiator’s work than actual combat. This was practical, as Urzaia saw it; the bulk of a Champion’s income in the modern age came from duels or exhibition matches meant to show off an employer’s might.
Of the sixteen entrants in the tournament, Urzaia came in second. The final round was the first fight he had ever lost.
He and three others were selected for further testing, while the twelve who didn’t make it were either expelled from the Guild or returned to another year of sweeping and hauling.
At the time, he’d expected a warm welcome from the older Guild members. Or at least an acknowledgement that he was one of them. Not so. They tended to ignore him, leaving him to train on his own unless he made a mistake. He didn’t understand until later that the first two tests were nothing more than building a foundation. The true test came next.
They kept him in a room with a team of alchemists, forcing potions down his throat and syringes into his muscles. He still couldn’t recall the memory without shuddering. He spent months in that room, alone at night and surrounded by faceless alchemists all day, living a nightmare. He saw things that weren’t there, lost control of his body, and lived in constant pain. The agony was like nothing he’d experienced before or since, as though his own body had turned inward to tear itself to shreds.
After half a year of constant torment, he was released. His supervisors at the Guild seemed surprised to see him, but the ensuing barrage of tests were mild compared to the treatment that had damaged him in the first place. When they finally concluded that he was in one piece, they released him into the Guild.
Years later, he found out that something had gone wrong during his test. He’d reacted badly to some of the alchemical processes, so while most candidates are kept at the agonizing stage for six weeks at the most, Urzaia spent six months feeling like his skin was stuffed with knives. They had expected him to emerge mad, if he survived at all.
But he was as sturdy on the inside as he was on the outside, and he left the care of the alchemists, as one of his supervisors put it, “Saner than when he went in.”
After his release, the Champions finally treated him as—
“I’m sorry,” Calder said, interrupting.
Urzaia lowered his hands mid-sentence. “Is something wrong?”
“They almost tortured you to madness?”
The former Champion shrugged one shoulder. “I am a very happy person. I have been, always. My mother once said that I was born with a smile on my face.”
He smiled wider in demonstration.
Calder shook his head. “I start to wonder if we shouldn’t just round up and execute all alchemists.”
“Eh, it takes strong pain to make strong men. Injections into the bone are bad, and you do not want one. But the one giving you that injection, he is not always bad.”
“That’s…noble of you.” Calder wouldn’t have let the alchemists go, any more than he spared the ones who tormented his father.
“I am a noble man. Anyway, after my release, the Champions finally treated me as one of their own…”
Mental conditioning was a core part of Urzaia’s Champion training. His trainers did not tear him down, but built him up. He was pitted against normal human opponents, with no enhancements or invested weapons, and made to feel invincible. Constantly, the older Champions would talk about how lucky he was to have joined their Guild, and how weak the others were.
After a year of this, Urzaia was ready to believe it. His wounds healed overnight, he was immune to most poisons, and even many Soulbound powers no longer affected him. His strength and reactions grew beyond anything he’d ever imagined, and his eyesight was as sharp as a hunting bird’s.
He strode out into his first assignment feeling like he could take the world apart.
It was appropriate that he was sent straight to the arena. One of the fight masters, who owned an entire team of successful gladiators, had begun to monopolize the markets for new fighters. He’d bribed his way into all the prisons in the city, and as soon as they received a criminal with combat training, he snapped them up. None of the other masters could compete, and his team was milking the arenas dry.
So his opponents had pooled their earnings to hire a Champion.
For his first job as a member of the Guild, Urzaia had picked his weapons: a pair of hatchets crafted by an Izyrian master smith. Urzaia’s father had used battle-axes in the arena, and he himself had gotten used to hatchets while chopping up firewood at the Guild. More than anything, the weapons simply felt right. He was no Reader, but he thought it must have something to do with their Intent.
He stood at the arena, sand under him and blue sky overhead, surrounded by a screaming crowd, and he felt invincible. The enemy had a team of eighteen, released to fight him in pairs. The first pair had spears and shields, while he carried only a hatchet in each hand.