The Red Queen of the arena — part VI
Changing perspectives.
Belatza, Eos, and Asik went all-in with the Autumn Sabbath match. They were gamblers, and the gamble paid off: now the three partners were back in their hometown, basked in glory and luxury. Maybe not the luxury of the aristocracy but enough to buy everything they wanted, which was nice clothes, good liquors, and expensive prostitutes. Bleatza didn’t even have a rage fit when someone told him her wife Kerbelin got a lover. Katu was with them, wondering.
What should be the next step? Katu started this journey with the obsessive aim to fight and use all the teaching of her father. She did that, but not really: she just fought animals and monsters. Asik, Eos, and her uncle promised her matches with master swordsmen: “they will line up to fight you once you had made a reputation” they said. But nobody came forward. Months passed, and Katu drifted to other thoughts. In her traveling, she started to appreciate beauty, pleasures, stuff. Owning things was fun. She was in a comfortable home, looking at the cathedral, petting her beloved cat, with fine clothes, exquisite swords hanging from the wall, people waving at her when they saw her on the window. Maybe she arrived where she was supposed to be.
Katu, just 21 at the time, was ready to retire. She did shorter tours, spending more time at home. She started a fencing school, something small, a taste of the orc style the more curious and scholarly fencers.
She even started to write a manual. All that time spent in the Empire help them to separate the religious aspect of Hesiak from the more practical ones. She hasn’t found out how to explain some concepts without metaphors about the Void and the “leaf adrift in the currents of emptiness”. It was nice thinking about this theoretical question, some days she did just nothing but drink wine and think of swords.
She slipped into a comfortable routine. At last, a young man came to wake her from her numbness.
Xahu, an orc of about her age, came to see her in the warehouse she used as a training place. Like Katu, Xahu left the kingdoms to escape a predestined path. He was born in a religious family and, like all religious families, they are matriarchy. The boys become sacred halberdiers or ascetic monks, while the girls learn the secrets of the Void and join the clergy.
Xahu wanted to meet Katu because he thought he found a sort of soul mate, not romantic, he swore (but he blushed). He too wanted to bring the orcish martial arts in the arena and maybe, under Katu tutelage, he could enter the pit and fight a master swordsman. He had a fiery passion: he didn’t want to be a leaf adrift in the river of existence, as the Hatsu religion taught, he wanted to be a fish swimming against the current.
The two started training together: Xahu was not bad but not a Katu level. He had some victory in animal fighting matches but more thanks to his equipment than his ability. Xahu had a vest made out from a holy Hutsa Maindire. The Hutsa Maindire are pitch black rugs that symbolize the Void (hutsa), a hole near which to meditate about God. Some of these rugs, the holy ones, are actual holes: extrusions in the Void, pocket dimension, portable spatial fold. You can put your arm inside a holy rug, even if someone holds it above the ground. The more a Maindire is deep, the more it is valued.
Thanks to the vest, the torso of Xahu was de facto nonexistent and impossible to hit. A bull trying to gorge him will end with his head inside an empty elsewhere, ready to be stabbed. Of course, the vest was considered a kind of magic armor and therefore nobody would fight him while he was wearing it. Xahu was very frustrated by this. Eventually, Katu learned that the fiery passion of his new friend was nothing but boiling rancor.
Xahu was complaining about everything because everything was against him. “This is unjust!” was his catchphrase. His drive to fight and show the world his valor was, in reality, a quest for gold and comforts. He left the kingdoms because he stole the holy rug from his family. He tried to push her to open the school to more students, not just the couple of curious amateurs she got already. Asik, Eos, and Belatza took him under their debouched wings, and together they spent time drinking and thinking of ways to get money (in reality they spent more time fantasizing about how to spend money they didn’t have yet).
Katu was growing restless, so Belatza tried to comfort his niece. Belatza told her that this was the Infernal Empire way, and she had to get used to it. And they were the ones who landed on their feet! She was the perfect example of the Infernal philosophy: she found her place and reaped the good that comes with it. She played following the rules and won fair and square.
Katu realized that she didn’t really do that. She didn’t play following the rules of the arena: she found a way to avoid them. The rules are no magic, but she didn’t think of not using it. Even if Hesiak was not “actual” magic for her, it was for them.
If she wanted to prove herself, learn the art of the sword, go against the best masters, she should renounce Hesiak and all orcish martial arts.
And so she did.
Part 6 of 7
Part1 — Part 2 — Part3 — Part4 — Part5 — Part6 — Part7
