36 A Changed Life

The next day, they are all brought back to the arena, and there are less than half the kids remaining. The child notes in an empty fashion that the one he'd stabbed is one of the ones missing.

At this point, one of the men comes to the front of them, and hands each of them a sword. All of the blades are coated in blood, and the child feels he recognizes it as the same blade he was handed yesterday.

They are soon being taught how to swing their swords, and the slightest failure or reluctance to continue ends in beatings with a cane, leaving massive welts across their skin, while not wounding them enough to make them unable to continue.

They continue until each of them collapse, and as each one does they are brought away. The child is the third to collapse. While he is weaker than the two who fell before him, his willpower is stronger, and he slowly feels a hatred growing for the people who had brought him here.

After being brought back to his room, he's fed again, and allowed to rest until the next day. The days start to blend together as they're continually trained. A few of the children decide to resist, feeling they know how to use the sword, but they always disappear, and reappear the next day missing fingernails, or with horrific burn wounds on them, and they never disobey again.

The child doesn't disobey any of the orders, but continually looks for chances. He doesn't want to escape, no, he simply wants to kill the cruel man that had put him here. If he dies doing so, then so be it.

No matter how hard he tries though, the months fade into years. They're always guarded by tens of guards, all standing around the arena at all times. Before they're teens, they start to be forced to fight other humans.

At first, the humans have no weapons and no combat experience, but as the months pass by, their opponents gain more and more, to the point where they will have better equipment than the children themselves. Some of the children die, or are crippled in some way, and the crippled never appear again.

The child, as he is still a child, wins not with skill, but sheer viciousness, not blocking anything that won't permanently wound him, and using the chance to go for fatal blows. By the time they're older, the now teen can no longer count the amount of men and women who have died by his hands. Some of those he's killed had fought back, others had simply been restrained, and he'd been ordered to kill.

He hadn't had any purity in his life, but at this point, he feels his entire body is stained with the blood of others. The monotony continues, until one day a the teen opens his eyes to the sound of a ringing bell. He's heard the bell before, but never has it been rung for so long, or so loudly.

One of the guards soon starts running between the cells, handing the children weapons, and ordering them to go out. As the guard approaches the teen, handing him the sword he has grown so familiar with, the teen walks a bit, before suddenly slashing at the guard's neck, who stares incomprehensibly at the teen as the blood spurts from his neck.

The teen isn't sure why the others had simply listened. All of the other guards had rushed off to whatever the emergency is, and the teen knows that this is his only chance to get the blood that he has been craving since he was first brought here.

Walking through the halls, he moves as carefully as he can, trying to minimize the sound of his footsteps. Occasionally he'll come across a guard, but they're easily dispatched, weaker than some of the people that he's been forced to face.

He continues to use his brutal fighting style, taking wounds to take life, and by the time he comes across an opulent looking area, he's littered with cuts, and starting to sway on his feet. Pushing open the door, he's met by two surprised guards.

He slashes one through the throat before he can get his sword out of his sheath, and rips his sword from one throat to the other, twisting to the side so the sword that is poised to pierce him simply scrapes along his ribs, used to the pain by now.

The teen watches the two bodies flop to the floor in a cold silence, and pushes open the door that they had been guarding. A fat man is sitting behind a desk, simply doing paperwork, no worry showing upon his face until he looks up to see the bloody teen, at which point he leaps as fast as he can with his bulk to a sword placed to the side of the desk.

The teen lunges forwards, jumping atop the desk as his sword stabs through the man's chest. The teen wants to inflict more pain, but he's growing faint, and after the man reaches for his wounded chest, looking on in disbelief, the teen simply collapses, his back resting against the desk, his sword cradled within his legs and arms.

That is how a group of men find him, each of them wearing a cuirass and wielding a spear, with a bright blue tabard above their armor. Among them is a woman who seems out of place on the battlefield.

While the men are wounded and bloody, the woman still has her blade in its sheath, and not a speck of blood mars her beautiful face. As they come in, they look on in confusion at the scene. A teen, hugging his sword like one would a lover, and the man they'd come to kill already dead.

One of the men approaches, and the teen tries to raise his blade, but collapses to the floor again.

"What's your name?"

The teen simply shakes his head. He's never had a name, simple called by "you" or "kid" at the orphanage. The people here had gone by numbers, their number based on ranking, the teen having eventually claimed the name "One". He has no intentions of keeping it though, no intentions of keeping anything given by those monsters.

As the teen tries to rise again, gripping his sword that is slick with blood, the man backs off at an order from the woman. The woman herself starts to approach, but the teen doesn't lower his guard. The woman is absolutely stunning, long straight blonde hair falling to her waist, blue eyes it's terribly easy to be lost in, bright red lips contrasting against her pale skin, and curves that any woman would kill for.

The teen barely notices any of that as she approaches, keeping his sword raised as the soldiers keep their own spears raised at him. The woman waves down the soldiers, who reluctantly lower their weapons, and as she approaches, the teen shudders, dropping his sword in exhaustion.

The woman approaches him, resting her pristine hand against his blood stained face, caressing it in the way a mother would comfort a child, ignoring her perfect fingers being stained with blood, the contrast with her skin striking.

"If you have no name, how does Damien sound?"

The boy can only feel something he's never felt before, a faint happiness, as he collapses in relief.