Just a few rules

It was three more months before the house of Estro managed to set up a fight like the one I had described. While I waited the matriarch apparently decided that at the rate I was going the cost of a cancelled fight wasn't too bad and had started scheduling two a month for me right from the start.

All three of the brothers I trained with had gone through the arena once. We were practicing when the trainer asked our whole group to stay after. That was unusual but not to the point that the other brothers were willing to stick around to find out what was going on.

"I have been meaning to tell you that I did find time to do as you asked. It was more interesting then I thought it would be, the rules are not quite what I always believed they were."

"I alway found the part about the victors being the combatants remaining after half the players have been sacrificed, but that the match continues until an authorized announcer calls it or there are not players left willing to fight, to be a very interesting phrasing of the rule."

"Yes, it is already worded so assume that more then one person can leave the arena."

"Not only that, it doesn't say who an authorized announcer is and it leaves a way for players to refuse to fight if they do not have valid targets and half the players are sacrificed."

"Which you knowing that, explains your reactions a bit better, but how the hell do you know that?"

"Same way I know everything else about the arena. So do you think mother will honor the agreement?"

"Hell no, but I cannot think of anything to do about it."

"First, when is the fight? What are the terms?"

"Three days. Really good, loser gets five, winner gets rest."

"Which is why you don't think mother will honor the terms."

"Not if you win. Doesn't care if you kill the pups or the pups kill you but either way there won't be another of these fights."

"And if I can force mother to back down, what did the priests decide?"

"What you knew they would."

"That works for me, but good to know they read. Three days is more then enough for us. Let me make sure my pups know enough to make mother back down. But Travis."

The trainer arched an eyebrow, I had never used his name even after learning it. I never used anyone's name.

"You enter that ring or you let anyone else enter that ring and I will kill them, brother or not. I would prefer not to sacrifice my family, brother."

"You understand why that is hard to believe right."

"He was not my family at the time."

The three younger men looked confused about where the conversation had gone. I spent the next two days going over what I expected and the consequences I would enact if they betrayed me and I didn't die.