A Promise Broken

3 Days Later

House Thal'kyr Palace Praxica

"How dare that slave defy me?!"

Marcellus' chest was heaving. Three days had passed since their departure from the capital, and still the bitter taste of the events that transpired at the Colosseum Primus remained on his lips.

"At this point, is it really a surprise?" Poledra, his wife, said in reply.

Angronius had always been a troublesome slave, and in all the time he served House Thal'kyr his rebellious ways were kept from the masses. Those days were in the past, now everyone knew that the esteemed Lord Marcellus couldn't keep his champion in line. A slave dishonoring his master was a crime punishable by death, a thing becoming awfully too common regarding Angronius' case.

"So..." Poledra brought two goblets then poured herself and her husband a drink, feeling that they both could use one. "...what's to be done?"

Marcellus grabbed the goblet out of her hand and glared at his wife. He knew what must be done, and drank the wine to harden his resolve. When he finished, he barked at the slave girl attending them. "You! Call my daughter up here, now!"

"Yes, dominus!" The slave bowed, then scampered off.

"What's Eanna got do with this?"

Marcellus dropped down on his chair and sighed, "Her inability to rein in Angronius proves that she's a poor mistress. If you haven't noticed, she's grown quite fond of the thing. Her slave, her responsibility. Eanna will have to learn that when a dog bites the hand that feeds it, it forfeits its life."

Polgara entered her father's study, meek and quiet as a mouse. The dread in her heart weighed heavily on her shoulders, and she struggled to keep herself from shaking like a leaf in the autumn breeze.

"Eanna, come here!" Marcellus said sternly, trying his very best to keep his voice level.

His daughter approached his desk slowly, "Yes, Papa?"

Getting right to the point, Marcellus made his will known. "Your slave Angronius has greatly displeased me. If that was his only crime I would forgive him, but it isn't. He has dishonored this house by making a mockery of our family name before the whole republic. His life will be the price of his sin, and you will see to the deed."

Stunned, Polgara could only stare at her father as the cogs in her head came to a screeching halt.

"Leave."

"But Papa-"

"Did I fucking stutter, girl?!"

Polgara took a step back. She'd never seen her father so angry before.

Lady Poledra, however, had seen it more times than she cared to count and stepped in before it got out of hand. She put a tempering hand on her husband's shoulder and calmed him, somewhat. "Speak, daughter. And by Lilith, speak quickly."

Polgara gathered her thoughts and took a deep breath. She decided to come clean, for reasons she had yet to know. "Angronius is not to blame for going against your will in the games..."

Marcellus was quick to deduce the remainder of her sentence and felt his blood pressure spike. The patriarch's eyes betrayed a thunderstorm brewing in his mind. Yet, he remained silent, goading his daughter to go on.

"I am to blame. It was I who ordered him to spare the Hyrkan champion, and I will not have him killed for that."

Slowly, Marcellus rose up from his chair and closed the distance between him and Polgara. He loomed over his daughter for the longest time before letting the storm out of his head. He drew his hand back and delivered a powerful slap across her left cheek.

Polgara's head snapped to the side, and she instinctively covered her face. Although the sting would last for but a few moments, the shock of her father striking her for the first time in her life would remain for quite some time.

"Get out of my sight!" Marcellus spat, pointing to the door. In his eyes, if she thought she could stave his wrath she was gravely mistaken. The fact that she, his own daughter, defied his authority before all of Reksia... granted, it was the first time Polgara had ever dishonored her family. She was a good girl, but that was no excuse.

Polgara fled the room crying, leaving her father feeling all the more miserable and her mother in desperate need for another drink.

The maiden ran aimlessly through the long halls of the Palace Praxica, with tears streaming down her cheeks. Slaves and wardens parted from her path, letting her head deeper into the outer palace grounds unhindered. Polgara's blurry eyes caught the shadows of the hanging gardens through the late noon sun's rays, and ascended the stairs to seek the one spot where she could find peace.

She curled up against an empty urn and hugged her knees to her chest. The day wore on until night came, and still Polgara remained at the hanging gardens. The noise of the sparring gladiators below died down, leaving only the faint sounds of the night creatures and the city clamor to caress her ears.

Then, she heard Angronius, who was the last person she expected would find her in such a sorry state.

"My lady?"

She quickly wiped her tears away, making herself look even worse as the paint from her eyes left smears all over her cheeks. "Leave me, Angronius. I wish to be alone."

But he wouldn't leave. Like a moth drawn to the flame, Angronius felt the traces of her anguish, tasted it through some latent power slowly budding from within. He felt it in the air when he was practicing with Etrusca, waited until all prying eyes were looking elsewhere before ascending to the heights of the hanging gardens. There, he found his mistress, hurt and weighed down by the sting of her father's rebuke.

He pitied her.

Polgara froze when she felt him take her into his massive arms, her heart seized in her chest when his rough hands brushed up her bare shoulders. But when she found herself nestled comfortably in his embrace, the maiden felt her sadness melt away.

"Angronius... how dare you touch me?"

Angronius didn't answer. His face loomed over hers, and Polgara felt her apprehensions fade when their eyes met. The beast of the arena had the most mesmerizing kind eyes, a farcry from the hateful and fiery orbs of hell that caused many a gladiator to falter in the coliseum. They were like pools of fresh water, a boon in hot summers that would chase away the heat of day and cool the soul.

"Why are you sad, my lady?"

Polgara said nothing at first, feeling lost in the moment. Her peace was broken, leaving nothing but regret as she remembered her father's verdict.

"My father did not take kindly to your actions in the Colosseum Primus. He wants you dead." She turned her head away shamefully, "And I am to see to the deed myself, as punishment."

"So this is how I am rewarded, for serving as entertainment faithfully for a hundred battles." Angronius frowned, "To be set free, not from bondage but from this world."

"I don't want to do it."

"I know, but you don't have to shoulder that burden."

Polgara's brows furrowed as she wondered about his meaning, then shot up as soon as she realized what he planned to do. "You would attempt escape yet again?"

"I will not die a slave." Angronius replied, shedding at last his façade of servility.

"But where will you run?" Polgara asked, feeling unsure of the fact that she was entertaining the idea of letting her slave escape. "The reach of my father is far and vast. There is nowhere in the republic where you can run and hope to escape his wardens."

"Then I will go somewhere where your father cannot reach me." The gladiator said, determined to pursue this course of action. "There are places in this world that the republic has no hold over. If fortune favors me, you and your family will never see nor hear of me again."

Polgara resigned herself to his decision. She truly did not want him to die, but regardless of her opinions concerning the gladiator, her father was set on taking his life. While he was her slave in name, House Thal'kyr claimed full ownership of Angronius. If Lord Marcellus wanted him dead, no one could stop him.

"I..." She said hesitantly, wiping away the smears clean from her face. "I really would like to see you again."

The swirling pools within his eyes evaporated to the embers of passion. His eyes smoldered with desire, setting her heart on fire when she made the mistake of looking into them. Angronius cupped her chin in his hand and tipped her head back.

Polgara felt her heart hammer against her chest as she saw him close the distance, but she wasn't afraid of him. When he kissed her, she tensed up as his lips claimed hers, then relaxed when he let her take a breath. Suddenly , the love of Acraesius wasn't the most important thing in the world to her anymore.

But it was all so wrong. He was a slave, a thing no better than an animal, and yet he made her feel something no one else made her feel before.

"You'll forget me."

She slapped him lightly on the cheek, "You are cruel, Angronius. You force a kiss on me, then expect me to forget? Damn you."

Angronius let her go and rose up to look past the walls of the hanging gardens. It would take only a single leap from the ledge and he'd clear the grounds of the Palace Praxica. Many things made him hesitate, prime among them was his hound Etrusca and his friends among the gladiators of House Thal'kyr.

Rissio, Lucretia, even grim old Oenomaus. They loved their life there, found contentment where all he felt was resentment. They would miss him, but they'll be alright. Besides, he wasn't good at farewells.

And so, clad in nothing but his battleskirts, greaves and pauldrons, Angronius slipped away from the hanging gardens to make one quick stop before departing for good. He broke into the smithy, slipping past the wardens patrolling its perimeter to steal Gorefather and Gorechild from the armory, then climbed back into the hanging gardens.

Polgara considered for a moment to yell for the guards, to stop him from carrying out his mad scheme. Alas, she knew she could not. For such a fine student of the mystic arts, she herself fell prey to Angronius' spell.

"Farewell, Angronius."

The gladiator gazed upon her face once more, and Polgara expected he would kiss her again. To her disappointment, he didn't. He vaulted over the ledge and disappeared into the night. A peculiar feeling of loneliness overcame Polgara and she found her thoughts returning to the memory of Angronius' touch.

Her fingers danced on the skin of her shoulders, where the slave's hands kneaded the flesh like soft dough and made her tiny body shiver with every caress. She wondered if she'd ever look at another man again and feel that way. She knew the answer to that question, but refused to accept it.

There was no man like Angronius.

The Freelands of Stygia

Across the Sodian Sea that separates Nuceria from the rest of the known world, there is a mythical place all Nucerians know as the Freelands of Stygia.

The name rings hollow in light of recent events, for the Freelands are anything but free. The republic saw to its subjugation, like the many lands it conquered in the past. The name was kept as part of some joke, a cruel reminder for the ones crushed beneath the heel of Nuceria.

Regardless, the Freelands of Stygia were beautiful. Lands filled with steppes, mountains and deserts, sprawling forests and thick jungles. It did not have a name until the first Nucerian explorers stepped into her shores. The foreign soil was the birthplace of many cultures and peoples, each with a different and often unutterable name.

When the new era ushered in the age of the republic, Nuceria began its bloody quest of conquering the Freelands. With the might of their legions and the aid of their advanced sciences, it would have become a short campaign.

But Stygian folk were hardly the primitive barbarians Nuceria thought them to be. What they lacked in technological proficiency, Stygians made up for with sorceries as old as time itself, and overwhelming numbers. Their warriors had little to fear for the flying ships of the republic or their cyber-warriors, for it was their very way of life that was threatened- a cause strong enough to bury old feuds and unite enemies against a common foe. The fear of enslavement was stronger than death.

However, therein lay the fatal flaw which shifted the odds into the Nucerians' favor. The Stygians had warriors, Nuceria had soldiers.

Their legions were not gloryseekers, hurtling themselves blindly into the fray for a good fight or a glorious death. The armies of the republic were war machines, a gigantic meat-grinder that never tired nor rested. This was a foe the Stygians never faced before, and for all their combined might they eventually capitulated.

Tribes, clans and kingdoms fell before the Nucerians until only the Hordes remained.

Led by Minerva, the Warmother, they were the hounds that bit at the heels of the monstrous hydra that was Nuceria. For years the warrior queen sent Nucerian generals back across the sea, in shame or without their heads. For years, she kept the Freelands free while all other Stygians bowed before the might of the republic.

Until one day, Proconsul Marsus Acraesius took up the mantle and led the Nucerian legions to war.

He broke the will of the Horde with battle after battle, utterly decimating their armies with every engagement. His legions trampled and massacred their way through the Freelands, until they reached its heart, the one place in all of Stygia where the endless fields of grass grew like the Sodian Sea.

The final battle saw the sky turn black with the smoke of a hundred artillery shells, and the fields drown in the blood of warriors. When the battle ended, the Horde consisted of little more than a handful of midwives, sorceresses and wounded or sickly warriors. Minerva and her honor guard, out of a moment of weakness, begged for mercy and surrendered to keep whatever semblance of a people they had left.

It was then that the Warmother truly learned how merciless Acraesius, and the republic, could be.

He took every man from the Horde; fathers, husbands, sons and brothers; to be made slaves in the homeland. And in a brutal act of unparalleled cruelty, as punishment for their defiance, Acraesius had every woman in the Horde raped by his legionnaires, so that their future offspring would forever be tainted with Nucerian blood flowing in their veins.

As for Minerva, Acraesius made her watch the atrocity before cutting out her eyes himself.

Then, he left her and her people, broken beyond repair. Thus ended the Nucerian-Stygian War.

But even after the war had ended, Nucerians were still dying. With their legions exhausted from the long campaign, and confident that they've beaten the people of the Freelands into submission, most of the republic's armies flew home to rejoice in their victory. The Nucerians left several outposts, garrisoned with an ample amount of legionnaires to keep the locals in line, but were scattered in such a way that no two outposts could be within thirty miles of each other.

Not long after the Proconsul returned to the republic, rumors started to spring up like weeds all over the frontier of a powerful barbarian warband riding with the swiftness of the North Wind across the Freelands, setting fire to every Nucerian outpost in their path and liberating slave camps wherever they went.

Leading them, riding atop a pale dune prowler cat, was a woman with blood-red hair.

Wherever she rode, the warband followed, and a bloody trail of destruction was left in their wake. And that day, another outpost fell prey to her onslaught.

For all the might of their guns, their seasoned legionaries and their technologies, the Nucerians were quickly introduced to her wrath. Neither their bullets nor their swords could pierce her flesh, and their men proved an insufficient challenge to her skills with the blade.

This she-devil, clad in nothing but thin strips of scaled-mail and animal skins, was steel-bound. A product of an ancient sorcerous ritual binding the tenacity of the strongest metals on earth to flesh, she became a potent weapon and instrument of vengeance of a hundred conquered tribes. She did her job well, and reaped the rewards for it. Nucerian outposts run heavy with spoils to be transported back to the homeland, and with so many conquered foes plundered they simply couldn't move them quickly enough.

Her name was whispered from the mouths of both Stygians and Nucerians, held both in fear and begrudging respect.

Sonjita the Red Maiden, they called her, The Firebrand of the East.

Like the land beneath her feet, she was scarred by the war. It left a hollow pit in her soul that could only be filled with the blood of Nucerians, and she would not rest until the last of the invaders were dead or gone from her home.

Every day she went unchallenged, her defiance inspired thoughts of rebellion among the conquered people. It was slow, like seedlings sprouting their first leaves in spring, but they were growing. The Eaters of Cities gathered both strength and number, with followers who've grown weary of their overlords and their cruelty flocking to join their cause daily.

A storm of fire, steel and blood was coming for Nuceria. No matter how many years it would take, it was coming.