Chapter - 18

"Good morning sir, how can I help you today? Are you a new arrival or a returning fighter?" I heard the voice come out of the short green humanoid in front of me with pointed ears and sharp teeth with white tufts of hair coming from above his ears and reading spectacles perched upon his nose. Despite hearing him clearly, I was not immediately able to respond, I was a bit in shock you see because the last creature I had seen like this had spoken like they had a poor education and a poorer grasp of the language. "What's the matter," he continued when I failed to answer him, "you've never spoken to a goblin before or just never one so loquacious?" I blinked at him a few more times and then said simply, "goblin?"

It was now the goblin's turn to pause and blink at me nonplussed. "You really haven't seen a goblin before?" he said to me as if speaking to a rare specimen they were afraid might run away if spooked. "Well, I met that one outside when my master signed me up to fight here, so you would be the second I have met or even seen for that matter, unless those guys in the hallway are also goblins." I was recovering quickly from my shock, I hadn't seen anything but humans and an elf with a bad attitude recently so I had forgotten what kind of world I was in but having previously seen people that were half-pig and half-dog before it was not too far a leap to accept the existence of goblins.

The old goblin in front of me gave an exhausted sigh before speaking again. "They aren't technically goblins, but neither are they technically not, orcs are like our big cousins that appear from our breeding once in a while. Now enough of that, I don't have time to fill in the gaps in your education just now. You mentioned that your master signed you up to fight, judging by that and your seeming childlike ignorance of the world around you and I must assume that you are both a new fighter and a slave that has had a very isolated existence." He looked sad for a moment before snapping his eyes back up. "That is correct," I replied when he paused for a moment looking sad, "today is supposed to be my first time fighting, I didn't know that I would have to stay here though." As I responded he started nodding as if he already knew my response. "Ok here's how it works, as a new fighter you have to stay in the arena quarters for ten days and each day you must participate in one fight, you do not get to choose your opponent. If you survive all ten days then your master will be free to collect you and your winnings, if you die your master can collect anything you may have won before you die. Also, in your first fight you will not be allowed armor and only one teka will be given to you as a weapon, be careful it does not break before you defeat your opponent as you will not get a replacement until the next fight. Finally, after the ten days fights can be fought until either a fighter's master yields the fight or until death but during these first ten days you must kill your opponent or die trying."

As his words washed over me in a flood, I couldn't help but to feel the crushing weight of my own impending doom at thinking that over the next ten days I would be forced to participate in not one but ten fights to the death. I, who in all the years of my previous life as well as the few weeks of my new one without ever finding myself in a violent situation would now be forced to kill or die again. The strangest thing is that I felt a strong urge to keep living despite how terrible my life here has been. Taking my silence as I processed all this as a sign that I had accepted my reality he pointed to the door farthest to my left. "Proceed through the first door and you will be placed in the que to fight in the arena, once you have fought you will be given food and water and allowed to rest until tomorrow." Realizing that there was no point in remaining standing here any longer I began walking towards the door indicated by the goblin at the desk. Seeing me turn towards the door indicated he pulled his book back open and returned to reading, completely lost to his surroundings again.

When I went through the door, I found myself in another short hallway which ended in another door which once opened led me into a much larger room. There seemed to be around twenty people in this room not counting the orcs in armor standing guard and a pair of goblins standing by a far door and drawing names calling names off a list. As soon as I entered the room, I felt a rough shove on my shoulder and looked to my left. An orc was standing there, pulling his arm back from shoving my shoulder, he looked a bit confused about something. "What?" I asked, slightly annoyed at being shoved. The orc grunted and pointed at the pair of goblins by the far door. Taking this to mean that I should go over there I went to where they were standing. "Hello," I started tentatively. "Shaddup human. Give me name!" the one on the left spoke in response to me, not seeming to care for my attempt at being polite. "Dung, my master calls me Dung." I respond in a sheepish voice, not wanting others to hear my shameful name. The goblin on the right scribbled something on a piece of paper and thrust it into a bag he was holding, then the goblin on the left spoke again. "Go stand with others, we call your name, your turn fight. When call name go through door."

I went back to the main portion of the room, none of the other slaves in this room seemed to be grouping together or talking and so I did not either. Every twenty minutes or so the goblin on the right would shake his bag of names and then pull one out and mutter something, presumably the name, to the other goblin. The goblin on the left of the door would then call out a name and the individual would stand up and walk through the door by which the goblin pair stood. Whether they all died or left the arena through another door I did not know but nobody who went through that door came back. After five others had been called, I heard the word I had been dreading, "DUNG!" the goblin voice yelled out into the room. I rose to my feet from where I had been sitting on the floor and felt the pins and needles plague my legs as the blood rushed back to them.

I walked towards the door and the goblin pair seemed to sneer at me as I went past them through the door. Once on the other side there was a single goblin wearing what looked like a leather tunic and basic cloth pants. "Here, take teka," he said tossing the flimsy blade on the ground and sneering at me. I reached down to pick up the fallen blade, it had a wooden hilt with no cross-guard at all and seemed to only be held to the blade with simple wooden pegs and a bit of tree sap. The blade itself was a pitted and dull metal that had a bit of rust on it, but the edge was extremely sharp looking. I hefted it in my hand a couple times to feel the weight of it, compared to the daggers I had been using to practice with Beetle this was just too light. I started moving my feet and walking down the hallway which ended in a metal gate. Shortly after I reached it, I heard drums being played rhythmically and the gate started sliding up in front of me.