Chapter 49: Chapter 44 – A Royal Invitation

"The drive for violence, is likely embedded deeply into every being. No matter how prosperous and peaceful a civilization got, they still placed violence on a pedestal to be valued, and at times, worshipped. That literally every civilization in known history boasted of gladiatorial arenas of some kind is proof of this." - Garth Wainwrought, socioeconomics professor at the Levain Institute for Higher Learning.

 

The next day, Cal paid a visit to the colosseum, the grand gladiatorial arena built underneath the largest mountain of the mountain range, and said to be the oldest and largest of its kind in the entirety of western Alcidea. She was no stranger to such buildings, though the ones in Al-Shan were much smaller, and unlike the bowl shaped construct were typically made of wood, with a raised platform in the center where the action took place.

 

When she entered the colosseum, she paid for a ringside seat, which were surprisingly quite available, probably since the vendor reminded her that anyone who chose a ringside seat also bore all the risks associated on their own. She had noticed that nearly everyone else who occupied a ringside seat were of the rugged sort, though some had their families in tow. Most spectators chose safer seats further back, with some behind the safety of the rock ceiling - which had viewing slits cut into them and seats behind.

 

Cal had seated herself on the southern side of the arena, and directly across, she saw the richly decorated balcony that was located at the northern side. If she remembered her emblems right, the balcony would be the one reserved for the royal family, who were themselves known purveyors of the fights. Even with her sharp sight, she could only barely make out the figures of several dwarves on the balcony, who seemed richly dressed, but whose attention was occupied by a less richly dressed old dwarf amongst them.

 

She took her eyes and mind off them when the day's programs opened. First on the agenda was a performance by a well known goblin troupe, who based themselves in the city itself and had only recently returned from a tour of the lands. Cal watched with amusement as two hordes of goblins - one horde dressed in reds, another in blues - marched out with military precision from the gates of the arena. A military demeanor rendered utterly comical by the utterly impractical, over-exaggerated "armor" they wore and ridiculously oversized weapons they held in their hands.

 

One of the goblins in red, who wielded a gigantic mace which had a head formed into the facsimile of a fist with its middle finger extended, stepped forward from his horde, and loudly shouted towards the other horde. "I fart in your general direction!" The goblin then turned around and slapped his rump while he made fart noises with his mouth to the laughter of the audience.

 

From the blue horde, another goblin walked out, in her hands a greatsword twice as long as she was tall, that wobbled to and fro as she walked. She cleared her throat, then countered with an insult of her own. "Well, your mother is a bugbear!" The horde across all faked a shocked gasp at her words. "And your father smelt of skunk farts!"

 

"Better get a bucket!" Replied the one in red. "I'm gonna throw up from the sight of your face!"

 

"Oh, go boil your bottoms off, you sons of nitwits!"

 

The exchange of silly insults went on for another minute before the goblins charged at each other. On every impact, the oversized weapons they wielded sprayed out a bright red fluid, and goblins that took a direct hit from the weapons - those weapons were soft, Cal saw some of them literally folded over a goblin it hit - fell down and pretended to be "dead", always in a grossly exaggerated manner, and often spouted lines such as "Oh no! You have killed this poor me! Who will feed my poor cats at home now!?"

 

The leader of the goblins in blue also launched into a dramatic monologue after she "slew" her counterpart in red. "This goblin is no more! It has ceased to be. It's expired and gone to meet its maker! This is a late goblin! It's stiff! Bereft of life, it rests in peace! It's rung down the curtain and joined the choir, invisible. This is an ex-goblin!" She said before her own second-in-command struck her down from behind and they waxed lyrical about the sudden yet inevitable betrayal.

 

It had the audience - Cal included - caught in the throes of laughter at the absurdity, and after the last goblin left lamented on how he was all alone and committed "suicide", the troupe got up and bowed to the audience, to which they were rewarded with loud applause and a bevy of coins thrown in by the audience. Cal had joined in and tossed a few gold coins along.

 

What followed next was a shooting competition. To have called it an archery competition would have been false, for only three of the ten competitors even used a bow. Several wind mages were stationed on the east side of the arena, to guard against missed shots that might have flown towards the audience. The competitors themselves were a mixed bunch. Cal saw two dwarves - one had throwing axes in his hands, while the other had a massive arbalest -, a human with a recurve bow, two orcs who had great bows taller than themselves, a merfolk who wielded javelins in her hand, three goblins, one of whom had a sling attached to a long staff, while the other two with a hand-crossbow and a sling, and three elves. One of the elves had multiple razor-sharp metal rings carried in one hand, while the other two had short spears notched onto their traditional atlatls.

 

The shooting contest itself was quite simple. A group of twelve rabbits - each with a strip of cloth of different color tied around their necks - were released at once, and competitors only advanced to the next round should they score a hit on their rabbit from a distance of fifty paces. Half the contestants were eliminated in the first round. The dwarf with the throwing axes and the merfolk had eliminated each other when they struck each other's target in the confusion.

 

For the next round, only five of the competitors remained. Five pigeons with colored bands tied to their legs were released, and the remaining competitors let loose as one. The dwarf with the arbalest missed his shot, which forced a wind mage to have the bolt deflected before it could hit the audience. The other four hit their targets at different places, and the results were tallied based on where they struck their targets.

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Crowned winner of the shooting competition was the orc, who had accurately landed his arrow on the bird's head, followed by the goblin that managed to hit it in the neck. The two elves tied and came in third, as their spear and chakram both struck the bodies of their fowl, and accepted their prizes to the applause of the audience.

 

What followed next were a series of pugilists who took on each other with their bare hands, an event which had the crowd enthralled as they cheered wildly and showered winners of the fights with coins. Cal noted that the fights were all done in good sport though, with no dirty and potentially lethal moves used, and the winners often shared their winnings with their opponents afterwards.

 

The dwarves had saved the actual killing for the last event, where a group of twenty dwarves - young, eager soldiers from their looks and the way they were equipped - were slated to go against a horde of wild monsters. The fight itself were meant as the final part of training for the young soldiers, and injuries or death were not unheard of, for the monsters were very real wild creatures, and sometimes aid came too late.

 

What served as the monsters for the day were a group of ten Stonebeaks. They were unusual creatures, which preferred to dwell in subterranean caverns, where they hunted for prey with their massive, jagged beaks, which were so solid it could breach through stone. In appearance, the creature resembled large, flightless birds, with long, powerful legs that ended in wicked talons. They had no feathers, and instead grew quills much like a porcupine would, which served as their main means of defense. The dwarves had split themselves up, two of them on each of the creatures, and the fight commenced as the crowd cheered.

 

The fight that followed had not gone as well as the dwarves would have liked. Ten minutes in, and half the stonebeaks laid dead on the arena floor, but nearly half the dwarves were incapacitated as well, with injuries that prevented them from further combat. The rest of the dwarves who still fought had started to tire, while the creatures clearly had more stamina, and this led to mistakes made. A wrong evasive maneuver made by a young dwarf saw her rewarded by a kick that had flung her away from the stonebeak she fought, though her armor prevented her from a disembowelment at least.

 

Together with another nearby stonebeak, the creature that kicked the dwarf away seized the opening, and the two quickly incapacitated the three dwarves that remained before them, before they made a break towards the southern audience stands. Now, some of the audience panicked and screamed, while Cal saw how the dwarf she sat next to had his wife and child hidden behind him, as the man himself pulled out a warhammer from.his storage artifact.

 

Since the two creatures headed her way, Cal hadn't felt like she should have just idled until others could take care of the situation. She stood up, while her hands went behind her back where her knives were sheathed - she had worn two of the new knives crossed behind her back, while she kept two machetes by the sides of her waist - and pulled them free of their sheaths, their weight felt solid in her hands.

 

Cal hurled the knife in her right hand at the further Stonebeak, and was pleased when the knife landed with a solid thunk as it punched through the creature's forehead and dropped it to the ground without any trouble. The other creature was much closer, and she dodged its beak, which embedded itself into the stone seat she had just vacated, and she brought her other knife around in an underhand grip and swung it at the creature's neck.

 

The heavy knife of high-purity adamant steel cleaved through the beast's flesh with minimal resistance, its quills broke apart when tested against the sharpened steel, and the decapitated creature dropped dead with a spray of blood from the stump of its neck.

 

Cal had nonchalantly dodged that spray and had not even gotten a drop of blood on her clothes, as she leapt down to the arena and extracted her other knife from the head of the second creature. She was pleased once again when she noticed not a single blemish on the blade, despite the hard skull it had just punched its was through.

 

By the time she got back to her seat, she found that the arena staff had already dragged away the creature's corpse. They had also repaired and cleaned her seat on top of that, while the dwarven family on the seat that neighbored her thanked her for the intervention.

 

She stayed and watched other lighter events after the little debacle, and had munched on some meaty sausages served with a sharp mustard she bought off a hawker when a formally dressed dwarf approached her, and passed her a letter in an ornately decorated envelope. Cal had the decency to have cleaned her oily hands first before she opened the letter, and was quite surprised that for once it did not refer to her by name or rank, and merely mentioned that the "royal uncle" appreciated her deeds today and would have liked to get to know her over dinner.

 

She raised her eyebrows, but decided to accept the invitation, since she had nothing planned for the night anyway.

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