It Rained Red Upon the Arena (13 page)

Everyone views me as a payday. Just perfect...

As Nick entered the kitchen he had slightly forgotten the grotesque nature for which he had gotten accustomed to living in. Men and women with bloody arms, legs, necks, and faces. There were new faces he had not seen before that looked terrified of their surroundings. Nick soon missed his private room and comfortable bed he had been living on. The arena was not nearly as pleasant.

Nick walked towards the line to get his breakfast and noticed the vast majority of inmates looking at him. They stared and talked to their neighbors; Nick, the Hetha, was a sight to behold.

With his new gloves he awkwardly grabbed his tray and proceeded to walk towards his normal table. Phillip was seated there and had not noticed him enter the kitchen. When he saw Nick, he immediately stood up with an enormous smile laced on his face.

“Nick! How are you feeling, my friend?” He walked over to Nick and embraced him with a hug. He squeezed hard and Nick let out a slight gasp. “Sorry, sorry, didn’t mean to hurt you, buddy.”

“It’s alright, I’m excited to see you, too, my friend,” said Nick.

“I heard that you were in the operating room,” said Phillip. I can’t believe they put you on beze powder. You were out for quite a while.”

“Feels like I saw you a mere few days ago,” said Nick. “It is a surreal feeling. Let’s sit and eat.”

The two seated themselves and began to converse about the events that had transpired over the past days. Nick and Phillip caught up quickly with Phillip asking quite a number of questions.

At the end of breakfast Phillip had to embrace his friend once more. “You know, who would have thought,” he paused for moment and raised his glass of water. “Who would have thought this soft spoken man would turn out to be the last living Hetha in the world? I knew I saw something in you when I first laid my eyes upon you.”

The two then walked to the dungeon for the daily training, only this time it was on opposite sides of the spectrum. Nick met with the Refect in charge to train him while Phillip stuck with his normal routine.

The Refect approached Nick. He was short and skinny. “Come this way. We have our own room,” he said.

They went into a separate room of the dungeon and the Refect shut the door behind them.

“So they say you are a Hetha,” said the Refect. “Fascinating. If you do need to respond to me with a name, simply call me Master Reza. I do not want to do this. I was instructed to. We are not here to chat, only to learn and hone the use of magic.”

Nick simply nodded his head in agreement. Not talking was never a problem for him anyways.

The training Nick endured consisted of various exercises for both the mind and body. It started with the mind. Nick had to search and feel the magic within him. That alone took days upon days of practice. Nick would sit in the room with Master Reza going through mental exercises which every Reza learns from a young age. Once Nick could feel magic within him, he began practicing movements for which magic attacks were performed. It came from the core of his body, in the abdomen, and pushed through with his hands. He perfected the movements through training in the span of a few more days. When he neared the end of his first week of training, he was given the opportunity to take off his gloves and try to perform an attack.

The procedure for Nick to perform a magic attack while in the dungeon was unfamiliar to him. Master Reza left the room and then instructed Nick to put both of his hands through a hole on the side of the wall. Then Master Reza would be waiting on the other side where he would put his hands through a hole in his wall to remove the gloves within a safe chamber inside the two walls.

It was interesting to Nick. He had never known the struggles his fellow Reza inmates had to deal with daily as they began their training. Once the gloves were off, Nick performed the stages of a magic attack that consisted of fire. First he took deep breaths and found his center. He could feel the fire pulse through his veins. He put both hands towards his core and quickly flung his hands while rotating them. Fire came rushing from Nick’s hands onto the blank wall in front of him.

“This is unreal!”

Nick looked towards the wall as the fire dispersed.

“Fire! Ahaa! Flames really came from my hands!”

He began the process of doing an attack with ice. It was the same result as before; Nick saw the wall covered in ice. He was fascinated with his new found abilities. He performed the attacks over and over. Some were smaller, others were larger in scale. He quickly became addicted to the process.

Over the next few weeks Nick saw a full recovery of his wounds. With them healed he became more mobile. Everyday Nick would learn a tip from Master Reza on how to improve his attacks. By the time Nick trained with Master Reza for the allotted time of one month, Nick was already perfecting the skill.

Men and women practiced in the dungeon as Nick and Master Reza stood outside of their normal training room and looked upon the inmates.

“You know, I’ve taught Reza from various ages how to perform destructive magic,” said Master Reza. “You have picked them up the quickest by far.”

“Thank you,” replied Nick.

“It normally takes years of consistent training to establish the skill to perform the attacks in the manner you’ve shown. I’m impressed. Good job. Don’t let all this training go to waste now.”

Nick smiled and held out his hand to shake Master Reza’s.

“I won’t fail,” said Nick.

The two shook hands and went their separate ways. Nick went over to check on Phillip before the training was over for the day.

Phillip was busy hacking away at his favorite bundle of hay as Nick approached him.

Phillip looked over towards Nick and said, “How was your magic training, you little traitor?”

Nick laughed and said, “Good. I’ll be ready for my fight against Body Bags. He has seemed a bit shaky lately, hasn’t he?”

“Yeah. But I would be, too, if I were fighting the last living Hetha.”

“Pay back will be in full force come tomorrow, Phillip.”

The nights were ever so long in the arena before fight day. Nick proceeded to practice his meditation as he did every night, only this time he used it to settle his nerves and to regain focus. While in meditation his thought traveled once again to Thomas and Penny, the only two people still alive who he truly cared about. Nick also realized he had begun to care for his new found friend Phillip, something he never thought would happen when he first entered the arena.

***

The next day Nick stood strong on the arena grounds as he fought Body Bags. His opponent trembled in fear as Nick sent a flurry of fire followed by the onslaught of his mighty sword. Body Bags stood no chance, and Nick could see it in his eyes. A few fast blows and his opponent fell. It was not much of a fight. Nick escaped the battle without a single scratch on him. It was unparalleled. The crowd of the arena was filled, over filled, in fact. Fans stood in the halls of the arena to simply catch a glimpse of what Nick was capable of. As Nick walked away from his fallen opponent, the crowd cheered his name once again: Bezat, Bezat, Bezat! The chant could be heard throughout Vincot. That is, heard by the few civilians who did not come to witness the fight.

Nick met with Phillip the next day to discuss his first battle with his new magical abilities.

“It was too easy,” said Nick.

“You sound cocky, but I’m sure it is true,” replied Phillip.

“Nobody can stand against me in the arena. I feel invincible,” Nick said with a smile upon his face.

“Nick, you can be confident, but you should never be cocky. There is a fine difference between the two. The day you walk into the arena no longer thinking you are a mortal is the day you shall fall. Keep yourself level, mentally strong, and the fighting will follow.”

Nick realized he had to come off his high of his previous match when Phillip talked to him that way. It was dangerous and immature to believe he was already the best fighter amongst the rest of the inmates.

“I can and will keep myself level, Phillip. I’m looking forward to the next fight.”

“I never thought I’d hear those words come from your mouth, Nick.” Phillip paused and let out a chuckle. “You are excited for your next fight. That’s good. It’s good for us to be excited about something down in this hell hole. Even if it is to kill another person.”

“I don’t enjoy the killing, only the excitement of the fight,” said Nick. “I never feel happy when my hands take another life. I never will.”

“You’re an interesting man, Nick, a truly interesting man,” said Phillip.

***

Nick’s next four fights were as smooth as they could be. He left all of them without so much as a scratch on him. Though this time Nick tried to keep a level head going into every fight. It was hard for him to do. He felt as if he was the best of the best already, that nobody could match his skill sets. He tried to stay humble and understand the importance that goes along with it.

Nick fought Dredger, the Paplon beast who has been in the arena for one year. Nick finished him within minutes. Next up was Crow, the old Reza male. Nick finished him off even faster than Dredger.

After the fight against Crow the Refect announced a cut back on the amount of armor they could provide for the inmates. The armory was stripped of nearly all articles of armor. Helmets and shields were all that was left of the armor. The combatants were also instructed they could not fight in the green cloth provided to them for wearing indoors within the cells. That left the men and women no choice. They either had to fight nearly naked or make some sort of clothing out of the spare cloth lying around the arena.

Nick walked out to fight his next opponent Nine. He was a tall, young, and skinny Reza. Nick waked out of the arena with a sword, shield, sword, and helmet. He elected to wear no shirt and fastened together underpants to wear so at least his entire manhood would not be exposed to the crowds. Nine made the fight last longer by cowering from Nick. The crowd got quite the laugh. Nine fell to the fiery blasts followed by quick swordsmanship. In his fourth fight Nick eliminated the giant, an arena veteran of one year and two months. The overly muscular man wielding two long swords could defeat Nick in a brute force competition, but nonetheless he fell by the icy hands of Nick Bint in yet another quick fight. Wearing less armor certainly made the fights go by quicker. There was no metal preventing a blade or arrow from easily piercing the skin any more. The crowds may have actually preferred that the combatants have no armor at all.

***

The gloves that covered Nick’s hands become sweaty and itchy as he practiced his swing in the dungeon. Nick felt as if he could never get used to wearing the gloves. He felt a bit of freedom when he could practice in the Reza rooms as they always had to take off their gloves. Even after weeks of shooting fire and ice out from his hands, Nick still enjoyed the spectacle and feeling of it all.

Since Nick had become Bezat, more inmates were interested in coming up to Nick to engage in conversation. They asked him about his past and how he came to be a Hetha. Nick was always short with them, giving them answers but never the full answer. Not even towards Benny and Bird, whom Nick had met on his first fight in the arena. He had no inclination to make new friends even now that he was becoming the Vincot Arena celebrity.

Nick’s next scheduled fight was against a brand new inmate. No one knew his name, and no one in the arena understood his significance.

Chapter Ten

Nick stared down the man who he was set to fight next in the arena while he was in the kitchen eating the day’s first meal. He was tall, wide shoulders, big chest, muscular frame from head to toe. Highly unusual for a Reza, but it was certainly possible. His blue skin and slicked back black hair glowed as the torch above him flickered to light the table. He had a big scar from his left cheek bone that ascended until it reached his hairline.

The man looked at Nick and the two made eye contact. Neither of them budged for a few moments. They locked eyes as if the two wanted to fight at that very moment in the kitchen, although, that would have been unwise as the Refect punishment for such actions would be horrifying. The look both given and received from across the kitchen was as real as tension could get.

“Have you ever seen such a strong looking Reza?” asked Nick.

Phillip looked up at Nick with a confused look upon his face as he fiddled with his food.

“Who?”

“The Reza sitting in the corner there.”

Nick nudged his face to direct Phillips eyes towards the man.

“I’ve seen a few. Is that your next opponent Nick?”

“Yes, he is,” said Nick.

***

Nick went on to train hard in the dungeon as he always did. He felt the pressure of the unknowing. He knew he had his work cut out for him with his next fight. The problem he faced was that his opponent was not someone who had been in the arena for a while. No one knew how the man fought, what his strengths and weaknesses were. He could not spy on his opponent when he was training either as the Reza train behind a closed door. The only thing Nick could do was to be as prepared as he could be. He began to train with the Paplon on one day, and on the next he would train with the Reza. One day each to focus and train his strength in each field.

Five nights after his opponent had become an inmate of the arena Nick awoke to the sound of chain rubbing against the metal bars of his cell. Nick’s eyes opened, and they adjusted to the familiar sight of his opponent. He stood there in his green cloth arena wardrobe fiddling with Nick’s door. The door propped open, and the man motioned Nick to follow.

The last time Nick had followed a Refect out of his cell in the middle of the night only to meet the fury of Body Bag’s fist. This time there were no Refect around; it was only the Reza that stood at the door.

“What are you doing?” asked Nick.

“I need to talk to you,” the man whispered. “But we cannot do it here. The inmates might hear, or worse a Refect. Come, I have a room.”