"To the fine audience out in the stands tonight, I humbly ask that you put your hands together for our next fight!" Only a few of the people in the already sparse audience clap, "In your southern most corner, you will find a vicious challenger," idle chatter breaks out amongst the crowd. The king- likely a stand in, as the True King would rarely choose to be here- high up on his throne, peering down, yawns as the announcer continues. The fights that take place in the later hours are much different from your usual gladiatorial affair. "The garbage pot," as this time slot is referred to, is made up of events that are just barely gladiator fights. The only people willing to participate are young up-and-comers barely old enough to participate; old timers with more bone than muscle, looking to relive the "good old days"; and the fighters who are utterly lacking in skill. Because normal, primetime gladiator fights are much better in every way, most people leave at sundown, right after the last of the main fights. However, the garbage pot has begun to draw in a very unique kind of crowd, besides passed out drunks or others who don't have any concept of time. Thanks to the emergence of the current top gladiator, Beefy, several people stay so that they might see the future of the gladiator scene. So they can see the next prodigy who came from nothing but dirt and cow manure. One of Beefy's many accomplishments was his grueling journey from these very same garbage pot matches into superstardom. His origins are what drag people to sit through the garbage pot these days. As he climbed higher, his success rippled all throughout the land of Grela. For instance, children from all 4 corners of the world look up to him now. Many of them gained a great interest in becoming gladiators, causing an increase in participants nationwide. The higher interest in fights and the increase in participants increased the overall betting pool as well. Ticket sales, and thus the wages gladiators earned from those ticket sales, skyrocketed. Not to mention less legal ways of earning money, the top gladiators are swimming in silk, and the mid-ranked gladiators are able to live normal, comfortable lives. As you will begin to see, the garbage pot, although hospitable in nature, hardly represents anything good. The effect most pertinent to our story, in this particular moment, is this aforementioned special crowd of garbage pot spectators. They will see that which they desire today. Their prodigy, their next golden child. At least, something along those lines.
"Some- a handful," the announcer glances down for a second, and looks back up with a sigh, "one or two people call him the most fearsome elf in this land: Ghizh, the Forlorn Hope!"
There's one or two claps for the tall, pale, southern-positioned challenger. He shifts his weight side to side nervously. He is among that first group of typical garbage pot challengers: this is his first fight. He holds his twisted dagger tightly, one of the sharp sides of the blade resting along the side of his forearm. It was a gift from his father, who was so proud that his son- 10 years after turning the legal age of 14- finally decided to become a gladiator. And so Ghizh's father wouldn't miss this for the world. He's in the crowd tonight, and one of the only ones cheering. By far the most enthusiastic, to boot. Ghizh raises his dagger in the air, and shouts. He does this to calm his nerves, but his voice cracks, drawing a couple of chuckles from the crowd. His father hisses at the crowd. Jeering, disrespectful polyglots, he calls them. He's not sure what the word polyglots means, but he knows it sounds harsh. Ghizh's gladiator title, The Forlorn Hope, is also a gift from his father. Neither of them knew what it meant, but they both agreed that it sounded rather forlorn. Ghizh's father waves to him. Ghizh averts his eyes, but can't hold in a smile.
"And in your northmost corner," Ghizh's attention snaps straight ahead to the north gate. The announcer continues, "Shini." There's a couple of small sighs from the crowd. Not enough to be heard by the fighters, or even by anybody else in the crowd, but sighs nonetheless. There is also significantly less clapping.
Shini stands limp at the gate, resting her left hand, and most of her weight on her sword. When both are standing straight up, the blade runs up just below her chest, and the handle reaches just below her bottom lip. However, Shini is not known for having great posture. Her deep slouch makes it seem like she and the sword are the same height. In total, the sword is just under 5 feet long, and about half as wide. The tip is a dull semicircle, curving back towards the base of the sword into two hooked points half a foot out on each side. In short, it's BIG, and Shini is just slightly bigger. Other than her slightly-larger-than-a-sword height, her skin is pale for a fiendling, taking on a pinkish hue in favor of the normal dark red. Not that anyone can tell, anyway. Concealing her skin, in just about all places, is a thick layer of dried blood, dirt, and a large assortment of other kinds of mystery grime. Her accumulated barrier of stinks and gunks makes it seem as though her skin is a darker red than most fiendlings. A single curved horn peeks out from her hood. Fiendlings are one of the many, diverse races in Grela. Elves and minotaurs are two others that have been mentioned. Well, Minotaurs were only mildly mentioned. Beefy, the head gladiator, is a Minotaur. As well as being utterly intimidating, and extremely rare, it's very marketable. Fiendlings are said to be the ancestors of demons. Red skin and horns will, of course, bring that comparison. And so fiendlings are often discriminated against, seen as the low of the low. There's a saying that goes, "The only honest fiendling is a dead one." Even then, some dead fiendlings have been accused and found guilty of theft. The most popular example was Frank Aglo, who was convicted for the arson of a large estate out on the countryside. His trial was swift, as he did not show up, and he was sentenced to death. Fortunately, or unfortunately, he had passed away 12 years prior after falling into the Great Caboose, a volcano near Grela's capital city. Most folk believe that all this could have been avoided if Frank had just lawyered up. "He oughta learn to not represent himself in court," Ghizh's father once said with utter sincerity, "Else he'll die thrice next time."
But, right now, we're focusing on a different fiendling. Shini's head hangs low. She stares blankly at the ground as she struggles to keep her eyes open. She hasn't slept in a long time, and hasn't eaten in even longer. If it wasn't for the tremendous aching pain in all of her joints, she would be passed out right now.
"I'll have you then!" Ghizh shouts as he charges forward.
"Oh- well I guess the fight started," The announcer mutters to himself as he slumps back in his chair, rubbing the tiredness from his eyes. In the time it takes him to do that, Shini picks her head up, sights a charging figure, and ends the fight.
When she put it together that the oncoming mass of shapes and colors was her opponent, she spun to her left, gripping her sword as she did so. As she clumsily, gracefully spun around, she let go of the sword when she reached a satisfactory angle. In an instant, the dull tip of the blade collided with Ghizh's abdomen, shattering most of his lower ribs. The force of the blade, combined with Ghizh's forward momentum, caused him to completely stop in his tracks. Had it not been for hunger and fatigue on Shini's behalf, it's very likely that Ghizh would have been split in two. After Ghizh drops onto the ground, the sword slams into the ground off to the side, leaving a sizable, sword-shaped divot. Immediately after, Shini is on her sword, moving in a way completely unseen up until this point in the match. Ghizh, however, did not see it, as he has spent most of his remaining strength on coughing up blood. Shini takes one last look at the downed man, and turns to shamble away. Ghizh, sensing a moment of weakness, tries to bring his dagger to his opponent's open back with his last breath. Alas, his effort is in vain: without missing a beat, Shini smashes her right elbow square into his Ghizh's chest, knocking him unconscious. Without another word, she begins to walk towards the south exit. She realizes she's going the wrong way, turns, and drags the sword and her feet behind her as she makes her way towards the north gate.
"And that's the match, folks," The announcer calls out blankly, "May the staff please come and clean up this mess?" Two robed figures come and carry Ghizh out of the arena. Four more come and clean up the puddles of blood scattered around the point of impact. "Now, next up..." the announcer's voice fades out as Shini walks deeper into the tunnel. You see, out of the three typical cases of garbage, Shini is somewhat unique. She isn't old, and, as proved by the last fight, she is not lacking in skill. She is relatively new to the gladiator scene, but she is not without experience. Thirteen years ago, at the age of ten, she spotted her beloved sword in a shop in downtown Windrell. She had never owned anything, much less anything as spectacular as a sword. She took out a loan from a shady looking, green goblin. She knew the man was a scumbag, but so was she. And she just HAD to have this sword. Setting aside her differences, and her street smarts, regular smarts, and common sense, Shini took out a 1000 gold loan to be payed back at 20% interest compounded monthly. An absolutely horrible deal, even moreso for a broke child. She didn't even try to negotiate the price, which, to be clear, the loan shark was entirely willing to do.
"I'll just fight in the arena! I'll be 14 in 4 years," she said, "with this, I'll be unstoppable!" She exclaimed as she took a step towards the shop door.
Her foot moved forward, however the rest of her body did not.
The thing they don't tell you about five foot long, two and a half foot wide swords is that they are tremendously heavy. Well, actually, the store clerk did tell her that. The thing about this sword, as Shini would find out much later, is that it was enchanted to increase the weight exponentially. Shini continued to pull with all of her might, constantly refusing the shopkeeper's offer to give her the money back. After three and a half days, with no dignity to weigh her down, she eventually dragged the sword out of the store. Out of worry of losing her precious keepsake, the sword would not leave Shini's grasp.
Ever.
She had spent so much money on this... this piece of art. This purchase was the single greatest thing she had ever done. If she were to leave this sword- HER sword- unattended for even a second, someone might steal it, and sell it for a fraction of the price. Not only would that be a total waste of her investment, it would disgrace the blade and her magnum opus of buying it. So even though It took the fifteen strongest men in all of Grela to struggle the sword into the shop, Shini refused to abandon it- not even for 5 seconds- out of fear. When people see a shiny object, they tend to want it. And when that specific shiny object is talked about constantly throughout town, people want it more. So, Over the course of the next ten years, Shini went through utter hell, mostly in ways she refuses to think about today. Lizardfolk, wolf people, cat people, squid people, elves, trolls, wizards, and the like tried to take Shini's sword in several different and disgustingly innovative ways. Some of the people may not have even been after the sword, maybe just looking for something to violate. Yet- maybe unfortunately for her- Shini clung to the blade and her life. With each survival she grew tougher and tougher, and each day she spent trying to haul her sword around, she grew stronger and stronger. At the end of her 10 year journey, she could easily lift the sword. And, you've seen what she can do with it three years after that. All on an empty stomach, no less.
So now, out of those three types of usual participants, Shini finds herself outside of the box. She's here to pay off her tremendous debt of around 7,200,000 gold. Her interest was compound. Every month, it would increase by 20% of the previous amount. After the first month, she owed 1,200 gold. The next month, 1,440 gold and so on. The debt collectors stopped actually compounding after two years, and just settled on 7,200,000 as a good number to charge. They knew that the actual amount Shini had to pay off would be similarly impossible, so they decided to demoralize her as much as possible. She was making no progress on her debt, and, if she eventually did, they could just start compounding again. Plus, it was just getting very annoying to do the math on how much Shini owed.
So why didn't the debt collectors just kill her? Well who's to say for sure, but a nice flow of cash is better than a dead body and a sword you can't lift. Plus, they tried that early on.
Shini shambles up to a robed figure in the lobby of the arena. "For disregarding the King's demands-"
"demands?" Her voice comes out in a murmur only loud enough to barely catch the attention of the speaking clerk. He stops for a second, and nods slowly, "please?"
"For disregarding the King's demands, your-"
"what were they?"
The robed figure stops, and sighs, "You were supposed to knock your opponent out in close quarters. And he has-" the robed figure stops and sighs again, "The King has asked you several times to not make such a mess. His royal highness is tired of covering or the first-time loss fee, AND the fee for cleaning up the arena."
"should stop giving me first timers then."
"That's not the point! And besides-" the hooded figure gets too frustrated to continue. He sighs one final time, "Your winnings have been cut in half, and docked 5 extra gold pieces for annoying me. That gives you 25 gold pieces."
"seriously?"
"That's with the bonus because I pity you. Out. Now." He places a large, flat sack on the counter, and walks out of sight.
Shini stands there for a second, with a forlorn hope that the man will come back with a comically large and full bag of gold for her. The smell of fresh, molten gold in her hands fills her nostrils, lifting her up high in the air as they keep pouring and pouring it for her reward. "For your great contributions to society as a whole, you have been granted complete forgiveness. Period! Thank you, Shini!" Someone important would say. She knew it was coming. Then, she smelled the burning flesh of her hands, because molten gold was being poured on her. She snapped out of her hallucination, and grabs her bag of real, inconsequential gold off the counter, turns, and bumps into one of the robed figures carrying the still unconscious Ghizh. She catches a glimpse of a scowl from the employee, "sorry," she mutters as they walk off.
She stumbles out the front gate, where a goblin is waiting for her. "Ah, my little Shini," he clasps his hands together, "How much today?" She tosses him the sack of gold, not bothering to answer his question. The gold is in the bag, and he's going to check inside anyway. What's the point of telling him? The goblin raises an eyebrow, "Only 24 gold? Did you lose?" 24? Wasn't there supposed to be 25? Shini thought there was supposed to be 25. She thought about thinking about complaining, but thought that that would take too much effort.
"no," she decides.
He clicks his tongue, "You should really pay more attention to the king's demands, my Shini," he stuffs the gold in his pocket, and throws the empty sack at Shini's feet, "Would get the debt payed off a lot quicker."
Shini probably has a retort. Somewhere. She just goes with a, "sorry," scoops up the sack, and keeps shuffling on. She shambles through town, tuning out everything around her. She's on her way to another job, freelance in the mines. Hours are flexible- from when she gets there until she passes out- so she has time to get something to eat before she clocks in. She's broken out of her trance by someone tugging on her sleeve. She snaps in the direction of the force.
"Spare some gold for a sick, old man?" A shrivelled, white haired, old beggar with a long beard asks.
She shakes her head, "got none," the beggar let's go.
"Greedy, greedy fiendling. All the same, all the same." Shini starts to count in her head. She folds out her empty pockets, and shrugs. When she gets to four seconds, she puts her left hand back on her sword. "Kick rocks," the beggar responds, and does so himself, kicking one towards Shini. Down the alley, Shini spots someone dumping some trash. She scowls when she sees that it's a local vendor who's given her a lot of trouble, but decides that she can compromise for the old man.
"hungry?" She asks.
The beggar points to himself, "Me?" Shini nods, "Well.. yes, of course," he gets up. His ankles crack and his joints creak like rusty gears. He stands in a deeper slouch than Shini. If they were both to stand straight, the old man would be a good five or six inches taller than her. But we've already established that Shini is not one for standing straight up, so they appear to be about the same height. She points to the man dumping trash, "Dumpster diving?" Shini nods, "Really?" She nods again, and starts shuffling towards the trash farther down the alley. The man strokes his beard for a second, then decides to follow her After a three minute, mute walk, the two new companions finally arrive at the trash bin. When they arrive, Shini immediately starts digging, "What are you looking for?" She hands him a subpar potato, "Are you sure? Positive? It's got some mold on it," she stops digging. She motions for the potato, taking out a pocket knife. The beggar hands it over. Shini cuts out all the spots of mold, and take a big bite. She holds it out to the beggar, who turns it down.
She chews for a while, then swallows, "It's better if you can see or feel what the problem is with the food."
"Pardon?"
"Everything is in the trash for a reason. The more apparent the flaw, the more trustworthy the food," she pulls a spotless apple from the trash, "I trust that potato way more than this apple."
"What? But that apple looks perfect."
She takes another bite of the potato, "Why's it in the trash then?"
The beggar scratches his chin, "I guess I don't know," he glances inside the building, and makes brief eye contact with the man who was dumping the trash earlier. The man inside quickly retreats out of sight, "Uhhh-"
"Did the man inside see you?" The beggar nods. Shini starts rifling through the bin, "He's real troublesome."
"Shouldn't we just get out of here? We can find other garbage," he pulls her sleeve again, trying to urge her out of the alley. The combination of Shini's mental and physical sword keep her rooted.
"You didn't get anything to eat yet," she continues to scrounge through the bin. She wraps her left arm around her sword so she can eat the potato while she digs through the trash with her right, "just keep an eye out." The beggar is at a loss for words, and just complies out of dumb shock. As he steps toward the exit of the alley to get a better view, the door opens, and he is dragged inside. The man inside explains that he is a shopkeeper, and describes Shini's situation to the beggar. He also emphasizes that Shini is not someone to hang around, and how unsavory the folks who tend to follow her are. The shopkeeper asked Shini to leave once a long time ago. Both of his legs were broken by the loan sharks. The beggar was pushed back out just before Shini realized that he was gone. She holds out about half of an apple. The beggar notices that this is a different apple than the one before, as the perfect apple lies near a note on the ground. The beggar begins to reach out, but hesitates. Shini doesn't notice this. She stares absently near the beggar's feet. He sighs, and grabs the apple.
"The other half was rotten," the beggar stops.
"But this half is okay to eat?"
"The rotten part was."
The beggar frowns, and takes a bite of the apple. He glances back towards the apple and the note. Intrigued, he reaches out for the note, but jumps back when Shini slams her sword into it, pinning it to the ground, "That's not important," she picks it up, and falls forward as she stuffs it into her pocket.
"Are you-?" The beggar gives her a nudge. He lifts up her head, only to see that she's passed out, and bleeding from her head. He panics, and tries to drag her out of the alley, but she still has a tight grip on the sword, making it impossible for him to pull her away. As he's trying to pry her fingers from the sword, the debt collector and a couple of goons round the corner, "Oi! What's this? Another person trying to steal from my Shini, huh?" They advance towards the scene.
"No, listen, I'm just-" the unsavory individuals continue to march forward. The beggar sticks his hands out, "I'm not trying to steal anything. This is-"
"Say, you look like someone..." the goblin stops, and motions for his goons to do so as well.
"I do? Who do I look like?" The old man asks.
The goblin smacks his head lightly with his fist, "Oh- come on it's on the tip of my tongue."
Elidon snaps, "Ah, oh right, we do know each other. It's me, Ifickt"
"Right! Sorry, I forgot your name. I feel really bad, honestly."
"Ifickt Your Mother," the goons charge, but the old man, Ifickt Yourmother, opens a portal beneath him and Shini. The portal closes, and they both vanish.
"Look for them. Find my Shini, and that thief."
"Yes boss."
"I'll go around town and ask about Ifickt Yourmother," the goblin adds.
The two henchmen don't have the heart to explain that that is a fake name. They just both leave in separate directions while trying to hold in their secondhand embarrassment. The goblin walks away from the scene as well. The shopkeeper, having watched the whole ordeal, steps out of the shop. He spots a whole apple on the ground, surrounded by other trash. He lets out a big sigh, and starts recollecting the scattered trash.