Martyr was having the time of his life.
He had always dreamed of a moment like this where he sat among the champions, eating luxury food he had never even seen before and with friends to share the experience with. It wasn't the friends he had imagined he would be with him, but good friends nonetheless.
He certainly felt like a champion, especially when the champions knights came up every few minutes to report on crowd problems or chiming in on teams that caught their eye.
It was weird to him that this moment came so soon. The crowd of the arena hadn't even seen him in action, yet he sat among legends like he already was one. Which made him want to prove himself even more.
Martyr and his team spent the first half an hour listening to Vanagloria's story backstage.
After Vanagloria was finally convinced by Dr. Dread to go along with his plan, the doctor held up his part of the deal and explained part of it to Blair before they left for the colosseum. Apparently Vanagloria had barely even been to any sort of good doctor before, Y'know like a competent one. which blew his mind. She had been diagnosed with her ADHD and apparently had not been given medication for it. The mental condition made a lot more sense now knowing one of her parents was from earth.
Vanagloria and the doctor had gotten to the colosseum pretty early alongside a few of the nurses that worked at the hospital. When they got there Dr. Dread immediately searched for one of the champions to try and convince to let him have his little show.
They eventually found Kryphia who was shocked by the discovery of someone born on earth on the islands.
After that Vanagloria and Dr. Dread split up as she went below the colosseum with Kryphia to wait for their time to come up.
Vanagloria apparently got a lot of time to talk to her but judging by Kryphias attitude towards her it didn't go well.
The newly formed group also spent a lot of time just getting to know each other, as most of them were meeting each other for the first time.
The buzzers went off once every hour or so, starting off with the first one that way before it turned dark. The first buzzer was Kryphia who seemed to just want to get it over with, picking a team of quiet looking water kids much to their surprise.
When she came back from talking to her group, Samsara finally was able to start a conversation with her. Asking her for tips on water moves and her past experiences with the competition. Kryphia seemed to like Samsara, at least compared to the energy she gave off whenever she was around Vanagloria.
The second buzzer went off after Vulcan came back. He had been watching from the chef's balcony below them. He came back up to whisper into the ear of the fire champion who was the one to set off the buzzer.
She was very tall and strong looking, there would be no doubt if Martyr saw her in public that she was a champion.
The champion looked like a warlord, draped in metal armor with fire coming out of the shoulders and gaps of the armor. She definitely had the flashiest outfit out of the bunch.
She ended up picking a team of all girls of various different elements, they had been putting up a bit of a performance by combining their powers to show off a very colorful display of images that must've gotten the eye of Vulcan while he was with the chefs, which is probably why he came back up.
The Fire champion even stopped by to meet Martyr's group and introduce herself. Her name was Enyo. She told Martyr that she's had her eye on him for a while and she complimented Vanagloria on her performance. She told her she expects a similar show at her arena in the Fire capital, Diablo.
Vanagloria gives her a thumbs up as she's in the middle of taking a big gulp of orange soda.
Martyr thinks it's great that he has also been getting a lot of attention for his accomplishments he's trained so hard for. It took him a while to get to the point of skill level with his Fire element that he's at right now.
Before Vulcan came up to talk to Enyo, he had been sending chefs up with giant trays of food for both Martyr's group and the other champions. As soon as he came back up the gifts from the chefs stopped coming.
Martyr had tried so many different types of food today, there was so much of it he could only take small portions at a time, unlike everyone else who seemed to settle on a specific dish early on and ate just that.
Vanagloria in particular had been mostly drinking different types of soda all throughout the afternoon. At first she hated it, along with Blair. But after the waiter suggested to her she would try other kinds, after just one more drink it started to grow on her as she started to try out all different colors of the earth drink.
According to Blair Vanagloria had been diagnosed with ADHD as a preteen, which apparently when combined with caffeine makes her calm down. It definitely showed because after about three bottles and two cans she just started to calm down and listen in on the conversations. She eventually passed out on her chair, which was a little too close to the edge of the balcony for Martyr's liking.
It made Martyr think about where Dr. Dread went, he made his presentation and then just disappeared. He was the reason they were all hanging out on this balcony in the first place and he didn't even get to thank him.
Vanagloria only got to sleep for about a half hour until she was woken up in a jump by the next buzzer. This was done by the extremely old dark champion, with a gray beard traveling to his weak looking knees.
This was Thanatos, the person the actual Greek god had been based off of.
Most of the "Greek Gods" that dominated the islands in their era had died. The only way to see any of them nowadays were to either visit museums on earth or the islands that had statues of them.
Or you could become a champion. Because when a champion becomes a champion, a giant ceremony is held to honor the new induction. At the end of the party, it is tradition to go to the castle shrine of their respective elemental god and pray to it so that god will send down the ghosts of all of the previous champions to talk to the new champion one on one.
From the stories Martyr had been told, it sounded like the coolest thing ever and was one of the big reasons he wanted to not just become a knight but also a champion.
And right now, seeing a Greek god before his very eyes felt pretty similar to how he imagined it feeling. Despite the fact he wasn't talking to Martyr.
Thanatos had only lived on due to his pure dark elemental powers keeping him alive over the years, switching in and out of the seat of the dark champion.
He looked like the corpse of a resurrected dead king, literally. His skin was transparent and you could slightly see his bones through a faint blue glow that lit up the inside of his body, creating the transparent effect. He wore a torn up and worn down medieval red and gold kings outfit, with a crooked gold crown.
Martyr thought he actually looked very cool, despite it being an almost depressing sight to see him float out of his chair into the crowd of contestants like a ghost over to his selected team. He didn't even bother to wait for the team to exit the arena; he just floated over, said a few words to the team and came back only to seemingly fall asleep.
The team he chose was a poor looking group of mostly guys with the elements of dark and air. Definitely a stand out group being so monotone colored compared to the rest of the teams, while also having incredibly rare elements.
A sleepy Vanagloria wiping her eyes asked seemingly to nobody. "Is he dead?"
"No, Thanatos is very much alive, go back to sleep." Kryphia said not bothering to even look in her direction.
"Okey dokey." Vanagloria said following her instructions complacently.
The second to last buzzer comes not too far after, done by the forest champion. She had very simple green and brown, cloth, archer-like clothing on with the hood up. She wore a cloth mask covering her face so the only thing you could see were her angry dark green eyes. She looked like she was just out hunting, gloves on, bow at her back and everything.
She didn't look very friendly at all, from the little bit of her face that Martyr could see under the hood. As she swiftly walked into the back of the balcony her scratched-up cape followed close behind her. Despite her rough scratched up clothing she still gave off an ethereal almost mystical type of feeling about her. She picked a very tough looking group of Fire, rock and forest kids that easily had 9-10 members.
It was a good choice, you could tell she wanted to win. Which made him think about the champion's whole role in the competition again.
"Hey, Kryphia, can I ask you something?" Martyr turned around in his chair to face her.
"Her name is Vega, she just switched out with the previous forest champion about a month ago." Kryphia said as if she knew exactly what he was gonna ask.
"No, I actually wanted to know if there was any sort of prize for the champions?"
"Oh." Kryphia said, thinking hard. "I can't really remember, I'm sure there is, and I'm sure it's not worth all the hassle."
"Oh wait I do, obviously they get strong knights to protect their own capital, but aside from that it's a lot of light coins and weapons and stuff from the light capital."
Kryphia puts her head on her hand, looking back at Martyr. "It's nothing that I really need to worry about."
Kryphia glances over at Vulcan who is asleep himself, then leans closer to Martyr, signaling he should do the same.
"Vega and Vulcan have been in plenty of behind the scenes arguments over the past few weeks leading up to this competition. So I think Vega might even be trying to get resources for some sort of fight with him." Kryphia whispers as if it were some high school drama.
"Like war?"
"I wouldn't fraise it like that. It would be more of a 1 on 1 type of fight. Not like the two capitals fighting. I also wouldn't mention this to Vulcan, I don't want to give him any ideas."
"I won't say a word. I wouldn't want to start a war either."
"Thank you, Martyr. That type of attitude is what we need in future knights." Kryphia leans back in her chair.
Martyr turns back to the group to see them all staring at him.
"Hey Martyr." Blair said who was sitting next to him on his right. She was batting her eyes at him with a troublesome grin.
"Hey?" Martyr said, confused at the energy she was giving off.
"Do you wanna tell them the story of how we met?" Blair extended her arm out to present the rest of the group looking at him.
"Oh yeah I've been meaning to tell this story. Buckle in, it's gonna be a while." Martyr prepares himself for a lot of talking.