Bloodsword: War of the Leaf

Sword Play

It was a maelstrom of light and sound that Tev stepped into, both washing over him in waves as he continued down the single step beyond the door and onto the sand-covered pit floor.  There he paused and through an act of sheer will blocked out the loud roar of the crowd and the glare of a hundred torches that lit the pit to noon-time brilliance.  Once that distraction was gone, the human began to carefully examine the pit itself.

Which, at first glance, was basically a modified box ten paces by ten paces.  The sides, instead of being flat, curved slightly outward as they ran from corner to corner.  They also appeared to be constructed out of heavy and durable L'Sell teak as they rose about three times the height of a man from the pit floor.  Along the top of those walls were the torches, set into the wall itself and interspersed with long metal spikes, defense against the unlikely possibility that the slick, handhold-free walls were scaled.

The last notable feature was another door set into the wall exactly opposite of where Tev had stepped into the pit.  He frowned as he stared at that door, which could only be his opponent's entrance.  he then peered up at the source of the roar that was nearly deafening him.  And he found on three sides, perched on the walls just beyond the spike barrier, five rows of wooden bleachers currently packed to capacity with colorfully dressed Mardish nobility, all screaming at the tops of their lungs for blood.

On the fourth side was a massive box that held ornately carved and luxuriously padded chairs, currently empty.  That could only be the emperor's box and, if the box's current state was an indication, the lord and master of the Emerald Empire was going to be fashionably late to his own mandated blood duel.

Mentally shrugging, Tev turned back to looking at the walls of the enclosed chamber.  'Now I see why they call this a 'pit',' he silently mused.  Indeed, with the spectators perched where they were, they basically looked down into a square-shaped hole at the competitors.

Done his brief but thorough examination of his surroundings, the human opened up his senses and let the roar from the mixed gender crowd wash over him.  Yet, in that instant it wasn't the crowded stands that filled his vision.  Instead a strange scene began to play itself out right in front of his eyes.

He had become another man and stood in another place far away in both distance and time from this one, a sword in his sweaty hand as he faced a monstrosity that he couldn't even begin to describe.  The coppery taste of blood already filled his mouth and in that instant of memory, he could feel numerous wounds riddling his body, including several broken fingers, a dislocated left shoulder and a fractured cheekbone.

Then, as he looked on in stunned amazement, the beast charged with an unearthly howl, the ground shaking at its rapid advance.  As if that charge somehow loosened the pegs of Time itself, the whole scene seemed to snap rapidly forward, filling Tev's mind with snapshots of time and experience.

First he felt the jar of his blade ramming home.  Then came the breaking of his hip as he applied the death blow.  There was the resulting spray of thick, dark blood over his body even as he was being roughly tossed to the side by the split-second impact.  Each image and sensation came one after the other in rapid succession.

Blink.  He was back in the pit even as a long metal pole came down from the stands, wielded by a young Mardish elf in pale green livery standing just inside the spike barrier.  Even as the human's eyes fell onto the pole, the elf used it to rap smartly on the door opposite.

A hasty downward glance revealed he was still hale and whole.  Yet Tev's body ached with the remembrance of pain, of exhaustion and fear.

Mouth suddenly dry with nervousness, Tev felt a trickle of perspiration slowly make its way down the back of his neck and between his shoulder blades.  'That was one hell of a flashback!' he thought wildly.  Was that one of the box's gifts?  Slamming another long-dead warrior's memories into his mind?  He could only hope they'd come at more opportune moments since he wouldn't be able to fight with one of those going off in his mind at the most unpredictable time.