Out of Character:
Marcus Book found that walking through the streets of Radasanth was not at all unlike gaining sea legs: a rhythm is discovered, and then it becomes second nature to move with it. In Radasanth’s case, it was a matter of stepping two or three times and then twisting one’s torso to the left or right so as not to collide with other pedestrians.
“I think I hate cities,” he said, lifting his eyes to thin, unadorned spires that towered over the nearest building to his right.
“Oh, I love them,” Anya said. Anya was a Vindicator – a kind of senior knight in The Brotherhood – and Marcus’ mentor and traveling companion. “You must learn to love people, Marcus. Without an anchor, a reason to fight, it will become all too easy to lose your way. Seeing all these people, all this life! It reminds me what I’m fighting for.”
Marcus nodded, but his inward response was a great deal more complex. He wasn’t concerned about losing his way, and he didn’t need people to remind him why he was fighting. He knew better than to argue, however – Anya wouldn’t understand. For her, the ends were motivation. For Marcus, the means gave him pleasure enough.
The paladins rounded a corner, and lifted their chins in unison to behold the towering structure before them.
“The Citadel,” Marcus said. “Why are we here, Sister?”
“To test your mettle,” she said. “It is one thing to spar, it is quite another to have another living thing trying to take your life from you. This is the only environment where I can prepare you for live combat without worrying about your wellbeing.”
“I remember reading about this place and its monks, and their healing abilities. What do you think they get out of it?”
Anya shrugged, causing the metal plates of her pauldrons to click and rattle quietly against one another. “The Brotherhood doesn’t know. I always imagined they worship some sort of god that feeds off the battles they host. We’ve investigated them many times, but there doesn’t seem to be anything infernal about it.”
“Perhaps they’re just good at hiding it,” Marcus said dryly. “Either way, let’s get on with it.”
***
Marcus was shown to his arena – that’s what the Ai’Brone monk called it, his arena. Anya was right; Marcus sensed nothing evil in the Citadel or from its monks. In fact, the monks themselves seemed almost boring. There was nothing distinct marking them as monks, much less as Ai’Brone monks.
The monk that had guided Marcus this far was, as far as he could tell, no different from any other citizen of Corone. The monk spoke Trade with a native accent and wore commoner’s garb, and had a chaotic shock of blonde hair. “Your arena and its challenge are beyond this door,” the monk had said, and then he just continued down the cavernous hall and out of sight.
The squire reached high and removed his sword from its threadbare sheath, which was fixed to his back by thin leather straps. The blade whispered as it was drawn across its scabbard, which was so infirm that the sword did not sing with freedom. Marcus was silently glad that he had the opportunity to draw now, and not in the presence of his opponent, and then he grasped the door’s handle and pushed.
The door was heavy and wooden and ancient, and resisted at first because it sagged on its hinges and its lower edge rested on the stone floor. After the first few inches the resistance was no more, and Marcus stepped forward. He was immediately blinded, and he used his left hand to shield his eyes while raising his sword high with the right. No attack came, and his eyes adjusted.
What he saw surprised and confused him. The arena was large and alien, and featured architecture wholly dissimilar from anything he saw in the rest of the Citadel. In fact, the air itself felt different – warmer, more humid. If it were possible, Marcus might have thought he were no longer in Corone at all, but somewhere farther south, somewhere with jungles and moss-claimed ruins.
The “room” was almost a hall and formed a square, with perhaps fifty yards between parallel walls. It was entirely constructed from large blocks of smooth stone, with patches of wet algae on the walls and on the floor. These patches looked to be very slippery, and Marcus made a quick note of those closest to him.
The arena, however, was not interesting because of its strange building materials or its seemingly incongruous atmosphere. It was strange in that it was divided in half in a most unique manner. The young paladin raised his eyes and found that half the room had no ceiling over it by design, allowing blazing sunlight to illuminate one half of the room while the rest was blanketed in deep shadow. Marcus stood in the lighted half of the arena, and opposite him was the dark half.
The knight was amused, and crossed the room until he stood right at the edge of the light, facing the looming darkness. He might have stared into the shadow forever if not for the sudden clatter of chains and a soft, pained moan coming from behind. The squire was further baffled when he whirled around to behold a man chained upright to the wall, dressed in the garb of a priest of the Ethereal Sway. His frock was torn open at the chest, revealing a painful wound: the priest had been branded with a letter of the Salvic alphabet, a tradition meant to advertise a lawbreaker’s sin. It would seem that he had been convicted a murderer, and the ugly welts around his throat suggested that he was very recently rescued from the hangman’s noose.
Marcus was duly puzzled – the priest was affixed to the wall just to the left of the door through which the paladin had entered, and there was little chance that Marcus had overlooked a chained prisoner when considering the arena. Before he could question this sudden appearance, however, he spun around again and held his sword at the ready. He felt the unmistakable presence of demon kind in the shadow, and sure enough there was a second figure chained to the wall where there was nothing previously.
The second prisoner was a young woman of pale complexion, who was otherwise lovely. Her lips and fingernails and her utterly straight hair were black as death, and her eyes were large and red-tinged. She wore the outsized white dress of a bride, except that her garb was torn and stained with blood and dirt, and her cheeks and arms were red with bloody scratches. She might have passed for a strange but attractive girl to anyone else, but Marcus saw her for what she was: a tiefling, a being with demonic ancestry. She whimpered at the sight of him and pulled at her chains feebly, for she knew his kind instinctively and rightfully feared for her life.
She might have been helpless, but at that moment the door immediately to her right opened, and at last relinquished Marcus’ opponent into the shadowed side of the room.
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