AN: Bethesda owns The Elder Scrolls. No, I make no money off of this terribly named bit o' work.
"You? You wanna join the Arena?" Owyn laughed, long and hard, and the slender Dunmer girl in front of him decided that the best course of action was to wait the ridicule out. Factions like this tended to be rough on their members, both physically and verbally, and a newbie trying to escape the hazing would find themselves humiliated. Her patience paid off. Before long, Owyn was growling at her that her "new name is Pit Dog, Pit Dog" and asking her what type of raiment she would wear.
"Heavy," she replied immediately. Another Dark Elf, clad in blue and beating up a punching bag nearby, raised his eyebrows at her, but she kept her face expressionless.
"You're not impressing nobody, Pit Dog," Owyn snorted, tossing (tossing?) her a bundle of metal, cloth and heavier metal. She managed to catch it, and tried not to stagger under its weight. She failed. "Trying to be brave will get you killed. Now put that on."
Changing into the armor in the privacy-less living quarters, the Pit Dog tried to calm her racing heart. Everything would be fine, she assured herself. She had been trained as a Crusader, and ever since her skills had begun to show themselves, she'd decided that she was born for the Arena. She was strong. She was skilled in all melee weaponry, and had enough magic ability that she could at least send her enemies aflame as she went down. Owyn—and the Arena fans—would find no fault in her.
As long as they didn't find out what star she was born under.
Easy, easy, easy, this Arena stuff. Well, not easy, exactly. Tiring and frightening, yes. But oh-so-satisfying. Sometimes, near the end of a match, when the no-longer-a-Pit-Dog needed only the final blow to mace her opponent into eternal submission, with muscles burning in the physical joy that only an athlete can know, she would stand in the middle of the grate and scream triumph. It was almost animalistic—by Azura, it was—but that kind of barbaric display of emotion would send even more fear rippling into her bleeding foe, effectively paralyzing them so they wouldn't even meet the Divines fighting.
Owyn was impressed, and was even developing a chummy soft spot for her, and everything was going quite marvelously. Brawler climbed through the ranks of Bloodletter and Myrmidon with ease, but it was the first fight of Warrior when everyone changed.
"Quick Nord woman, uses both a sword and mace. Be careful, Warrior," Owyn had warned her as she'd slammed her steel helmet on before battle.
"Duly noted," she said seriously, unsheathing her sword. She ran up the Red Room ramp with ease, no longer slipping on the ever-sticky surface like she used to. The Arena fans' screams greeted her before she'd even finished opening the door, and her face lit up. Adrenaline began pulsing through her veins and she took a shaky breath. She'd begun to live for these moments.
While the irritating Imperial announcer-who was he, anyway? She'd never even met him-did his thing, she carefully applied a nice wounding poison to her blade. She mentally went over the list of spells she knew. Owyn had said her opponent was a Nord, so that left frost spells out. Electricity and fire would work fine, but the only shock spells she knew were close-range and the fire spells were weak, so neither option would be particularly desirable. The Warrior sighed as the gates opened. It was a good thing she'd learned how to quickly gloss her weapon with poison during battle, but she hadn't restocked in a while.
She wet her lips as the Nord charged forward. She could worry about that later, when she'd have more pocket money and could make a trip to The Gilded Carafe or something. For now, she needed to put this woman down. She dodged a swipe to her stomach and tried to take out the other woman's wrist, but miscalculated and caught the gauntlet of the yellow raiment, instead. The Blue Warrior raised her sword quickly and blocked the others, and they were left trying to force their weight on each other.
That was quick, the Dunmer thought to herself, slightly amused. She stared down the other woman, taking in the once-pretty face, now slightly disfigured by a healed broken nose. Obviously, she was a woman either with no other option or one much in a position like the elf's situation. Warrior felt her respect for the Nord rise a bit, but that didn't stop her from gripping the other woman's sword hand and sending a jolt of electricity through it. To her credit, the Nord didn't do much more than gasp and drop the weapon, soon to draw her mace.
The elf grinned. Maces were slow and heavy, so her sword would hopefully make quick work of her rival. However, she was much more comfortable with a mace herself, so she supposed the two women were equally matched. She slammed the hilt of her sword into the Nord's stomach while she was recovering and stood over her fallen opponent, sword held high for the final swing, when she felt her ankles give out from under her and found herself lying next to her quickly-recovering foe, who had obviously tripped her.
Warrior decided to give up the sword instead of trying to hold onto it, throwing it like a wobbly javelin as she fell. The poisoned blade clipped the Nord's arm, and the cry of pain that followed allowed the Dark Elf enough time to draw her mace and hold it up as a shield as she stood up again. The Nord demonstrated the speed Owyn had cautioned his Warrior about by flinging her mace down just as the other mace defended its owner, and the elven woman winced as the force of the hit rang through her bones. She tried using her shield to jostle the taller woman's hold on her mace, but it had no effect. Deciding that shields weren't worth it in general, she slipped her hand out of the handle just enough that she still had a grip on it, then slugged the Nord in the head. Startled and a bit dizzy, the Nord's grip slackened, and the Dunmer slipped out of her grasp and quickly slipped a poison onto her weapon. Thankfully, the other woman still seemed a bit out of sorts, and the elf wasted no time in burying the mace into her side.
And that was how Warrior's mace broke.
The crowd went wild, and all Warrior could feel was a cold dread seeping into her bones. The mace head had only bounced off of her opponent's torso, and while the blow had obviously hurt, it wasn't anything near the fatal slam it was supposed to be. The elf could fight with her fists well enough, but if her sword skills were weak compared to the mace, then her fists were really nothing. Using the last of her poisons (oh, shit, when did that happen?), Warrior uncorked the bottle and threw its contents in her opponent's direction. The corrosive liquid splashed onto the Nord's exposed neck and upper chest, and its victim howled in pain.
Warrior ran.
Arena rules stated that, once a weapon was dropped, it could no longer be picked up again, so that made her abandoned sword and shield worthless. All she had left on her person were a few restorative potions and her steel gauntlets, tucked into the same pouch with the rest of her gear, which she for some reason had forgotten to leave behind. As she ran around the Arena, much to the crowd's sadistic delight, and heard the heavy footsteps of her pursuer behind her, the Dunmer briefly considered putting them on. Doing so would immediately throw her out of the competition, and while her skin would be saved, Warrior didn't want to have to see the look of disappointment-okay, fury-on Owyn's face afterwards.
While fleeing, she noticed an arrow—probably from a previous fight that the Arena groundskeepers had missed—lodged into one of the grate holes that allowed blood to drip into the aptly named Bloodworks. Warrior saw her last opportunity and dove, plucking the stray arrow from its trap and rose to meet her foe. She blocked a mace swipe with her left arm—ouch, something definitely just broke—and jammed the arrowhead into the Nord's already injured shoulder. The Nord only screamed and yanked the offending stick out of her skin, ignoring the blood flow that followed. She raised her mace for the swing that would end it all, and—
-found herself ensnared in a passionate kiss with the Dark Elf Warrior that she was supposed to be fighting. All the Nord could think was what in Oblivion before all of her, physical and mental, found itself unable to move.
The Blue Warrior had her eyes closed, focusing all her magicka in her lips, and making sure her opponent was good and frozen, and so it took her a few moments to realize that the crowd had gone silent.
The moment of truth, she bitterly thought. Now they all know that I'm not the super-strong fighter I led them to believe. She was tempted to scan the crowds for a glimpse of a (no doubt) disapproving Owyn, or the shocked face of her Gladiator mentor, but the paralyzed Nord she was currently locking lips with reminded her that there was business to be taken care of. She broke away from her fellow Warrior and focused all her energy in her fists as she brought them as far away from herself as she could reach, then slammed them both into the left side of the Nord's neck.
As soon as she saw the life escape from the Nord's eyes, she began briskly walking towards her side of the Bloodworks, feeling very, very tired. She opened the door at the bottom in a haze so thick with misery that she didn't hear the Arena erupt in applause and more than a few catcalls.
Warrior trudged down the gory ramp and literally fell into the inviting waters of the fountain, gasping in weary happiness as she felt its magical essences seep into her skin. Though physically invigorated, her mind still felt exhausted. No magic would help that. She laughed—mostly at herself—at the inscription carved into the rim of the basin.
The best techniques are passed on by the survivors.
The Gray Prince didn't even notice her arrival, so wrapped up was he in his daily training. Her fellow Dunmer was nowhere to be found, so she assumed he was still up in the stands; they liked to watch each other fight. That left only Owyn and Ysabel, though the latter didn't really count. She trudged towards the Bladesmaster, ready for a chewing-out regarding her Lack of Macho Fighting Ability, or however one would put it. She only met his eyes when she was but a footfall away from him, not sure if she was prepared to meet his look of…
Glee?
"By the Nine, that was brilliant, Warrior!" Owyn cackled, pounding her on the shoulder in joy. "Why didn't you tell me you were born under the sign of the Lover?"
"Sir, I—"
"Well, anyway, here's your payout this time. Great job out there; ya really earned your keep this time, Warrior."
Aforementioned Warrior could only blink, not feeling the weight of the gold in her hand. "Sir, I…I don't understand."
"What don't you understand, idiot?"
"Isn't that…against Arena rules?" Owyn gave her an are-you-seriously-asking-me-that look. "Well, I mean…aren't you disappointed in me?"
"Disappointed, Warrior?" Owyn laughed again, louder and harder than before. "That was a brilliant bit of…of…something you displayed! I don't think this Arena's seen something like that! Ya really won the crowd over this time! I wouldn't be surprised if you get to be the Blue Team Champion!"
The Yellow Team Champion—when had she come in?—scoffed, and began venting her miserable social life out on the punching bag.
Hope began to blossom in the Warrior's chest. "Sir…am I being promoted?"
The laughter stopped abruptly, and Owyn's signature frown was back in its familiar place. "Of course not! Do you need to be demoted down to Pit Dog to relearn the concept of hard work?"
The still-a-Warrior hid her grin. "No, sir."
"Now, get out of here, Warrior! From what I saw out there, you're gonna be needing some better equipment. What did you think you were doing, not checking your weapons or anything? It was like you were asking to die!"
The elf only gave him a lazy salute as she walked away, running into her mentor on the way up the Bloodworks stairs. They traveled to the Market District together, talking about her match. She was, naturally, a bit hesitant to speak about it, but soon warmed up to his naturally familiar demeanor and not-awkward comments on the fight.
"It wouldn't surprise me, though, if you never hear the end of that little stunt you pulled at the end," was the only thing he said regarding her desperate game-winner.
And true enough, she didn't. She made a point of never using the move in any of her fights ever again, but that infuriating Imperial commentator always made snide comments about her kissing "expertise", and she had taken to wearing hoods during her frequent Market runs to avoid rude Arena fans. She had expected disappointment and glares for cheating or being weak or something! She was naïve, and hadn't taken into effect the immaturity of the masses.
Sometimes, ignoring the problem really can make it go away. Now a Champion, she had thought she had gotten past the worst of it when she was discussing with Ysabel her Champion name.
She supposed she should have seen it coming when Ysabel immediately suggested "The Heartbreaker! Make them love you before breaking their hearts, literally! Ooh, or," the woman would not be stopped by the Champion's steely glare, even, "sending them off with a kiss before they die!"
The Champion tried very hard not to grit her teeth. "If you won't be deterred from this theme, I'll humor you. Set me up with The Messenger of Death."
She knew Ysabel's face had sagged, but at least it would be the end of the silly matter.
She hoped.