This was the first one.


Memoirs of a Victor


It had been so long ago that I had entered that place; the place the spoke of the future and had the technology to prove it. It was as if, the host, ‘The Liaison’, he called himself had come from the future to test the best fighters of my time. I won that tournament, but promised never to enter again. A promising upstart, the man had deemed me, as I fought my way through the tournament and prevailed at the end. But what had been the cost? The amount of blood that had been shed could have filled a lake and still had overrun. The nightmares still continue.
	
Even now as I scribble these words and near my final breath, I can remember the eloquence of the man as he approached me and offered me a chance to compete, a chance I eagerly jumped at. By some strange magic, which in our time was rare and was not prominent in the tournament if used at all, he brought me to the lobby, which was situated in a place that he said was ‘Forgotten by Reality.’  At first, I didn’t know what he meant and part of me didn’t want to find out. I was not the first one there, evident by the vast array of fighters that had been gathered for the tournament. They ranged from barbarians to Vikings, and all things in between. 

The man, The Liaison, appeared before us all and promised us our due reward for winning; an even bigger tournament, but that was for one tournament only and this one was not it, the second tournament held later in the year was for that. As he spoke, in a way that we could all understand, he pointed out several features. We each were afforded our own rooms, for rest and relaxation, as well as a place for free food, and something called Restoration Chambers, wherein after battles we could go and restore the majority of our damage back to a respectable state. As you can probably imagine, the toughest of the men didn’t like this notion and threatened to harm Liaison for insinuating such a thing; he promptly told them he could not be touched and demonstrated why -- The Man was nearly a God, he truly could not be touched.

Finally he ended his speech and offered us a word of advice. There are no friends here, there are no enemies. There are only those who seek what you seek, to be the man who is crowned Warrior, and the inaugural champion of The Way of the Warrior.  When you step into your battles, disregard all emotion, all feeling, and slice your way to the top, that is the way of the Warrior, and that is how it shall always be. 

We were not visited by him again until just before the finals, wherein he revived all the fallen competitors and stationed them in a place where they could watch the finals. It was me and a man named Adinraen Barriurden, a peculiar fellow. The match lasted longer than any before and I walked away the victor; soaked in a mixture of elven and human blood. What I had seen had been brutal, and I promised to never return for a repeat performance. Instead, I chose to leave my memoirs here, as a package deal when The Liaison offered spots to future combatants. 

The tournament of The Way of the Warrior is not for the faint of heart or good of soul; it is a tournament where men and women before ambiguous beasts of battle and leave their souls behind as payment. I, shall forever stalk the world and train my sword to kill the man known as The Liaison, in an effort to end the tournament once and for all.