“Auxiliary approaching!” a turn of the head over a deeply scarred shoulder, a tussle of curls and locks and a sharp, involuntary movement of the wrist was all it had taken. From perfection of form and purpose to waste and ashes, and all in a moment fleeting as to have never been, save for the fact plainly visible on the flesh before her that it had been, that the damage had been done and that a tiny piece would be forever marred on otherwise flawless creation. “Outsiders hound you, Devlin,” the woman thus afflicted called back towards the courtyard wall and the man standing at attention on the rusted gate of iron bars unceremoniously thrown to the elements for the past near on two hundred years. He shuddered at the reply and, casting a glance over his own shoulder came to understand the nature of his transgression, quickly turning his gaze back to the path leading to their mountainside home of brick and natural stone, quietly counting the number of individuals taking the trail and carefully considering their colors, accoutrement and outfit. She didn’t have to look to know what he was doing. In the Dying Season even a fight camp wasn’t immune to bandits in the guise of Imperial troops.

“Curse you, Devlin,” she grumbled under her breath as she surveyed the damage wrought by her miscalculation at the sudden call from the roadside tower some ten feet behind and to her left. The face had been perfect, had taken weeks to bring forth upon the brick with her homemade pigments of animal fats boiled down to a liquid and mixed with the sharp pigments in alizarin and ochre which could be formed from the naturally occurring resources around the camp. Where there had been a half formed eye, symmetrical to the other with a precision her usual efforts did not permit her, there was now a deep gouge across the bridge of the nose and upwards, scarring the brow and discoloring the previously blue-black hair. She bent at the knee and withdrew a rag from her small table of yellow and violet plastic, some toy an old world child would have sat at and drank from plastic tea cups filled with dreams and imagination back when the sun shone and the world was well fed, fat and green with the bounty of Astara’s blessings loaded upon them in droves none to include the Bull Emperor of the Crimson Throne could afford in the modern day, in this new world.

She stood and wiped at the gouge of pigment and binder, but it was plainly clear that she wouldn’t be fixing it this way. Nothing was ever that simple. She would have to wait for the paint to dry, and cut away at it or cover it with another layer before carrying on with the rest of the project. He had been beautiful, Hectyr. Square jawed, strong featured, with those mischievous eyes promising death, deliverance, neither, both. It was a shame, had he kept those eyes on his opponent’s he might have caught the feint in time to avoid losing his to the other man’s punchblade. They had run the drill a hundred times, eyes on the target, don’t forget the off hand just because the main is thrusting at you. Must’ve thought he was real clever stepping off the line and to the outside of his opponent’s guard, holding him with his own off hand at the elbow while sending a diagonal downward strike to the back of the guy’s right knee with his own main hand. Takes less time to draw a blade at the hip, pivot and deliver a straight blow then it does to bring a blade from your own shoulder to your opponent’s knee.

He had been one of the last to go through the camp’s training regimen at the same time as she had, was going to retire soon. She’d already offered him a commission as an officer of the camp, and he’d been leaning increasingly in that direction rather than his first thought toward buying up mercenary contracts and forming his own unit. What would that fool have done with a mercenary company? Go back to fighting for thirty bronze scales a head per engagement? He’d been offered a thousand bronze scales as a signing bonus for that last fight. It was sitting in an old world plastic container once meant for porting food back and forth in his room, alongside his gear and everything else he had ever owned. He’d never even used the money. She’d heard the man who killed him had subsequently been stabbed in the back by a foreign barbarian woman facing Kull. She kept to the law of the arena very strictly, if she had a religion, a faith, it was in the infallibility of blood and sand. Still it pained her to have lost the Black Rabbit of Astara to a lucky punch and a foolish miscalculation. Still it brought a smile that his killer had been stabbed in the back by his own teammate.

Neither of these things were in keeping with the law of blood and sand, but she could accept this sinful trespass of her nature against the arena. “Hold!” Devlin again, they must have advanced quite a ways. Could she have been lost in her own thoughts long enough to have missed their trek up the mountainside? Sure enough she was still standing pigments and rag in hand, and sure enough she could see faces poking out from behind the bars when she turned to look. Placing her stuff down on the plastic table before casting a last look at Hektor’s marred visage peering back at her from the brick of the inner courtyard wall she approached the gate as Devlin spoke to the Auxiliary. “You calling me a barbarian, Ouis’Visean!? How’d you even get into the Auxiliary? Someone buy you for snake handling and decide you were too big to be worth feeding, sell you to the emperor?’ ‘Shut up Devlin. I am the Doctora of the Australos Fight Camp. State your business, sergeant,” she could see a scrawny thing, dark and of healthy color draped in an ill-fitting hide between the assembled unit. It was a girl, of a good age for training, if smaller than she’d like. For her own sake Aibhilin hoped the girl had come to the Auxiliary dressed like that rather than been made to dress this way by the troop. She didn’t need a broken girl to mend back to a new normal. This was Australos, the only need here was for fit killers of men.

Rags' life had become one of strangeness and learning, among the men who slaughtered her tribe. She had initially tried multiple times to enact revenge, before slowly coming to see this group as their new tribe. Though there were a lot of new rules to get her head around. For starters, she was the only woman in this group, which is the exact opposite of the Harem-like build of the tribes of the Valleys. They did seem to have something called 'marriage' to prevent mating from being a problem with this backwards, inefficient system. Rags didn't quite understand it yet.

They explained other things as they traveled, such as heir weapons, which were sharp and made of metal, as opposed to Rags' crude stone knife and club. They claimed they were taking her to be trained in combat, as only then would she have any worth as a person. She'd either die in this school, or come out the other side an exotic, deadly warrior worth marrying, as a status symbol. All of the men laid claim to her, and who would take her was to be decided if and when she stayed alive. There was something about how they talked about this which rubbed Rags up the wrong way, as if she would be property to them. Maybe it was just their strange, dialect. They spoke more words in a sentence in the deserts and caves than in the valleys. They thought her simple because of her dialect, but in truth she was a very intelligent girl. She thought them needlessly complicated because of their dialect, but you could not find a group of simpler men.

After weeks of travel, they arrived at the gates. Rags was marveling at this sight. This was not a cave, nor a cave made of cloth, called a 'tent'. This was a small valley, in the middle of the desert, with smooth, tall walls, and an entrance barred by metal beams like the swords the men she traveled with used. They were let in, and Rags found herself looking up at more strangely dressed men like the ones she was travelling with, not adorned with pelts but with cloth and metal shaped to their body. And one woman. The first woman she had seen since the death of her tribe. Shed never seen a woman so muscular, and her fearsome confidence was nothing like the anxious fight-or-flight state of a Valley Person before combat. This was a woman who believed she could win any fight, and didn't view them as encounters were anyone's life may be lost. Rags marveled at this unusual (in her experience) female.

“I think she’s trying to figure out if you’re a man with tits, or a she bear,” Devlin proffered to no one in particular at the sight of the girl eying the camp, its occupants, and especially the Doctora after the gate had been wedged open and the troop had entered the main courtyard, captive in tow. Devlin himself was smaller than Aibhilin, and was every bit the barbarian born he had been taken as by the Auxiliary. From the Whit’Mar freehold all the way across the Wastes and North of the accepted border established during the First Crusade, he had only wound up here through a series of poor decisions made as a young fortune seeker intending on returning to his warband a hero, slaves and wealth trailing in his wake. Instead he had taken a bolt to the right shoulder in his first engagement and wound up a slave in the fighting pits of the Southeast, before being offered up to the Empire to take the place of his owner’s son in the mandatory tribal Auxiliary drives of the late seventies. None of that would matter to this girl, though. If she was an Imperial subject she wasn’t from anywhere Aibhilin had ever heard of.

Once she had gotten through the gate and set her eyes upon the Doctora it was immediately apparent just how tan she really was. Not necessarily particularly dark skinned by birth, but tan. An oddity to be sure, someone the imperials would have wanted as a house slave more than a brutish pit fighter. Must have been from a nomadic tribe, born above ground in a place that wasn’t as prone to the erratic weather she would be sure to get her fill of here. She had gotten lucky to have been taken by the group she had been for what it was worth, considering she no doubt only survived because of her youth and had almost certainly lost those closest to her in the engagement. It wasn’t legal for the Auxiliary to take personal slaves as such, let alone to sell them for personal gain. They were in the employ of the Empire and couldn’t profit from their duty until leaving the service, but that didn’t mean the occasional especially high value person didn’t fall through the cracks and wind up being exchanged for bronze shards behind closed doors. The troop were either too foolish to note her worth to the right buyer, or were more committed to the cause then the average by far.

None of that mattered now, not anymore. She’d been presented to a school, and from here the involvement of the Auxiliary as an official Imperial body would come to an end one way or the other. This barbarian girl was now a subject of the empire, and would either take the sacramenta and join the camp for which her employer would pay the Empire a finder’s fee, or she would be given a day’s provisions and pointed towards the nearest settlement, the one which provided Australos with its own provisions and food stuffs, to live out her life as a subsistence level forager. There was no way to keep her from simply returning back to where she had been taken by the troop in the first place of course, and no one would blink or try to stop her if she waited until the Auxiliary moved off and took the same route she’d been taken on to reach Australos back home. Knowing how the Auxiliary operate however, the chances that anything was left for her to go back home to were slim to none. In her experience most who went back turned around a day or two after getting home and realizing there was nothing left for them there volunteered at the camp.

Chances were she had probably never seen so many people in one place in her life as she was about to see flooding into the courtyard. Australos wasn’t a large outfit, only twenty to thirty fighters at any given time and a handful of paid staffers, but they were far larger than any group who could manage to survive jumping from hand-dug well to tiny natural spring out in the desert. The larger cities could only exist because of a direct access to a natural aquifer, and even most of them gravitated at around six hundred people in total. Everyone was aware of the arrival at this point, and they’d all made their way to the courtyard to get a look at the new recruit for themselves. Most were not enthused. Too small, female, barbarian, whatever their individual complaint was it was plainly visible that she wasn’t going to be quick in making friends of her potential fellow fighters. She shouldn’t take it personally. Fight camps were tight knit units, and most would rather a small group who’d known one another for years then outsiders of unknown skill and intent joining the stable, but they didn’t say anything out loud. They knew what came next, and would hold their tongue until it was passed.

Aibhilin neither smiled nor glowered toward the youth as she sized her up. She didn’t much like looking at people like they were meat, had too much experience on the other end of the ordeal to appreciate being the one preforming the visual dance of half passionless stare down half cold hard napkin arithmetic. It was costly to train a fighter, and every one they took who didn’t come out of their first engagement alive was a significant monetary loss to the camp. Aibhilin looked the girl in the eyes only after carefully examining her every other feature in a process that left her feeling like she needed to bathe. She had curiosity in those eyes of her’s, and the glimmer of intelligence. Aibhilin herself was not known for her intellect, nor her appreciation of those who thought they could think their way around an axe to the head, but it was enough to come to her decision. “This is a camp. We fight other camps for food, hides, metal,” she tapped at the long blade hanging from her sword belt to emphasize the possibly foreign term, “we protect our own. You can stay here and be a camp fighter like us, or go home. Your choice,” the Auxililary wouldn’t appreciate the, “or go home,” bit, but outsiders hound them. The choice would be this girl’s regardless of the troop’s opinion on the matter.

"I know she woman" Rags relied up at Devlin with a challenging tone. She was starting to get a bit tired of being treated like a half-wit just because she had to learn what these people took for granted. Her dialect once more got a few smirks and nasty laughter from the hostile onlookers, and her upper lip snarled in response to this reaction like an animal cornered. She did not feel welcome here. Which made it all the more strange to her that the muscular woman was offering her a choice to join.

Rags was used to a system where the man chose. He would either take you into the harem or kick you out, though that was never without a good reason. It was in everybody's best interest to keep a group of six; five women and a man, as that was the optimal tripe makeup in her culture. There were too many people here. Wouldn't they fight? How do they share food and resources? Then again, that question had been answered for her now she thought about it. They take those things from other groups, who might be as large as this. Here, combat between humans wasn't a battle for land that neither party wanted, but that happened because neither party wanted to lose good land either and retreat to the mountains. Here, combat was the primary method of gathering necessities. No wonder they placed such value in it as opposed to the art of hunting.

Without the rest of her tribe, Rags knew she could not survive alone for very long. The default action for a lone Valley Person was to find a new tribe that would take them, and join. So there was no doubt in her mind what she would do here. "Stay here. Learn arts required me. Not survive outside. Confused. What is 'Home'?" she replied, but despite the minimalist structure of her language, there was no stuttering or sign of struggle. She spoke quickly, confidently, and with that same spark of intelligence that showed in her eyes. Then again, the language of barbarians and savages was known for having evolved and mutated into one that didn't waste words, and conveyed a message as fast as possible because the time taken to speak nouns, adjectives and definite articles might be the difference between life and death in their harsh living conditions.

Heh, good question. What was home these days? Her own place of birth was so long behind her that Aibhilin no longer considered it home, not really. Sure it was what was listed on her entry on the wizards list of active Arena combatants, “Aibhilin. The Lady in Blue. Place of Birth: Bhilinai’s Tear,” but she hadn’t witnessed its decrepit tunnels or spiked cavernous ceilings with her own eyes in near on a decade now. Had it really been so long? Australos hadn’t felt like much of a home in the beginning, it had hardly welcomed her or even her considerable talents with much warmth or openly expressed appreciation. At least in Bhilinai’s Tear she had always been taken by those in her caste as a premier example of their people. Strong, deadly, and with an easy grace and manner toward the sometimes unsavory task of enforcing the will of the strong over the fear of the weak, oppression and submission of the foragers to the whims and appetite of the warriors being the only thing keeping those of her station in the meat and snakeskin necessary to continue in their pursuit of their own goals and ambitions, namely that of upward mobility amongst the caste.

Continued armed opposition to the other tribes who would take their freehold by force was of course the reason they gave to those below them for the brutality with which they treated their foragers, but in reality it mostly came down to being the most desirable, prolific warrior of the lot. The wealthiest, most influential voice you could be, the shot caller. Woman, man, it was all the same there. Through strength and skill at arms coupled with a ferocious reputation and penchant toward violence you would be as guaranteed as you could be to hold position, power and authority. Australos wouldn’t welcome this girl any better than it had welcomed her, Aibhilin herself would not go out of her way to make this place better for the barbarian girl than it had been to her despite the fact that she could in her position as Doctora. It was doubtful any would actively do anything to hurt the girl, violence outside of training was naturally frowned upon and had always been met with swift and immediate repercussion in the form of the camp ritualistically and savagely beating the offending party as a unit. That didn’t mean they would show her any kindness or hold anything back in the mock battles she would be subjected to.

Aibhilin had killed a fighter with four pairs of ears in the arena to his credit to be seen as worthy to become the first woman to join this camp, and those he had fought and bled alongside in Australos were none too happy about his untimely death upon the very sand they stood upon this moment, nor at her having taking his place alongside them in the stable. None of the people at the camp had ever so much as bumped into her in passing during the fleeting moments primarily restricted to eating and personal hygiene that were permitted the otherwise very industrious fighters, and though she had spent two weeks sleeping in the quarters permitted her with one eye open none ever so much as lingered about her door in passing. She had however been beaten, bruised, broken and beleaguered every moment of every combat drill, sparring match and mock arena competition she had participated in for the first year she spent here. None had taken their meals with her, nor had any spoken more than a few snide curses at her expense to her during that time, and she had daily considered returning to Bhilinai’s Tear, or as she had thought of the place at that time, home.

She had joined the camp when she was years older than the girl before her, it had been said at the time and repeatedly thereafter that she had been too old for the training, and though she had spent but a year at the camp it was determined that if she was going to prove herself to the owner of the camp as having been a good investment for the year of food she had consumed at his expense and the Doctore’s time she had taken up throughout the year’s training that she would kill or die upon the sand within the season. It was quite the shock to most of the assembled fighters of the camp when she returned after the bout with a pair of ears on a band of snakeskin tied about her neck. The brutality, the ridicule, the lonesomeness of that first year had pushed her all the more to excel in whatever area she could. They would not converse with her, nor take her seriously, but they would cross mock blades and throw blows at her until both entrants found themselves bloodied, bruised and beaten, and so into this pursuit she had put everything she had within herself with the need of a starving wolf to thrive, to succeed, to emerge victorious and superior.

After her first victory the camp was a different place entirely. Nothing to do with the buildings or scheduling changed, no person had come or gone, but it had never been the same again. All had come to accept her as a competitor. Not to say they had come to see her as an equal, a peer, or even worthy of the cheers and accolades which usually accompany a teammate’s first victory upon the sand. This was perhaps lesser than the respect which came to the others to return to the camp with trophies earned in blood and metal, but it meant much more to her then it did to the average first time victor. To her this was a validation, proof positive that despite the torment and the misery of that first year she had survived and overcome, the first peak of her climb upwards toward a destiny as of yet unknown but ever driving her onward had been surmounted. This girl would learn the same way she had, through pain and isolation, a storm battered island among a sea of uncaring outcroppings and frigid waves, and she would grow and learn or be drowned amongst the treacherous waters. This was the first lesson of the law of blood and sand, to survive despite the pain or be swallowed by it.

It hadn’t been that moment, or even that day when Aibhilin had begun to think of Australos as home. She wasn’t sure if there had even been a moment when her memories of Bhilinai’s Tear had seemed more to her thoughts of a place she had once been then where she was supposed to be, or at least wanted to be. There was a moment when she understood that she couldn’t remember the last time she had longed to be in Bhilinai’s Tear once more, and a time when it didn’t sadden her to think that she would never be there again. She still thought about her siblings, still wondered whatever became of old flings and if that outsiders hound her, rat faced Bhnnocha had would up together with Efynvair, her once crush and later more than crush who she may well have remained in Bhilinai’s Tear with were it not for Bhnnocha’s constant, seemingly innocent but plainly underhanded meddling in the pair’s affairs. In time, though, Australos had increasingly become where she wanted to be, and the fighters had been the people she wanted to be with. Then came Hektor’s death on the sand, and the whole world fell away beneath her feet. Australos had not been home for her anymore, not since that day.

“Good enough. First you eat. Then you learn,” there would be a ceremony to officially induct her as a member of the camp, but that would come later. First there would be food, and lots of it. The fighters trained near on fourteen hours a day and their rations were close to three times that of the average worker or forager, both to increase the fighter’s size and to promote the psychological understanding of their superiority over the common rabble from whom they had largely been born to. Only after the girl had eaten her fill, almost certainly alone as she assumed none from the camp would deign to take their meal with an as of yet not officially inducted member, would Aibhilin pair the girl up with a more experienced student at the camp and instruct them to savagely beat her in mock combat. She would of course be given the chance to defend herself, but at her age and size it was doubtful she could avoid the worst of the attack even if she happened to be a trained combatant. If she still wanted to join after taking her meal alone and without expectation for that to change any time soon, and withstood repeated, vicious blows from sparring blades then she would take the sacramenta and be accepted as a full member of the camp.

Food was already being prepared, the process had begun at the first call of Auxiliaries approaching, and the camp would be expected to feed the soldiers regardless of their feelings on the matter. Legally an Imperial owned business could refuse to feed common Auxiliaries, but it would almost never be done. The cost wasn’t the issue so much as the slight toward the Emperor who employed them, something that would almost never reach the attention of so lofty an individual but which if taken in poor taste could result in the turning of the fortunes of the owner. Naturally she had orders to provide adequate hospitality toward the employees of their esteemed ruler handed down from her own employer, though she was not going to be especially polite about the way she handled them. They served a purpose no doubt, and could just as easily have been her should things have gone a different way. Two of her three brothers had become Auxiliaries during the tail end of the ramp-up, less by choice than by order of the Empire, but it would have been her had they been accepting women. Didn’t mean she was going to host them within the grounds of the Courtyard.

“Devlin, she is our guest and gets the first plate. Our friends here,’ she gestured toward the Auxiliaries, ‘are welcome to their servings after they vacate my courtyard,” Aibhilin gestured toward the fire, erected on the South side of the courtyard near the front entrance to the cavern next to which a series of old world ceramic bowls, most chipped and cracked but all in reasonable working order sat upon a serving table. These in turn were being filled by the presumed students tasked with the duty with flame cooked snake meat, fungi collected from around the mountain stream the camp depended on for its survival, and small cuts of meat which were mammalian in origin, probably rat or even thinly sliced cave lion. Aibhilin made no effort save the gesture to instruct the girl toward the fire, but walked in that direction herself assuming the girl would follow. “What is your name?” she looked toward the fire and the promise of hot food which it offered as she spoke the words rather than ensuring the girl was following her, but assumed she would hear a response, even if it were delayed by a matter of seconds should she choose to engage the Auxiliaries in conversation before her.

Aibhilin herself would have spat in their faces should she have been in the girl’s position, and wouldn’t care the slightest bit if she did so. They had almost certainly taken everything and everyone the girl had ever known from her, dropping her off in a strange place filled with stranger people without the explanation of why or even the shared vocabulary necessary to explain where they were taking her and to what purpose. Devlin had earlier snorted audibly at the reproach from the youth in response to his comment, had even chuckled a bit under his breath, but he hadn’t made any further comment. Not while the boss lady and the Auxilaries were speaking business. With that over his mouth quickly turned back on, picking up where he had left off. “Well Ouis’Visean, our time here is through. Wish I could say I was gonna miss having you around, but I doubt you’re fit to clean the latrine around here, so let the emperor have you,” Devlin propelled his arms forward in a shooing motion clearly instructing the Auxilaries out through the gate the way that had come, though there was certainly time to interrupt or say something to them on the part of the girl who had been taken here by them.

Rags had not asked the meaning of the word 'Home' because she no longer had one, but because she had never had one. The People of the Valleys are always on the move, always travelling in search for food. every time their supplies of water get near dry they dig a well where they stand, or descend to the valley floor to dig there. They sleep often in caves or crags but only in Winter do they ever sleep in the same place twice, but never more than twice. The word 'Home' was lost to this culture to to nothing but lack of use. This question went unanswered by the woman, however, who instructed her that she would be eating, and only learning afterwards. Rags didn't know that these sentences made grammatical sense. Rags didn't know of grammar, or of writing. She was just happy that the woman, like her, didn't waste breath on pointless, fancy words and got straight to the point when talking to her. From that moment, Rags liked Aibhilin.

When the woman walked away, Rags looked around and wondered if she was meant to follow, before seeing the amusement in people's eyes on her confusion. Snarling up at them again, she shied away and caught up to Aibhilin, who asked her for her name. She recognized that word! It had been spoken by the soldiers who brought her here! They had tried to relive her of her pelt and give her clothes that looked too large for her, in impractical. She took that as an insult and refused. Her own pelt was better suited to purpose. The response from the men was 'Your name is now Rags. Got it?' She didn't even know what name meant. The Valley people had no names.

"Rags," she answered, before looking at the Auxilaries as they were shooed out. In truth, she was, in a way, sad that she was leaving yet another tribe behind, even if they were all men and had been confusing and impatient teachers, jeering and insulting her at every turn. On second thought...she didn't miss them, and turned away, letting them watch her back as she followed Aibhilin to the food. She uttered not a word to them, on farewells, thanks or vengeful insult.

Pity. She’d have had words at least with any who had harmed her people. Then again, she had never had much of a reason not to like her people. Her family had fed her, treated her and her siblings well, taught her enough to excel at her task and produce for herself whatever she had set her mind to. It wasn’t for dislike of her people that she had left home. Who knows what the family or band or whatever this girl, Rags to hear her say it, had come from had been like. It wasn’t uncommon in the wastes for women to be treated as chattel, and her’s was a people barbaric enough to have names for human beings like Rags. Could have been given to her by the Auxiliaries she supposed, perhaps her own name wherever she had come from might have been feared on her part to have sounded even less regular or palatable to whatever she must have thought of the people of the camp, though it never crossed Aibhilin’s mind that they might not have even had a particular purpose for the convention of giving names to individual people. Her own culture was heavily invested in the name, and in the expression of individuality as a member of the tribe. Hardly a collective of the many over the few, Bhilinai’s Tear.

She didn’t ask for further clarification on the matter of course, or even look to the girl as she covered the distance to the fire. She was rather upset about her painting, and curious as to whether Rags would choose to stick around after she’d let Revhinult beat her until she couldn’t stand on her own power. Maybe he was a bit much, he had several years both of age and time spent training in the camp over her, as well as a foot at least in height and likely double her weight. He wasn’t anything special, would probably be dead within the Season after his first bout came to pass, but he was her best unblooded student at the moment, and pairing her against a victor was not something she deemed appropriate. She had been a skilled combatant when she was required to prove herself against a fighter with four ears to his credit, and though she had survived the experience it was hardly the same to expect Rags to do the same as she was. She was still young enough to grow, and if she had the birth for it she would grow under the training regimen and food intake the fighters at the camp were subjected to as a rule.

More importantly she had time to learn. Aibhilin had been too old when she joined for the general curriculum, and had only made it work because of what she had brought with her from Bhilinai’s Tear. This girl could be better instructed from the beginning in the nuances of combat in the arena as opposed to the tribal bickering and the hunt of the foragers she had been taught. Aighrit was closer to Rags in age, and as she was inclined to believe the more promising student in the long term when compared to Revhinult, at least assuming he grew. As of now he was smaller than she would have liked despite the year and a half of the diet and training regimen he had endured, and measured up at only a few inches and perhaps a half larger than Rags. He was a smart one, like the girl she had just welcomed to the camp, and had a greater grasp over the training than any of the other students had been able to claim only this far into the training. He could be a real competitor someday, but for now it might serve well enough to task him with introducing Rags to the brutal nature of the business in which the camp made its living.

The healthy middle ground would be Aevaur. Almost directly in between Aighrit and Revhinult in size, skill, and duration of training, in addition to being a grumpy, malicious fighter with a penchant towards taking more damage than he rightfully should before throwing it all back at his opponent with a vengeance. Aibhilin decided that she would line the three up, have them remove everything but their practice blades and their skirts, give Rags a practice blade and let her pick an opponent for herself. Maybe she’d pick the biggest, or the smallest, or one who seemed to be in between the other two. Could give her some insight into the girl’s thought process she supposed, and it removed the necessity of making the decision from her and placed it firmly on the newcomer. It wasn’t a realistic welcome to the life of a pit fighter, she had never once chosen her own opponent in the entire duration of her stay at Australos, but it was common to follow practices that gave the students ownership over their own decisions. It’s easier to swallow that you picked an opponent who clobbered you then it is to accept that someone else set you up against someone they didn’t think you had a chance of defeating.

Aibhilin was upon the fire now, and only once ten feet away from it turned to the girl. “Eat, Rags. Eat much,” speaking of Aighrit she had forgotten he was set to the task of handing out the food, and he approached herself and Rags with a full bowl in one hand and a bronze forked utensil in the other, butt end forward. The boy was pale, too pale in truth though unless you had knowledge of the fact that he had spent the majority of his life above ground most in the wastes would have taken him to be a common underdweller like Aibhilin herself, more grey than pink and more cold then cool in undertone, fair haired with close cut ringlets and pale grey eyes. He was smiling, that one was obnoxious and was always smiling, as he extended both hands towards Rags, though he kept a more than appropriate distance between himself and the newcomer. In one hand the bowl of freshly grilled meat, in the other the utensil, offered butt first. He wouldn’t speak a word to her, none of them would, but it was a more friendly greeting then Aibhilin would have expected for Rags. Food and a smile, you’d think the place was an inn or something. “After you eat, you learn."

Rags took the bowl and the utensil, which the savage quickly sussed out the meaning off; a device for eating the hot food without burning one's hands. The boy smiled at her, though. The first actual show of friendliness since her tribe had been killed. She of course, responded in kind, smiling back at the boy, her mood lifted. She held her fork sideways and ate the food off it sideways, treating it more like meat attached to a bone than eating in the manner of what passed for civilisation in this world.

She went to an unoccupied area near the fire and sat down on the floor, eating hungrily and ravenously. As she did so, she looked around at the rest of the camp. There were more men here than she'd ever seen in her entire life. She was still not sure how she felt about this strange place. It offered food, shelter, education and human company. She would want for nothing while here, but she still did not feel welcome. This sis not feel like a mutually equal relationship. If she left tomorrow, they would not miss her. They did not need her. She would rectify this, and the muscular woman seemed to be the key to that. They clearly respected her. All she had to do was follow her instructions and she'd be set here for life. The people would gradually see her as useful and a worthy inclusion. She smiled to herself. She'd started to figure out what 'home' meant.

When she finished her bowl, she returned to Aibhilin and held up her empty bowl and fork. Both had been licked clean. "Food gone. Learn?" she asked, with eyes filled with anticipation and wonder. Rags was ready for a challenge, both to her body and mind.

"Learn," Aibhilin nodded as she spoke the word, chewing with half of a cut of rat meat still in her mouth as she conversed, too impressed with the girl's apparent dedication to her newfound occupation to concern herself with table manners. She hadn’t been eating at a table anyway, and the only other person sitting with her had been Devlin. She didn’t actually like Devlin much, but he’d always been here, made for easy and familiar company. She had had a friend in Bhilinai’s Tear who in turn had a friend she couldn’t stand. Her friend, the one she had cared for, had died of an onset of fever which would not break. The mutual friend, the one she had not cared for previously, had become a lasting part of her life before leaving home in search of the arenas of the Empire of the Crimson Throne. Devlin was much the same to her now, had been conversational with Hektor though too wordy and smart assed to hit it off well with Aibhilin herself. She didn’t see him that way anymore, not after Hektor’s death. He was a cursed barbarian, a lousy fighter and an even less appealing human being, but he was her cursed unappealing human being, because he had been Hektor’s cursed lay about friend.

Aibhilin wondered if she had initially gotten the point across that here learning meant fighting, beating and being beaten by your fellows. Hopefully Rags didn't expect that this was going to be an enjoyable experience, because even if she somehow miraculously beat any of her three students she had considered for the bout there was almost no chance that it was going to be a painless experience. If she did manage to beat one of her students without it having proven to be a worthy encounter she would make the girl beat them nearly to death simply to impress upon the other students that failure was not an option, and to ensure that it would be remembered by all in attendance, including Rags herself. She was of the opinion that although you swallowed what damage you had wrought upon your foes it wasn't something you were supposed to forget. Battle was thrilling, incredibly so at times, and the memories of the conflict were as prized as the trophies you took from them. Half a blur in the heat of the moment and whose retention and quality of clarity was to be fought for longingly in contest with one’s own mind, the tale and the memory were sweet succor when unable to fight after your career had come to an end.

What was rarely fought for, and far less remembered in a half haze as opposed to that of a crystal clear reflection was the look in the eyes of a beaten opponent as you delivered blow after blow upon them after they had ceased to fight, their bodies having given way and the realization that they might die on their backs having set in. This was not the part of the contest most wished to remember, and she would make this girl see it in the eyes of her opponent if she won to make doubly sure that she understood what it was she was getting into. After that point she would ask her once more if this is what she truly wanted, and offer her the chance to stay or go, be that to the lands she had come from or to the village on the opposite side of the mountain which provided their food and other provisions. She wasn’t sure what the girl would choose yet, couldn’t be sure, and although she would have enjoyed having her as a student in the camp she would not attempt to sugar coat the grim reality of what this place, and those who called it home, truly was. Here reigned bringers of death upon the sand.

"Here we fight. We learn to fight by fighting," Aibhilin choked through as she finally remembered herself and decided swallowing was appropriate before continuing her conversation. The students had their meals, more importantly Rags, the victors, herself, the staff and the Auxiliaries had their food. She didn’t mind interrupting the students who ate last and were likely only half way through their own meal as is, it might just give them the added initiative to want to really put the hurt on the newcomer. They were training to be professional killers and shouldn’t have needed that extra justification, but they were also foolish in the way that all youths are foolish and likely none of them were terribly interested in doing this for the reasons she was. She had enough experience to see the larger picture, to understand that if she didn’t get the truth of this life expressed to Rags here today then she would die in her first fight upon the sands. Her opponents would have been shown the truth, would have trained every day to bring death and to avoid having death brought upon themselves, while Rags would be of the understanding that this was more show than life and death survival. It wasn’t worth the food she would eat in the years before her first bout to have her go and die in her first match.

“Revhinult, Aevaur, Aighrit! On the line!” the students dropped what they were doing and hurried to obey. They had known that someone was being chosen to introduce the newcomer, and though it was unlikely any of them had thought it would be them save perhaps the ever brooding Aevaur all had known to be ready in the unlikely case that it would be their name called out by the Doctora. Most had not finished their food, and it was possible that Aighrit had only just started at his meal given his current position as the last in the line, mostly because he was generally too happy looking for Aibhilin’s taste. “In your skirts, prospects!” They hadn’t quite reached the line, a so-called patch of dirt along the courtyard wall that had no distinguishing features save for the mass of footprints which had been beaten into it over the years and had simply been called that from long before Aibhlin’s time, but once they had they quickly set to removing their jerkins, snakeskin boots, chauses and coifs. What was left was three young men in knee length skirts largely constructed of hanging vertical strips of snakeskin leather with bronze scales sewn to them over a leather undergarment primarily meant for the purposes of modesty.

They stood in a line from the lightly muscled five foot ten seventeen year old with skin that would have passed for bronze were it not for the almost green and sickly undertone and a close shaved head of what may have been auburn hair, to the maybe five foot seven sixteen year old dark of skin by birth rather than lifestyle and possessed of what was closer to a gut than muscle, clearly unamused in expression beneath dark hair more natty than curled and falling in a mop just over his eyes enough to require him blowing and picking at it on occasion to keep his field of vision clear. The line ended with the boy, Aighrit, who had served Rags food to her, and though the three kept their eyes straight ahead and did not look at the Doctora or Rags in strict discipline hammered into them throughout their duration at the camp he was still as smiley as before. If it phased him that he had been taken from his meal as soon as he had been given it didn’t show, though Revhinult, the comparatively tall bronze student, was steady faced and emotionless and Aevaur was openly glowering at the perceived inequity of their having been taken from their hot meal and ordered to attention on the line.

“Pick one to fight,” Aibhilin gestured to the three students on the line in their skirts. “Win, lose, doesn’t matter. Fight well is all that matters,” she took a practice blade from off her sword belt, generally relegated to use in display of a technique while standing in front of the students or when pairing up against a victor in a sparring session to more actively impress a certain weakness of their weapon handling upon them without overt risk of harm, and extended it hilt first in her right hand toward Rags, palm upwards and hardly gripped at all. The students carried virtually identical practice blades on their own sword belts, each of them as well as her own about a foot and a half long and of cast bronze, their hilts wrapped diagonally in snakeskin leather to improve their feel in the hand. They were too dull to cut but heavy enough to leave brutal bruises and even potentially small lacerations or breaks should they contact an angled, fleshy or particularly susceptible joint such as a finger knuckle or wrist with sufficient force. “Not sharp, for learning. It can’t kill. It will hurt.” Aibhilin ran a finger over the false edge for clarification, intending to display that it couldn’t actually cut.

Rags nodded. She assumed that here, learning to fight would be how to fight using these metal weapons she saw on the Auxiliaries, as she already knew how to fight using hands, teeth, and crude stone weapons, and she had been no match for any of the men. It wasn't just that they were stronger, but even she could sense there was a purpose and efficiency to their movements. Rags would like to be taught that so she could win fights eventually. And of course, the only way to learn was to be told, and then to do for yourself.

Three boys were lined up, and Rags was told that she should pick one to fight, and that winning or losing doesn't matter here. She just had to learn, and do her best. She was then offered a blunt sword, which she took and tested the edge for herself. It wasn't as heavy as a club but it was still hefty. This was a tool she could use to hunt and kill animals if she so wished, though her teacher assured her it wouldn't kill humans. She had no reason to doubt her.

Rags then looked at the three choices, starting with the largest. He had no hair, which the girl found odd. Where did it go? It didn't matter. He was the largest, and most imposing of the three. Rags would not pick him. There was no concept of 'pride' or 'wanting to prove yourself' in the Valleys. Pride got you killed, and you proved yourself by surviving, and you survived by making smart choices such as 'if you have a choice, don't pick the biggest, strongest opponent'. Next was a tanned boy like herself who didn't look as physically imposing but looked vicious. When their eyes locked, Rags' top lip snarled and she shied away, skipping over him quickly.

That left one. The smallest of the three and the closest to her height and build. He would have been the obvious smart choice if he hadn't have been the boy who smiled at her earlier, and she smiled back. The thought of hurting him gave her a slight knotting feeling in her stomach, but the fact remained that he was the smartest choice. She quelled the feeling in her gut and pointed to Aighrit with her free hand.

“Aighrit, arm up. You two, back to your food,” Aevaur neither smiled nor snarled in response either to the girl curling her lip at him in distaste nor toward not having been chosen. His expression shifted between a general grumpiness and blowing absently at his mop of hair as he picked up his clothing from off the ground and began walking back to his seat. Revhinult had frowned, however, but whether that was because he had been denied the chance to show off or because he had legitimately thought she would pick him was not clear, before following after Aevaur with his own clothes picked absently off the ground in his hands. Aighrit was still smiling, though his face did not waver from his straight ahead gaze. He drew his own practice blade into his left hand, and crossed it over his chest before giving a low nod and slight forward leaning bend at the waist. Rags likely would not have understood the significance, but it was meant as a show of respect for one’s opponent and was usually relegated to fights between already trained combatants rather than as something meant for a newcomer straight from the wastes. He stood at attention once more after the other two had made way, and only then looked toward Rags.

There was a purpose to this ceremony, however seemingly pointless it might be. It was the behavior and reflected the mindset required to appease the Imperials who paid for the professional bouts that they would attend and gamble upon, a cut of which went to the schools participating. It was something that must be done in order for the camp to eat, and was hammered in with sharp and immediate disciplinary action from the first day of one’s training at Australos. It would be hammered into Rags as well, should she stick around after the bout had run its course. None of the potential choices the girl could have made would have shocked Aibhilin, after all she had laid them out for her for a reason. It did tell her that the girl wanted to win more than she wanted the glory of a fight against a stronger opponent, and that she was aware her chances would be greatest against the most physically inferior opponent. Aibhilin had never had much trouble with the bigger opponents herself, she was almost always smaller than any she faced in the arena despite her considerable height and weight. It was usually the ones who were the most experienced and dedicated to their training who presented the obstacles and hidden dangers which would get you killed.

Everyone within a thirty foot radius of Aighrit had cleared out of the way of the fight, less concerned about being in the way as interested in making sure no happenstance blows were to break their bowls and spill their food onto the ground. This included Aibhilin, Devlin, and the rest of the staff, all having taken a seat outside of the makeshift fighting pit measured more by eye and practice then by any physical barrier or obstacle, and set at the task of eating while watching the entertainment. It was time, and whether or not Rags was ready for it Aighrit would be. Blade in hand, opponent before him, he had been through this all before. He smiled at the girl, made a concerted effort to catch her gaze. He expressed neither pity nor remorse with his gaze and features, however, and neither did he seem to be enjoying this with any kind of vicious or brutal nature. His smile seemed more to suggest a peaceful ease of his nature and passively happy character. He neither looked down on the newcomer, nor felt bad about what he intended to do to her, neither was he going to enjoy the experience. Win or lose they would fight. It was a part of life here.

More realistically it was life here, but he had known worse ways to live. He hadn’t always been all smiles, but long ago he had come to understand a fundamental part of nature and his place in it which had brought forth the ease with which he carried himself despite the pain and the unsavory nature of the pit fighter lifestyle. He could neither change the past, nor in wishful desperation hope to change the future. All he could do was persevere and survive, causing as little pain to others in between cycles of day and night in the meantime. It wasn’t an unhappy state to be in, not for him. Every day above ground was a good one, and one that he had no guarantee to have again. Why be an Aevaur and be down about it? “Fight well, friend!” he called out merrily to the girl, genuine grin plastered to his face in a way that probably made him look stupid but felt right. He did want her to fight well, and he had no animosity nor grievance with her, or much of anyone else. He would do as the Doctora asked of him, though it would be unpleasant. It was always unpleasant one way or the other. It was also necessary.

The boy wouldn’t have understood the necessity in the way his Doctora did, she concerned with the girl’s long term survival as a professional arena champion and he with her short term health, happiness, and the superior nutrition she would have here rather than in the village across the mountain, but he did recognize that if he did not swallow the knot forming in his throat at the prospect of hurting another person with whom he had no qualm then she would be forced to do the same to him and would be made to face down another, likely Revhinult who would not share his concern. It wasn’t just this barbarian girl he uniquely didn’t want to hurt. He didn’t like hurting anyone, perhaps because all are special and yet the same. Neither would he hold back, for the both of their sakes toward another day of breath above ground, as happy, healthy and well fed as they could be. He extended his legs to his sides, facing her dead on and with his shoulders and head low in a half sit over thin air. His right hand was held a few inches out and to the right of his face, his left gripping the practice blade pointed straight toward Rags and held at his mid-torso.

If she advanced to strike at him he wouldn’t do anything to stop or slow her advance, waiting until she had come to within his own striking distance to move or react whatsoever. Should she not move to strike at him and either remain where she stood or move backwards or to walk a circle about him as the cave lions do before leaping upon their opponent he would instead break his stance and charge toward her, left hand and the blade held by it kept straight at his mid-torso height and pointed directly at her. He would not attempt to tackle her however, and would stop before covering the distance entirely to begin to deliver a high poking jab with his blade toward her face and, should he not be stopped or intercepted by the girl cut low by bending at the right knee towards his own right side, thrusting his left hip forward while leaning right and downward with his left shoulder, his left arm making a slash across his body with a whiplike chain reaction sending the blade traveling from a foot or two in front of her face forward and down toward her right leg unless stopped or blocked by her.

Should she instead charge toward him as he charged toward her he would attempt to spin off course in whichever direction her sword was not being held in and deliver the same high jab feint, low leg slash as before while she either stopped to cross blades or continued to move forward, assuming she would either block or move past him but simply to test the waters without committing to a more aggressive strategy right out of the gate. It wouldn’t do either of them any good for him to go and commit to a particularly heavy or difficult strike only to be parried and knocked to the sand on his backside in the first exchange of the contest.

Rags indeed did not know the meaning of this gesture, but she read in both the boy's eyes and the eyes of those watching that it might be a good idea to return it, so she did, crossing her own blade over her chest with her right hand (she was right handed) and bending at the waste in the same way she saw him do. When the surrounding people cleared away, she recognised that something had changed, and naturally the most obvious cause was that the fight was starting right here and now. She switched her grip to hold her sword in both hands, and started moving low and hunched, like an animal about to fight another of it's species. The boy was still smiling, but Rags' face was grim and determined; Too focused to look like she bore him any ill will to but feral to look like she'd treat this like a training fight.

Despite the People of the Valleys regressing to the level of neanderthals, their intellect and lessons in combat taken from thousands of years of hum history were not lost. When two tribes clashed in the valleys, it was rarely a test of head to head skill, but of wit and guile. Whether you could catch the opponent's head unawares with one strong club blow, or whether you could snare them in a trap. That's what determined victories out to the west.

The boy called out to her to fight well, to which she replied "Fight well too, friend!" as she watched him take a strange but deliberate stance. She wouldn't try to copy this one. She had been asked to fight to the best of her current ability, and that meant doing it the way she knew best. She kept crouched, every muscle poised like a spring, and now they were visible, she didn't look so much like a skinny waif of a girl, but a toned survivor who might pack a strong blow or two in her small frame. Her sword was still held in both hands, semi-upright like a club, as again, she thought it best to fight how she's most comfortable.

She knew from trying to avenge her tribe that trying to attack somebody with the training of the desert people would be met with swift repercussions, so, lesson learned, she started to circle him, guard up, ready to deal with his attack instead. Sure enough, her opponent charged towards her. She noted where his sword was pointed, and what he would do when he reached her with that much momentum, and when he was about to hit her, she quickly sidestepped, but he had suddenly stopped, and jabbed at her face. If she'd committed to the sidestep, she'd have avoided it but his change of tactics caught her off guard and she hesitated in confusion, allowing the sword to deliver a blow to the side of her head, dazing her. While she couldn't properly get her wits together, she held her sword up straight to try and block whatever would inevitably coming, and it did block his diagonal swipe, kind of. It prevented the sword from hitting her body, though it slid down the length of the sword and whacked both of her hands, causing her to grunt in pain and drop the sword.

At that moment the planning part of her brain froze in panic, allowing her more primitive survival instincts to kick in, and without a second's hesitation, she lunged at Aighrit, arms moving to grab his shoulders and putting her entire body weight into the tackle. If it succeeded in connecting with him, they'd both be driven to the floor, and the snarling devil child that was Rags, on top of the boy and pinning him with her legs, would raise both her arms, curl her hands up into fists and bring them down. First she was aiming at his head, then her brain kicked back in and she realised she didn't want to hill him, but win this fight, so she changed the target of her fists to his shoulder mid-descent.

If the tackle failed to bring the boy down to to him avoiding it or tanking it, Rags would land back on her feet, and make a diving dash for her sword.

This one had some fight in her. Aibhilin was impressed as she sat behind the fighters, still picking at her meal while watching the two meet. Not just anyone would attempt to start a grapple with a larger opponent, and she’d thought it through pretty well. His left arm was down, his right high, and she had gone for his shoulders in a full speed tackle. It wouldn’t have worked if the angles were different, had he not spun away and struck low just before she hit him. He was too large to be taken by a simple tackle from a physically lesser opponent should he have been on balance and had both of his hands prepared to start a standing grapple, but by hitting him when and where she did she would send him to the ground. She did wonder if the girl had experience in ground fighting, however. It wasn’t necessarily as simple a notion as get on top of the opponent and win, and there was little and less chance that Aighrit was going to drop his blade or let the girl take his shoulders in the process of taking him to the ground. A bite, a chew, and Aighrit was down, though as she suspected it wasn’t without the positioning of an experienced grappler.

Aighrit decided that he liked the newcomer. Not because of the bow or her wishing him a well and good bout, but because she was so clearly determined to fit in here. He wasn’t trying too hard to fit in himself, he was fairly sure that Aibhilin really didn’t like him actually, and he and the newcomer were hardly shaping up to be all that similar. She was all animal instinct and toned, predatory lizard-brain while he liked to think of himself as the old-souled, ever smiling kid from the badlands who had wanted to be a healer but wound up a killer in training through a supreme twist of fate, but he had the personal experience to understand empathetically that she was trying because she was curious though scared, proud despite being intimidated, and above it all desperate for something more. It must have been confusing here, he’d seen others from outside of the Empire’s sphere come into the villages and camps of the Wastes, had known the look of someone who hadn’t realized the world was larger than the handful of faces and places that they had known their entire life. Most rejected the overwhelming number of people and places and returned to what they had left. She had no choice but to learn something new, so she gave it her all.

Aighrit hadn’t expected to be taken by a full on tackle, but he welcomed the change in pace. She had dropped her weapon, he had not, and it left him with a number of options. His opponent had closed with him at too tight a distance for him to dodge effectively, too close for him to easily reposition his blade into her open belly from her lower leg or move off the line after having just planted to her side to launch his strike, a strike which she had dealt with better than he would have thought a newcomer usually would have. He could have dropped the blade and attempted to use his left hand to lift at her right leg and his right hand to push hard on her left shoulder, which would likely have sent her into a spiral and snowballed collapse to his left, but thought better of attempting it. She would have to go through him if he did knock her off balance, and from here his chances of stopping her in her tracks entirely were poor at best, still recovering from his swing and being newly planted in his current position as he was. Better instead he figured to let her have her way, at least to an extent.

She hit him head on and ferociously hard, and the two went rolling into the sand with his back landing first. Aighrit was not an inexperienced fighter, however, and he controlled himself well during the fall for a student. On the sand entering a grapple was a common state of affairs, and he was certain that he would have had more practice at ground fighting then she was like to have had. Still she had hit too fast and too hard, from too close a distance for him to attempt to flip their position in the air, and getting landed on and skidded across the sand on bare skin was a painful experience. He wouldn’t stop fighting just because of a little pain, however. While still in the air Aighrit had tucked his chin close to his clavicle to protect the back of his head from being the initial point of contact with the solid earth below, and yanked upward with his legs, hips and groin, aiming to get his thighs around her waist and his legs locked at the knees and ankles, right knee below his left knee and right ankle over his left ankle to create the maximum amount of pressure and the strongest grip on her as he could before hitting the sand.

Unless Rags managed to struggle out of the lock before they hit the sand she would likely be too late once upon the body of her opponent on the ground. He would have enough leverage over her, and enough of a size and mechanical strength advantage to keep her from being able to get her knees onto his body, a position he was more than happy with. If caught in the guard she would have all the arm length she would need to launch blows with her hands toward his face, but too little to get her mouth anywhere near his face, something you learned to make sure of if you wanted to keep your ears or nose clear of an opponent’s teeth. The blows he could deal with. He wasn’t strong enough to thrust himself up with his arms and reverse the girl’s position, and didn’t even attempt to. Being on your back wasn’t the same thing for a trained fighter as it seemed to the inexperienced, or at least inexperienced in this form of combat, average wastelander. They were generally more used to lobbing crude projectiles and closing on the opponent after softening them and their ranks to employ heavy stone clubs or old world junk weapons meant more as a finisher than a proper weapon for melee combat.

Simply being on the ground was not the same thing as a pin. From here he could keep her from getting her knees on his shoulders, and still had full use of his own arms, the left of which was still gripping his practice blade. He would smile up at her regardless of whether or not the she had struggled out of his guard in the air, or whether her waist was now being gripped tightly with his thighs locked in place at his knees and ankles. He’d have been smiling even if she’d passed his guard, drawn a secondary weapon and thudded it down on his head. It wasn’t meant to be facetious or mocking and his eyes didn’t betray any ill intent behind the gesture. This was simply the way of life here, two potential future friends having a bout on the sand. It wasn’t necessarily fun, he didn’t enjoy fighting, but it was life. It was living, breathing movement through time and space, above ground and with a still mostly hot meal, and a reasonably comfortable bed of animal skins and old world extension cords formed into a makeshift hammock to look forward to, and he even had reasonable company. Why let his distaste toward fighting ruin an otherwise happy, healthy day.

Aighrit would simply wait a moment for her to launch a blow and, assuming she was still going through with her earlier plan and punching toward his shoulders despite the guard, he would use his left arm to lash out at her right bicep if a blow was thrown from that hand in an effort to hit the nerve cluster located on the spot and deaden the attack mid swing or at least soften the impact upon his body, and if a blow was thrown with her left hand he would use his right hand to grab her arm after she made contact, and would attempt to keep it straight while he shot his left arm, blade in hand, between her ribs and underarm and her extended arm, before violently twisting to his left side at an angle that, should it be successful, would overextend her arm from the rotator cuff of her shoulder with enough force to cause her significant pain. He wouldn’t roll over on top of the arm if he caught it in a lock, he didn’t want to dislocate her shoulder, but he would steadily turn further to his left inch by inch in an effort to get her screaming and thrashing about on top of him, her subconscious desperate to end the pain and save the arm.

It would be the least damaging way to make it clear that she needed to be let go, have the Doctora call it and stand the pair back up and set them to their blades upon their feet once again, at least in Aighrit’s thinking and assuming he managed to achieve the lock whatsoever. These were the few moments his smile did not shine through, when he had an opponent in a disadvantaged position and was actively twisting or tearing away at them. He wouldn’t hurt her, not really, whether he had achieved the lock or not. It wasn’t about his fear of causing permanent or at least long lasting injury to others that concerned him, he had enough self control and enough skill to know how much pressure he could put into a blow, twist, lock or whatever else before causing actual damage. It was one of the first things impressed upon the students here, cause as little actual damage to your fellow camp mate as possible, they’re too much of an investment to risk making ineligible for future paid bouts on the sands of the arena. It was the knowledge that one day he would be expected to do this for real, and that on that day he would have to roll over onto the arm if he had caught and locked it, shove it out of place and then run his blade through their spine as they twisted on the ground in agony. He shuddered, disturbed at the thought, though it was unlikely any would notice it as anything more than a spasm caused by fighting for every inch toward twisting Rag’s arm out of place.

When Aighrit first locked his legs around her, Rags ignored it as she brought her foe successfully to the floor and threw both her balled-together fists at his shoulder. She was puzzled why he was smiling now. Rags' own face was still a mask of grim concentration as it was only now starting to dawn on her that she'd fallen into a trap. His legs were around her, and she couldn't escape now. She had to fight where she was. It got worse. Committed to her attack, her opponent struck her right arm, weakening her blow, though when it landed on her shoulder, driven by her left, it still impacted quite hard. Rags was deceptively strong for so small a girl. Right after she made the blow, but before she could take her fists away, he grabbed her left wrist.

Luckily she managed to withdraw her right in time but it was still a little slow and dead from the earlier blow, but that didn't help her when he got his other arm under hers and then pulled her arm. The pain was immense and she did indeed start yelling and howling. Unfortunately for the boy, doing this made her desperate, and in her desperation she forgot what was happening, where she was and even who she was fighting. The only though in her head was to end the pain. So she began thrashing, and it proved harder than Aighrit would have thought to keep a grip on her. It was lucky for him that she gave up when she learned that struggling just makes the pain worse. So her thoughts turned to a new direction; getting Aighrit to let go. She grabbed at her foe's sword arm with her free right hand, pulled herself towards it and opened her mouth, moving with intent to bite his arm, and if there's one thing you didn't want to happen in a fight with a savage, it was get bitten. Some of them were even cannibals!

Aighrit hated this part. The hurting part. He didn’t want to hurt the girl, but he would. Her blow struck, and harder then he would have thought from a newcomer. She had known combat before, had hit with intent to harm before. He didn’t doubt her strength, or her desire to prove herself to the camp. It was the only way she could see a path forward to food, home and companionship, or so he assumed. It didn’t change that he had been chosen and by her as an introduction to her new way of life, should she stick around after the fight. He couldn’t know whether or not she would, but he wouldn’t blame her either way. What he did know was that if she could hit with that much ferocity, and despite his guard and his having checked her blow at least in part at the shoulder then he did not want to find out what she could do with those teeth, currently taking aim at his own bicep. Her plan would work, he wouldn’t roll over onto her shoulder and risk causing a dislocation to stop her teeth and he wouldn’t hold the lock and risk her ripping his bicep clean from his arm and into her jaws.

Would she actually be able to chew through his arm? Of course not. Humans don’t have the jaw strength nor the capacity to choke through that much blood and viscera in time to continue their onslaught upon the rest of the limb. But would she be able to take a chunk out of his arm large enough to land him in the camp physician’s quarters for weeks while she trained along with his camp mates and he lounged around in recovery accomplishing nothing? She absolutely could, and it was good that she would target him in this manner, he knew the Doctora would appreciate it which at the end of the day was what this contest was really all about. It forced him to make a decision, to react and improvise. Either violate the law of the camp by causing her real physical damage, or get out of this without giving his opponent the leverage she needed to get her knees around his shoulders and pummel his face into a battered pool of gooey pink waste.

As her right arm made contact with his left he would lean into her grab and twist away from the direction of his lock, which she would almost certainly allow whether she was consciously aware of this or not. Unless she had supreme body control it would be almost unthinkable that she could will her body to turn further into his grip, as it’s natural reaction is to turn away and out of whatever predicament had found her shoulder and, to the body’s natural understanding, her entire arm to be put into harm’s way. As he twisted away opposite his lock he would also tuck at the arm, crossing his forearm over his bicep and turning at the left shoulder and neck upwards and from his right to his left, her left towards her right as her body was parallel to his, in an attempt to send his left elbow crashing into her forehead with all the force he could muster from his position on his back. When the opponent is shooting their own head, supported by a gripped hand, toward their opponent’s bicep, whose space in time was now occupied by an elbow on a crash course with the opposing force, this was actually quite a degree of force despite the inability to fully work his hips into the strike, being on his back.

He was aiming for her forehead on purpose, of course. He could have tucked and spun at a lower angle, gearing for her teeth or her neck if he was intending on causing a maximum amount of damage. Hitting her forehead at this angle would be as likely to hurt his arm as it would be to hurt her forehead, the thickest part of the skeleton he could have struck from this angle. It would also be the only place he could hit without risking breaking her teeth or collapsing her windpipe, neither of which were acceptable options to him. A broken nose would heal, though to be straightened for aesthetic purposes would require a second painful break done by a physician. His own had been broken on three separate occasions, none of which had been pleasant experiences, but teeth and windpipes could not be replaced. Besides, he’d been knocked about the jaw several times and though he had yet to have lost a tooth on the sand it was a terrible pain for weeks after a good hit to eat, chew, swallow, and she’d be eating an already extremely uncomfortable amount of food over the next few weeks. Exacerbating the unease of suddenly being expected to eat three times the average ration of a working adult would be just as devastating as dislocating a shoulder to her upcoming training regimen.

Whether or not he managed to connect with his elbow to her forehead he would have in that moment steadily, sneakily released his lock at the ankle and knee between the two legs behind her, hoping that if he had connected it would be enough of a distraction to keep her from noticing. If he did connect Aighrit would then attempt to loop his left leg around her waist and quickly around it to the opposite side of her body, using his right hand which had previously been holding her in the abandoned lock to get as good a grip on her left side as he could, her having bent at the waist to attempt to bite his left shoulder having put her waist and lower ribs well into the possible gripping range of his right arm looped around her back. Should he be allowed to get his grip on her right side with his right hand and get his left leg around her waist and to his own right side he would then use this position to move his torso, with the leverage of his right hand on her torso and his right and still mostly in place though no longer locked in place leg, towards her back in a half sitting up, half skidding along the sand with his lower back and backside motion, ending if allowed to sitting up behind her, his right leg now planted to her right side and his left leg along her left side, with his right arm still gripping at her right side and his left arm, blade still in hand, being relegated to crossing the blade at the flat side awkwardly across her chest and angled diagonally towards her right shoulder.

From this point, if so allowed, he would raise his right arm with the inside of his elbow placed at her underarm and his right hand gripping her right shoulder, his left arm moving upwards with the blade in tow to place the outside flat of his left elbow at her left underarm with what would have been the sharp side of his blade were it not a dull practice sword held across her left shoulder at the tip and angled down diagonally low and left to the hilt still held in his left hand should he not have lost it during the time in between. There would be no pressure, no strike, no lock from this position. She could even attempt to stand up and lift him as though he were a backpack even if he managed to get this far before she intervened. It was meant for only one purpose should it be successful whatsoever. To show that from here he would be able to slash her throat open. Of course he could be reacted to at any point in between sending the elbow and attempting to change guard and take her back. She could avoid the elbow or, far more likely, simply take the elbow and notice his left leg crossing her waist. She would notice, of that he had no doubt, the question merely being if she would notice in time after taking an elbow to the forehead, if she had taken the elbow to the forehead whatsoever, to do anything meaningful about it.

Even after this point, should he have managed to get his grip on her right side with his right hand, either at her waist or her lower ribs depending on if she had shot back and to an upright position after taking the elbow at which point her waist would be most practical or remained low to his body in an attempt to continue biting at the soon to be leaving left arm through the elbow in which case he could more easily manage the lower ribs and had successfully moved his left leg to her right side in preparation to change his position she could throw her own legs back and around to his right and far side, lying atop his right arm and both of his legs entirely and attempting to pin them beneath the weight of her lower body and forcing him to react with just his left arm which would still be within range of her head and both of her arms at that point, although she would lose the advantage of leverage.

Lying on top of an opponent’s legs and arm from that angle would likely mean he could simply get to his knees and throw her off of himself, as she would have no real ability to hold that side of his body down except with her own body weight and that being half spread across his legs, half of his torso and an arm with her having only the two unsupported legs and half of her body itself smaller than his own to hold him, while he would then have a blade directly in her face, albeit one that she had two arms and teeth to wrestle with. This however would be assuming that the elbow had hit whatsoever, and though he had every belief that it likely would as she was lunging for that arm with her head and her grip on the arm was pulling in the direction of her face, something he was putting force into, if it did happen to miss then he wouldn’t have time to change his initial plan, and the chances of her stopping him and taking an advantage would be highest. Still, without risk there was no chance at reward, and Aighrit had to simply trust in his own skill at grappling over his opponent’s.

Rags turned her head instinctively to protect her face from the incoming elbow, but this just meant it hit the side of her head and dazed her more than if it had hit her forehead like intended. Naturally, because if this, she didn't notice any of what he was doing with the rest of his body. Before she'd recovered from the blow, She found that her opponent was now behind her, and was trying to press his blade to her throat. Rags let out a snarl, and did something she realised she was going to have to do to win this; think. With both hands, she grabbed either side of Aighrit's skirt, ripping handfuls off, and, with something to protect her hands from what she was about to do, grabbed at the sword and started to push it away from her. As she was doing this, she struggled to raise her torso, bringing Aighrit with her, then bent her legs and placed her feet flat on the floor. Gritting her teeth, Rags push off the ground. With a tremendous effort and show of leg and core strength, she was now standing.

The savage girl then located her sword, escaped the sword, and dived for her own, picking it up and getting back to her feet quickly. She faced her opponent. Now it was her turn to smile as she rushed him this time, swinging her sword down diagonally left like a club. Though she had no form or skill with a blade, she was used to swinging heavier things, so her attack was very swift and had power behind it.

A crash, a rip, a tear, and Aighrit was all smiles once more. This was good. Rags could fight, and here that was what bought and paid for your meat. The possibly unintended side effect of tearing at his skirts, a tactic which uniquely avoided the normally heavily defensible snakeskin and bronze plated material which under normal circumstances could hold up well even under the stress of taking an incoming blow but which had no practical defense against ripping or tearing and in that effect was little more than a strip of leather worn hanging from a skirt for decorative purposes, was that it placed her head and his at a conflicting angle. Whether or not she had even realized the back of her skull had connected with Aighrit’s nose as she tore, her body naturally seeking out a counterbalance to her upward momentum as she tugged and having found it in the flesh of his face, and hard. He did not resist as she stood, not because he wouldn’t have but because the suddenness and violence of the potentially accidental strike had taken him completely off guard. By the time he was reacting she had already stood and moved with haste toward her blade, having cleared enough distance that he couldn’t strike her in the back.

He could have attempted to run her down, of course, but he didn’t. Should he take her by surprise he could have put the weight of his practice blade to the side of her head and landed her on the ground, but if she turned and struck first, something that was entirely within the realm of reason as he assumed she would want to face him and strike as soon as she could to keep up her momentum she could in turn do the same to him. It seemed a largely unreasonable gamble to the cautious youth. Blood was running down his chin, and around his mouth from the nose above. Still he smiled and waited the second for the girl to turn and run toward him. It hadn’t actually been necessary to use the leather strips which comprised his skirt to grip his blade, it was a blunt practice sword which could be gripped hard as one might without risking even so much as a papercut, but it showed thought, intelligence. Maybe he would grow to like this thoughtful fighter. For now he would merely do his duty and continue the fight until one or the other was on the ground. He may be bleeding, his nose might even be broken, but it wouldn’t be enough to finish the fight in the eyes of the Doctora.

Blade gripped in his left hand Aighrit made no move to stop the girl as she charged him swinging. He too was a thinker, and in this the art of the blade dance upon the sand he had more understanding than she. She would learn if she so chose, and might well grow to be an incredible force in the camp if she showed as much growth as she showed thought and gumption, but for now he would stick to what he knew. As she swung diagonally and downwards from her right, his left, he stepped backwards and to the left with his right foot, his body now facing her right side, raising his blade at a left diagonal angle relative to his position, the angle being to her right and upwards gliding along her own blade, and simultaneously stuck out his own left leg. Not enough to comically cause both of her legs to fly up into the air and send her into summersaults even if she didn’t react to it whatsoever, but enough to cause her to lose balance if she didn’t move around it and possibly enough to cause her to misjudge her footing and wind up on her right knee with her left leg lunged forward in front of and to his right.

As his leg extended he would make a downward, looping slash at what would either be her back at her waist level or, if she did indeed wind up on one knee, the back of her head with the practice sword in his left hand. If she avoided the leg entirely she could of course just keep on with her forward charge now aimed toward thin air and miss his attempted slash entirely. He had struck before he would consciously know what would happen to her if anything from his extended leg, and couldn’t know for sure that he would hit anything. It didn’t matter. If she legitimately kept running despite his having moved from her direct path it would just look like he had swiped at thin air for some reason. Even if she dodged the leg, stopped running, and turned to strike it would put his blade in her direction and able to be adjusted to block or hit another target so long as her angle didn’t change markedly, and he didn’t expect her to fall entirely especially without sliding along the sand and well out of range to strike him, or to jump and strike while swinging backwards as she charged though if she did that it would be pretty impressive.

Dramatic changes in angle were unlikely in this case, and it was more important here that his blade remained in a relative position to be useful in the ongoing fight regardless of whether it hit or not. This was no longer going to be a measure of quick finishes on the ground, but a protracted bout of skill at blade and sharpness of wit. She had the advantage of proactivity for the moment, though his block, attempted trip and slash might well force her into the defensive posture of having to react to what he was doing, but he had the advantage of a presumably far greater amount of moons of training with the blade and at the particular form of fencing common to the pit fighters of the arena. Even those with significant training at other fighting arts often found the change to facing an opponent on the sands to be a difficult one to adapt to. Here it was rarely a battle of quick deaths delivered by a particularly devastating parry and riposte on the part of a superior duelist, but the long, protracted contest of death by a thousand painful bruises. She had smashed his nose to a bleeding if not a broken state, he had elbowed her in the face. They would continue to inflict minor pains upon one another until one simply could stand no longer. This was the way of things at Australos.

Rags was actually surprised when she saw Aighrit's face. Did she do that? Now she thought about it, she did remember feeling something hit the back of her head when she pulled the scraps of skirt. She gave a sheepish smile almost as a form of apology right before she rushed him. The grim expression she'd worn throughout the battle had returned by the time she reached him. She didn't think she'd beat him in a match of sword skill but she had the strength and relaxes to stand a better chance at sword's length than close and grabbing each other. The last minute had proved she would be at a far greater disadvantage if so skilled an opponent could lock in more holds.

He moved swiftly and artfully to her right side and his sword caught her sword's blade. This time she knew he was in the habit of doing two things at once and was looking out for the other thing. She found it in the form of her opponent making a kick at her leg. She kicked her own leg away and used that momentum to twirl, using her grounded leg as a pivot. Mid-twirl she realised she could use this move to her advantage and, without having been taught to do so in her life, used the twirl to put power into her sword, and as she faced Aighrit again, swung her sword horizontally at his midsection with force. As their swords clashed, she realised the downside to this manoeuvre was that while her back was turned, she couldn't see what her opponent was doing. It was both a blessing and a curse that they both attacked at waist level, therefore neither were hit.

Rags pushed off from his blade to gain some distance, then held her sword in one hand and crouched, the free hand raised in midair looking ready to grab. She would let him make a move again, but this time she was wiser. She knew more about how he fought, and would not get disarmed or caught on the ground again.

Aighrit could have made a move while she was twirling, it took longer to turn your entire body around on its axis than to step forward with a leg placed in between an opponent’s to interrupt their circular movement, but he didn’t. His strike was already in the air, and she would be returning with her own. His would hit first if she had moved too far from her center of mass with her arm, and would hit at the same time if she kept the blade at waist level which, as it soon became apparent as the clash of their blades resounded across the courtyard, it had been the second option. As she stepped back and into a crouched position with her blade raised he attempted to catch her eye, smiling all the while. It showed that she had the ability to adapt to changing conditions which was critical on the sands, but it also put him into a position where he had to be the aggressor. Being proactive was good on in a fight, especially when taking ground and options from the opponent, but she was now prepared and ready to move as soon as he made his own attempt at putting his blade upon her.

He would still need to make a move regardless of his thoughts as to her position and her capacity to learn on her feet, and so he did, though it was unlikely she would have expected the exact nature this attempt would take. She would likely be expecting a strike geared at disarming her or at bringing her back to the ground with the off chance of a direct blow toward her body, probably toward her head as she was now crouched. He instead would make an attempt at disrupting her and her plans. He didn’t charge, and should she have wanted to she could have made an attempt to move out of his way or even backpedal in a circular pattern to keep him at a distance, at least for a while. Regardless of if she did, assuming she was still holding her blade in one hand and keeping her other hand up in an attempt to guard he would simply wait until he was within striking range, taking care never to get so close as to allow her to dart out unexpectedly with her blade and take him in mid-step or to have no room to maneuver and no time to block if she lunged and struck at him.

As soon as he was within a step of striking range and assuming she made no move to change tack and slash or charge toward him, he would half step forward and stand with his left leg just slightly in front of his right leg and thrust low toward her leg before slowing to a near stop midway and instead turning at his left hip and shoulder upwards, sending his blade in a looping arc to her raised hand held to attempt to grab at him, a relatively speaking slow strike but one he expected she would either be led to think was actually a thrust towards her legs and which she might respond to with a block toward that direction leaving her opposite off hand and arm open to his strike and her blade moving in the wrong direction to stop it, or which in the worst case scenario might elicit her to simply move forward and into her own strike which would still leave his blade in between himself and her unless she managed to fancily dart around him and toward his right, her left. In case of this he had not lunged or even more than half stepped into his strike, keeping his right leg open to either backpedal, sidestep or even kick or knee forwards if necessary.

Should the strike land or at least swing through thin air and assuming he didn’t need to backpedal he would once more slow in the air before bending at the shoulder and hip in the opposite to his original direction and downwards, sending the real blow hurtling down and toward either her still exposed hand, her sword hand or her clavicle depending on how she moved to intercept his first strike or if she had moved at all. This, because she was crouched, never caused him to have to move his arm at any point above her height level which had she been standing would have left him uncomfortably exposed in the lower body and underarm to a potential thrust from her direction, still allowing the blade to float at least at her shoulder and head level at its highest point before being brought back down upon her, allowing him the option of using it to instead be placed point towards her body assuming she did charge while he backpedaled or sidestepped, leaving him the most options and taking advantage of the maximum amount of potential openings as well as putting together a brutal series of blows whose angles would be difficult to predict, his own right and off hand held open and at a reserved place a few inches in front of and to the side of his head.

Aighrit was a student, but he was no beginner. He knew enough to know that placing the most obstacles in the opponent’s way while striking at and weakening if not outright taking one’s opponent’s tools away from them was the path to victory in an extended bout. Quick kills were rare on the sands and weren’t possible in a training bout with practice swords, and the tactics and discipline which reigned supreme on the battlefields of the war fighters held little and less viability when alone and staring down an opponent who knew where you were before the fight had commenced and whom knew that no reinforcements, no fire support in the form of peltasts, and no shield walls or palisades would be found. If she reacted to the first feint she would be likely to be caught by the second, and if she caught the feint in time to react to the second blow it was still unlikely to expect the third. Low and straight, upwards and looping, downwards and slashing, changes in angle all in a matter of moments was not something that was easily understood without years of practice, he himself having only gotten it after the first year of being caught by the same type of techniques. Rags could of course have ran toward him, lunged and thrust before he did or forced him to change his plans in any other way, but this was why he would wait until he was in the range he wanted to be to attempt any of this, and left himself the distance and the time which comes with it to be able to react to her movements if she did anything which would necessitate a change on his part.

Rags watched as her for got closer and closer, but the savage never moved. She knew that he was still too far to hit, and if she undershot and missed, she'd be leaving herself open, even though she'd never heard the words 'leaving herself open' together before. She had learned a lot from this fight, including the knowledge that Aighrit, and possibly everybody else, often did two attacks at once. So this time, when he thrust at her leg, she moved her blade down to meet it and block the attack. That's when his sword, with a fast, minute movement, changed direction. But this time, she had been expecting something else to happen, and her had was kept free just for that eventuality, as when she swung with both hands she had more power but only one mean of both attack and defense. As the sword swung towards her unguarded side, she leaned in close to her sword and at the same time raised her free hand and twisted her arm so that the fairly underpowered swing would connect with her arm, which it did. It hurt, but it didn't take her arm out. That was when she grinned, this time a confident smile of a hunter who's just caught a rabbit.

Her hand moved down as the blade moved up, and she twisted her arm back around so that her grabbing hand was facing her foe. When the moment was right, it shot out like a snake and made a grab at Aighrit's wrist. If it managed to get a secure hold, then she would bring her sword back up, at attempt to jab his chest with the intent to wind him. If it failed to get a secure hold, and didn't change his own plans, then his sword would be coming right for her head and her arm snapped back to rest horizontally over her head. Taking two hard hits in so short her succession might hurt her arm, however, but this was a risk she was willing to take, as she'd learned from her foe and would now give him a taste of his own medicine. While her arm was moving to protect her head, she pointed her sword up at his chest and jabbed, with the intent to wind him.