Fiend's Fourth Hurdle

The air reeked of blood and wet iron.

Garrik stood at the edge of the sand, the roar of the crowd already muffled in his ears while his thoughts remained elsewhere. They were not here yet, not focused on the wiry, small man across the field who barely held the hilt of his little sword. Instead, Garrik was remembering the day he earned the weapon strapped to his back.

A knight clad in steel, a mountain of polished pride, had cried as his claymore slipped from limp fingers. Garrik did not recall the face, only the final scream and the way the armor crumpled beneath the blow. That sword likely had a name, as they all did.

That memory stretched back a long time, to when he was still fresh.

He recalled the first days as a slave, when the whip cracked sharply, something he had never liked.

So he chopped off the slaver's head.

The strong live. The weak die.

That was all there was.

But one strong man meant nothing against a dozen armed with steel. They had come like hounds, pinned him down like prey, and brought him here in shackles. That was the price paid, as it always was.

The strong are free. The weak are slave.

He remembered his first fight with Brusk in the chamber. Brusk was bigger, just enough to make the difference. Garrik tasted a miserable defeat that day, and Brusk had laughed.

In the end, the strong win and the weak lose.

Now Garrik stood again, sword in hand, feet sinking slightly into the sand that had soaked up blood from earlier matches.

Across from him stood a man fragile, sharp-eyed, trembling beneath his skin. He had claimed thirty lives, all stolen with the toothpick he held in shaking fingers.

Garrik's kill count was fifty.

Their steps closed the distance slowly, a silent ceremony of killers about to test the truth.

The man darted left, then right, rolling and circling, using feints and bait.

The strong attack. The weak run.

The man danced like a ghost, but ghosts do not bleed. His blade darted, searching for gaps but finding none. Garrik did not swing immediately; he waited, measured, not out of mercy or arrogance, but simply because he was tired of the circling.

Then, with a shift of weight and a deliberate breath, Garrik lunged forward quickly, fast like an avalanche when it knew its path. The claymore swung low and caught the edge of the man's blade.

Steel met steel as the man's sword flew up, end over end, into the sand, ringing as it landed.

The man's eyes widened and his throat twitched as he took a step back.

Garrik saw the fear and the hope within him.

Hope always lingered in the weak.

The strong decide the fate. The weak entitled only to hope.

The man tried to speak, perhaps to plead or scream, but Garrik did not wait to find out.

The weak beg for time, but the strong do not wait.

He moved in a single fluid arc, the claymore singing as it carved through air, muscle, and bone.

The man's head rolled.

The weak die. The strong decide how.

The crowd erupted as roars and cheers rained down like arrows, some in joy, others in loss. Their bets had lived or died in that moment as well, but none of it mattered.

Garrik looked down at his weapon.

Fifty-one. The blade had served him well.

But something else called to him now.

There, in the center of the arena, half buried in sand like the bones of a fallen god, lay the blade.

The claymore of the blind commander had been left behind after his defeat to the cannibal boy, the one who devoured men and vanished for three days. It had lain there untouched for days. Many had tried to lift it, but none succeeded.

It was bent, its tip curled slightly upward, warped from some unspeakable clash. Golden engravings snaked across the flat of the blade, symbols foreign to this land, etched with an artistry no slave could afford and no beast could earn. Curves and lines whispered secrets in a language too beautiful for the bloodied sand.

No one had lifted it before, and no one could.

Until now.

Garrik dropped his old weapon just like that.

The claymore that had fed on countless souls was discarded.

The blade thrown away did not call back to its master, and the master had no intention of using it again.

It clattered to the sand without ceremony, like bones tossed to dogs.

He approached the fallen titan of a sword, its weight seeming to hum in the ground even while still. The hilt was dark and smooth, the guard shaped like wings reaching downward.

Garrik crouched and took it in both hands.

It was heavy, not just in steel, but in age, purpose, memory, and a power that did not belong here, not in this filth of sweat and screams.

It wept in the sand.

The moment it left the earth, the crowd hushed.

It rose slowly and reluctantly, as if it remembered being wielded by gods and resented being handled by a brute. The weight made Garrik's muscles burn, but he stood straight.

He lifted the blade toward the sky, light catching its edge and curving down into his face where sweat mingled with the grin creeping across his lips.

The blade's mirror surface reflected back his twisted face, broken nose, scarred lips, and body, grotesque and proud. There he was, a monster, a thing of muscle and meat.

A strange feeling stirred within him, as if he had stolen something divine, as if the heavens had once bestowed this gift and then cast it aside.

Now he had plundered it.

The weak are thrown away. The strong are picked up.

His grin remained, but something hollow spread inside his chest. It ached, deep and quiet.

Behind him, in the sand, his old blade lay like a waste forgotten, like the bodies he had carved apart.

A relic of a lesser time.

A grave with no name.