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“Is it true that you have a double digit experience divisor?” Dinharm (ranked Mushroom Worm) asked me one day.

Expecting a conversation about the topic, I admitted that yes, it was true.

He laughed loudly, his arms on his hips in a gesture of dwarven triumph. “It is true! I shall pass you in ranking, and explore tunnels, naming the features after my clan and family, and you will still be here, wallowing in misery, just a classless dud.”

“I still have...” but he was gone.

This is the day when the new ones started gathering experience from their fellow dwarves, and ignoring me outside of combat.

“Are you certain you wouldn’t rather be a pit fighter?” Bitaxes asked one day.

“I prefer my fights without rules, or the expectation of waking up afterward, if I lose.” I said.

“This coming Wrathday, we shall visit the arena.”

.....

This, as it turns out, was a terrible idea. A minotaur wasted no time getting directly into my face and bellowing:

“Behold, lizard! I am Tentamarkus Estruchis, enslaved by the mighty and wise matron Apollonia Germanica!” He snorted out his nostrils for effect.

“I will not be returning to the cooking pits, if that is her question.” I said.

“You will go where your mistress commands you, slave!” he replied.

Bitaxes cleared his throat. “Friend, this is a trainee, a sworn member of the Warrior caste, and thus a dwarf. There will be no enslaving of him on this day.”

“Mind your own business, you stunty pebble!” Tentamarkus told him. Me, he struck across the helmet.

[You have taken 12 points of bludgeoning damage; after armor, no damage has been received.]

“Behold, how he bleeds! Dwarves are rocks, and rocks do not bleed!” he exclaimed.

Thank you, Kismet; there was no bleeding.

I wasn’t sure on the rules, but his face was RIGHT THERE. I struck him back, his eyes going wide with ... excitement. Oh, crap.

“At the convenience of the announcers.” I said.

“Lad.” Bitaxes said, “this doesn’t have to happen now.”

“At least it’s only the one.” I said. “He doesn’t seem much stronger than I am, at least.”

“You will understand soon.” Bitaxes said, taking inventory of his weapons. I don’t know why; the Brass Sergeants kept us all sharpening and cleaning our weapons until they matched the readiness of their own.

It turned out that my fight to resist enslavement was the very next priority of the announcers.

And of course it was; dwarves, even unarmored unarmed dwarves, began entering the arena. “Duhr do not abandon Duhr.” Bitaxes explained. “Distribute your weapons to the others. Especially that chain. It won’t do well to trip yourself during this fight.”

“That only happened the once.” I said, but did as he said. The various weapons of the Tunnel Warden were distributed to Artisans and Templars, and I kept only Heart’s Protector, my curved short sword (which yes, had finally been returned to me by that time).

Half the arena filled with dwarves, the other half with minotaurs. “What in the seven hells is this?” I asked. “Nothing in the laws covers such a fight.”

“Welcome to Othello.” said the dwarf next to me. “I hope you’re moving forward, like the rest of the armored warriors?”

I did so. They wouldn’t let me stand in the front line, and I couldn’t even locate Tentamarkus in the swelling mass of minotaur flesh. The announcers didn’t even call a start to the brawl, it just began. Like breathing, with a life of its own.

It wasn’t quite a dance, but it had rules. Rules I didn’t know, and hoped I wasn’t breaking as I set about myself, seeking areas where the armored plates weren’t.

There was no retreating, no quarter offered or given. The first fatality was one of ours. Two minotaurs grabbed hold of his arms, and pulled, snapping an arm off near the shoulder. I didn’t get the best view of it, as I was pushed back and to the left by a thundering minotaur, clad mostly in mail.

He ended the charge with an upward sweep, intended to fling me into the air. It exposed his chin and neck, which I had learned were not valid targets. It had been a rough-house, not a fight in earnest.

That changed; the dwarven section of the crowd above chanting “Fight, Fight, Fight.” as the weapons came out of inventories, as stances changed.

As the minotaur section of the crowd let out an exultant battle cry of their own. As the minotaurs already in the arena took their own battle stances.

War, if on a smaller scale than most.

The arena only fit so many, but I saw no fighting in the space above. There was no room to wield the truly dangerous weapons, the greatswords and greataxes that featured in so many of the contests of the Ring. What followed was long and bloody and fast.

And it was far from one sided, with reinforcements coming from the ladders above.

A minotaur grabbed at my ankle; I slashed at the back of his wrist. Two minotaurs, one in plate and the other in leather, tried to encircle an unarmored artisan. In turn, they were attacked by three armored dwarves with pikes.

“There you are!” Bellowed Tentamarkus. “This ends, now!”

He lowered his head, and charged not at me, but at a dwarf to my right, clad in armor that looked much like ours, but with a subtle blue-purple (yes, indigo, thank you) tint to it. His side was turned, and he was busy with two opponents of his own, who in turn...

It was a mess, okay? Nobody was fighting just one enemy, and nobody had the full attention of anyone else. This allowed me to position myself for a [Trip] attack. Tentamarkus dodged, but that same dodge broke his momentum and placed him in a different group than he’d intended.

I had no time to spare for him, whirling to take a blow from whatever the three foot cousin of a hand-axe was upon my shield. My metal shield, whose Condition was already low. Still, it remained there, which was more than could be said of wooden shields.

I found myself pushed back into a tree-like leg of one of my opponents; neither of us unaware of the other, but neither having the time to reverse our weapons and stab the other. I pushed off from his ankle, but not strongly enough to inconvenience him.

I did a flip over an attempted ram, only to land directly in the path of another. I was able to grab a horn and keep myself from being trampled, only to find myself free of him, and hurled through the air. I landed on a soft casualty, if slicked wet with crimson. When I took my feet, I had to circle counterclockwise (to the right) to defend a crew trying to remove the fallen from the sands.

My usual style was to take hits on my shield, but this melee was too fractured, too uncertain. I found myself dodging and weaving and having to think ahead of where I was dodging to. At least it was easy to tell friend from foe.

It went on for about half an hour after the announcers began telling us to stop, but it wasn’t until the town guard seized access to the ladders that it truly began to wind down. Most of the fighting was by the edges anyway, at that point; the central ground was too treacherous with bodies and various fragments.

Slowly, the sides broke apart from each other; we the Duhr moved mostly to the side that had originally been the minotaur, and they likewise to ours. The stoic guards came down, minotaur and dwarf standing side by side to keep us apart.

Huffing, bleeding, gladly taking a knee just to keep the world from spinning (yes, concussion), I found no sign of Bitaxes until he grabbed my shoulder and pulled me upright. “Show no weakness.” he told me. “This was a bad one. The young ones have forgotten again.”

“Forgotten what?” I asked.

“Forgotten the war.” Bitaxes said. “It may be twenty or forty years off, yet, but there’s another war coming. Not some small skirmish like this, but proper war. Nasty thing, and we won’t be the ones to start it, but we’ll finish it, mark my words.”

I looked about, sands stained black and red. “What manner of weapons should I expect?”

“It’ll be war, lad. Expect all the weapons. All of them.”

I would learn later that dwarves fought their wars differently. It wasn’t just enough to break the troops; you had to carry the war into the caverns where the enemy lived. For lack of a better word, it was genocide.

A genocide that paused for peace treaties, but still the annihilation of not only warriors, but civilians and children as well.

“I don’t know if I can do that.” I told Bitaxes.

“But you will, Larval Pig.” he told me. “If you want a time of peace long enough for your siblings to grow and start talking, you will.”

Oh, and yes, I missed their first words.