Navia woke up from her dream with a wet face from her tears. “From a bad memory… To a bad place…” Whispered Navia, taking a look at her empty cell with only a straw bed on which she was lying. The place was frigid, but she ignored that fact. In her dream, she was in a much colder place.
She covered her face with her knees and arms wrapped around them. “I miss my parents, my master, my husband… All of them…” Navia let out one last tear before calming down. Taking a deep breath, she recalled her last fight. Moving her left arm, she felt a little stinging pain, but her skin already recovered, as well as her whole foot. Moving her left arm and hand felt a bit uncomfortable, but it was better than having the bone stick out of her arm.
“... I killed… I killed a man. He was forced to fight me… And yet…” Navia’s whispers of disbelief ended with a scream of pain she felt inside. Waking up everyone who was asleep, startling the man that was in the cell in front of her. Taking deep breaths, she blamed the voice. “I swore to protect people… I killed someone… The voice. The voice made me do it. I wanted to win, not kill him, you stupid voice!” Navia shouted, punching the floor until she noticed that the blood was drawn from them.
“Getting insane after the first day?” The man from the other cell asked, pitifully looking at mentally broken Navia.
“After one day? I think it started after the fall of Brimwon… I thought I had died, yet I lived. Saw the aftermath, what was left of my husband, slowly recalling my past and my death. I saw a bit of hope, but it was smashed into bits, leaving me only with a small crumb that I also lost…” Navia explained, with every word getting closer to another breakdown.
“Lost? Forever or for the time being?” The man asked, getting closer to the doors of his cell. Gently placing one hand against the iron bar.
“I don’t know… It was a little girl. She was sold to another family… Markiz family…” Navia answered, panicking inside as she thought about the girl being closed with that lunatic in one room.
“So you don’t know if she is dead or alive. There is an equal chance for both, which can give you a bit of hope. A reason to escape… But I am sure that you have more reasons to live.” The man tried his best to lift up Navia’s spirit. Navia first thought that he just wanted to rest calmly, but looking into his eyes, she couldn’t exactly read them, so his reason was much more complicated than what she initially thought.
“Were you some kind of philosopher before being locked up in here?” Navia asked with a light chuckle, feeling a bit better after hearing the man’s words.
“Some would call me that. Some would call me a teacher, or a wise one…” The man’s answer was broad, but it was enough for Navia to understand that this man possessed knowledge that couldn’t be classified into one category.
“All right… If I want to escape, I have to get stronger. Since I slept already… I’ll have to train my body.” Navia quickly stood up and began doing push-ups. The man in the other cell watched her and occasionally gave her hints on how to train properly. Watching her training very closely, like a personal trainer.
Even after constant training without any stops for two hours, Navia barely felt tired, but she thought that her body just didn’t want to tell her that. Being cautious, Navia stopped her training and began meditating. As she opened her mind, she was standing in a sea of fog with a door stuck in the earth in front of her.
“I barely dig four inches down… The ground is getting harder and harder the deeper I get… Now it's almost as if I am scratching a stone with my bare fingers…” Navia complained, yet she went to her knees and continued digging the door out. With the scratch of her fingers, only a speck of dust was scraped off the floor. Even without seeing much progress, she didn’t stop, it was the only way to get stronger for her.
An hour passed, and it didn’t change; two hours passed, and the results seemed the same. After four hours of hard work, the hole got deeper by only a fraction of an inch. Most people would think it was futile work, but Navia was patient and had time even when the progress was barely visible.
“It is better than nothing… Those few inches gave me the ability to create a small bit of armor and a bigger weapon… It’s worth it. It’s worth it.” Navia repeated to encourage herself to continue her work.
After seven hours of work, she stopped digging and stopped meditating. When she woke up, she noticed that the man in the cell in front of her was missing. “Was he sent to the pit for a fight?”
Navia continued her workout for an hour, remembering the bits of advice given by a fellow slave. She stopped as she felt someone watching her train. In the doorway stood Godan with a lite smile. “I see you’re warmed up for another fight. Wounds healed after a day of sleep… Good. Seeing as you killed the second best fighter-”
“Where is the man from the cell in front of mine?” Navia cut in with a short and sharp question. Not wanting to listen about her previous fight.
Godan frowned in confusion. “What man?”
Navia pointed the finger beside Godan’s head. “In the cell behind you. A man with brown hair to his shoulders, well built, trains for most of the time.”
Godan turned around for a second and back at Navia. “You went crazy after entering the pit, or were you the same before coming here?” Asked Godan, trying to joke about her sanity, but he was still confused by her question. “This cell had been empty for a month… There was a man like that in there, but he died in a fight against Grizzly.”
They both simply looked at each other in disbelief of what the other had said until Godan broke the silence. “Okay. Enough of these creepy stares and stories. You have another fight. Come on.” Said Godan as he slowly moved out of the cell. Navia followed behind him.
“Am I strong enough to face him yet?” Navia observed the man in front of her trying to gauge the difference in power between them. “No… He is far above me… That I am sure of even without experiencing his full blow. He might even be as strong as that creature…” Looking at Godan, she could see the skeleton creature much taller than him with a harpoon in its hand, even longer than Godan’s longsword.
Waiting at the arena was Navia’s current opponent. The man looked as if just taken from a street with an axe and wooden shield made of planks. He was shaking as he waited for his opponent, imagining a buffed man with a sword in hand. Once Navia entered the arena, his fear vanished.
“It’s… It's just a woman. Ha! I can handle her no problem. Hope it won’t turn out too brutal… Sorry lady. I’m just trying to survive.” The man thought as he raised his shield and ax, a sign of being ready for a battle.
Navia took a wide fighting stance, ready to dash forward and begin the battle. The man was surprised that she didn’t seem scared of a fight, but he admired her courage. One more thing confused him, and he had to ask, “Aren’t you going to pick up a weapon?”
“Don’t need one.” Navia answered, a bit furious as she could read the man’s thoughts without even seeing them.
“Suit yourself… I am not abandoning mine…” As the man’s voice trailed off, he wanted to move forward and begin his attack, but Navia was much quicker. Appearing right in front of him with her fist near her head. “What the-” Blood from her hand turned into a gauntlet, and with it, she punched the shield, breaking it apart. The man’s words were stuck in his mouth as he watched his protection being broken into pieces.
Terrified and confused, he swung his axe down. The second gauntlet appeared in Navia’s left hand as she stopped the axe by grabbing its blade. With one swift move, she threw the weapon away, and in one motion, she kicked her opponent in the chin. The man fell to the ground unconscious after one hit.
“That’s one way to welcome someone into the arena…” Whispered a man from the crowd above, sympathizing with the man that had fallen in seconds.
Navia then fought four more men, and each fight ended quickly, with barely any attacks coming from Navia’s opponents. The crowd slowly got bored after seeing quick one-sided fights without any bloodshed as Navia refused to kill any of them.
As she took care of her fifth opponent, Godan entered the arena and shouted as he looked up, “Getting bored? Let me spoil you, Navia’s next fight. Tomorrow you’ll see her fighting the champion of the arena! She will be fighting ME!”