Welcome To Gradingier

As Alph had explained, Gradingier was a volcanic island. The island radiated an adventurous feeling which caused my insides to tingle. The organizers of the brawl did not want any trouble so they checked each and every person who entered. There was only one entry, through a narrow valley between two mountains. Which had dozens of highly armed men posted. Thankfully Adrian had rehearsed us very well in what we were supposed to say.

“Who ra ru!” the guard wearing a round armour, which mysteriously looked like a dustbin to me, bellowed.

“What?”

“Who are you?”, Suhani whispered.

“Bracer, Bracer Phoenix”.

“Why do you do?”

“What?”

“Why are you here?”, Suhani whispered again.

“For the brawl”, I answered.

“Which from?”

“Wha-?”

“Which island?”, Suhani cut me off.

“Movarda”

After five more rounds of horrible english the big guards wearing dustbins let us pass. Brio had to deposit some of his gold to another guard wearing a dustbin. As the valley got narrower the crowd got thicker. We had to squeeze through the smelly, sticky and super sweaty people to get ahead in the que. A towering cemented amphitheatre stood ahead of us, stretching up to the sky, the flag staff at the top didn’t look anything more than a toothpick. The amphitheatre was probably big enough to fit half a dozen colosseums in it. The men in dustbins were spread in front of the gate, scowling at each and every person as if looking for a person who had stolen their nose. One of them stared at me in such a way that I had to touch to make sure my nose was still where it was supposed to be.

The amphitheatre was filled with thousands of men and women who were howling their lungs out. From the inside, the amphitheatre had high walls with only two entry and exit points. A brown stone staircase took us up to the seating area. Alph shivered slightly as we passed a man picking his nose and then licking his finger. People kept rolling in for the next half an hour and then the guards shut the gates. Then, there was silence, the chattering stopped and two and half thousand spectators looked on as a trapdoor on one end of the arena opened and a person walked out. It was difficult to point out the gender as the person had a black inverted pouch over his head with eye slits.

“Fellow competitors”, he said, it was a man alright. And his tone seemed familiar, like a faint memory. He wasn’t blaring but his sound seemed to reach every corner of the stadium where people straightened up to listen attentively, “-before I begin with the general instructions. I would like to introduce you to some people”.

The trapdoor opened again, “these people”, the man spoke, as two dustbin men walked out with three chained men and a women, “-are Atlanteans, who tried to sneak into this competition”, the huge audience first gasped and then howled.

“And I!”, the man continued, “would never allow something like this to happen”.

The audience bellowed as the men in dustbins smacked the woman on her neck, who stumbled to the ground and cried out in pain. I looked at my cabin mates and recognized the look of horror creeping up their faces. “Tell the lady to shut up”, the man spoke, this time in a louder tone. The sobs reduced, and then stopped.

“I would have sent these people back, but my lions are hungry”

The audience shouted, “Ladies and gentlemen the competition begins in exactly one day from now, all competitors shall be provided tents and all other required facilities, just on the other side of the amphitheatre”, the man pointed his fingers to indicate the direction. “As for these people”, he pointed to the prisoners, “what better start to the competition, than a sacrifice at the eve”.

The audience cheered.

The man cleared his throat, “there have been rumours about the final prize haven’t there? Yes, it is true, this time the prize is greater than ever before. Something you wouldn’t even dream of possessing. What is it? You’ll find out soon enough. A prize of such high value deserves a strong owner”, the man roared, “and so the challenge will not just have lions or tigers. This time we are introducing the scariest creature ever in the history of the competition”.

There was a collective grasp.

“Dragons?”, Dream questioned, “anyways we’re cooked man”.

“What do we even have to do here?”, Alph questioned, “we don’t even know where to start”.

“We'll figure something out”, I mumbled, I wasn’t concentrating on the conversation because my mind was already preoccupied, that lady was still sobbing. A shiver passed through my body, I had to do something.

And that man, his voice?

Why was it so familiar?

“What are you doing?”, Suhani asked.

“Thinking”, I replied.

“Miracle! You think?”

“Well”, Alph decided to interrupt, “Bracer is an Atlantean, a species that has the ability to think out facts and plan their course of action for the-”

“Shut up”, Dream groaned, half patting and hitting him on his head.

Suhani stared at Alph, who went through a period of self realization, “Oh”, he exclaimed, “you were being sarcastic, right, right”.

The conversation was interrupted by a loud clang, as the trapdoor opened. A lady walked out, she had dark black hair that almost completely covered her hair. Even though she was a long way out, I could see her eyes and they looked like blackholes. She stood there for a moment and walked towards the masked man.

I noticed Suhani had gone green and seemed to be struggling for words, “Abaddon?”, I mouthed.

She nodded at me.

I turned to look back, but all I saw was the trapdoor closing and the masked man was alone once again.

The rest of them stole glances as Suhani and frowned seeing her starched. The masked man kept rattling out the rules. “Intentional killing is not allowed, because . . . . . . but you can kill by mistake . . . . allowed . . . . .”.

The games were to take place in the amphitheatre itself. Just outside, were tents, hundreds of them spread over the grass, in all directions.

“That’s Zozugi”, Alph pointed at a mountain, away from the rest of the range. It was spewing out smoke from the crater at its top. It was a long way out almost a mile or two, but I could see the lake around it. Alph had mentioned that the mountain was in the centre of the lake swarming with rainbow coloured Piranhas.

“We don’t have to go there? Do we?”

“No”, Alph quacked, “of course not, why would we?”

“Yeah”, I grunted, “why would we?”

“Tent four-zero-three”, Brio read out from a chit.

The tent was green from the inside, just like the outside. There was a dusty red carpet spread over the ground. Still better than what I had expected. There was a small brown four legged table in the centre. A hammock was dangling at one end of the tent and two bunk beds at the other.

“I’ll take the hammock . . .”, Alph began, earning himself a deluxe-I’ll-kill-you stare from Suhani, “. . . . oh but I am having a headache”, he fumbled, clutching his leg, “so I’ll sleep on the bunk bed instead”.

Suhani grunted and walked away.

I turned to look at Alph who was still clutching his leg, “Normal people have headaches in their heads”, I explained, patting him on his skull.

Alph stared at me.

“What now?”, he questioned once we were done with settling down.

“Might as well go for a trek”, Dream replied, “we don’t have anything to do anyways”.

“I’ll pass”

“Aren’t you fussy”, Dream grumbled.

Then as it was decided we divided into pairs to cover ground faster.

“Stay close”, Suhani snapped as we squeezed through the crowd. We found ourselves a bench beside the hopelessly overcrowded barbeque.

I sat quietly trying to stop the saliva oozing out of my mouth as I watched the people eat. And simply to say, I was failing miserably.

Suhani didn’t seem to have any such problems. She easily ran her eyes from person to person pausing for barely a second on each. Then she paused, and zeroed in.

“What?”, I asked.

“Shut up”, she hushed, hitting my arm lightly. She leaned over the table as if to get a better view.

I tried to make out where she was looking, but there could be a hundred possibilities. Then there was the sound of the chair scraping on the ground and then Suhani stood up.

“Huh?”

“Follow me”, she whispered.

“Into that?”, I questioned, pointing at the barbeque.

“Yes”, she replied, looking at me as if I had lost my head.

“You do realize that place has more people per inch than hair on my head”.

“What?”, she squawked.

“Nothing”.

I followed her, hoping she knew where we were going because I myself had no clue. I doubt she knew the struggle I was going through to keep up with her.

“Listen . . . . . . hold up . . . . . Wait, will you . . . . hello? . . . . I said something . . . .”.

She didn’t seem to hear me and if she did, she chose to ignore it.

We emerged out of the ocean of sweaty people. And my arm was dripping with sweat, picked up from a hundred people on the way.

“Alright”, I said wiping my arms, “where exactly are we going- and why are we standing in front of the forest?”

“Shhhh”, she whispered, “look”.

I saw where she was pointing and recognized the person immediately, “the masked man!”.

“Speak softly and follow me”, she spoke, turning back onto me. She looked back once again, “don’t get us killed”.

“Wasn’t planning to”

With the lightest possible footsteps, we trailed after the man. Maintaining almost two hundred meters of distance from him, just enough for him to be at the end of our vision. Every molecule in my body expected him to twirl around and catch us.

But so far, so good.