The arena floor was a pile of lethargic people, wriggling like a container of bait worms. Groans and grunts filled the air as the students untangled themselves. Sword-lances littered the floor where dying duelists dropped them. Adakontus moaned and clutched his head, while he pushed someone’s foot out of his face. These mass resurrections felt like being hungover in the front row of a drumline competition. He stood up, trying to avoid stepping on anyone too much.

  He grabbed a student’s outstretched arm, and pulled her to her feet. Her messy brown hair shook as she gave him a slight nod, and she whispered a word of thanks in an unknown tongue. Adakontus weaved through the mess, helping those who reached out.

  The other students sat on the cusp of sanity. They had come a long way from blank stares to almost normal mannerisms. However, reality had not yet set in.

  A tan man clapped Adakontus on the shoulder and fired off a stream of sing-songy language. His eyes fixed firmly on Adakontus’ forehead. About halfway through his voice cut out, but his mouth kept miming the words. Adakontus simply nodded along until the man quit.

  The Instructor finally entered the fray, speeding the process along. A monster of white bone and gray muscle, simply turning its skull sent the students scurrying. A hellish anatomical model from the shadow dimension. Its blueflame eyes flicked onto Adakontus for a moment. He shivered. A primal fear, one that no amount of exposure would dampen. He couldn't believe he'd taunted that thing.

  Hurried along, Adakontus grabbed his sword-lance carefully. It wasn’t time to cut anyone, not yet. Noone had trouble finding their specific weapon among the mess. Adakontus could probably pick his weapon out of a lineup of a thousand in ten seconds.

  Once the students reformed the circle around the edge of the clearing, silence reigned. The duels would begin soon. Adakontus did not fancy that. He’d only won a single duel so far, and he won it with a nutshot. Turns out, Handsome was rather weak compared to the other students. Adakontus spent more time dead than fighting.

  Adakontus pushed the building frustration away. He took a deep breath, savoring the earthy aromas. Spears of golden light pierced through the ink black overcast. Each brief ray cast a brief spotlight onto the fantastical scenery. A blue, spongy mold swelled the side of a rock. A shimmering beetle munched on a glowing, fungal bulb. A dog sized wasp crawled through a meadow of pink mushrooms, wings twitching with each mechanical step. Adakontus calmed.

  A cloud of pale dust thundered down the path to the clearing.

  That wasn’t normal. Adakontus squinted.

  Holding thick chains in their yellowed knuckles, a team of twenty skeletons pulled a rusted wagon down the path. Two rows of ten. They sprinted, kicking up clouds of dirt on unison steps. The wagon bounced over rocks behind them.

  In no time at all the skeletons arrived, and a whirlwind of dust erupted as the skeletons dropped the chains. The students coughed and hacked, but the skeletons bulldozed into their next task, unloading the cargo before the wagon stopped rolling. Towers of crates stacked up, quick as can be. Three skeletons broke off from the work crew, pulling boxes off the towers.

  Reading on Amazon or a pirate site? This novel is from Royal Road. Support the author by reading it there.

  They approached The Instructor, and presented the crates. Knees in the dirt, chin down, and arms above their heads, as though giving The Instructor a gold crown instead of a worn-down box.

  The Instructor leaned in to read the crates’ lids, before directing the skeleton to a specific student. It had an abundance of personality the skeletons lacked. Their yellowed bones moved gracelessly like machine levers.

  The crate towers disappeared, and a crate sat behind each student. The skeletons formed teams of two and cracked the crates open. They pulled out the most wondrous and valuable item Adakontus had ever witnessed. Clothes!

  The skeletons dressed the students, who looked perturbed their attentions. The fiery-haired woman shook the skeletons off, refusing to relinquish her weapon. The Instructor ended that. Ungrateful woman. Clothes make the man, and only animals are naked. Those crates delivered the gift of civilisation.

  Adakontus’ turn to be dressed came far too slowly as the skeletons worked their way around the circle. The creak of his crate being opened filled him with glee. Sand colored silky underwear went on first. Adakontus was too excited to mind the skeleton’s icy touch. Then came a pair of thin, dark pants with built in socks that rose just past the knees. The socks were luxuriously soft. Adakontus regretted dirtying them on the nasty arena floor. An incredible disrespect to something so comfy!

  A long sleeve shirt, made of the same thin materiel as the pants, went over his head. Next came a second pair of pants. This time thick, red and rubbery instead of thin and weightless. Leathery scales, dark green to the point of black, covered the backs of his knees. The scales seemed hard and stiff but deformed easily. After that was shirt of the same rubber, with the scales on the inside of his elbows and armpits. Lastly came scaled gloves.

  Adakontus wiggled. The clothing was tight, but comfortably so. The style was somewhat strange. The students looked like a bunch of red-latex ninjas, just not as shiny. Adakontus somehow felt more dignified when he was naked. Hopefully all this effort didn’t land him in some sick dictator’s bodyguard harem.

  The skeletons ran to the wagon and took out pieces of black armor: cuirasses, helms, boots, and other parts Adakontus had no name for. The armor went straight from the wagon to the students. Skeletons in groups of four fastened buckles and straps with surgical efficiency. The students went from kinda fetishy to downright heavy metal, and not the uranium kind of heavy metal.

  Full plate encased Adakontus almost head to toe, and scales protected the gaps. The armor had an impressive practicality. Simple and deadly. It didn’t need spikes or skulls to be scary. Its muted style radiated an aura of ‘boot to the face.’ For the first time ever, Adakontus felt badass. The least badass among badasses, but still.

  The Instructor paced among the students, carefully inspecting them and causing quite a number of flinches. The skeletons stood erect, like puppets on taught strings, waiting for the verdict.

  The Instructor walked to the center of the arena.

  ‘I. Amolhekai. Now. Training truly begins.’

  Murmurs floated among the students, their anxiety hidden behind black helms. Adakontus shifted his weight uneasily. Training begins now? Then what was the hell he’d been through?

  Amolhekai flicked his hand at the skeletons.

  ‘Remove all.’

  A skeleton pulled off Adakontus’ helm. Wait, remove all? No!

  Adakontus just got these heavenly socks!