The royal hunting party first found him over the twice-rotted corpse of a deer, reeking of rot. His black-and-orange pelt was mangy and flecked white with fleas. Tendrils of gut blackened with flies hung out of his mouth, dangling with the glowing Faerina's beads that adorned his neck. As he leaned down to take another mouthful of the repulsive corpse, a hunter thought to himself, how callous nature is. How could she have let such a beautiful specimen of a morkko fall so low?
That hunter was young. It was one of his first trips, and it was out of simple grief of the way things were, that he told the prince, who told the queen. And by evening, the queen had proclaimed for the morkko to be captured for the Ethernia arena, where the gifts Faerina granted him could be put to greater use.
The next day the party returned with snare traps, wire nets bristling with curls of metal soaked in tranquilizer. They would need twice as many for a morkko than the average sylesti, and three times for a morkko as large as him, even as starved as he was. The zolnixis tracked him to a tiny clearing of an old campsite. Trash, old canisters and shattered bottles and cheap plastic rings, littered the ground, but the morkko didn't seem to mind. He slept in the darkest corner of the camp, but woke as soon as the first traps sunk into his skin. He roared and thrashed his limbs and neck, but traps were meant for this, and only tangled him further. The hunting party waited for an hour in the terrible stench, the awful roaring, as the morkko slowly fell under the trance of the tranquilizers.
By the time he had awoken, Fire Eyes had been named, washed, his wounds bound, and his mouth bridled and his legs immobilized with rope. When he saw the tamer standing in front of him, he snarled and fought, straining against his bounds. But this was to be expected, and the tamer only pulled the rope tighter, forcing his mouth shut and cutting into his skin.
Still Fire Eyes fought, drool seeping out of the edge of his mouth as he thrashed his head and neck, clawed the ground. No matter how tightly the tamer pulled the bridle, or shouted at him, or offered food, the morkko still shook and growled through the leather and fought. Eventually, it was decided greater measures would be needed.
A great helmet was hauled in. It was stone carved to look like a bull's skull: sweeping horns and flat teeth, the eye holes carved deep and painted with a snakelike white pupil, additions of spikes on the sides and thick leather straps, enchanted to be a tough as steel. The morkko howled when he saw it and struggled with greater fervor against his bounds, but it was no use. The bridle was pulled shut by two tamers and a third lowered the mask onto the Fire Eyes's face, buckling and tying the straps around the morkko's massive neck. It was fearsome, the mask of a gladiator, and yet effective in subduing the morkko, who found himself blind within the heavy armor.
That is, at first. When the tamers deemed it safe enough to loosen Fire Eyes's leg bounds, he took off with surprising vigor, knocking back a tamer's draeyl and running headfirst into a stone wall, with seemingly no damage to either. He screamed, ramming into the wall as if trying to shatter the stone, again and again.
The tamers exchanged glances. One of them muttered how he had never met such a stupid morkko before. Regardless, he was caught, tied, and the training process went anew.
A sylesti wearing the mask would have to be trained blind, and without any sort of projectile magic. In the wild or with a traveler, this may have been an issue, but in the roofed confines of the coilseum, it would do. Fire Eyes was so large and fearsome that no one expected that he should learn magic rather than focus on his natural gifts of teeth and claws and brutal weight.
So came the training:
Meat was placed in front of him, and he was released. Fire Eyes rushed forward, guided by his nose, and tore off chunks as fast as he could. A whistle was blown, but it was meaningless to Fire Eyes, who had not eaten three days prior and considered it more important to eat than investigate. A weight slammed into his side, heavy muscle and scales and he fell, winded and weak. But he got up anyway- he was hungry- and lunged forward to warn off the draeyl, only to be pulled still by ropes again.
When he stopped moving, the ropes loosened. He headed towards the meat. The whistle again, and halfway through a shank he felt the displaced air from draeyl charging towards him. Roaring, he reared, and caught the draeyl between two forepaws, before being pulled back to the ground by the ropes. The draeyl pounded his skull.
Again the ropes loosened. Fire Eyes pulled himself up shakily and drew towards the meat. The whistle, Fire Eyes turned for the draeyl but there was only empty air and tightening ropes.
Loosen. Meat. Whistle. Turn. Eventually, there was no meat and when the whistle blared he turned.
Years passed until the commands were seared into Fire Eyes's very being. Stop at a whistle. If it's not human, it's meat. His vision was replaced with blazing smell and touch: blood, blood everywhere but coming from here, bite bite bite and more warmth and screaming and satisfaction.
Finally, his pelt, clotted with dried blood, was cleaned, brushed, and oiled until it shone. The stone mask and armor polished. The scars where rope had cut into covered with decorative bands made of leather and firebird feathers, strung with beads blessed by Faerina herself. The crowd saw him and cheered.
And so was the tale of Fire Eyes, once one of the pitiful and repulsive wilds, transformed into a truly beautiful gladiator, using the gives Faerina granted to the fullest. A creature built for fighting, made into fighting.
The leather bit into Fire Eyes's skin. |
