The Fire Queen

Chapter 7

"This is just the beginning," Uraia said to me, noticing my reaction to the plight of these people.

Inside of the city there was an oppressive atmosphere of despair and hopelessness that hung over everything. Men were sitting around in the streets with nothing to do; dirty children were begging for food; women were standing in doorways offering their services as sex workers. The shops and businesses that were central to the vibrancy of the city were boarded up, and the streets were being patrolled by armed militia who were obviously not under the authority of the military or the City Patrol. Uraia led us to the inn where we would be staying. The inn was owned by the bandits, who used it as their base in the city. Once inside the inn we could talk safely about what was going on in the city.

"It's the syndicates, they've taken over everything," Uraia told me in the room that we were going to be sharing, "those men that you saw patrolling the streets were enforcers that work for the syndicates; their job isn't to keep the peace, it's to ensure that nothing interferes with their activities. When the syndicates took over they began demanding high taxes from the residents and the business owners, that's what drove most of the people out of the city. The syndicates installed their people in their houses and started running their operations out of the buildings where the residents' businesses used to be."

"How are these syndicates making money if they've driven almost everybody out of the city?"

"The syndicates work for the nobles; the nobles are bankrolling the syndicates with the proceeds they receive from their activities in the states. Many of the citizens in the countryside that tried to flee for the neighboring kingdoms were unable to do so because those kingdoms sealed their borders, which left them with no choice but to return to indentured servitude. Your father was right about foreign involvement in the kingdom. To make up for the citizens that were able to flee slaves were brought in from elsewhere. There are only a few kingdoms that are active in the slave trade; one of them is working to prop up the noble families, and their influence is growing; it's only a matter of time before they make their move."

"Why is there a food shortage if people are working the fields?"

"They're using a lot of the land to grow something else besides food, a flower called Caeda that's used to make a powerful narcotic; those flowers are ten times more lucrative than food crops, so they grow just enough food crops to meet their peoples' absolute minimum needs and use the rest of the land to grow Caeda, and it seems like the same kingdom that's propping up the nobles is responsible for the proliferation of this narcotic. We've spoken with some people that are familiar with all of the kingdoms and their belief is that the kingdom of Volstaff is behind all of this, they have a history of meddling in the affairs of weak nations and trying to bring them under their control."

I was curious to see what the rest of the city looked like but Uraia advised against it, saying that it was too dangerous to just walk around the city. We remained at the inn while we waited for someone to arrive with the details of where that night's fight would be taking place. The location of the fights was kept a secret and was only revealed at specific locations on the day that the fights were going to take place. That night the fights were going to be taking place in what used to be an underground market. We left the inn just before nightfall and made our way through the darkening streets in the direction of the venue, which wasn't far away from the inn. The fights could be held in small venues as it was mostly the syndicate bosses and their close associates that attended. Six fights were scheduled for that night. Uraia was fighting last. The venue filled up fast as the syndicate leaders and their associates arrived in groups and took their seats.

My father had done his best to prepare me for anything that I might encounter in this world, but nothing could have prepared me for what I witnessed that night. I knew beforehand that I was going to watch fights to the death, but still the violence that I saw that night had a chilling effect on me. I had never seen a human being killed by another human being before, and the sight of them doing so for mere sport was especially disturbing, made worse by the way that the victor played to the crowd before and after killing their opponent. When the time came for Uraia to fight I was nervous. In the five fights that I had seen the fighters had shown no mercy as they had sought to take their opponent's life. I knew Uraia was strong, but in this environment there was no telling what might happen. Her opponent entered first. He was introduced as Vrado, was muscular and from the looks of it was over 6ft tall. He wore a horned helmet over his head, no armor, and carried an axe and a shield. Uraia, as a returning fighter, entered next. Uraia carried no shield, preferring to fight with two swords, just like when we sparred. I knew how skilled Uraia was as a fighter but I was still worried. The man that she was fighting looked incredibly strong, and the scars all over his body attested to his experience as a warrior. In all likelihood he had been drafted by one of the syndicates to deal with Uraia, whose victories they'd grown tired of.

The fight started with the two of them circling the ring and feeling each other out. Vrado attacked first. He lunged at Uraia with his axe, which Uraia was able to easily dodge. Vrado lunged at Uraia another two times and both times Uraia dodged. Vrado was powerful but he lacked speed to deal with Uraia's agility, this was noticed by everybody during their opening exchanges and the inevitably of his defeat was felt by all. The next time he lunged at Uraia she parried with the sword in her left hand and slit his leg with the sword in her right hand, dropping him to one knee. Nobody was more sure of Uraia's victory than Uraia herself. I could see in her posture that she didn't view Vrado as a threat and was merely toying with him like a cat with a mouse, nonetheless I continued to watch the fight through my fingers. The ease with which Uraia was able to dodge his attacks caused Vrado to get frustrated, and the more frustrated he got the more he charged at Uraia with no regard for the fact that he had no answer for her speed and agility. For Uraia, the fight with Vrado was an exercise in surgical striking. By biding her time and waiting for him to strike first she was able to pick him apart to the point where he was struggling just to move because of the amount of blood that he had lost. Vrado knew that he had lost the fight. In one final desperate act he charged at Uraia with the little bit of strength that he had left. This time Uraia didn't parry. She blocked the blow from his axe, ducked underneath his follow up swing with his shield and went through him with the sword in her other hand. Vrado dropped his axe and fell to his knees, death now just moments away. Uraia didn't play to the crowd and delay his death like the others had done; with one swift and decisive swing she cut his head off and brought an end to the fight.

Uraia and I didn't talk on the way back to the inn. When we were back in our room at the inn, all of the feelings that I had been keeping suppressed during the fights came bursting out of me and I threw myself at Uraia and wrapped my arms tightly around her.

"What's wrong?" Uraia asked me.

"Don't do that again," I said with tears running down my face.

"What?"

"Those fights, don't do them anymore," I pleaded with her.

"But you saw how good I am, nothing's going to happen to me."

"Uraia, please!"

I looked up at her with my tear streaked face and when she saw what this meant to me she agreed not to go back and took me in her arms. It was that night that I came to truly understand how special Uraia was to me and how much it would hurt if ever I was to lose her.

Back in the Northlands, I was spending more time away from the settlement with Anbu and Lucy than I was before. I had too many feelings to sort through, and I couldn't do that amidst the hustle and bustle of the settlement, especially with all of the excitement around the two large grain silos that were being constructed. Mainly what I needed to sort through were my feelings for Uraia. The intensity of my reaction to watching her fighting had awakened me to the depth of my feelings for her, but just what those feelings were I didn't know. She had always been like a big sister to me but it wasn't clear to me if the feelings I experienced that night was caused by my fear of potentially losing my sister or something else, something that I couldn't begin to imagine how I would deal with.