Olympia

Olympia sits alone in the Champion’s Quarters. There had been fourteen champions of the Deathmatch Arena before him, and in the past they had all been accompanied by a host of servants before their battles. A dozen would arm the champion in his suit of plate mail and sharpen his weapons, while another dozen would fan and pamper him, indulging his every whim before he risked his life in the arena. But Olympia is different—he sits in his Quarters, dripping with sweat from warming up, and dons his armor himself. He had begun his life alone on the streets of the Deathmatch Arena, abandoned and discarded. In those early years he’d fought for rancid scraps out of the Butcher’s Bin and had been beaten nightly by drunkards. He’d struggled to survive then, but that changed after he met him.

"Better to suffer with friends," Olympia mutters to himself, his mind thinking back to the days before the Arena.

He tugs at the laces of his greaves, feeling the cold metal pull flush against his shins. Always the right before the left, never the other way around. It is a mantra for him, a process he follows before every fight, even at the very beginning when he had been thrown headlong into Gladiator training. He was fifteen when he and his friend had tried to take food from the Arena Barracks and had been caught.

“You know the rules, boys. Those who take from the Arena, join the arena,” was the last thing the pair had heard before landing in the cells with the criminals, enslaved to be used as fodder for the Arena. Lost in his memories, he feels the left greave pull flush and the cold steel snaps his mind back to the present.

Dust falls from the stone ceiling above him, causing him to smile. “Eager today, are we?” he says to himself. He can hear them roaring and bellowing above him. The day he had become Champion had seen the largest recorded crowd to ever fill the Arena, a record that would continue to be broken each time he had defended the belt in the tournament since. A stark contrast to the first match he had ever participated in, thrown to a bunch of hecklers to ‘warm up the crowd’ before the main event. The audience had grown red hot when they’d witnessed a skinny young prisoner fighting for his life and standing victorious, surrounded by a dozen dead bodies. The onlookers had taken notice from that day, and fans from that first show hadn’t missed an opportunity to watch the Prized Fighter ever since.

He stands and moves quickly around the room, dodging and striking, making sure his gear is positioned right. It always is—he could have gotten ready in his sleep. Was this his 348th fight? Or his 384th? He’s lost count, and honestly, he doesn’t care. He isn’t fighting for status or power, or the men and women that throw themselves at him in the bathhouses of Champions Rest. He fights for the sound of a blade torn from its scabbard, and the clash of its edge striking armor. He fights for the sensation of blood falling over his forearms and caking the sand around his sandals. He fights for the purest love of fighting. He fights in his memory.

Olympia turns to grab his helmet from where it hangs on the head of a marble statue. Its plume is newly redone and it shines to a dazzling degree, though it will soon be covered in a layer of blood and mud. He carries it under his arm, plucks a reed from his garden and makes his way from the Champion’s Quarters and through the barracks beneath the Arena. The men and women who have trained here to take his title are countless, but they respect him nonetheless, bowing their heads or pressing their fists to their chests. Olympia has never ducked a fight or cheated, he has never made an excuse not to compete. He isn’t just the Crowd’s Champion, he is the Fighter’s Champion. He truly is the colossus of the Deathmatch Arena.

The sound of the grandstand rumbles down into the tunnel as he ascends the ramp to the match. The helmet slips down over his face, secure and comforting on his head. Like always, since the night that towering Brute had torn him apart, he raises the reed in honor of Demetrios, and steps out to face his opponent.