The Price of Freedom: Innocence Lost

Your Fates Been Chosen

The three of you are more or less silent as you are lead through the streets, all the while wondering what your new life is going to be. Eventually, you arrive at a large building that looks more like a school than anything else. The building has high gates around it to stop anyone from escaping, and as you arrive, children of different ages all crowed around the gates to get a look at the new arrivals.

"Go on, back, back!" Rhode yells, sending the children scattering as she opens the gate and ushers you through. You are then lead along a cobblestone path to a large, round structure in the middle of the school. "Now I want to make this clear!" She shouts back to the three of you. "While you belong to Master Titus, as long as you are in this academy, your lives are mine! You will refer to me as Mistress and you will obey my every command. If at any time you disobey me, you will be punished. Your lives will be hard. I will push you to your limits and you will hate me for it. If at any point you hate me so much that you want to kill me, it means the training is working!" She shouts out as she leads you inside the round, open-topped building. You enter through the doors to see several rows of stairs in a circle around a large pit, coated with sand.

Rhode leads you into the pit before carrying on with her speech. "I will make you work, I will make you scream, I will make you weep, I will make you bleed and I will keep you alive! While you are training with me, I expect you to be the best! Not to impress me! Not to impress Master Titus! You will be the best because if you are not, you will die!"

You stop dead in your tracks. Lula's expression has gone detached, trying to block out any sign of emotion. Alexius is trembling as he reaches out to grab your hand and looks up at you with tears in his eyes. It's then that you're hit with the horrible realization. You're standing in a gladiator arena.

The initial shock takes a little while to sink in. The journey from Greece has crushed any hopes you'd had of ever escaping captivity and returning home to your mother, and you knew the life of a slave would be hard, no matter what work you'd be doing. Still, you didn't expect to be forced to murder other people to avoid being killed yourself.

You, Alexius and Lula are given a good meal and the rest of the day free to recover from your long journey chained up in the ship, then you are put to work. You are woken up as soon as the sun rises and expected to get dressed and ready as quickly as the other students to avoid a beating. Once dressed and fed, you and the rest of the children are all sent out to the practice yard to get started with your morning training.

The rest of the students all fall into place, warming up in a variety of different ways while they wait for Rhode to arrive. A blonde haired girl who's a couple of years older than you heads straight to the wooden swords. A teenage boy with skin even darker than Lula's is hurling blunted javelins across an empty stretch of land. There is also a younger boy you notice, who was practicing with a net, throwing it around as if trying to catch and trap an invisible foe in front of him. It doesn't look particularly impressive.

Alexius and Lula hover around you for a second, not really sure what to do. "So..." You mumble, taking a look around. "Where are we supposed to start?"

Your brother gives a little shrug. "I don't know, but I think I'm going to practice with the wooden swords. That's probably the first thing we should learn, isn't it?" He asks nervously. "How to fight?"

Lula casually stretches her arms above her head. "You play with swords. I go run." She tells Alexius with a smile. "No one kill me if no one catch me." She seems strangely positive. Perhaps the idea of killing for her survival doesn't daunt her, or perhaps she's just trying not to think about it. "You run with me?" She asks you, hopefully. "We see who is most fast."

"I think I'll train with Alexius for awhile." You tell Lula.

The girl gives an innocent laugh. "Boys always hit each other with sticks. Is same in my country. No mind. You two play. I run." She says, sprinting away and leaving the two of you to practice together.

You pick up one of the wooden swords and start fighting with your brother. It doesn't take five minutes for you to realize that Alexius is always backing away from you, making it easy for you to knock the sword out of his hand. "You're too scared Alexius." You tell him. "You can't worry about getting hurt all the time. If you do, you'll never get close enough to hit me." Taking a step forward, you hit his arm with the flat side of the sword. Your brother flinches and rubs his arm, but you needed to make a point. "It's only wood Alex. If you're scared of fighting with wood, what's going to happen when you have to use a real sword?"

Your warning seems to scare Alexius and for the rest of the morning, he's a little more aggressive when you fight. "You're getting better." You compliment him, stopping to take a rest. "Hold your sword a little higher though. You're smaller than me."

Alexius sits down to catch his breath. "I will." He promises, rubbing at the bruises on his arms and looking up at you with a little smile. "Thank you for teaching me to fight Andreas!

Leaving your brother for awhile, you head over to a well just outside the training grounds to get some water. The older African boy you saw training earlier is there too, drawing the bucket up from the well and filling up a water skin to drink from. "Hey, can you pass some to me?" You ask him, but the boy only stares at you blankly for a moment. "... Water?" You ask him again.

"Water." The boy repeats the word back to you, but doesn't pass the bucket.

"Don't you speak Latin?" You ask him. He doesn't reply. "What about Greek?" You ask in Greek. Again, no response.