Guild Wars_ Edge of Destiny - J. Robert King [60]
“How?” Zojja wondered.
“Oh, we’ll beat them,” Eir replied, “and with Edge of Steel, we’ll bring down the Dragonspawn, too.”
Zojja sniffed, “You make it all sound predestined.”
“It is, Zojja. We’re the Dragonspawn’s destiny.”
CONTEST
For the first time in two months, Edge of Steel canceled their scheduled match.
The fans were outraged.
“They will not fight tonight or tomorrow,” proclaimed Sangjo, standing in the announcer’s tower. “Or the next night or the next.”
Boos answered his pronouncement, welling up around the arena.
“What’s the matter?” Sangjo asked. “There are plenty of other gladiatorial teams.”
A chant of “Edge of Steel! Edge of Steel!” began in one sector of the arena and propagated through the whole. It shook the stands and washed across the other gladiatorial teams waiting below. In the announcer’s tower, Sangjo smiled secretly and waited for the chants to die down. After five minutes, they did.
“Friends. Friends—they will fight again. In five days, you will see them face their greatest rivals ever.”
A wild cheer went up. The cry evolved into a single chanted question—“Who? Who? Who?”
“In five days, you will see.”
Throughout those five days, Sangjo furiously promoted the match. He sent out a small army of stable hands to stand in the streets and shout teasers. The one bit of information they did not divulge, though, was whom Edge of Steel would fight.
Edge of Steel themselves spread the news through the taverns of Lion’s Arch. They promised “a strange challenge,” “a brutal whupping,” and “a bloody massacre,” depending upon which group member was giving the report. Soon, the taverns rang with speculation about the mystery challengers.
But even Edge of Steel knew little about their opponents. Just after laying down their challenge, the foes had vanished through an asura gate. They were a complete mystery.
As Edge of Steel worried about their unknown foes, Lion’s Arch boiled into a frenzy over them.
Then the night of the match came.
Crowds clogged the streets all around the arena, shutting down traffic as they jostled to get inside the huge overturned ship. The stands filled with hundreds and then thousands. Banners announced the crowd’s favorite—Edge of Steel—but no one knew the name of the challengers.
Then the time for battle came, and Sangjo ascended the announcer’s tower to call out, “Welcome, everyone, to tonight’s epic spectacle. The famous versus the obscure, the known versus the unknown. The heroes versus the villains. Many have asked who these challengers may be. Now is the moment you will see for yourselves. Here they are, Dragonspawn’s Destiny!”
The crowd leaped to its feet, applauding and cheering—craning to see what great menace would emerge from the gladiators’ hold.
The barred gate rolled back, and from the darkness waddled two tiny asura onto the newly sanded arena floor.
A rumble of uncertainty answered, followed by a roar of derisive laughter. These two? They looked like aphids. Shouts of outrage began to pierce the laughter.
“What is this?”
“No!”
“A joke!”
Then, a towering norn warrior stepped from the darkness, dragging a huge bow from her shoulder. She drew from her quiver three heavy-headed arrows, each bolt the height of a man. When a great black wolf loped out beside the woman, the furor of the crowd died down, and a few people began to chant, “Wolves! Wolves! Wolves!”
But then the men rolled the gates closed. No more wolves emerged—no more creatures at all.
Heckling shouts filled the stands.
“And now, the team you have come to cheer for, the champions of the arena, the undefeated. They are Caithe, Rytlock, and Logan, but you know them better as Edge of Steel!”
The air turned solid with cheers.
From a gate on the opposite side of the arena trotted the sylvari, charr, and human, and the shouts redoubled. The gladiators lifted their hands in greeting, and the fans responded