Elias of the Bronze Dagger
A thin black line pulled taut between two dark points: so appeared the sell-sword specter leaning against the wall of the fighting pits.
At one point, his sand-smoothed boots had sunk into the mud, which he ground thoughtfully beneath his heel. Living dirt - filled with clods of fertile soil, flecked with gold and white and bronze, able to grow food and host a nation. Nothing like the sands of the south. He pulled thoughtfully on a long pipe out of which slithered an exotic aroma unlike the tobacco strains of Sembre. The smoke parted around his hawk-like nose like clouds breaking around a sharp mountain peak and coiled at his ears before fading into the nothingness of the torch-warmed air.
At the other point, his back - wiry and strong beneath layers of black travelers clothes - rested on the damp stones of the fighting pit through which reverberated all the living sounds of the arena tournament. The shouts of the crowd, the stomping thrill of combat, and the valiant death cries of the warriors: all of it filtered through the robe and rock to reach the man leaning on the wall outside the ferocious space. A particularly grand cheer shuddered through the stadium, shaking the walls and rattling the obsidian halberd propped against the wall beside the man. All of it occurred to him in vibrations and rattling - all the life sifted out. He took another drag from his pipe as a half-orc woman and her halfling compatriot - a curious pair - approached the tournament’s sign-in table.
A thin black line pulled taut between lush soil eager to birth new life and an arena where the living met with death and won.
“Fertility. Courage.” Elias muttered the gifts of the Virtuous Gods under his breath and tucked a pendant back into his tunic. He emptied his pipe onto the ground the sweet tobacco into the mud at his feet, planting it at the foot of the wall. Then, hefting his halberd away from the damp rock with a sharp cry of metal on stone, the thin black line ripped itself from the un-living rocks at foot and back and stepped toward strange new allies, the thrill of death’s vicious encounters, and the new soil awaiting him.
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