The Broken Hourglass Weekly Update
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The streets are quiet today. Still busy, still irritatingly crowded, but quiet too. Subdued for some reason I can't see, but that I know is there. A current, some charge hovered in the air. I used to like that feeling. Knowing something was coming, bracing against it, and seeing what you could take from it. Now, it just makes me uneasy.
Last night, the fortnightly fights that Larius runs had barely drawn enough wagers to pay for the cost of feeding the fighters, and that's not even taking in to consideration the time I wasted on "training" them. Larius is the one who finds the new meat, anyway. He can spot them, the ones out of options, the ones that will stand and bleed for a few coins, but he needs me to make sure they look good doing it. He wants somebody not quite good enough for the Arena, but tough enough to last in a real scuffle. The hungry ones just stupid enough to think he's giving them a break, that he's helping them out. Larius couldn't teach them how to fall if he pushed them off a cliff. I'd been lucky that I hadn't had to learn everything from him. I took my training in the army, and, when I went rogue, I had nothing much else to do but slug it out weekly for a pittance. I never tried the Arena back then, couldn't risk my face being seen in the real show, or so I thought. I should've been more worried about getting my face wrecked beyond recognition.
