Chapter 2 - Training Day

Chapter 2: Training Day
                Early the next morning, after eating breakfast with the rest of the men, Quentin donned his gladiator’s loincloth and joined the group of men jostling to leave the barracks. Quentin was pushed aside as the other gladiators shoved past him. He nearly made it through the door when he felt a huge hand come to rest on his shoulder; he turned and saw the draenei’s expressionless face just as the draenei threw him aside with such force that he slammed into the wall. Through a haze of pain, Quentin heard the draenei say simply, “you leave last.” The draenei’s hooves clattered as he left the barracks; Crazk had warned Quentin about the draenei, whose name was Hacut, when the two had dinner the previous night. 
                As soon as the goblin left him yesterday, Quentin fished the key to his trunk from his pocket. He unlocked the trunk, and saw, with relief, that everything seemed to have made it intact: various articles of clothing, trinkets and baubles he kept as souvenirs from his adventures these past few years, and the pair of short swords his father had gifted him when came of age. The blades were twins in every way but one: on the pommel of the first sword was a raven, the sigil of the Carrington family, and on the pommel of the second sword was a horse head; Quentin had loved riding as a boy and had shown a natural skill at it, so his father had the smith attach the horsehead pommel to the second sword. The thought brought a smile to Quentin’s mouth. What would they make of me now, in the jungles of stranglethorn, training to be a gladiator, he thought with a mix amusement and sadness. He put the swords aside, and, confidant that his most precious possessions had arrived, he locked the chest, checked it, and slid the key back into his pocket. 
                Quentin removed his leather boots and laid down on the bed.  He had been so busy travelling and preparing that he had not had much opportunity to rest, and, before he knew it, he drifted off. It seemed that he had just closed his eyes when he awoke to one of Crazk’s guards standing at the end of his bed.
                “Oi,” the guard shouted as he kicked the wooden bedframe.
                “Yeah?” Quentin replied groggily, noticing that the guard was a fellow human.
                “Boss wants you for dinner at his house. It’s on the northern end of the compound, near the ocean. Be there in ten minutes,” as soon as the guard saw that Quentin registered the order. He turned and departed, leaving Quentin to wonder if he hadn’t been some remnant from a dream. Quentin noticed the fading light outside the window and realized that he had been asleep much longer than he initially thought.
                Crazk’s manor sat atop a small hill near the northern edge of the compound, overlooking the ocean. The goblin greeted Quentin at the door like an old friend and welcomed him inside. Once he was inside, Quentin saw that the goblin’s house was adorned with artwork, treasures, trophies, and artifacts collected from all over Azeroth; they were strewn all about the manor, and, while the house couldn’t exactly be called untidy, Crazk was getting dangerously close to becoming a hoarder. The goblin admitted as much to Quentin and joked that he would soon be forced to live in the barracks if he collected many more treasures.
                Crazk and Quentin entered the dining room, and Crazk introduced the human to his wife, Ril, a pretty Goblin woman with curly black hair and small, bronze rimmed spectacles; she was sitting at the table pouring over a stack of papers when she turned her head and looked at Quentin over her glasses and said, “Hello, pleasure to meet ya,” before returning her attention to her work. Quentin returned her greeting, to which she nodded without looking up.
                The three spent the rest of the evening eating and talking, with Crazk doing most of the latter. They feasted on dragonbreath chili and sweet potato bread and shared a bottle of brightsong wine. Crazk explained that this was a tradition with new recruits, a last meal of sorts. He then went into further detail about what Quentin could expect and what was expected of him: gladiatorial matches were technically non-lethal, but they used real weapons; deaths were rare, but injuries were common, including serious ones. Surender was preferable to dying, but a gladiator was only to surrender if they were sure death was imminent.
                They finished the meal, and Quentin bid farewell to Ril, while Crazk led him to the door.
                “One last thing,” Crazk said as Quentin was about to leave. “That draenei you saw that the sparring arena this mornin’. His name’s Hacut: avoid him at all costs. He’s my best man, but he’s a son of a bitch. Any chance he gets, he’ll challenge ya. Steer clear if you can help it.”
                The advice rang through Quentin’s head as he peeled himself off the floor; he staggered through the doorway, morning sun in his eyes. Ignoring the pain in his shoulder, he rushed to join the other men for a morning lifting session. And so, he trained. By the end of his first week, Quentin was so sore that he could barely get out of bed in the morning. Physically, in the past, he could hold his own in almost any group of people he had found himself in, but it was much different here: he was clearly at the bottom of the totem pole; and the men let him know it. He endured it as best he could. By the end of the second week, he still hurt like hell, but his body was growing acclimated to the training; underneath the pain, he could feel his strength beginning to grow and his reflexes improving. By the third week, he had graduated from a wooden training dummy to an actual partner. 
                “Well met, lad,” the dwarf cheerfully shouted when he met Quentin in the sparring pits for the first time. “Hope I give ye better sport than the wooden men,” the dwarf said, laughing. “Name’s Brenan,” he finished, reaching out with one of his large hands.
                “Well met, Brenan,” Quentin replied, meeting his firm handshake, the dwarf’s friendliness throwing him off-guard. “I’m just happy to be off the dummies.”
                Brenan smiled. “Let’s get started then,” he said.
                Brenan was always friendly with him, but he did not spare him in their sparring sessions. The dwarf beat him, again and again, without cruelty but also without mercy. After each session, the dwarf would give him a hand up, Quentin dusting himself off, and they would begin the process again. Quentin remembered the sword training he had received almost as soon as he could hold one; his father had hired the finest swordsman that money could buy, but the lessons did him little good against the dwarf. Brenan wielded a round shield and a wooden short sword against Quentin’s dual wooden short swords. He beat Quentin every time. When he had finally seen enough, Sorek strode over to the pair and shoved Quentin out of the way, disarming him in the process.
                “Watch,” Sorek ordered.
                The orc stood toe to toe with Brenan; the two began sparring. Brenan was tremendously strong, but even he could not withstand the orc’s onslaught for very long. The orc attacked with such speed and ferocity that Quentin could hardly believe it, considering the orc’s apparent age. Brenan withstood for a time, but the orc landed a blow on his shield that spun the dwarf around. That was it for him. Sorek hit Brenan’s exposed back with such force that the blade shattered upon his back, the sound of the crack echoing through nearby forest.
                Sorek threw the hilt of the broken blade at Quentin’s feet and shoved the other into his chest so hard that he almost knocked the human to the ground. “If you insist on using two blades, attack aggressively. And you must get stronger.” With that, the orc left them.
                Quentin went to the dwarf, who was lying on his back, staring at the forest ceiling. He apologized to Brenan and gave him a hand up. The dwarf rose slowly, with a groan.
                “Ye dinnae ‘ave to apologize,” the dwarf said with a grimace. “But we ‘ave to get ye better, lad. I cannae take many beatins’ like that.”
                And he did improve, slowly, if for no other reason than to spare his new friend any more of Sorek’s “demonstrations.” The dwarf still won most contests, but it was costing him a greater effort. Quentin attacked with more confidence and more ferocity and finally, towards the end of the day, knocked the dwarf on his back. Quentin smiled and held the edge of the wooden sword to the dwarf’s neck.
                “Well done,” the dwarf said, signaling defeat. Quentin removed the sword edge from Brenan’s neck and helped him up; the dwarf dusted himself off. “I think we’ll make a gladiator o’ ye yet,” Brenan reassured him.
                From then on, Quentin took all his meals with the dwarf and stuck close to him during their strength and endurance training. He found Brenan’s company pleasant and let the dwarf do most of the talking. Brenan told him of his past: how he had grown up poor in the streets of Ironforge and how a gang had taken him in and raised him. His expression grew dark, and Quentin could see the regret in his face when the dwarf told him of the terrible things he had done in the gang’s service. In those days, he explained, the gang trained him with a pair of daggers, and he would coat them with poison when he did his vile work. He started telling him of the baker’s apprentice girl that he had met and how they had slowly fallen in love, but his expression grew sad when he mentioned her; he told Quentin that that was a story for another time.
                At the end of what was Quentin’s third week at the compound, training was ended at midday as the gladiators were to prepare to depart for Gurubashi, and Crazk wanted them rested for the games that weekend, especially those who were slated to fight. Quentin wasn’t surprised when Crazk informed him that he wasn’t close to being ready for the arena yet and so wouldn’t be fighting that weekend; the goblin told him that he was pleased with Quentin’s progress, but sending him into the arena at this stage in his development would be the equivalent of a death sentence. Quentin was still to join them on their trip, though, as Crazk wanted to give him an understanding of the games.
                Later, finding the men’s bathhouse busy, Quentin made his way to the beach, and, looking around to ensure that he was alone, peeled off his loincloth and dove into the ocean. This little pastime had become a favorite of Quentin’s during his short stay at Crazk’s gladiator sanctum; he would sometimes break off after a hard day of training and find himself alone on the beach, enjoying the smell of salt in the air and the sound of seagulls calling out to each other. Growing up on his parent’s estate in Elwynn, he and his older brother would spend many of their days swimming in the lake near their family’s mansion. As Quentin grew older, he would bring girls to the lake, and they would swim naked together; as afternoon gave way to evening, they would explore each other’s body while lying on the shore.
                As Quentin broke the surface and ran a hand through his thick black hair, he heard someone shouting from the shore; when he looked, he saw a green figure. It was the orc woman, Sohka. He noticed, with embarrassment, that she was waving his loincloth in the air and yelling something to him, but he couldn’t make it out. She threw Quentin’s loincloth aside and began peeling her training clothes off. She tossed them aside and ran towards the ocean and dove in, swimming towards Quentin. She came upon him as he was treading water, still stunned at this development.
                “Thought I’d be alone for a dip, imagine my surprise to find his lordship here, naked as the day he was born,” she said, exposing her white teeth and sharp, little tusks in a grin.
                “I’m no lord,” Quentin replied. “Happy to have company, though.”
                   “Bet you are. I’ve seen you gawking at me,” the orc said and shot him another smile. She started floating on her back, exposing her small breasts, muscular chest, rippling abs, and thick thighs; her womanhood was lightly covered in curly, black hair. Sohka did a backwards somersault underwater, sticking her legs straight up out of the water while she was under. She emerged from the water and noticed that Quentin was blushing.
                “How cute, he’s blushing. Haven’t seen a naked woman before?” she teased, splashing Quentin with water.
                “I’ve seen plenty; you’ve caught me off-guard is all,” he said, splashing her back.
                “Ah, but a real woman, not some quaking, frail noble girl.”
                “I’ve had my share of ‘real women’,” Quentin assured her.
                “Sure you have, rich boy,” she responded. After thinking for a moment, she said, “I’ve got an idea. Say we have a little race? From this spot we’ll race to that island,” she said, pointing at a small bit of land that jutted up from the ocean. “Once you set foot on the island, turn around and swim back to shore, first one back wins.”
                 “Wins what?” Quentin asked.
                “The best prize of all: glory,” she replied.
                Quentin agreed. Sohka did a countdown, and they both began swimming when she reached zero. Quentin fancied himself a strong swimmer, but he saw immediately that he would not be a match for the orc’s athleticism. As they swam closer to the island, Sohka had almost a body length lead on her human opponent. Quentin decided to make a desperate play and lunged for the orc’s legs; managing to grab Sohka’s ankle and catching her unaware, he pulled her back with all his might as she gave an angry, shocked grunt before Quentin pushed her underwater. Quentin gained momentum, and he managed to reach the island first; as soon as he stood on the shore he turned around just in time to see Sohka charging him with a mix of fury and amusement in her face. She threw all her weight into him, sending his naked for hurtling into the sand and knocking the breath from his lungs. Before he could recover, she grabbed him by his ankle and dragged him a short distance flipped him onto his stomach, straddling her naked form over his.  The orc shoved Quentin’s face into the sand.
                “Nice try,” she hissed in his ear and gave a bark of laughter before sprinting towards the ocean.
                Quentin made a desperate grab for her feet but missed badly. He looked up to see her thick, green muscular buns running towards the sea. He supposed he would have to be satisfied with that as a victory, because the actual competition was all but over. He dragged himself out of the sand and made his way back into the ocean and swam slowly to the shore. By the time he was halfway there, he saw that the orc was standing on shore with her hands on her hips; she was already clothed. He came ashore and made no effort to hide his nakedness. The orc gave Quentin a smile and threw him his loincloth.
                “I feel like I’ve been trampled by a pack of kodos,” Quentin told her as he got dressed.
                Sohka laughed at that. “You aren’t bad for a spoiled noble boy,” she said, eyeing Quentin up and down. She ran a green hand through her black hair, which was shaved short on the side, with the top being a messy mow-hawk.
                The now-dressed Quentin approached her and stuck out his hand. “This spoiled rich boy is called Quentin.”
                She met his handshake. “So I’ve heard. Name’s Sohka, but I think you know that already.”
                “I might’ve hard it mentioned a few times.”
                “Thanks for the fun, Quentin. I’d best be off now,” she said, turning to leave.
                “Let’s get a pint in Gurubashi,” Quentin said to her as she was leaving. “My treat, since you won our little competition.”
                “Win a match in the arena, then we’ll talk,” she shouted, without looking back towards him.