Chapter Text
K'Sante groaned as he was jostled awake. Wherever he was sleeping, it was moving far too much to be stable.
"Sante. Sante get up,"
A voice urged behind his eyelids, still blocking out the increasingly noisy outside world as his senses awoke with his brain.
A heavy hand landed on his shoulder and shoved him hard finally getting him to react with a glare at the perpetrator of disturbing his beauty sleep.
"There you are. Thought you died or something!"
The perpetrator was Sett, a friend he had made sometime before now. The man was a mountain of muscle, much like K’Sante himself, but wore a ratty, thin cloak that hardly covered his broad shoulders over top of his equally ratty white tunic-- though it could hardly be called white anymore. Somewhere in the back of K'Sante's mind he knew that hood hid a pair of animal ears, similar to a wolf's, that sprouted from the top of his head of reddish pink hair. In their first encounter he believed the man was bewitched by some ancient forest god.
Beside Sett was another man, considerably thinner in build and slightly shorter. His robes were slightly cleaner than the man beside him, but their lower edge was frayed as if it had been sliced off. K'Sante remembered that he'd learned his name was Kayn. He had a jewel eye for some sort of accident he refused to elaborate on.
"Where are we..."
K'Sante muttered. He felt as though his head had been smashed over and over into a rocky cliff face and then left to soak in boiling water to rot. Let's just say he wasn't in the mood for many pleasantries.
"Right now? We're in an armored prison carriage,"
Kayn didn't seem to be up for optimism either if his tone was anything to go by.
"Headed to fight to the death."
What did he mean by "fight to the death"?
"Are we being punished? For what purpose? By who..?"
K'Sante trailed his questions quickly as he rubbed his head and tried not to slur over his words. Attempting in earnest to get this full picture before whatever carriage reached its threatening destination. He'd already fought for his life once-- it got him stuck here. At least he assumed.
"Well, it's technically the best option we could have,"
Sett chimed in.
"If we win, we get glory and fame. A whole second chance at life."
What on Earth was this situation he'd ended up in?
"Are you saying we're--?"
The three men were launched toward the head of their transport with little time to recover as the rear door of the carriage opened, all three lifting a hand to shield their eyes from the blinding sunlight that flooded through the large opening.
What looked like a soldier stood on the other side, holding the hilt of a sword sheathed into his belt. A thin width of feathers cascading from a small podium on his helmet and blending down into the silhouette of his cape behind him. Brassy armor fitted around the muscles of his abdomen while a kilt of leather strips covered a red under-tunic and strong legs on one side. He seemed about as fed up with the situation as the rag-tag group he was looking at.
"Get up, gladiators,"
Well fuck.
K'Sante watched the other two get up and be hauled out before he even thought about moving.
A rattling of metal followed his companions as they were removed from the carriage and he quickly found out why as he moved to stand and cold clamps of iron around his wrists made themselves known; an equally thick chain keeping them together across the center.
Just perfect.
Stepping out into the light, K'Sante squinted against the blazing sun. His feet hit lukewarm stones and almost just as quickly he was shoved into line beside Sett. He used the time to let his eyes adjust before looking around.
They were in some kind of central, outdoor, gathering space; pillared buildings surrounding them in all 4 cardinal directions with smaller ones at the secondaries and even roads branching off between them. There were slim trees sprouting from shallow stone boxes along the buildings, shrubbery and vines also spilling their way out at random.
Crowds of what seemed to be every class of people began to gather and observe them. Clearly whatever they were here for was some kind of event they put the word out about.
K'Sante could hardly care, cocking his head up to toss back his dark locks and let the sun hit his toned face. Whoever these people were, he would not let them see him weak.
The same soldier who had let them out of their box-on-wheels surveyed the three of them as more carriages arrived and lined up evenly beside the one they had come out of. He started small with Kayn, gripping his slender cheeks and turning his head side to side to get a look at the rest of his face.
"What's with your eye, serf."
It was less of a question and more of an insult. He heard Kayn scoff at the warrior.
"Keep talking and we'll be matching."
K'Sante had to refrain himself from snickering when he heard a clack of teeth and saw the soldier pull his hand back. Looks like he wasn’t the only one about to give this war-decorated nobody a hard time.
This was further confirmed with Sett who was next in line. He did not let the soldier get such a privilege as touching him. He growled deep in the back of his throat when the man attempted to reach for the hood of his shitty little cloak. A set of sharpened teeth and fangs greeting the other man from behind his snarling lips.
K'Sante bit back another smile when the officer cleared his throat nervously and moved on to himself.
"Any tricks up your sleeves, brute?"
"I don't have any sleeves."
“You know what I meant you sonofabitch. No funny business, got it? Or I’ll make sure you're dead first.”
K’Sante scoffed. This guy was clearly all bark and no bite. Big words and little action besides avoiding any attack thrown at him.
“You seem nervous, pretty bird. Afraid big cats like to snack on sparrows?”
A grin split across his plump lips which only spread to the other two beside him as the soldier flinched slightly, the clink of his armor giving it away.
He turned to a boy nearby, perhaps a squire or scribe of some kind.
"Mark down these three. They've all got enough nerve to take on a beast. See if his highness wants em."
His highness? Well well well.
"No idea we'd go straight to the royal box..."
Sett muttered against his ear and K'Sante couldn't help but snicker quietly.
Both of them received a blow to the shoulders from behind, getting a grunt and a hefty snarl in response.
"Keep quiet, you two."
K'Sante just exhaled through his nose in an attempt to keep his composure. Petty insults were fun, but now wasn't a time for murder. He shot Kayn and Sett a look out of his periphery that made sure they all stayed on the same page and backed off.
The scribe finished whatever he was scrawling on a large spool of parchment and sprinted across the plaza as the soldier turned back at the three of them, nodded to whoever was behind them and sneered.
“May the gods take pity on you.”
K'Sante heard a loud thwack and a pain in his knees and neck before it was lights out again.
This time when K'Sante woke, he was considerably colder which he definitely wouldn't complain about. The clamps around his wrists were also missing which was another bonus.
However, the insistent banging that woke him in the first place was not great. After much internal conflict on whether to choke out whoever was responsible, or use his words-- K'Sante cracked open his eyes.
Turns out it was Kayn. He was slamming himself over and over into a wall of iron bars.
"Kayn,"
K'Sante forced himself not to smirk when that immediately got the boy's attention.
"Leave it alone. Those bars are tougher than you, for sure."
He expected a snarky remark, but instead Kayn just huffed out a heavy sigh as he rubbed the shoulder he'd been using as a battering-ram, before coming to sit beside where K'Sante was on the flat stones of their cell floor up against an equally flat wall.
"Can't blame me for tryin... if Sett was up, I'dve made him do it. Pretty sure they gave him a wonder drug though..."
"Why would they do that?"
K'Sante questioned. Half interested, half trying to keep Kayn talking since it seemed to calm him.
"His hood is gone. I'm guessing they found his-- features dangerous or something."
Ah. Well that made some sense.
K'Sante just nodded, glad when Kayn took it as an invitation to continue his report of what's happened while he’d been unconscious.
"There's been talk of some royals coming to meet us. In this city there's two brothers that rule because their parents were killed at sea? I dunno, the guards here don't have very good diction,"
That got a chuckle from the larger man. Kayn's sass was as entertaining as it was irritating sometimes.
"They're supposed to be here today sometime before sun down-- oh yeah, it's about noon right now,"
Helpful, but K'Sante doubted it'd matter what time of day it was till they started their battles or till he got hungry enough to start counting the hours till their next meal.
"I think one of their names is Yasuo. Don't quote me on that though. But, the guards here seem to think highly of him, if how much they talk about him as the "warrior prince" is anything to go by. He apparently monitors the military here and oversees the tournament thing we're being thrown into,"
Somewhere, K'Sante knew that name. From where or what he couldn't say, though.
"Oh, last thing, the guards are also apparently not a fan of their Champions? Something along the line of their personal bodyguards I guess. One of them might be blessed by a thunder god because they said he can turn into lightning and zip around or something freaky like that."
"Now you are just telling tall tales, Kayn. Did you hit your head ending up in here?"
K'Sante smiled at the younger man who only glared back at his teasing.
"It's not a tall tale! I heard it straight from one of those lunky iron pots--"
Kayn cut himself short after a decent thud echoed through their cell followed by dog-like whining. Sett had launched himself off the bench he'd been left to rest on and was now in a pile on the floor that vaguely resembled a man, but looked more like a lump of melted wax with how his skin blended with the color of his tunic. The only contrast being his fiery hair.
"You okay, buddy?"
Again, Kayn spoke, being the first to get up and go check on their tallest member. He only got a whimper in response.
"Hey. Words big guy. Nobody knows what your weird sounds mean."
"I can't feel my legs..!"
Sett finally spoke, flopping out his large arms to land onto his back to glare up at the skinny purple haired man above him.
This time K'Sante was up and helped him up to his feet, reassuring him he'll probably be able to feel them again in a short while.
"It's probably a side effect of whatever they gave you. Made it so you'd have a hard time busting out."
As he assisted Sett to sit back down on the bench was when he noticed the two wolf-like ears sprouting from his head and the tail that laid limp against the bench beside him. Sporting the same shade of ruby color as the rest of his head, his ears were in a laxed attention stance while the similarly colored, long, bushy bundle that rivaled the width of the man’s own thigh seemed about as useless as his legs at the moment.
"Now what to do about those..."
Sett tilted his head slightly in confusion before trying to look up at what K'Sante was just above his head. And upon discovering his exposed secret he yelped and tried to cover them with his hands.
"What the fuck?! Where'd my hood go?! And why is this here?!!"
He panicked as he held up the tail that was still lifeless and shook it with his growing irritation.
"I did such a good job trying to hide it, why is it back?!"
"Easy, easy, we'll figure it out okay? Try to regain your strength rather than worrying about your extra-- extremities."
K'Sante tried to comfort again, placing a hand over one of Sett's pressing on his head still.
"K'Sante what if they kill me?! You know how they treat people like me! I don't want to die..."
"You're not going to die. I won't let them hurt you or Kayn, alright? We will figure it all out just calm down"
The darker man helped his trembling comrade to take a few deep breaths that helped him relax a little before he spotted a bright flash across the floor. Moments after Kayn came colliding backward with him and K'Sante had to catch him quick as he started swearing in anger at the jump-scare he was just unwillingly subjected to.
When he looked up to find the cause, he almost thought he might be dreaming. Or maybe hallucinating was better as what seemed to be a boy stood outside their cell in a quickly fading halo of light and shimmering, tiny sparks.
He had a head of bright greenish-blonde hair kept away from his soft features by a golden laurel which framed his head in delicate gold leaves. He wore a short, but intricately detailed tunic that was held taught by a thin golden belt at his waist, decorated with a lightning bolt motif at its center. Small bolts also hung from his ears that were halfway decorated with small blue and green gems.
His smile was bright and he had a playful, childish look in his eye that reflected in his wide stance with his hands placed up on his hips.
"There you are!”