ROLEPLAY

Oren pyr Lydia

Yesterday, I applied for a job with the Fyros Legions. You know that ever since I was a kid, I've dreamed of joining them. Mom used to say that they were very rough homins, but as she liked to say, to become a patriot one day and be able to exercise our duty within the empire, there are only two solutions: be rich enough to pay for the rite of citizenship, or become a legionnaire. Legions in fact pay the rite of passage to the authorities, in return for a year's commitment to them.

So, yesterday morning, I went to Pyr, in front of the Cerakos gate. Every month, the legions organize a recruitment session. Here, a dozen of us were waiting. An officer arrived, accompanied by a helmeted legionnaire, and had us line up. Then he explained the legionnaires' rite, saying that it would be very hard and that only a handful would pass. I'd been training for months, pounding the goaris and kipees of the imperial dunes, but looking at the other pretenders, I wondered if I belonged here. Most of them were burly, with a patient look on their faces. It's said that the legions attract a lot of outcasts, even criminals, who hope to regain their virginity by joining the legions. So, at the age of 16, I'll admit that I was in a bit of a pickle.

The first test began without us even having to introduce ourselves. The officer pointed to the first applicant in line and took him aside, towards the cliff of the burnt corridor. Meanwhile, we had to wait in line, neither moving nor speaking, under the mocking eye of the legionnaire who stayed with us. When the officer returned, he was alone. I wondered if he'd thrown the applicant over the cliff. We heard everything and anything about the legionnaires' ritual. The worst I heard was about camping out for a night alone in the devil's bosom. Anyway, we waited like that for hours under the sweltering sun, which was starting to get seriously hot, and no applicants came back. When I was called, it was towards the end. The officer took me to the top of a dune, then asked me to remove my armor and keep only my loincloth on. He then pointed to a large lumper grazing in the distance. A godgin, one of those huge lumpers that sometimes wander around here. The officer then told me to go and fight the lumper with my bare hands. The look on his face was unmistakable. So I went for the godgin. As you can imagine, I didn't last long. He knocked me to the ground with two blows. The officer picked me up and told me to get back into the fight, which I did. How many times did I fall? Frankly, I don't know. I'd been kicked by paws and attacked by thorns, and I'd gone into a rage like you wouldn't believe. It was stupid, I know, but I had no chance of defeating the godgin. Not without weapons, not naked, and certainly not with my little fists. And yet I was going. I was going to fight, again and again. Then the officer said stop and showed me a place, behind a dune, where I met up with other would-be legionnaires. The others and I looked at each other. We didn't know whether we'd passed or failed. None of us dared speak. Some time later, another applicant joined our group. The officer and the legionnaire who had been watching us in front of Pyr joined us. The officer announced that we had passed the first test. I'd passed? And yet I hadn't even managed to scratch the godgin? I later learned that this test was designed to test combativeness. It didn't matter if we managed to kill the lumper, as long as we got up to fight again, it was positive.

By the end of the first round, there were only six of us left. Half had been eliminated. The second round awaited us.

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