The Hero's Auction

The following morning, the prince and I climbed into a carriage and made the journey to the capital. The little cottage I’d been in up to now was isolated from the main cities, but with the competition about to kick off, we needed to be at the heart of things. As we approached the high walls of the capital, a great gate stood open to admit us, and a handful of guards tugged their forelocks in deference to the royalty passing by. Elias just sniffed and ignored them, idly rubbing his hands along the trousers he now wore. I allowed myself a slight smile at his discomfort.

We trundled along the busy streets as the townspeople darted out of our path. A few stared after the carriage with interest, but most went about their own business, leaving us to ours. It took a while meandering through the winding thoroughfares, but we eventually arrived at a very large, centrally located building. It was massive, constructed of heavy wooden beams and broad panels that towered above us and gave the structure a gravitas that reminded me of major sports venues back home. The prince allowed himself to be helped out of the carriage and gestured for me to follow.

The double doors were grand and intricately carved, and they opened at our approach. Our steps led us now into what the prince referred to as the “Hall of Heroes.” As soon as we were inside, standing in the massive rotunda that served as a foyer, the prince waved a hand at me and strode away. I took a step to follow, but an official-looking gentleman wearing blue velvet and carrying a scroll reached out and blocked my movement with one hand. With a shake of his head, he unrolled the scroll and scanned it, finally saying my name in a deep monotone. I nodded, and he seemed satisfied, pointing me down a hallway that was lined with doors.

“Third door on the left,” he murmured. I made my way down, resisting the urge to open the other doors, and stopped at the one he’d instructed. I pushed it open and went in, finding a pleasantly comfortable room with plush seating and a table. A jug of water and some cups sat on the table, and I quickly poured a drink and downed it in one swallow.

For a long time, I stayed in the room, alone and thinking. A part of me wanted to try to leave, but I decided that would be a bad idea. I suspected the other proxies were waiting behind the other doors, and that thought sobered me. Some of those people, those strangers, were the ones I might have to kill. They were nearby right now, and I might be tasked with ending their lives. I shuddered a bit but took a deep breath and drank more water. First things first. I needed to know what to do next.

Elias had given me some information on the journey to the capital, and I reviewed it in my head now as I waited. I would be given a budget, he’d said. I would be bidding on potential teammates for this competition, party members chosen for the journey ahead. He saw me recoil at the mention of purchasing people, and he assured me that this was not a situation of enslavement.

“What sort of culture allows people to be bought and sold like chattel?” the prince had said, disgusted. “We are far too advanced for that.” A sly smile curled his lip as he said, “Besides, where’s the challenge in bending people to one’s will by force? I prefer giving others a choice and then encouraging them to choose correctly.”

I hid the little shiver his words evoked in me. He continued that everyone involved in the auction was there by their own free will, eager to participate in the competition as a means to earn perks and glory. To me, that sounded more like a sports draft back in my world, which in an odd way made sense. I could work with that. I just needed to build a dream team.

Any money left over from the auction would go toward supplies and equipment that the team might need. The capital city was central and populated, but most of the kingdom stretched out to forests, mountains and plains, and that was where most of the competition would play out. Proxies could make a big difference in the remote villages, after all, improving the lives of the people.

“Don’t focus on the fighters,” the prince had instructed me as we rolled up to the Hall. “This will be a small team. Proxies are often tempted to bid on the biggest and strongest players, but that’s a trap. Look for specialties instead. Those with skills that others might overlook but that might be useful for repairing things, moving quickly, making strategies. They don’t need to be good at swinging a sword to do some good in this kingdom, which is what they will be focusing on.”

He had left the last bit unsaid, but I understood his meaning. My team would have nothing to do with his more underhanded schemes. The assassinations would be my burden alone.

The prince had given me more tips about what to look for, much of which was swimming in my head now, but I was hopeful that I would know what I needed when I saw it.

Eventually, a retainer came to the room I was in and instructed me to follow. We walked down a long corridor to a tall door, and when I pushed it open, I found a wide open space, almost like a small theater. Seating surrounded a raised platform in the middle of the room. This would be where the auction was held, I realized. Panels of glass surrounded the stage, and I noticed as I looked through that the glass was a one-way mirror, allowing the attendees to observe the subjects on display but not vice versa. The room was already filling up with proxies, observers, and those hoping to be chosen for the competition. The retainer handed me a bidding paddle and directed me to an empty seat near the dais, and I slid into the chair as unobtrusively as I could. A few others cast side eyes in my direction - were they other proxies? Nobles? Possible teammates? I had no way of knowing, so I chose to stay silent and wait for the auction to start.

With the ringing of a bell, the crowd settled and the auction began.

The auction process seemed to go by slowly as prospective party members filed across the platform, one after another. A host auctioneer read aloud a list of each candidate’s strengths as they took their turns in the center of the dais and waited for the bidding to commence. I realized that many precincts and territories had sent their strongest fighters - perhaps they’d had a local competition for the honor of being sent to the auction. These were the teammates that I had no interest in, so I mostly tuned out when the large, Viking-adjacent potentials were up for grabs. Instead, I focused on the population of the room itself. It was quite interesting to see the variety of humanoid races present, most likely waiting to be bid on. Most of them, I could generally figure out, such as the beast hybrids. Characters made from mixing human and animal characteristics had been a feature of fantasy lore for a long time in my world. But even with a rudimentary idea of what I was looking at, I soon found myself surprised by the differences between the stories I knew from home and the reality in front of me.

The hybrids, for instance, seemed obvious at a glance, but the longer I looked, the more questions were raised. These were not regular humans with furry ears and tails, and they didn’t have the distinct and familiar features of domestic dogs or cats. The animal that made up the non-human part of most of the hybrids was a complete mystery, something fearsome and dangerous, and many of them looked more like monsters than men. The commonality between them was their great size and physique; they all seemed to share the ability to crush any average human without breaking a sweat.

Apparently, this was the largest gathering of beast hybrids in one place in the capital since - well, since the last competition. Most of the beast tribes lived off the land in secluded and remote areas, and their rarity in the auction added to their already exorbitant cost. I heard someone murmur to their neighbor that most of these hybrids had been soldiers in the service of the nobility, trained to fight and also accustomed to life in the city. I wondered how many had actually made the trek from the edges of the kingdom to be here for this event.

The pattern of warriors dominating the options continued until an hour into the auction. A young hybrid girl walked onto the stage and surveyed the crowd. She had pitch black fur up to her elbows and knees, and her yellow eyes were sharp and seemed to be tracking movement, even though the one-way glass should have prevented her from seeing anything but her own reflection. I made the decision to bid on her, and from the moment I raised my paddle, I felt her eyes piercing into me. It was unnerving.

I didn’t face much competition in the bidding; she lacked large muscles and documented skills like the seasoned fighters had. But she perfectly matched the profile I was told to look out for by the prince. Someone near me sniffed and dismissed her as “feral,” which I inferred meant a hybrid that lived in a wild tribe rather than in luxury as a mercenary. I wondered what had brought her here.

One thing I had gleaned from listening to the prince and some of the voices around me: no one could compare to a hybrid when it came to survival and tracking skills. It didn’t matter that she was small and could probably not lift a sword with two hands and a pulley. I put in the winning bid, spending only 6 percent of my budget and securing my first party member. An official wrote her name down on a card: Andra.

Following her, I secured a middle aged elven mage named Estelar. He didn’t specialize in combat, but rather in the natural arts, things like purifying water and helping crops. His skill set included some basic healing, as well. Not only did he fit our strategy by being able to ensure the party was kept healthy, he would also be useful to our secondary objective of winning favor in smaller territories during our travels. His ability to assist with agriculture and farming would lend credibility to our group and garner us points outside of the prince’s darker schemes.

He was slightly more expensive than I had hoped, but the cost of adding him to the group still remained well within the budget Elias and I had set aside.

Finally I decided to add a technician to the party. An older woman with two large horns curving from her forehead trundled out onto the platform, looking fairly unassuming except for the nimble fingers that fidgeted with the clasps of her belt. As the host read her skill set to the crowd, I realized that she would be useful as a mechanic when it came to our items and weapons, with the added bonus of a lifetime of knowledge and training on the weapons themselves. I considered myself fairly physically fit, but my experience with deadly weapons was next to none, so having someone with the knowledge to help the party choose gear, use it and maintain it would be the best insurance for our team’s objectives.

Another hour passed and the auction began to wrap up. Three party members seemed sufficient, I thought. A small group that could move quickly and with a low profile. I counted the funds I still had in hand, satisfied. With just under two thirds of my budget remaining, all that was left was to meet up with my new party and shop for necessities.

As the auction crowd began to disperse, I felt a touch on my shoulder. The same quiet servant as before now gestured for me to follow, and I was led to a side room labeled with an 8 on the door. It appeared to be a meeting room, one with a comically large table at the center. It made sense, I supposed; most of the parties that had been built today had at least six people, and some had as many as 12. The prince had mentioned that a common strategy in these competitions was to spend the bulk of the budget on people, split the group into smaller parties for efficiency, and try to cast a wider net for glory by sending the smaller parties in different directions. It wasn’t a bad idea, I supposed, but it was limiting in its own way. I sat down at the table and waited.

It wasn’t long before the door opened again, and this time, my three new companions entered. They each paused, surveying the room and finding just me there. I rose to my feet and gestured for them to sit, and they did so uneasily. I realized they were probably surprised that we were such a small group. They would already know that they had been chosen by the proxy of the youngest and least accomplished member of the royal family, and now they had to adjust to small numbers on top of that existing disadvantage. Disappointment hung in the air.

As the silence grew more strained, I cleared my throat. I needed to speak up to try and calm everyone’s nerves. But before I could get a word out, the door burst open dramatically.

The prince had arrived.

His smile was vapid as always, his narrowed eyes darting from person to person before settling on me. I met his gaze steadily, and after a moment, he waved an arm at the others with a flourish.

“Welcome to the winning team,” he said confidently. “I’m sure you have your worries given how different this group is from what you might have expected, but I will remind you that innovation never prospered on a path already made.”

He circled the room flamboyantly while speaking, his steps overplayed to accommodate the new attire he had agreed to wear. The three new faces in the room watched him move with a combination of interest and confusion. In spite of the prince’s struggle against the trousers, his aura still entranced all who hadn’t yet been subjected to the horrors lurking under his royal persona.

“I would wager that most in this room were disappointed to hear their top bid was by the prince with the least acclaim, but I assure you that my status is a boon, not a curse. You see,” he continued, “while my older brothers and sisters were plotting with nobility, I was studying the common man. While they were deepening their pockets, I was drafting my plans for this very day. I gave my all to better myself as a ruler and to better the kingdom under my eventual rule. This competition is simply the first spotlight of many in my rise to fame on the grand stage.”

Waxing poetic seemed to come as naturally to him as casual cruelty. He will become a truly terrifying tyrant if he gets the chance, I thought.

Suddenly, the hybrid girl, Andra, raked her claws over the polished wooden table, scoring the surface. Everyone started at the sound, even Prince Elias.

“Get to the point already. I don’t care for long speeches,” she said in a low voice, her eyes shooting daggers at the prince.

A pregnant pause filled the room. No one moved as we waited to see how the prince would react.

He blinked, and a slow smile crept across his face. “Ah yes, of course.” The prince slid into an open seat, his movements reminding me of a snake. The rest of the room exhaled.

“The plan is rather straightforward: we use the advantage of our small group to travel fast and efficiently. You two,” he said, gesturing at Pira and Estelar, “will aid the townspeople and villages we run through, and you,” he turned to face Andra, “will be in charge of guiding them as fast as possible.”

He nodded to himself before looking at me.

“My proxy will be following my orders and working with information on a need-to-know basis to ensure things go as smoothly as possible while avoiding any… major conflicts. This party isn’t exactly built for direct confrontations, after all.”

“This party is a joke,” Andra muttered, her fingers curling into fists. “What if I don’t want any part of it?”

Elias cocked his head, his slight smile still plastered on his face. “What could you mean by that?”

She hesitated, but she was in for both a penny and a pound, so she pressed on. “You talk fancy, but something about you smells foul. I don’t trust you.”

I froze as my eyes darted to Elias, looking for his reaction. I noticed the other two at the table were also watching the young royal.

The prince leaned back, his smile unchanged.

“Treason is a terrible thing,” he said after a long moment. “To act in such a way, to refuse to participate in this competition that you willingly signed up for, would be to betray the royal family in a sacred tradition.”

“I can change my mind,” Andra said.

Elias pursed his lips thoughtfully. “You could. You could tell people that you decided not to join our party. You could tell people lots of things. But then, so could I. I could tell people that you are treasonous. I could tell them that you joined this competition so you could harm a member of the royal family. I could even tell them that you tried to kill me right here.” He waved a hand. “After all, the evidence of your violence is there on the table before you.”

His eyes drifted down to the table in front of Andra, focusing on the deep scratches in the table from her earlier outburst. She followed his gaze and flushed at the trap she had inadvertently made for herself. Her lip curled in a snarl, but she stayed silent.

Elias smiled again, and as usual, it didn’t reach his eyes. “You’re from the Wallandar Tribe, are you not?” He didn’t wait for an answer. “It would be a shame if the whole tribe was indicted for treason against the crown. Yes, a real pity.”

Andra’s eyes widened. The prince shrugged. “You couldn’t possibly be acting alone in this plot to kill me, of course. Everyone in your tribe is part of it, or so I would be forced to report.” He leaned in, his eyes narrowed to slits as he regarded her. “Once that word got out, all the parties present for this competition would hunt you and your people to extinction. Every man, every woman, and every child in your tribe, dead. All from a foolish tantrum.” He rubbed a finger slowly along one of the gouges in the wood.

Andra sunk back into her chair, defeated. A glimmer of true fear shone in her eyes, snuffing out any rebellious flicker that might have remained.

The prince’s words hung in the air. But then, he abruptly sat back, grinning and looking almost merry.

“Of course, that would never happen!” He laughed. “This is all just silly talk. Smile, everyone - it’s a happy day! The beginning of a new era. My era!”