------------- College Days - Aegiea

The instructor stepped forward again. His swing was hardly unexpected. She barely bobbed her head back. He missed by less than an inch. He stopped and grimaced.

"If you aren't going to take these exercises seriously, you're going to get hurt."

She nodded, almost bowing her head.

"I assure you, master, I take fighting very seriously. I merely did not have to put much effort into avoiding that blow."

He narrowed his eyes.

"I see. You would bother to go through the motions if I came an inch closer to taking your nose off, perhaps?"

"If you had come an inch closer, you would have taken my nose off. If I had allowed it, I would have deserved the pain."

"And what of the damage to your pretty face?"

"That would get better, I assure you master."

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Aegiea Valloria had led a charmed life, if one could call being born as a slave in Viridia "charmed". She displayed a natural aptitude for fighting as a youth and was sent to the ludus of the great Gaius Vallorius, master Gladiator of Compaecia. But something along the way had protected her. The others whispered that she was Nike's chosen. Still others dared to compare her to Athena Herself. But she was anything but a pious worshipper of the Gods. Rather, she was a self serving little tramp. She did anything she could to win favor. She slept with her first promoter at 15. She seduced her way into matches she should never have been given. And by the age of 20, she'd already secured her freedom, not through hard won victories in the arena, but through carefully orchestrated matches, seduction, and blackmail. But she was not really free, for she was still a slave to the killing and the violence on which she had been raised.

She left Compaecia and headed north just as the Crystal War was starting. Along with a band of Viridian mercenaries, she wished nothing more than to make a name for herself killing the heathen Symballans. But the orchestrated action of the arena was soon replaced by the horror and confusion of war. She found she was in the middle of an ancient hatred that was not hers and her bloodlust was soon sated. In one last, insane engagement, she turned on her blood-crazed companions and found herself captured by the Symballan army. What might have been an immediate death sentence became a period of enlightenment after the priestesses she had tried to save came to her defense. The old Aegiea Valloria faded away. A new one marched out of the desert a year later, a truly free woman, called by the Sisters of Isis "The Shield Maiden of Viridia". Though her heart had changed, she still had little use for the Gods.

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