Tag: fantasy arena fights

A king is murdered on the eve of a peace treaty, sparking a war between the warlike Alethi and the mysterious tribe of nonhuman Parshendi. Thus starts a decade-long war of attrition on the Shattered Plains, one of the most inhospitable places on Roshar, a rocky world torn apart by vicious storms and imbued with the power of Stormlight. Leading the charge are Shardbearers, noble warriors bonded to historic blades of incredible power that can be summoned at will.

The story follows the surviving royal Kholin family as they struggle to hold their fracturing country together, Shallan, a foreign noblewomen chasing mysteries at the heart of the world’s conflicts while running from the devastating secrets in her past, and Kaladin, an Alethi spearman betrayed into slavery by his leaders, who shines brighter than them all, even when thrown to his death on the plains of war.

Cyrus, the unbeatable Golden Sun, has been trained since his youth to annihilate opponents on the sands—but he’s no less a prisoner than the criminals he faces, and his usefulness to his masters lasts only as long as the money keeps coming in.

Bastian Lytos, a former griffin rider sentenced to the Arena for disobeying orders in battle, knows only despair. When fate throws him into the path of the Arena champion, he begins to wonder whether the gods—one in particular—sent him here for a reason.

An unlikely alliance forms, but in order to survive long enough to see freedom, they’ll have to fight… To the death.

Abramm has dedicated the last eight years of his life to becoming worthy to tend the Sacred Flames of Eidon. But on the eve of taking the vows that will irrevocably separate him from the life he was born to—as Abramm Kalladorne, fifth son of the king of Kiriath—he is betrayed by his spiritual mentor and sold into slavery by his brothers.

Flung into a world of galley ships and ancient mist-bound cities, Abramm is forced to compete as a gladiator. When the oppressed masses rally around his success, he discovers his suffering has molded him into something greater than he ever thought possible—to serve a purpose he never imagined.

Seyonne has been a slave for sixteen years, almost half his life, and has lost everything: his dignity, the people and homeland he loves, and the Warden’s power he used to defend an unsuspecting world from the ravages of demons. Seyonne forces himself to exist only in the present moment and to avoid the pain of hope or caring about anyone.

But from the moment he is sold to the arrogant, careless Prince Aleksander, the heir to the Derzhi Empire, Seyonne’s uneasy peace begins to crumble. And when he discovers a demon lurking in the Derzhi court, he must find hope and strength in a most unlikely place…

Sierra escapes slavery under the king’s torturer and his apprentice Rasten, falling in with the fugitive Prince Cammarian and his foster-brother, Isidro, recently crippled at her master’s hands.

Prince Cammarian struggles to defend his homeland from invaders, while questioning whether to trust their new ally Sierra… whose horrifying magical power is punishable by death in the frozen north.

When Isidro is enslaved by the invading army, and Rasten approaches Sierra with a plan to kill the master they both abhor, she and Cammarian must decide what price they are willing to pay for freedom…

On his sixteenth birthday, Talen is given a magical birthright that forever changes his life. When his family is slaughtered by a powerful sorcerer only known as the Golden Fool, Talen is sold into slavery and forced into the fighting pits.

There he finds violence and killing, but also two friends who lighten his misery. He must use his birthright—the ability to glimpse possible futures—to survive.

All he wants is vengeance. Find those responsible for killing his parents, and get to the Golden Fool. First, he must escape the pits, using his wits and his magical gift. Even that might not be enough.

Young Gav can remember the page of a book after seeing it once, and, inexplicably, he sometimes “remembers” things that are going to happen in the future.

As a loyal slave, he must keep these powers secret, but when a terrible tragedy occurs, Gav, blinded by grief, flees the only world he has ever known. And in what becomes a treacherous journey for freedom, Gav’s greatest test of all is facing his powers so that he can come to understand himself and finally find a true home.

Gereint Enseichen of Casmantium knows little and cares less about the recent war in which his king tried to use griffins and fire to wrest territory from the neighboring country of Feierabiand, but he knows that his kingdom’s unexpected defeat offers him a chance to escape from his own servitude.

But now in a position of strength, the griffins are not inclined to forgive. Willing or not, Gereint will find himself caught up in a desperate struggle between the griffins and the last remaining Casmantian mage. Even the strongest gifts of making and building may not prove sufficient when the fiery wind of the griffins begins to bury the life of Casmantium beneath the burning sands…

Llesho was seven when the Harn invaded his family’s mountain kingdom of Thebin. Sold into slavery on Pearl Island, he was, as far as he knew, the sole survivor of his royal family.

When Llesho was ten, the old man called Lleck secretly began to undertake the boy’s education, revealing that all six of his older brothers were still alive!

So Llesho petitioned his lord to be trained as a gladiator, to win his freedom, find and rescue his brothers, and with their help raise an army against the evil Harn.

Bane the Bastard is the illegitimate son of the Rigante king. Born of treachery, Bane grew up an outcast in his own land, feared by his fellow highlanders, and denied by the father whose unmistakable mark he bore–one eye tawny brown, the other emerald green.

Bane found acceptance across the seas–only to have it stripped away by a cruel and deadly swordsman. Now fighting as a gladiator in the blood-soaked arenas of the Empire, Bane lives for one thing: revenge.

But the armies of the Stone are preparing to march on the lands of the Rigante. The fate of human and Seidh alike will be decided by the clash of swords–and by the bonds of twisted love and bitterness between a father and a son . . .

The dragons only emerged from their deep caverns when the weather was right, with thick clouds and sweltering heat. It was on such a day that Arlian’s home village was destroyed, his family and friends slaughtered.

He survived, though, and swore vengeance on the dragons, and on the looters and slavers who had captured him in the ruins. But no one had ever slain a dragon; how could a mere slave hope to do so?

When Rialla was young, slave traders from Darran ambushed and enslaved her clan. For years, Rialla lived in bondage, and when a chance came to escape, she fled to the mercenary nation of Sianim.

Now she can strike back at her former masters. A lord in Darran seeks to outlaw slavery—but there are plots to kill him before he can. Rialla is chosen by the spymaster of Sianim to prevent the murder—and is plunged into a world of deadly magic, where gods walk in human form, and her most trusted companions are not what they claim. And where Rialla could be enslaved again…

Over the hot land of Ashdod looms Threshold, the pyramid which the Magi of Ashdod are building to propel themselves into Infinity. Thousands of slaves have given their lives to the construction of Threshold, now almost complete.

The Master of the Magi knows the glassworker slave Tirzah is hiding something, but he would never guess her secret is forbidden magic. Tirzah can communicate with glass—and the glass in Threshold screams to her in pain. For it knows what no one suspects: Something waits in Infinity, watching, biding its time. When the glass capstone is cemented in blood, it plans to step from Infinity into Ashdod…

From the age of seven, Dunstan has been enslaved in the army of Thursley. After thirty years in the fire of constant warfare, he has been forged into an unbreakable warrior.

Oswynn is the property of the Sisters of the Withered Branch, the order of witches who serve the earls of Thursley. Brighter and more gifted than her fellows, she yearns for so much more.

Hand-in-hand, can they really stand against the traditions of hatred and break the chains of bondage, or are they doomed to forever be slaves of the Sword and Wand?

In the snowy forestlands of northern Asa’in, the young sorcerer apprentice Tandu embarks on a peacekeeping mission on behalf of her order, the Shadow Towers, following the theft of an ancient magical artifact

At the heart of the twin continent of Edorarr, in the great gladiator arena of the southern empire, a slave is fighting for his life, drawing both admiration from his friends—and the ire of his masters.

Eryk, is one of those friends, who trains Rahlon in the hope that he can win freedom, as he could not. But Eryk hides a dark secret, one that connects Rahlon’s forgotten past and the dark shadow that amasses at the northern edges of the world…

In a world where dragons once soared alongside gods, Lion of Zarall is the most feared gladiator in history. Branded, collared, and forced to kill, he’s known only as soulless property.

But when everything changes in a single night of dark magic and political betrayal, Lion finds himself cast into a world that wants him dead. His past fame is now a curse, his name an insult to the new order.

Hunted by the king and ailed by a deadly injury, he must survive in the harsh North where his very existence is a sin — and confront the invisible chains that bind him. But if his obedience shatters, he’ll face a fate far worse than death.

During a political coup in the port city of Kolhari, fifteen-year-old Gorgik is taken as a slave to the government obsidian mines in Nevèrÿon’s Faltha Mountains. Years later, he is sold to serve one of the royal families, and eventually the army. When he is finally free, he leads a rebellion against Nevèrÿon’s rulers to end the tyranny of slavery.

His is the through-story that connects these first five stories, in Tales of Nevèrÿon—and all the eleven stories, novellas, and novels that the series, Return to Nevèrÿon, where we can watch civilization first develop money, writing, labor, and legends.

When the Riders conquered and enslaved the pastoral Yendri, only one possessed the necessary rage to fight back: Gard the foundling, half-demon, who began a one-man guerrilla war against the Riders, which ended in the loss of his family, condemnation from his own people, and enslavement to powerful mages.

Bitter and wiser, he finds more subtle ways to earn his freedom. This is the story of his rise to power, his vengeance, his unlikely redemption, and his maturation into a loving father―as well as a lord and commander of demon armies.