Tina wasn’t sure what kind of meeting place Devon was going to take them to, but the last thing she expected after finding their way through the narrow, darkening and soon even torchlight streets of Constantinople was to show up at what appeared to be an ancient arena.  Well, Devon had mentioned something like that after she’d repeatedly pestered him about where they were going, but she hadn’t expected what looked to be a gladiatorial arena from ancient Rome. So Colosseum-like?

“I thought this was the middle ages?” she said, looking out from the stands they had arrived at. “Weren’t these sort of places abandoned when Rome fell?"

They were in the stands now, below was a huge round space, to doubt where men, animals and slaved fought to the death. The walls of the fighting area seemed a bit scorched here and there. Did they have a fire here recently?

“This is still the Roman Empire, just... evolved somewhat” Devon noted. “I thought you read the reference books I gave you?”

“Mostly, but this still isn’t Rome,” she told him. “We are a long way from Ancient Rome.”

Both in time and space, really.

“True,” he agreed. “But the emperors and their subjects still like to think they are Roman, even though they are actually Greek.”

And they would for another three hundred years Tina guessed by what he’d told her so far.

“And what is that smell,” she wondered at the new horrible odor that assaulted her nose.

It smelled to her like… like burning hair of all things. Why the hell would they be burning hair in a place like this? she wondered. Was maybe the fire that made those black scorch marks on the arena walls was still lit?

They couldn’t be burning people alive, could they, for entertainment?  No, she decided.  Sure the Byzantines had had Greek fire, but that was for war.

She only caught a few more brief glimpses of the main field of the arena before some men in armor Devon referred as ‘bezainted’, something to do with the fact that they looked like they were wearing jackets made of coins, came to collect them and take them to Devon’s business partner or whoever their meeting would be with. As they walked, he added the man was a Byzantine official of some repute, or whoever had the hammer of the gods or some such thing that Devon was looking for.

Did traveling through time always feel like a movie, she wondered, adding another question to her very long  list that her boss had yet to clarify.

The man’s chambers were decked out in an absolutely medieval manner, what with tapestries, braziers spitting sparks from burning charcoal and marble floors that her sandals and the men’s boots clapped echoes around them. Tina briefly wondered about the risk of carbon monoxide poisoning from the sizzling stands that stood at each corner of the room. She’d read once a Roman emperor got killed because of that, but there seemed to be enough ventilation in the chamber to prevent that kind of untimely death. And there seemed to be no hair in these fires, so where, she wondered, had that odor she’d smelled earlier coming from?

Some medieval Eastern Orthodox sacrifice maybe?  She probably should have paid more attention to the religious sections of those books her boss had had her read.

“I still don’t know exactly why you needed me here,” Tina  asked Devon. “What is it about me that’s special where it comes to dwarven hammers?”

“Have trust in the compass,” the dwarf told her. “It’s was made by the Norns themselves, and has never steered me wrong.”

“If you say so,” she replied.

An attendant came out. He was decked out in more of the kind of toga like attire that she associated with the Roman Empire, so maybe he was into nostalgia. The guy looked pretty young, not even as old as she was.

“Consul Merimus will see you now,” he told them.

They were led to another ornately furnished chamber, where a heaviest older man reclined on a divan. Yep, this guy really did think he was a Roman.

“Consul,” Devon stated and bowed slightly. Tina wasn’t sure if she should bow in kind or offer up a curtsy. She decided to bow, at least a little.

“Ah, the dwarf from the Halls of the Mountain Kings,” the man said, rising slightly, then he waved a hand at her, although only barely glanced Tina’s way and with a kind of amused smirk on his lips. “So this is your player?’

“Player?” Tina wondered, getting a suddenly bad feeling about what her purpose was here and instinctively glancing around for the best exit.

“She is by all accounts an expert,” Devon stated. “Worthy to face your champion and of a very sizable wager, I would say.”

The consul turned and squinted at her and pursed his lips. This wasn’t a casual glance, but an appearing to size her up, although not in any kind of sexual way. It was kind of the way she’d been looked at by past coaches. Tina’s apprehension deepened even more.

What was really going on here?  What was she really here to do?

“I’ll admit that she is tall, and her limbs appear supple,” he stated. “But she doesn’t look like a Murderball player to me. Her skin is rather… unblemished, wouldn’t you say, considering?"