Ania looked her opponent in the eyes. A slightly younger warrior faced her, clad in ragged leather armor just as she was. He and Ania each sported a rusted shortsword and a buckler.

One swift action -- it was over. Ania's sword had punched clean through the enemy's face and protruded from the back of his head. And Ania sensed that the audience was not pleased. Something to do with the swiftness of the fight...

Her head was instantly filled with so much anger and venomous hatred that she nearly blacked out, going down on her knees to keep her balance. She couldn't see the arena around her. She couldn't see anything at all. Her face felt sand--then she knew nothing.

Ania was 22 years old, barely a child for a Moon Elf. The enemy was her brother. The arena was an Illithid fighting pit.

More enemies fell, with more effort. Another child. Ania's older sister. Her younger sister. Her youngest sister and her remaining brother, at the same time. Her father, a strong Moon Elf who had seen the slave pens as an opportunity to force his will on Ania's mother many times. An endless array of goblins and half-brothers and half-sisters. It wasn't personal. Nothing was. When Ania did not wish to kill them, she was controlled and forced to do so, and later punished. There wasn't a choice. There never was.

Quickly Ania noticed that the quality of her armor improved as she killed. From raggy leathers to good quality metal-studded leather, to chain mail to splint armor to full plate, a tower shield, and an extremely sharp longsword.

Her opponents soon became much tougher. Captive Drow and Duergar. Underdark spiders and rats. All of them died.

Every moment was etched into Ania's memory. She could not forget the way her mother looked at her, weeping and in agony, as she was forced to cut her to ribbons as punishment for some deed Ania was never allowed to know. She could not forget the fire in the eyes of the Drow who took her youngest sister against her will in the pens. She could not forget being forced to please two scary-looking Human women whom Ania was unlucky enough to somehow displease. She could not forget the dying faces of her opponents on the sands--angry, sad, afraid, insane, pained, relieved. She could not forget the face of the Duergar who forced her to his will, her pregnancy to him when she was 732 years old (though she had no such reckoning of time), and her sale to a Drow trader as the result of her sudden inability to fight thanks to her pregnancy. She could not forget how her child was butchered and force-fed to her to break what of her will the Illithid had not bothered to remove. She could not forget the similar fates of the other children she had as a result of her enslavement to that Drow and her male. She could not forget the pain and the horrible sense of shame pressed into her when her later Drow mistress rounded her ears with a scalpel. She could forget nothing.

Years passed, and Ania's muscles began to atrophy--when not in bed or bound to some object, she lived in a crate slightly smaller than she was, and she could not exercise. Eventually her master and mistress grew bored with her, and she was dumped in a pit, unarmed and naked, to become the food of a young giant spider. There was no way she could have climbed back up, and the only way out was through the spider's small lair--and the spider was hungry.

Ania managed to navigate the lair and escaped, barely alive. The spider remained in the pit, its innards made into outtards through a large hole punched in its exoskeleton and the leg-bones of a large humanoid stuck in the hole. Getting through the city and out the gates was simple; she merely acted as though she was the bearer of an important message.

Through luck and through years of submitting to masters and mistresses along the way, Ania made her way across the Underdark. At the age of 1086, while fleeing from an Illithid who had set her loose to give his hunting-Drow practice, Ania stumbled across the small slave-town of Sanctuary.

There is where she stayed, there is where she learned that the adventure was far from over and that her experience in the fighting pits would have to serve her again...