Quickly, the name and fame of the "Cat Pack" grew. Chonmo and Fimzi got more wins under their belts and I was in the clear for a bit. I made sure to personally train an eager to learn Nuzri so she could get in a few wins for us as well. She was one of the only females in the pits. That painted a target on her back. I did my best to point out the sloppiness in her approach. She could not overpower most males so I told her to focus on her agility and quick strikes with her sword. She took that to heart, and we worked on that. She was surrounded by 5 lions and tigers in her next match. Zipping past them, she was able to kill them all before they could do much damage to her. It was a good victory. Nuzri took her time soaking up the crowd's reaction. It was a mix of positive and negative. She was linked to me, and I was pretty much a villain in their eyes. As she did so, it looked pretty beautiful from how others described it. There was a special prize fight coming up and I was asked if I wanted to take part. "With a little risk comes a great reward." the head slaver said. I declined. They were surprised.
Reasonably, I was wary about this. The slavers had never mentioned risk before this point. It went without saying. Every fight was a fight with our lives on the line. That is what it meant to be a slave in the pits. Now, they had to warn me about it. It did not sit right with me. Whatever this "little risk" was, it was probably an insane addition to the fight. I did not need that right now. What I needed were 2 more clean wins. Desperate fools could throw their lives away if they wanted. The slavers shared a look with each other before shrugging. "If that is your choice." the head slaver said. He then looked at the others and offered them a spot. They also said no. When they left us, my clansmen asked me why we had to turn it down. I explained my thinking to them and they seemed to agree with me. The prize fight was not the main event. Alvin v. Clover would close the show. The special prize fight was not for a couple of weeks. That was time to get all sorts of promotion and time for all the participants to train. I was taking it easy as we were not getting any tough fights for awhile. They needed us.
I was too valuable to be casually thrown out there. I had also shown to all of the audience that if one of the "Cat Pack" went down, I would hunt down and slaughter who did it. They could not book just any of the slaves in the pits for us. It had to be a good fight in itself and one that I might think twice before calling a grudge match for if another clanmate died. That was a good spot to be in. They would not just casually throw our lives away. That also brought safety via the added time to train and scope out any possible competition in advance. I made sure that we all took advantage of that opportunity. Getting stronger would not hurt us either. When it was finally time for the prize fight, the slavers had a giant scrying device on the ceiling for all of us to see the match. There were 5 competitors: the dogkin, drider and couple of harpies that fought with us in the 10 on 10 as well as a human with 5 wins so far in the pits. The prize was an enchanted shortsword that dealt some lightning damage on top of the slashing. That was a nice weapon to have. It would help anyone that needed extra power.
