Kicking and hissing as they were, the drider children were already pretty powerful. I had no pretense that they would be able to win in the colosseum. The upper tier of all the fighting gladiators would wipe the floor with them. As young children, they would need to grow and train more. They could read and speak in Elvish and Common. It was good to be bilingual. Reading, writing and arithmetic were essential to education in this era. I also added both economics and civics to their curriculum. Having them being able to do taxes and learn what to do to become a good citizen was something I hoped that they would take in. They learned how to hunt the many stray dogs in the city from their parents and could fend for themselves when it came to food. There was a problem with the stray dogs and wererats in the capitol. Too much overabundance and waste was causing it. All of them seemed to hang out in the sewers and they were able to make a small thieves' guild. The duke's son loved dogs and refused to allow them to be hurt or neutered too. The guards handled the problem.
Listening to the word on the street, the wererats were pretty organized and it seemed they had some strong weapons. While you would normally expect a simple pair of daggers and light crossbows from them, these new guild members wore black silk robes and carried whips and sticky nets. That made it hard for them to be captured by the authorities. Even if caught, they would be able to escape after pinning the humans in the net. From what I heard from others, I could tell who was responsible. Arza did say that the humans were easy targets for stealing money. Some of the people of the neighborhood gave me uncertain looks, but they could not say anything to me about it. They were simply too scared to tell me what they were thinking to my face. I never wanted to get too sloppy though, so I made sure that all the driders I owned stayed inside when not with me. That meant that it was a net negative for me as I would have to start feeding the kids again. Soon, I would be looking to put them in some fights with the slaves in the pits. You had to be careful not to get them all killed.
I looked over the 8 driders that I still had. They were looking back at me. They had 8 eyes each and some followed me as they continued playing. 5 were males. 1 was a hermaphrodite and the others in the group were female. I was adamant that Szicut and Zivith were the ones to name the kids. I hoped that it would boost their parental attachment to them. They were named Rakad, Esris, Zresra, Chaxar, Xinrox, Rairza, Asath, Yonte. That was fine with me. I watched as they played. It was mostly them crawling and jumping on the walls and each other. The point, I was told, was to establish dominance and practice hunting and moving around. By far, the most dominant of the children was Rairza the hermaphrodite. Szicut and Zivith were giving them opposing viewpoints on gender relations. Obviously, the female Zivith wanted the female Asath and Yonte to rise. The male Szicut wanted the males to assert themselves and not let themselves be oppressed. When I was asked about it, I looked at all of them and said "Whoever can prove that they are the strongest, can take that place.
