Gladiator and tiger

gladiator and tiger



Kamirtad woke up in a cage where he was locked up like an animal. He had his sword and armour with him but what of it; he was still doomed. On his arm, bloody and swollen, was a fresh tattoo: “Gladiator”.

“Hello,” said a voice in his head.

At first, Tad thought he was going mad from thirst, fever, and the noise coming into his prison from the outside where people enjoying the bloody spectacle yelled at the top of their lungs. But no, the voice that had greeted him didn’t go away. It repeated, “Hello. I’m a prisoner here, like you.”
Tad looked around. The only prisoner here beside him was a giant tiger in the nearby cage. The beautiful beast sprawled on the floor in a thin slanted ray of sunlight coming from some crevice above.

“Yes, I’m a tiger,” said the voice. The big cat’s intelligent brown eyes met Tad’s for a moment. The man felt so small under the tiger’s gaze. He tried to imagine fighting that beast. He wouldn’t stand a chance.

“It’s so hot here,” the tiger complained.
“Yeah…” Tad sighed. “I had no idea tigers could talk, especially the way you do: with your thoughts.”
“I’m the last one,” said the tiger, his voice a sad melody in Kamirtad’s mind. “My name is Rayis.”
“It’s an honour to meet you, Rayis. I’m Kamirtad… just Tad for my friends,” the young gladiator fell silent, not knowing what else to say.
“So, Tad. I’m going to lose to you today.”
“Why?”
“I’m tired of living like this. It’s pointless… I want to leave this world. And you… live as long as you think it’s worth it, Kamirtad.”
“No matter what they throw at me, I’ll survive. And one day, I’ll escape!” Tad promised, passion in his voice.
“How brave! I admire that,” said the tiger, his sadness still as strong and melodic as before. “But no, you can’t escape. There’s a little demon in your throat. Didn’t you know they bind them to us gladiators? Well, they do. This thing has one job: to throttle you if you try to run away. There is no escape.”

Silence followed.

“Oh boy, say something…”
“Don’t give in to me, Rayis,” said Tad in a resolute tone. “I promise I won’t either. Yes, we are trapped and can’t escape but there, on the arena, we will be at least free to choose how to die. I want to die like a warrior.”
“True words, Kamirtad…” Rayis nodded. Something changed in his voice as he said that and in his eyes as well.

There were no turnkeys and gaolers here, only a hidden mechanism that opened the doors when someone was ready to enter the arena. When the time had come the rusty cogs clanked and creaked in the walls, rattling the chains and lifting the grates up, and a separate passage opened for each competitor.
“See you on the arena, my friend,” said Rayis as he headed towards his.

Tad walked his path with a heavy heart. It’s one thing to fight a wild beast, it’s a very different thing to fight a person, someone who shared his name with you, someone who is as intelligent and brave as you are. Tad wondered whether Rayis felt the same, whether they would be able to fight each other at all… But Rayis’s first jump shattered his doubts to a thousand smithereens.
Kamirtad’s armour didn’t help him much. The tiger broke his shield with the first hit, knocked the helm off his head with the second one, crushed his breastplate with the third.

Since Rayis was no mere wild beast but an intelligent creature he knew what a sword was and how to deal with it, so he acted accordingly. The giant tiger wasn’t just strong and fast, he was smart. Kamirtad stood no chance against such an opponent.

The fourth hit broke his ribs, the fifth set him flying. Tad fell on his back and couldn’t get up. In fact, he could barely breathe: the broken ribs hurt his lungs every time he tried to gasp for air; the world was a blur of red and blue - blood and sky - before his eyes; and faces, he glimpsed faces in the blur, faces of the friends he had lost in the war. He was dying.

Knowing this, Kamirtad stopped struggling; he closed his eyes, he let the world fade from his mind. He had almost been out of here, free of life and pain when he felt the pressure of someone else’s will. Rayis. He reached the dying man’s mind again. It was clear what for...

“Rayis, no! Don’t give in!” Tad thought as loud as he could for he was so weak he could not speak.
“What for? I am the last of my kind,” he heard the answer.

It lasted only a brief moment. The will of the dying man submitted, broken, he felt another mind, Rayis’s mind, giving him a command he could not disobey. Tad’s hand grabbed the hilt of the sword again and raised the bloody blade up, aiming at the white fur at Rayis’s chest.
With the last jump, the tiger fell on the blade and clenched his teeth on Tad’s throat.

“Free…” both warriors thought in unison. The unspoken word flashed and faded like a falling star.

He was free. The pain was no more and his body was as light as a feather. Tad felt himself raising in the air, in utter silence and saw the arena growing smaller and smaller below. His dead body was there, bloody, broken, crushed under the body of Rayis.

It was over. He had nothing else ahead of him but freedom, lightness, and serenity.

Tad wanted to see Rayis one last time, tell him something, even if it would be just a good-bye, but the tiger was nowhere to be seen.

“Don’t animals have souls?” thought Tad and the thought hurt him like no sword ever did. “No, of course, they do. They just don’t go the same way we go after we die…”

(July 16, 2003)

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Random stuff

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Antisocial personality disorder is indeed a super interesting (and at the same time scary) subject. I thing humanity should put more effort in trying to understand it. There are therapies for helping sociopaths, but they are not effective enough at the moment.
What I love about columnar basalt is that it can be any colour of rainbow. And it can be striped, dotted, and have a dozen of other patterns. It can have curved, angled, knotted, and other shapes. Google for "basalt columns" if you're curious, you'll see amazing photos.
What takes 5 years to draw easily takes just a day to read, no worries :)
"Wisdom is a comb life gives you when you already have no hair". Sad but true.
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I'll tell you a secret: we, authors, need you, readers, much more than you need us. There would be no point to tell stories if there were no one to listen. And sharing our imaginary worlds with other people is a great joy. For some of us, the only joy in life, because we're often depressed and lonely. Thank you for reading :)
McColl34:
Faith and Hope are fairly common English names. Love is not used as a name as often. It is not unheard of, but not as common. The trio of names first appeared in the Bible (I assume it was first appearance, the letters to the Corinthians were written about 1,900 years ago). Specifically, in First Corinthians 13:13, "And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love." In the original Greek, they would be "πιστις" (pistis), "ελπις" (elpis) and "αγαπη" (agape).
Norns (Wyrd, Vernandi, and Skuld) come from North mythology, but there are similar mystical creatures (three women - old, middle aged, and young - having something to do with fate) in many different cultures, including Greek.
Aprillen:
The Norns were indeed Fates -- Urd means "fate", Verdandi means "in the making" and Skuld means "future". They would sit at the foot of the World Tree and measure out peoples lives and destinies. (Urd=Wyrd; I'm used to the modernised Norse variants of the names since I'm Scandinavian.)
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I'm a cruel author. Not George Martin style cruel, but still...
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Jude Wilkins:
Many greenhouses, at least the larger better ones will have fans that will mimic breezes that come on at night for air circulation and to toughen the plants like a wind does.
(discussing cat names of different countries)
McColl34:
Smoky Is a common name for grey or greyish cats. Socks is also fairly common for cats with different color fur on their feet.

Mildegard:
Blackie would be Chernysh in Russian (cherny = black). I had a black cat with that name. We have a cat name similar to Smoky. Dymok (dym = smoke). And I remember the name Socks... there was a movie where a man tamed a wolf and named him Socks. So I thought it was a dog name.
Jourell:
On the other side of the Sociopathy/empathy coin we have something like Jan and Rhoda from the film The Bad Seed. She's a high functioning sociopath but uses that knowledge and the fact shes an angelic faced little girl to manipulate people and hide her tendencies. At the time the time the movie was made, sociopathy wasn't well understood and it touches on some interesting discussion on whether someone can be "born bad". If you do see it, i recommend the 1950s version, the recent remake is lousy.
Jourell:
What we think of as fairy tales and folk tales were originally a lot darker and didn't always have a happy ending. Children weren't necessarily considered different, they had to be taught lessons in a world that was generally a lot harder than it was today. there were often morals yes, but they were as much warnings of things that could happen. For example Hansel and Gretal was about the dangers of trusting strangers, particularly if they deliberately tried to attract children to them. Red Riding hood had sexual undertones and was a warning against rapists. In Cinderella one of the ugly stepsisters cuts off part of her foot to try to fit inside the shoe and the blood gives her away.
By the 19th century attitudes towards kids were starting to change. The Brothers Grimm collected these folk tales and "cleaned them up" to something that was considered more acceptable to society at the time. But even then, many of their versions of these tales wouldn't be considered "kid friendly" today. Since then as morals and attitudes have changed these tales have become more and more "sanitized".
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I'm a 3D artist at my day job, so I use some of my skills to make shortcuts when I work on GWI. I quickly model any furniture, rooms, objects, etc. in Blender (at home) or Zbrush (at my workplace) and use free 3d props when I can. It saves a lot of time. Like, 80% of time.
Jude Wilkins:
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Mildegard:
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Jude Wilkins:
I'm curious to see what size Faith is compared to Nolan. If Hope is 24 years old, she's an adult but she's so small compared to Nolan plus she looks childlike still. Is Nolan larger than the people being grown from the embryo stage or is this something that you'll explain later?

Mildegard:
Nolan is tall, but not extraordinary tall. Just about 190 cm (no more than 40 cm taller than Hope).
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Nolan's case: he no longer carries the virus and his immune system is mad at his own body cells. We can give him the drug and it might work, but once we remove it the effect won't last long. The drug will have to be present in his bloodstream every minute of his life (hello side effects and a deadly overdose!) just like the nanites he survived on. In theory, we can prolong his life for some days/weeks with the said drug but it will be torture and not really a solution. The solution is reprogramming his immune system so it wouldn't see him as an enemy anymore.
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GWI is a black and white comic, but I color the pages occasionally, mostly the ones my Patrons choose. If you support me by becoming my Patron of buying me a Ko-fi you can choose one too.
I make GWI sketches and contours in PainToolSai, add basic colors and gradients in FireAlpaca, do shading and add details in SAI again, and then add effects, text, and bubbles in Photoshop CS3. I usually make pages in packs (3-4 at once).
Makeshift cableways and ziplines similar to those in the comic (with hooks, wheels, ropes, and brakes) are used in many rural areas of the world, often by kids, to get to school. Surprisingly, it's quite safe.
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Rikter's tattoo didn't always look like three big red stripes on the right cheek. It started as a tiny dot when he was a baby and was expanded years later. Paint, when put under the skin, is toxic, after all.You don't want to put a little child to unnecessary risk by applying too much of it too soon.
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No donation is too small. Where I live 1$ can buy me a tasty protein-rich lunch or two bus tickets.
"Gifts of wandering ice" is a member of Spiderforest collective. It's a friendly community where comic creators help each other (that includes sharing readers, providing hosting, helping with web design, collaborating on various projects, and other stuff). If you have your own comic you can join too.
According to my counter's statistics, average time readers spend on a page while reading the comic for the first time is 20 seconds. So, yep, there are lots of pages and GWI seems huge, but don't worry, you can actually binge read it all in less than three hours.
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Comments are important. Very. Most comic artists are lonely people and get sad when they don't see any feedback from their readers.
There are two types of empathy: emotional and cognitive. The first type is natural (you are born with it or without it) and is based on the activity of mirror neurons. The second one can be learned by studying human behaviour and practicing imagining yourself in another person's place.
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Icebergs come in lots of colours. Not only white, but all shades of blue and green. Red and black ones are rare but not unknown either. The patterns and shapes also vary a lot. Striped icebergs - yes please. Shaped like castles - sure. Wavy - yep, those exist as well.
See a typo or a badly translated phrase? Tell me about it and I'll fix it as soon as I can.
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I have "Dreams" series on Patreon (open for patrons pledging 2$/month or more) where I draw stuff that cannot happen or can but won't be mentioned in the comic. Like Jan being a good brother and not a tattooed exile. Or Lara and Ren as little kids. Or Nolan with lots of cats around. Or little Hope helping her mother with cyberarm repairs, etc.
Ancient diseases returning because of melting permafrost is a real life thing already happening in our world. And since we're entering the global warming era, it's damn scary.
If you're interested in more webcomics about memory transfer I suggest checking out "Cato's apprenticeship". It's about a boy with a brain implant.
If you're interested in learning more about Ash and his life before he met Elie I have a story on Patreon (open for all patrons) titled "Tsunami kid".
Remember the ammonite shelf in Tim's room? Yep, some ancient ammonoides were that large. I bet they wouldn't mind eating a human if we lived at the same time.
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"Gifts of wandering ice" has a page on TVtropes and you can edit it.
Samovar is a Russian device for making tea. I love them. My mother has one. It's not very old (older than me, though) and uses electricity instead of wood to boil water, but it's still cool!
Originally, I'm a writer. I decided to learn to draw at the age of 22, because I wanted my novels to have nice covers and was too broke to pay an artist.
Common Russian name for a tomcat is Vaska, for a female cat is Murka (mur = purr).
"Gifts of wandering ice" has a Discord channel. You can chat with me and the other readers there.
"I love nightmares. There I'm always the most dangerous monster".
Jan
"Nightmares are fun and so much better than life".
Jan
"The world is so real it hurts".
Elie
How dreamcatchers "work": good dreams get caught in the web and slide down to the sleeper along the feathers, bad dreams just go through the hole in the center of the web.
Evacuation capsules similar to those used in the comic exist in real life. I heard that in Japan you can easily buy one in a supermarket.
Floating cities, like many other things in the comic, were made in Zbrush. It took about 30 min after work and saved me hours of drawing.
I'm a cat person. I have two cats at home. The boy's name is Trikster and the girl is Omegana (my nerdy husband named her after Omegon from Warhammer 40000, I have no idea why :D )
I work as a 3D artist in a local animation studio. The same studio that was making my favourite comics when I was a kid.
Что случилось с русской версией комикса "Дары бродячих льдов"?
Комикс Дары бродячих льдов перезапущен в новом формате на сайте mildegard.ru
Randomwebcomic.com is a side project of Olga's (the author of GWI). It's a simple website that sends you to a random webcomic - a webcomic roulette. If you are a webcomic artist, you can add your comics there too.
In the beginning there was only a short story - "Ice gift" (13 chapters, 4 characters) - that later turned into "Gifts of wandering ice" you know.
GWI has a store with 1$ books and juicy freebies! Check it out :)
"Tales from the Afterworld" is a collection of illustrated short stories in different genres (sci-fi, fantasy, magical realism) from the author of "Gifts of wandering ice". You can read it for free here or on Tapas.
Did you know that there is a way to support the author of GWI without spending your money? Here you go: download Tapas app, subscribe to one of Olga's stories on Tapas, earn Tapas Ink in the app by watching ads or playing games, donate the ink. Easy :)
Everything is better with a cat.
My main hobby is telling stories but I also have another hobby: I play the ocarina (a ceramic flute). If you're curious, here's a video of me playing an Irish folk song in a Russian forest.