There are schools where men are taught the gentle flow of civilization, where they learn to reckon maps, command engines of war, and send death across horizons they shall never tread. Mine was not among them.

Far beyond the frontiers where empire yielded to forgotten wilderness, beneath a brazen sun that hung in the heavens like the molten eye of an ancient god, there stood the Fortress of Zhar. It was no place for dreamers or philosophers.

There, the first lesson granted to any recruit was not how to slay another man, but how to endure after every pleasant illusion of humanity had been stripped from his soul like bark from a dead tree. They placed within my grasp the long, broad blade of the jungle, a weapon forged less for elegance than for inevitability.

Then they directed me toward the Circle of Blood, where another warrior awaited with an identical command. One of us would master the other, or fail.

There was no trumpet to end the contest, no kindly officer to declare enough blood had been shed. The duel ceased only when flesh or spirit failed.

If both combatants collapsed together, two more entered the crimson sand while the gray-robed masters observed in silence, their hard eyes revealing neither approval nor pity. The Circle cared nothing for fairness. It worshiped only endurance.

The great blade proved a relentless instructor. Too weighty for graceful flourishes and too swift for hesitation, it demanded that every stroke possess purpose. The burning air stole strength as greedily as any vampire of forgotten legend, and a wasted swing invited death as surely as an enemy’s steel.

By the sun’s zenith, my shoulders blazed with agony. My palms bled beneath hastily wrapped cloth, and the dust of the arena mingled with sweat until my garments became as rigid as cured hide. Yet the masters never spoke of pain.

Pain was merely another inhabitant of the wilderness, as common as thorn trees or venomous serpents. Only much later did I understand that they were not fashioning executioners. They were forging men who might survive the realms beyond civilization.

Beyond the walls were two monstrous predators.

One slew the colossal giants whose ivory tusks gleamed like moonlight, and the mighty horned-one whose charge could overturn trucks. They butchered these magnificent creatures and abandoned their carcasses to black-winged scavengers that darkened the skies.

The second predator hunted kingdoms rather than beasts. They carried weapons wrought in distant lands, proclaimed glorious revolutions in voices filled with false righteousness, and reduced loyal villages to smoldering ashes whenever obedience was withheld.

Often these hunters marched beside the ivory thieves. Gold has never possessed a darker magic than sorcery.

When the crimson sun finally descended toward the horizon, the true weapons appeared. Long rifles of blue steel replaced the jungle blade.

Then came instruction worthy of professional warriors: the storming of hidden encampments, swift descents from winged sky vessels, defense of caravan columns, and endless marches through thorn forests whose every branch seemed animated by malicious spirits eager for human blood. Yet the machete remained ever at my side.

It had become more than forged metal. It was the memory of a simple truth older than kingdoms.

Every quiver empties, and every rifle falls silent. Steel endures.

Our first campaign began before dawn beneath a sky still jeweled with unfamiliar stars. Guided by scouts through towering mopane groves, we pursued raiders protected by crimson-bannered warlords who had trespassed into the sacred preserve where the thunder-beasts still roamed beneath the guardianship of forgotten powers.

Their hidden camp revealed the measure of their wickedness.

Ivory tusks lay piled like the bleached pillars of some ruined temple, while heavy crates bearing the sigils of distant empires overflowed with cartridges and instruments of slaughter. We watched in silence until the first golden rays crowned the eastern hills.

Then we descended upon them. The battle was brief, savage, and worthy of the epics sung in vanished cities.

Their champions fought with discipline born of fanatic devotion. We answered with the colder resolve of men who had looked into the Circle of Blood and discovered that fear could no longer command them.

They battled for conquest, greed, and hollow dreams whispered by ambitious tyrants.

We fought because humble villages deserved peaceful nights beneath the stars. We fought because the colossal beasts, whose ancestors had wandered the earth long before the first crown adorned the brow of any king, possessed as much right to the world as those who sought to destroy them.

When silence finally reclaimed the battlefield, I cleansed my rifle with meticulous care. Only afterward did I wipe the dark stains from the broad jungle blade, for it was the rifle that had won the victory.

But it was the merciless lessons of steel, beneath the burning skies of Zhar, that had taught me to live long enough to wield it.