The weather was perfect for what was to come; the excitement in the air seemed to drive off any risk of rain, and only small cumulus clouds drifted lazily by the open space above the arena.<br/><br/>The three sponsors of the grand tournament, Kettle; Fail and Brown, hoped their newly built stadium would last many years, and be the grounds of many more tournaments, but you could not call an event the First Great Battle, before a Second Great Battle came along to mark something as the original. For this reason the tournament was more important than perhaps all tournaments to come for the contestants, because this year alone the winner would be crowned<span style="font-style: italic">The Champion</span>, rather than<span style="font-style: italic">The 34'th Champion</span>. If the contestant sought glory then this was the year for him or her.<br/><br/>The arena symbolized the trinity that had built it: Three gates leading into the round arena pit; three gates for three groups of contestants, each battling to be the chosen favorite by their particular sponsor. Above the gates were seats for thousands of cheering audiences, each shouting praise for their own favorite.<br/><br/>The arena was of a simple design. Very few traps had been placed around, as it was felt the fighters should finish off each other, not fall prey to outside forces. On the south wall, nearest the Fail, gate were a dozen lions chained up, unable to chase someone on the battlefield, but Fail Regulus had felt it offered contestants a chance to manoeuvre enemies into an overly dramatic death.<br/><br/>Mister Kettle, whose gate opened at the east side of the arena, had been more practical minded, and had a hole dug by the wall and filled the bottom with spikes, gem-encrusted, of course.<br/><br/>At the north-western gate, where the participants for Brown Jenkins entered, was a blend of the two other ideas: A deep hole filled with gem-encrusted lions.<br/><br/>At the first sound of the trumpets the participants entered the arena. Since contestants were likely to just target whoever nearest, actual fighting was prohibited until the trumpets sounded for a second time. First came a time for introduction and mingling; scouting and choosing your desired opponents; strategizing once you figured out who you would like to charge, provided no one picked you first; or just a time to make the audience cheer for you.<br/><br/><br/>-------------------------<br/><br/><br/>The golem had come to the arena when it was still only in the first stages of its architectural conception. The head engineer had just settled on a location when the yellow hulk lumbered past him, hailing from gods know where, and stopped moving in the spot that would later become the Brown barracks. No one had bothered trying to move it, because frankly it was too large to be worth the trouble; standing four heads taller than any builder in the crew, and that was entirely without having a head itself. Its lack of ears and mouth was another reason no one tried to negotiate the golem into walking off.<br/>As a consequence the arena grounds and the team barracks were literally built around the golem, which did not move an inch in the months of construction.<br/><br/>To the workers, and perhaps later to any visitors, the silent golem became a kind of mascot for the barrack. It had a humanoid outline, being bipedal and with at least one fully developed arm. It was genderless, though many had joked that the small, shriveled appendage poking out of its back had enough similarity to constitute the golem as male.<br/>Its torso was massive and without a lot of variations, being fundamentally wedge-shaped, with the broadest end making up the shoulders and the narrower end forming the equivalent of its pelvis. Its legs were composed of rectangles, and it had flat squares for feet; it was in these aspects about the most simplistic design you could imagine. Only in the case of the arms did the construction get more complicated than basic geometric figured crudely held together by... something.<br/><br/>The left arm was the golemâ€™s most detailed structure, but also the most pointless: it was realistic looking version of a baby's arm, hanging limb and yellow from the massive shoulder-wedge.<br/>The right upper arm was a yellow tube of such circumference that even the mightiest barbarian would feel ashamed to be compared. This tube was connected by a ball and socket joint to a lower arm with intricate patterns furrowing through, ending in a massive three-fingered hand, large enough to reach around a grown manâ€™s head and strong enough to close around it, too. The right arm was special, if nothing else, then because it was the only part of the otherwise bright-yellow golem that was in a darker shade of orange.<br/><br/>The right arm, though, was not the most notable abnormality. In the chest, right where a personâ€™s heart would be, was a crystal embedded, clear as a diamond and big as a tangelo, baring the "nipple stem" of the comparative fruit. When a greedy worker had tried to touch the gem, it had been the only time during the construction of the arena that the golem had moved. The worker had fled unharmed, and no one tried to touch the gem or the golem again, and it had remained motionless until the sound of the first trumpet.<br/><br/>As if a spell had been lifted the golem stepped forward and walked out the gate, into the sunlit pit. It walked in a straight line, using whatever senses it possessed to determine its competition, trying to pick a single opponent. It possessed a basic pattern for which type of opponent to fight first, but for whatever reason it was difficult to analyze the colorful individuals.<br/>As it walked out, the crowdâ€™s cheers turned into puzzled whispers, as no one could recall seeing such a creature in the tournament brochure, but upon a second read-through people found a page they had previously overlooked, listing the yellow entry as "The Golem of Schadenfreude."