The Drafted Champion

Prologue

The Grand Gallery of Historical Art was one of those places that was designed to be a massive, dark, quiet library but was refitted for art. It was always clean, dust free, and probably one of the driest places in the country. It was also the favorite field trip destination of Master Rin. 
 Master Rin was a man of unknown ancientness yet had the vitality of a seasoned fighter. It was his eyes that had scared students for decades: cat-like pupils, and irises that alternated between a shocking blue and deepest black. It was also rumored that he had tattooed whorls on his body but covered them with his Masters Robes. 
Today Master Rin took his six robe-clad and clumsy eight-year-old apprentices to the Gallery because he firmly believed that if these children wanted to become great men and women someday, they needed to understand who and what came before them. The good and the bad. He was almost to the Formation of the Territories when the smallest apprentice, a dark haired girl, used the wall to her right to steady herself. The wall she touched was an intricately carved marble behemoth arch-like secret door. The door was supposed to tell an important part of history, but makers of the door used a nearly dead language and now the language was an exponentially dead masquerading as art. Master Rin was about to breathe a sigh of relief when to his amazement and horror, the door began to open. 
“Apprentice Josephine, remind me what gift your house possesses?” 
“The Gift of Answers.” Josephine’s fellow apprentices gasped. The Gift of Answers was not only rare but had uses beyond comprehension, like opening a door that had not opened since being first closed. 
Master Rin remembered that day and he remembered who was deemed more historical artifact than person thus sealed inside. It’s a great honor, those were the world they told that person. 
“Apprentice Josephine,” Josephine became rod straight at the Master’s tone. “You have done me and your fellow apprentices a great service by opening this door. Though, my apprentices, what is inside I can guarantee will change the way you view those you idolize. There is a good chance that it will give you nightmares for years to come once you know the why. Do you wish to go in?” All of them stood straighter, nodded, and then wiry boy Apprentice Osa quoted, 
“You told us that, ‘With noon comes midnight.’” 
Master Rin smiled, “Now I can tell you who told me.”

At the end of a dark stone passage with no ornamentation or brackets for torches, and that seemed to go miles deep, was a round room with simple stone benches set into the wall. In the center of the room was a sight both horrifying and amazing: a woman who had the same aged quality and tenacious vitality that Master Rin had (all of the apprentices took note of this). There was just one major difference between her and Master Rin and that was that she was encased in an amber, rune covered… upright tomb. 
“Why is she in an amber tomb in the Gallery?” Gawked Apprentice Leo while Apprentice Josephine whispered, 
“Why does it give off so much light and why are there runes?”
“All valid questions. To the first, it is not amber. It isn’t any type of stone at all but a spell made material, hence the runes. As to why she is here…” Master Rin, to the notice of all the apprentices, sounded close to misery. 
Apprentice Dalia, already incredible tactful and adept at handling pain, stepped forward, “What is her story, Master Rin?” 
Master Rin who had been standing close to the woman, turned his head and smiled at Apprentice Dalia. “Her story is one that should never be summarized but rather told in great detail to appreciative ears.” At this, every apprentice found a seat on the benches. “This is the story of someone who was so much more than someone I loved; so much more than she was allowed to be; and so much that she could never belong to anything or one.”
Master Rin gently touched the part of the woman’s tomb that was over her hand. He took a deep breath and sat on the bench opposite of the apprentices. He looked them in the eyes with such comprehending yet controlled agony, agony that has had time to age, and began. 
“Today is the five-hundredth and ninety-fourth anniversary of a long forgotten woman, who at the time was still extraordinarily young, was not so much asked as commanded to do the fighting no one wanted to do. She was a drafted champion and so she became property. Her name was Inanna Uruk.”