Post by Non Compos Mentis on Feb 6, 2007 5:50:24 GMT -5
Basically the follow on to my previous post. Once again, feedback is welcome.
They dragged me from the arena that night as I was unconscious through the pain in my legs. My route was through the dark stone corridors in the cell block a few hundred meters from the Circus Maximus. The route was not one that I was familiar with as that was my first battle and my first flight through that area of the arena. They were completely alien to me and had no resonance within my mind other than the time I had spent walking the other way through the corridors on my way to my doom.
The floor of my cell was dusty, the same dirt and sand that had been on the floor of the arena. The damn thing had tried to follow me all the way back to my squalid ten feet square living space just to remind me of the horrible acts that I had participated in when I was there. The dirt on the floor was tinged with crimson and, although I was sure it was from my injuries and the gaping hole that was left in my side, it felt like the very blood of my kills had followed me as well. The souls of those who I had taken had returned to me as a constant haunting of my acts.
I breathed in through my nose, my nostrils expanding to get in as much air as possible. I tired to bring in as much as I could but then I began to choke on the fumes of my cell. The stench of blood rose up and ripped through my sinuses like a great slash from a blade. It came from the blood of the men who had fallen by my hand. It came from those who I had removed from this world. Not only had these men haunted my soul for probably as long as I would live but they had haunted my nose. Of all things to possess they chose the thing I needed to breath. Every time that I would take a breathe now I would smell the rotten, gut wrenching odor that would forever remind me of what I had done.
I stood up, my head almost hitting the solid stone roof that provided some shelter for me and my fellow gladiators. The cell was identical to everybody else’s except for the arranged patterns of blood that marked the floor of every individual cell. It seemed only suitable that the only thing that was used to distinguish us was the blood that we spilled as an occupation. There was no sense of identity here, there was nothing but the monotony of routine and the inevitability of a violent death. This is what bound us together and provided the one and only link in out lives. We were Gladiators, that and nothing more.
I took a walk all of ten feet forwards to the front of my cell. Whilst the sides were segregated either by wood or stone, preventing communication between us and denying more links between us, the front of the cell was made purely of iron bars. The cold, unmoving and completely solid bars were completely devoid of life and humanity. The inhumanity of my occupation, or rather my slavery, was now reflected in the place I lived. There was to be no life, no emotion and no feelings, there was only to be the cold, hard heart of death and pain. This was my reality, one of constant depravity.
They had told me when I finally woke up after the battle that I had been saved by the crowd. I heard their call as I faded out of consciousness, a sign of hope and of salvation as my life dripped away down the edge of his swords. I had hoped that it would some but it was still unexpected. A call of mercy from a roman crowd was almost unheard of. In one of the territories it may have been more likely and my hope may have been justified, but who said being a gladiator in Rome was ever justified.
Indeed, the call had been unexpected and my life had been hanging in the balance as I knelt on the bloody, dusty floor with his twin swords positioned at either side of my head. My life was in the hands of the crowd in theory but I had heard many gladiators talk about defying the emperor and going the opposite of what the crowd wanted. There were stories of gladiators signaling to the emperor’s throne and, as most of the time the crowd wanted death and blood, would offer their hand to their victim. Quite often the victim would think about his option and then save his life by hacking off the rebel’s arm with his sword.
He had me in his grasp and he could have taken my life at any moment if he wasn’t afraid of the consequences. The thought must have flew through his mind at that time. He had spent pretty much his whole life fighting for a living like some emotionless animal. The man was so used to killing that it was a surprise that he stopped to adhere to the crowd’s demands. He could not have many easier chances to kill someone, that must have been a temptation.
I was bleeding from my thighs like crazy, my whole body ached in pain and I was unable to move. There was a hole in my side the size of a man’s head, so big that I could feel the air gushing in and out of it. I was under a spell of immobility, my legs couldn’t move and neither could the rest of my body. All I could do was sit and wait for what I thought was coming.
My life was in his hands, his blood soaked hands full of sin and the souls of his victims. He had full control over whether I lived or died and he had the ultimate decision, not the emperor or the crowd. If he wanted to kill me I was dead. He wanted to do it, I knew that, I could feel it through the blades at my neck and through the force of his presence. And yet, with all of his will and coldness, he could not do it. He took the blades away and I fell to the ground in relief and pain.
The dark skinned warrior that held my fate in his hands had won many prestigious battles before. He was well versed and experienced in the acts he needed to commit and he had all the attributes that mattered. Although he was quite small in size he made up for this with immense agility and speed as well as more than his fair share of strength. The man was a killer, a veteran fighter, and I had chosen to go head to head with him in that battle. It was a move I now regretted but one that I engaged in with a burst of adrenaline and nothing more.
When I finally regained my consciousness after being dragged from the arena by the slaves, they told me that plans had been made for my future already. They did not give me details, the slaves probably didn’t know them as they would not be trusted by those who mattered. I spent my walk back to my cell thinking about what plans had been made and secretly I knew it was the dark skinned warrior that this concerned. I knew that plans had been made for a grudge match between the would be dead and the would be slayer.
My thoughts were confirmed when I sat in my cell, the physician had already seen me and sutured my wounds. His surgical equipment cut through my dead flesh like the same gouging I had received to my side. The physician had been silent the whole time, not giving my any information, not even to say that what I was about to experience would be extremely painful, which it was. He had been told not to give me anything to think about more than the pain in my flesh and the throbbing of my blood because this would drive me to becoming a better gladiator.
Hours after he had left, maybe even days as the pain made me lose all sense of time and space, they came. The men wearing the emperor’s colors, the vivid indigo, half way between violet and navy. Three of these men stepped in front of my cell, not daring to enter the den of a delusional killer. These men were smart and intelligent enough not to make mistakes. They stood far enough away from the bar so that I could not lunge at them through the metal. They had sent the physician ahead to see if I was violent but they still dared not take the risk.
The stood and began to talk, the middle man clearly wearing the more elaborate uniform made his introduction.
“Gladiator, I am Flavius Dendium, Advisor to the Emperor.”
He called me gladiator, the generic name for all of us. I had heard of Flavius before, his name was bounded around as one of the Emperor’s most prized advisors and a major influence over the senate of Rome. Flavius was rumored to be the driving force behind the gladiatorial battles, the man backer to their beneficial effects on society. He was responsible for the thousands of lives that had been wasted in the Circus Maximus and hundreds of thousands more across the territories. This man was the face of death and a personal devil to everybody he named Gladiator.
“By order of the Emperor you are to fight again.”
Was this intended to be a surprise? I was called Gladiator and therefore it was my occupation to fight as often as I could. I had seen many other fighters be sent to their deaths without some much as a word from a praetorian, never mind from the advisor to the Emperor. Was this his idea of a joke? Was this a sick taunt to make me feel disgraced that my life was saved only be mercy?
“You are to fight in the festival at the end of the month.”
Ah, the festival. The time of the year when the most elite gladiators were to face each other in a fight to the death. The fights were arranged in order to please the fans at the time of year when their faith in the Emperor was beginning to lower. The games were always used as a political aid but during the festival it was more true than ever.
“You are to participate in an individual fight.”
Very rarely were the festival fights one-on-one affairs. The fights at this time were usually reserved for mass battles, recreations of historic events and epic contests. It would seem as though the crowd had developed a liking for me already, either that or I was meant to be fodder for a legend. There was nothing the crowd liked more than to see a favorite massacre a few slaves.
“You are to fight the man that had your head in your last battle. Kindridus Londinium.”
So that was what he was called, the dark skinned warrior that had come so close to killing me in the arena. He had wanted to remain anonymous having disappointed himself. He wanted to rejoin the fray at the very bottom as the Gladiator that we all were. He wanted to be normal again, he wanted to be a nameless warrior like we all were but they would not allow him that. There would always be some expectation attached to his name.
“You are required to put on a performance worthy of the Emperor himself, and if you don’t and still succeed in keeping your life a second time you will be killed at one of my praetorian’s hand.”
With his threat the three men left. Flavius and his bodyguards left the scene like they had arrived, silent and dignified although their words were anything but. Their words had driven me into a world of thought. Thoughts of the moment where my life was saved only by the cries of Rome’s citizens. Thoughts of how the next time would not be as lucky for me and I would begin my decent into hell at last. But my biggest and most ominous thoughts were to the fact that I would be killed even if I won, I would have to put on a show to the crowd of Rome, I would have to perform acts that were depraved and horrific if I was to live.
This would be the biggest fight of my life, the most meaningful one as well. My reality was one of death on all sides and no escape. I was living in an inhuman prison of pain and suffering and now I had one route of escape, to inflict this pain and suffering on one man. Truly speaking, this would not be an escape, just a prolonging of my life.
My life had been saved because I had spilled blood. It was saved because my life offered more blood to be spilled if I was alive than if I was to die. I would have to start repaying my life in blood and I would start against the dark skinned warrior in my next fight.
They dragged me from the arena that night as I was unconscious through the pain in my legs. My route was through the dark stone corridors in the cell block a few hundred meters from the Circus Maximus. The route was not one that I was familiar with as that was my first battle and my first flight through that area of the arena. They were completely alien to me and had no resonance within my mind other than the time I had spent walking the other way through the corridors on my way to my doom.
The floor of my cell was dusty, the same dirt and sand that had been on the floor of the arena. The damn thing had tried to follow me all the way back to my squalid ten feet square living space just to remind me of the horrible acts that I had participated in when I was there. The dirt on the floor was tinged with crimson and, although I was sure it was from my injuries and the gaping hole that was left in my side, it felt like the very blood of my kills had followed me as well. The souls of those who I had taken had returned to me as a constant haunting of my acts.
I breathed in through my nose, my nostrils expanding to get in as much air as possible. I tired to bring in as much as I could but then I began to choke on the fumes of my cell. The stench of blood rose up and ripped through my sinuses like a great slash from a blade. It came from the blood of the men who had fallen by my hand. It came from those who I had removed from this world. Not only had these men haunted my soul for probably as long as I would live but they had haunted my nose. Of all things to possess they chose the thing I needed to breath. Every time that I would take a breathe now I would smell the rotten, gut wrenching odor that would forever remind me of what I had done.
I stood up, my head almost hitting the solid stone roof that provided some shelter for me and my fellow gladiators. The cell was identical to everybody else’s except for the arranged patterns of blood that marked the floor of every individual cell. It seemed only suitable that the only thing that was used to distinguish us was the blood that we spilled as an occupation. There was no sense of identity here, there was nothing but the monotony of routine and the inevitability of a violent death. This is what bound us together and provided the one and only link in out lives. We were Gladiators, that and nothing more.
I took a walk all of ten feet forwards to the front of my cell. Whilst the sides were segregated either by wood or stone, preventing communication between us and denying more links between us, the front of the cell was made purely of iron bars. The cold, unmoving and completely solid bars were completely devoid of life and humanity. The inhumanity of my occupation, or rather my slavery, was now reflected in the place I lived. There was to be no life, no emotion and no feelings, there was only to be the cold, hard heart of death and pain. This was my reality, one of constant depravity.
They had told me when I finally woke up after the battle that I had been saved by the crowd. I heard their call as I faded out of consciousness, a sign of hope and of salvation as my life dripped away down the edge of his swords. I had hoped that it would some but it was still unexpected. A call of mercy from a roman crowd was almost unheard of. In one of the territories it may have been more likely and my hope may have been justified, but who said being a gladiator in Rome was ever justified.
Indeed, the call had been unexpected and my life had been hanging in the balance as I knelt on the bloody, dusty floor with his twin swords positioned at either side of my head. My life was in the hands of the crowd in theory but I had heard many gladiators talk about defying the emperor and going the opposite of what the crowd wanted. There were stories of gladiators signaling to the emperor’s throne and, as most of the time the crowd wanted death and blood, would offer their hand to their victim. Quite often the victim would think about his option and then save his life by hacking off the rebel’s arm with his sword.
He had me in his grasp and he could have taken my life at any moment if he wasn’t afraid of the consequences. The thought must have flew through his mind at that time. He had spent pretty much his whole life fighting for a living like some emotionless animal. The man was so used to killing that it was a surprise that he stopped to adhere to the crowd’s demands. He could not have many easier chances to kill someone, that must have been a temptation.
I was bleeding from my thighs like crazy, my whole body ached in pain and I was unable to move. There was a hole in my side the size of a man’s head, so big that I could feel the air gushing in and out of it. I was under a spell of immobility, my legs couldn’t move and neither could the rest of my body. All I could do was sit and wait for what I thought was coming.
My life was in his hands, his blood soaked hands full of sin and the souls of his victims. He had full control over whether I lived or died and he had the ultimate decision, not the emperor or the crowd. If he wanted to kill me I was dead. He wanted to do it, I knew that, I could feel it through the blades at my neck and through the force of his presence. And yet, with all of his will and coldness, he could not do it. He took the blades away and I fell to the ground in relief and pain.
The dark skinned warrior that held my fate in his hands had won many prestigious battles before. He was well versed and experienced in the acts he needed to commit and he had all the attributes that mattered. Although he was quite small in size he made up for this with immense agility and speed as well as more than his fair share of strength. The man was a killer, a veteran fighter, and I had chosen to go head to head with him in that battle. It was a move I now regretted but one that I engaged in with a burst of adrenaline and nothing more.
When I finally regained my consciousness after being dragged from the arena by the slaves, they told me that plans had been made for my future already. They did not give me details, the slaves probably didn’t know them as they would not be trusted by those who mattered. I spent my walk back to my cell thinking about what plans had been made and secretly I knew it was the dark skinned warrior that this concerned. I knew that plans had been made for a grudge match between the would be dead and the would be slayer.
My thoughts were confirmed when I sat in my cell, the physician had already seen me and sutured my wounds. His surgical equipment cut through my dead flesh like the same gouging I had received to my side. The physician had been silent the whole time, not giving my any information, not even to say that what I was about to experience would be extremely painful, which it was. He had been told not to give me anything to think about more than the pain in my flesh and the throbbing of my blood because this would drive me to becoming a better gladiator.
Hours after he had left, maybe even days as the pain made me lose all sense of time and space, they came. The men wearing the emperor’s colors, the vivid indigo, half way between violet and navy. Three of these men stepped in front of my cell, not daring to enter the den of a delusional killer. These men were smart and intelligent enough not to make mistakes. They stood far enough away from the bar so that I could not lunge at them through the metal. They had sent the physician ahead to see if I was violent but they still dared not take the risk.
The stood and began to talk, the middle man clearly wearing the more elaborate uniform made his introduction.
“Gladiator, I am Flavius Dendium, Advisor to the Emperor.”
He called me gladiator, the generic name for all of us. I had heard of Flavius before, his name was bounded around as one of the Emperor’s most prized advisors and a major influence over the senate of Rome. Flavius was rumored to be the driving force behind the gladiatorial battles, the man backer to their beneficial effects on society. He was responsible for the thousands of lives that had been wasted in the Circus Maximus and hundreds of thousands more across the territories. This man was the face of death and a personal devil to everybody he named Gladiator.
“By order of the Emperor you are to fight again.”
Was this intended to be a surprise? I was called Gladiator and therefore it was my occupation to fight as often as I could. I had seen many other fighters be sent to their deaths without some much as a word from a praetorian, never mind from the advisor to the Emperor. Was this his idea of a joke? Was this a sick taunt to make me feel disgraced that my life was saved only be mercy?
“You are to fight in the festival at the end of the month.”
Ah, the festival. The time of the year when the most elite gladiators were to face each other in a fight to the death. The fights were arranged in order to please the fans at the time of year when their faith in the Emperor was beginning to lower. The games were always used as a political aid but during the festival it was more true than ever.
“You are to participate in an individual fight.”
Very rarely were the festival fights one-on-one affairs. The fights at this time were usually reserved for mass battles, recreations of historic events and epic contests. It would seem as though the crowd had developed a liking for me already, either that or I was meant to be fodder for a legend. There was nothing the crowd liked more than to see a favorite massacre a few slaves.
“You are to fight the man that had your head in your last battle. Kindridus Londinium.”
So that was what he was called, the dark skinned warrior that had come so close to killing me in the arena. He had wanted to remain anonymous having disappointed himself. He wanted to rejoin the fray at the very bottom as the Gladiator that we all were. He wanted to be normal again, he wanted to be a nameless warrior like we all were but they would not allow him that. There would always be some expectation attached to his name.
“You are required to put on a performance worthy of the Emperor himself, and if you don’t and still succeed in keeping your life a second time you will be killed at one of my praetorian’s hand.”
With his threat the three men left. Flavius and his bodyguards left the scene like they had arrived, silent and dignified although their words were anything but. Their words had driven me into a world of thought. Thoughts of the moment where my life was saved only by the cries of Rome’s citizens. Thoughts of how the next time would not be as lucky for me and I would begin my decent into hell at last. But my biggest and most ominous thoughts were to the fact that I would be killed even if I won, I would have to put on a show to the crowd of Rome, I would have to perform acts that were depraved and horrific if I was to live.
This would be the biggest fight of my life, the most meaningful one as well. My reality was one of death on all sides and no escape. I was living in an inhuman prison of pain and suffering and now I had one route of escape, to inflict this pain and suffering on one man. Truly speaking, this would not be an escape, just a prolonging of my life.
My life had been saved because I had spilled blood. It was saved because my life offered more blood to be spilled if I was alive than if I was to die. I would have to start repaying my life in blood and I would start against the dark skinned warrior in my next fight.
