~ 32 ~

Stripped of Character

Two men stood in the middle of the gladiator pit, wanting to keep close, but keeping separated for safety. Light filtered down from above, a hole the size of a well set in the flat ceiling, which teased to a world beyond this nightmare.

The chorus of cheers continued around them, humans and numankos, spitting at the arena. Within the ring, one of the men shook his head, pointing at the leader who loomed above at the front of the stadium. "You! Who are you to decide that we should kill each other?"

Above, a giant sat on a throne, a shadowy figure, who placed a hand on the exposed half of his chest. "I? Tul'mor Val'kyr, King of Mofasos. The right I have for you to end your brother's life? None." His shoulders relaxed into his chair. "Only that you both will die if you choose not to fight. Where is the worth in that? Dying for an honour that is soon to be forgotten?"

The second man stood stepped next to the first, the two, standing together, facing upward at the giant. "Our families will remember the kind of men we were. That honour, and our dedication to it, will be carried down and spread. It'll ennoble the spirit of our people."

"It'll ennoble a history of the deceased, perhaps," Tul'mor mused. "For what good is the honour of an absent husband and father? Does it protect your home? Place food upon your table? When my tribe leaves to remove your sort from this land, do you we will not sail to whence you came, with only a fraction of our kind, to slaughter your last remains?"

Both men looked to each other and, with a shaky exhale, nodded to each other, barely managing the strength to look up at the giant. They both spoke together. "We refuse to fight."

Tul'mor rose without malice from his throne. The king numanko looked at him, chanting brief, strange sounds. Then it knocked the bottom of its sceptre against the ground, slowly, each one silencing the crowd.

And silence was held on the final, fifth knock.

Then the king numanko chanted. "Oo."

The audience on the round rows of seats, human and numanko, repeated the chant. "Oo."

"Oo. Oo."

The crowd.

"Oo. Oo."

The king.

"Oo. Oo. Oo!"

The audience. "Oo. Oo. Oo!"

Then, together, they pumped the sound over the arena.

"Oo! Oo! Oo!"

"Oo! Oo! Oo!"

"Oo! Oo! O—"

Tul'mor leapt from his throne to the silence of. In the pit, one man stumbled back, but the other, frozen in shock, was flattened beneath the feet of the beast. A splatter of red carried outward, a breaking of bones, with nothing but a squishy mess of tissue beneath the giant's feet.

The other man ran away, catching the glint of a halberd on the ground, but, after his first step, a hand engulfed the back of his head. Sizable fingers clamped onto his face, clogging his nose, blocking his vision, suffocating him within the hold. A second later, the hand raised him, and his feet kicked in the air.

The giant choked him with grip alone and, once the man's kicks became wild and he was seconds from suffocation, the hand clenched, and his head spilled between its fingers. A moment later, the hand released, and a limp body fell.

A couple of numankos dropped down onto the stage.

"Leave the remains," Tul'mor shook his hand, flinging away filth. He glanced at the hanging cages above. "Let the building collection remind them of what they're fighting to avoid."

He turned and, with a push from oversized legs, leapt to the top of the stadium, landing and turning, sitting on his throne. The king numanko tapped his sceptre twice, and another cage dropped. It hung feet from the ground. Slowly, the flooring of the cage retracted, until two more men were dumped into the gladiator pit.

One man fell forward into the squished remains of the first man, while the other found his footing easily, coming to look around the zone. Looking up to see the shadowy crowd, loomed above and looking down, sprawling backward in countless rolls and endless lengths.

"I-I... I-I won't do it, either!" he called to the crowd. "You can't take away that which makes a man! My values, all that I've practised... that's me! Without those, I might as well be—"

A sword buried itself into the side of the man's throat, cutting quarter way before pulling back, then being hacked into several more times. He fell to his knees, choking to breathe, unable to see the brother who then took his head.

The deed was done with a final chop, and the beheaded man fell. Behind him, his brother Laleen stumbled forward, panting, squirts of blood across his face. His tears diluted some of the blood—but did nothing to remove it.

"It would seem as some aren't as hard-fast to your beliefs as others," Tul'mor commented. "I was always curious to see what it would take to break a man from all that he knew. I hope the answer isn't something so easy as death. Will all of you die with honour? Or will you go to forgo all that you know?"

He chuckled and waved his hand. "Drop two more cages."

Above in their cage, Zinnine watched the number of participants grow, some pleading with others not to fight—only to be slashed at his throat. Some fought fairly. Some, being defeated fairly, would unfairly kill their foe to avoid death. Men that he had known, those that he had grown up with in the ways of being a Laleen—gone in but a couple of moments.

"We won't be able to fool the bastard into letting enough of us out into the arena," Gero calmness plucked Zinnine from his panic, who, in a series of jerks, came to look at his brother. Gero nibbled at his thumb as he watched the zone. "Even if enough of us were out, in this hysteria, we couldn't organize a revolt."

He chuckled. "So much for life-long practices."

Zinnine's hands fumbled against the against, searching and feeling for the metal bars—gripping them for support. All he knew, all that he had believed himself to be, crumbled before him in facing death. "Y-You're not scared? This is it. We're going to die. We're seriously... going to die. No-no-no-no... no... no no..."

Gero glanced at him from the corner of his eyes. "You never believed death could touch us, did you? Not even on the battlefield?"

Zinnine shook his head, though that could have been for a different reason.

"Aye." Gero returned to examining their surroundings. "I fear I had the same perception of invincibility, myself, around your age. Death nearly plucked me then as it does here now. Though I survived, I knew I had to ready myself for the day I must say farewell."

Zinnine choked on his own spit in attempting to speak. Still gripping the cage, he tried to rise on weak legs. He barely rose more than a foot. "I-Is that it, then? Y-You've ready yourself to die?"

Gero shook his head. "No. Few are ready to die." He sighed. "And I am not one of them—and never will I ever be." But then he nodded, a strange thing to do, a smile blossoming across his face. "All you can be is more prepared to take your final breath. That is the best any discipline can take you."

Gero looked at his brother fully. "For, in the end, we'll always want a little more time, as we struggle to leave matters unfinished."

Zinnine's hand let go of the bars, and yet he was still standing, but with a struggle to breathe. Though everything was shaky, he focused on his breath, neglecting all the fears and panics, focusing on the present moment.

His possible last moment.

He fought to the other side of that thought, able to collect himself, able to go on and do what must be done. Many things flashed through his mind. The face of his wife, the woman that he risked the shame of putting down his sword to be with. That, and his children, of Zanieth and Astria, little children that, with a hiccuped breath, realized he was never involved in their lives as much as he would have liked.

Tears spilled from his eyes for them, for being able to be important to someone beyond himself. Shame washed into him in passing before the doors of his daughters, hearing their happy laughter and energetic questions. Gero spent more time with them and, despite being their uncle, was more of a father than Zinnine ever was.

And that thought opened his eyes.

"Gero," Zinnine opened with a newfound calmness. "No matter what happens here—you must be the one to escape. No matter the shame you must incur to be the strongest, take the chance on their promise to escape. If we are the last to fight—you can easily take my life."

Zinnine had gone from fearing death, to its total acceptance, so long as it bought something for someone else.

But Gero's smile turned into a smirk. "We'll see." He looked down to the many cages dropping, and the many more bodies falling. The arena was filled with people outright fighting without honour or fairness. The crowd's cheering drowned out the clinking of meat and the crying of dying men.

"As loath as I am to renounce all that I have come to believe," Gero started. "I refuse to murder the man that has more of a reason to leave than me."

Zinnine shook his head. "You're set to be king! Father has always loved you more—the same with our people! With your skill—"

"Skill has ceased to be a factor for me," Gero answered. "Worry not about my survival. Focus on yourself. Set it in your mind how far you're willing to go if it means returning to home. If the reason is strong enough for you to commit heinous acts, then shred freely, and bear not one regret."