Cesare nodded his understanding, not just of the words but of the underneath the syllables. None of it mattered, not his pain, fear, self-hatred, or any of it. All that mattered was living. A wolf didn’t care what it had to do to survive, because they had no give up in them. Cesare straightened his shoulders, casting off the self-pity that mired his soul with a shake, he’d lived this long, he wouldn't roll over now.

Tamlin noted the change in posture, muscles moving and rearranging. A slowly bleeding boy transforming into a feral monster ready to fight, dull eyes shedding their murky film, sharpening with terrible intensity. “Good. You've come a long way, but a building only exists because of its foundation. The stronger and deeper the foundation, the taller a wise man can build.”

Bonelessly, the man slipped into his ready stance. “You’ve learned technique's, now we'll work on foundations. A man once said there is only one sword stroke, to kill. Everything else is words.”

Tamlin's fists darted toward him, kicks hammering with bruising force. Hitting with explosive force, they left him scrambling to get his feet under him. Each punch, kick, elbow, and knee carved another line into Cesare’s body, branding technique into bones.

Tamlin pulled everything from Cesare, from the beginning work on stances to the most recent meditations on Sen. As hours passed, Cesare fell into the moment, reacting on a level more basic than thought. Counters flowed from him, finding openings he couldn’t see, dodging became a thing without thought. He dwelled in now, hot power, predatory and needy running through him in pure streams of savage truth. Cesare embraced the feral clarity, sinking into its fleshy presence.

Shifting, Tamlin moved close, hands hooked into bony claws that sought to cage. Twisting with the holds, they locked and tangled, grips, counters, and elbows moving in a never-ending engagement. The room echoed with the slap of flesh, punctuated with grunts of pain, layered under heavy breaths of brutality. Gripping his arm, fingers digging in with bruising strength, Tamlin tossed him to the ground with a hip throw. The battle changed to leverage and distance as they worked to subvert the others strength.

Stepping back, Tamlin ended the hours long test. The world slammed into Cesare as the trance broke around him. Legs wavering, Cesare collapsed gasping as his body revolted. Falling onto his back, sweat pooled around him. Muscles burned with the steady pain of a body riding the razors edge.

Panting frantically, Cesare closed his eyes, willing his body calm. Tamlin’s voice intruded into his consciousness. “You’ve picked up Go no Sen, but you still have a long way to go.” Cesare tracked the man's quiet walk as he disappeared from the room.

Tamlin had always been a bastard. With pain and bruises, he pushed Cesare beyond anything he’d reach on his own. The man wouldn’t let him settle for exhausted, he was intent on dragging Cesare to the bleeding edge of his ability, holding him at that point, demanding he stay there until the end of the spar. It was brutal, unforgiving work, and if his life didn’t depend on getting as good as he could as quick as he could, Cesare would tell the man to take a long fuck on a big dick.

Groaning, Cesare stripped, sponging himself off with the bucket of water. Tamlin had pushed him from the beginning, sinking a barbed meat hook into his flesh, dragging him past his limits with casual cruelty. Cesare had found his real limits where flesh wept blood and exhaustion threatened to pull him down into unconsciousness. Once Tamlin had shown Cesare that line, he’d pushed him to walk deeper into the salted wasteland of exhaustion.

His steps faltered as he left the room, a twisting, sick feeling, tightening in his gut as the wolfs presence leaked away. Little by little, it drifted away as the world lost an electric vitality. Creeping misery as virulent as cancer, only ever at the edges of his life, surged into the hurting void. It was the pain of a birthday gift shining and beautiful found to be made from diseased shit. Without realizing it, he’d settled into a slow prowl that sent students skittering away, ducking his cruel eyes.

He entered the courtyard with a long stride, violence staining the air around him. Eyeing him, gladiators moved out of his way with easy, unimpressed steps. Everyone here was used to violence, even if it was only the play violence of gladiators.

Uniformity enforced with pain and blood, their was no place for different in the courtyard, her otherness meant weakness. Arbela’s with their knives dancing, darting and slashing, blades never still. Thin fast kids looking too young, it wasn’t strength that won a knife fight, it was speed and viciousness that ruled. Silver scars and sadists eyes marked them out from the others.

In their corner of the training field, Sampson worked with the cestus. Standing in the center of his boys, he brought them out one by one and thrashed them, brutalizing their flesh in displays of furious strength. Even as the boys were broken into the ground, they looked up at Sampson with hero worship shining in their eyes. His abuse might as well have been the blessings of Aries.

Wooden swords twirled into the air in a dazzling display as a pretty boy with golden hair showed off for the dimachaerus. He preened under the crowds admiring eyes, lapping up their fawning words. Off to the side, Atalanta taught her class of girls with quiet words, eyes tracking Cesare as he passed.

The murmillo had pride of place in the middle of the courtyard. With their leather armor buffed to a high sheen, they were the only ones carrying live steel. Each move sent gleaming arcs of light across the courtyard. They were super stars, the ones everyone looked up to. It wasn’t just that they were the strongest, no, they held the coveted prize, a future. Each of them was slotted for a spot on a professional team, baring crippling injury, they were on their way to fulfilling the dream every gladiator bled for.

Cesare skirted around the groups, meeting challenging stares and speculative eyes equally. He wasn’t one of them and everyone knew it. He’d earned his space through flesh and pain, other people’s pain and their friends flesh. You weren’t given anything here, everything you got, you took from someone. Respect, power, fear, it was yours for the taking, if you could carve it from the meat of the kid next to you.

Coming up on his territory, he stepped over the speed bump that marked its boundary. His stride changed, center of balance grounding, taking on a confidant prowl. This was his, he’d bleed for it, fought off the challengers, and come out the winner. This was his valley of death, and he’d keep it by being the baddest motherfucker in it.

Lined up along the fence, the Cherries watched, waiting for him to take his place before entering the sparring cage. Looking them over, he let a tight smile crease his face. He’d taken away who they'd been, and given them what they wanted, if they could pay the butcher to get it.

They ran laps before school, sweating their asses off as the sun came up. After classes, they came here. He'd work them into the ground, bleeding them out to water the grass, punishing their bodies for the sin of weakness. After he left, they worked a rotation that was a combination of sparring, dummy work, body weight exercises, and teaching each other. When their trainers came for them, they were ready to squeeze them for every drop of technique they could beg, borrow, or steal.

Over the weekend, they did their runs before hitting the courtyard to match up against each other. Working a rotation of sparring, dummy work, and sprinting, until they hit the ground. Each got to decide how badly they wanted it, failure was on them. This was the path to what they'd always wanted, a path to strength, confidence, and the power to take back what he world had stripped them of, self-respect.

He never asked who showed for the sessions and who passed. Cesare didn’t care, he’d given them the regimen to push them to the limit of endurance. If they had the discipline to keep themselves in line, they'd grow their own brand of strength. It was easy to get strong when someone was pushing you, but only the strongest could birth strength out of discipline.

Hanging his bag on the fence, Cesare ducked into the sparring arena, claiming the center of the ring before facing his students. The first one walked in, gladius held in a relaxed hand, eyes centered on Cesare's body. No one walked out of a spar without a few bruises to show for it, but how many you got was up to you.

Cesare started as soon as the girl entered his striking range. Everyone knew you were fair game as soon as your foot entered the corral. There were no words to start or stop, you fought until Cesare let you go.

Moving in on the girl, his punches and kicks rained down from angles she was used to. There was no reason for fancy, this wasn’t about winning or dominance. Pushing her defenses, a punch snuck into a gap she should have known to guard against. Hammering into the leather, the fist tore a grunt from her. A man with a sword had an advantage over the unarmed, but only if he knew what he was doing. An idiot with a sword was no less an idiot, a pork chop with a sword was still good eating.

She lost steam quick, nothing compared to the furnace of hell that was sparring. The body working at a fever pitch, adrenaline dumping in a flood of panicked fury, heart beating hard enough to rattle ribs. Running, swimming, biking, couldn't compare to the voracious needs sparring put on the body.

Her returns came slower and slower until they stopped all together. It was a common mistake, a trigger flipped in the mind to turtle up and rely on defense. That kind of thinking was fine for fighters and sheep, but killers knew better. When you stop trying to win, you slit your own throat.

Dodging into her guard, he closed the distance. Stumbling back, she tried to get her sword into play but up close, a sword was as useful as a paddle to a man in a desert. Cesare’s knee slammed into her stomach, her muscles seizing under the impact. His elbow cracked into her mouth, cutting lips, slamming her into the ground with a bone rattling thump.

Blinking up at him, her eyes dilated wildly, flickering like shutters on a camera as blood leaked from split lips. Sense came slowly back to her. Once she'd settled into a glare, he knew she was back with him.

“You fight to win.” The words filled the area with quiet menace. “The time to give up is before a fight. If you’re facing a man with steel, then it’s too late to defend.” Sweeping his eyes over the watching crowd, he continued, “You didn’t come here to be saved. You’re here to learn to save yourself. When you're too tired to lift your weapon, you fight. When your maimed and bleeding, you fight. When death is tearing out your soul and your opponent has your heart in his hands, you fight. You fight with everything you have because no one's going to fight for you.”

Getting slowly to her feet, the girl avoided his eyes, heat climbing her cheeks. He didn’t help her, that wasn’t what he taught. This was more than how to fight, he was warping souls into murderous horrors. Monsters that savaged life, forcing the cold bitch to feed their wants. He wasn't making good people; he was breaking the chains others had thrown on them. They were storms of volatile, dominate force, unrepentant abominations needing only direction to cast off the yoke’s others had thrown around their necks.

With a strange gleam in her eye she stepped away making way for the next fighter. Cesare wasn’t easy on them because life wasn’t easy. It was brutal, cruel, and more often than not it wasn’t worth the effort to get up in the morning. You kept going because the other option was too scary. If you wanted something you had to have the courage to take it, to reach into the blender and pull out the gold ring. That courage couldn’t be given, it could only be earned.

The next was a boy with a trident. Thrusting and whirling, he kept Cesare back while working strikes into the combinations. Dancing around the boy, Cesare watched for the break in the flow. Stepping into those gaps, Cesare punished the boy mercilessly. The world would never let up on the weak so Cesare couldn’t. He hardened them to pain, callousing their souls to life's tender mercies.

Under the pressure, the boy strengthened, anger collapsing into a hard ball of aching power. Each blow was calculated, Cesare never hurt the boy without purpose. Each punch was an exclamation point marking a mistake, every kick a lesson in the power or weakness of the boy’s stance. A rush was a test of the boy’s base, pushing it hard enough to expose weakness but never to break it.

The students came into the ring and left with a new appreciation for both the power of a well-placed fist and the weaknesses of their technique. But this wasn’t for them, no matter how much they got out of it, Cesare wasn’t here for them. He was here for the credits and training. Cesare watched them learn their weapons, sparring against them as they built the foundations of their styles. Seeing it from the ground up stripped the style to its basics, exposing the truths of the steel.

Leaving them to their practice, Cesare was halfway across the courtyard when he felt the change in the air. It was subtle, a difference in the voices, a tingle in the air, a suspense as reality tightened the noose around his neck. Reflexes honed to perfection from a hundred beatings on the streets, flared in warning at the changes. He quickly picked out the murmillo, lean blades cutting through the courtyard, converging on him.

Cesare measured the distance to the arches and came up with a losing number. They had just enough of a lead that anything less than a sprint would put them on him. Spreading his feet, he centered himself, the warmth of the Enochian Blade heating in readiness.

The girl and her boy toys eyed his waiting figure with cool calculation. Hands fingered well-worn leather hilts as they spread out, stripping him of escape. The Murmillo fell into their angles of attack with the well worn ease of long practice.

“I wanted to talk to you away from your … teammates,” Jerold said from behind him.