Ch 46

The gates were rising once more. Once more the drums were beating in their rhythmic cadence. I walked calmly out into the arena as the crowd screamed excitedly. Today my opponent was a human woman.

            Normally, I would have discounted her quickly because of her young age and slight build, looking barely more than eighteen. I realized that I could not so easily do so however, despite being slender her muscles were tight, and she was carrying a whip as if she knew how to use it.

            She was also calmly walking into the arena, eyeing me across the distance and sizing me up. Her eyes glinted and she began to smile cruelly when she saw my twin daggers and realized just how much of a reach advantage she had with her whip.

            As she uncoiled it, I noticed something a bit odd about the end, but it was moving and difficult to see clearly. As soon as the gates clanged shut behind us, she broke into a sprint, coming towards me with her whip kept out to the side and trailing behind.

            Not wanting to be caught between her whip and the gate I also began to run in closer. As I got close, she suddenly stopped running and planted her feet in a spray of dirt, her whip lashing out towards my chest. I decided to tank the hit considering I had my toughening spell in effect. As it came towards me, I moved in, not trying to evade.

            I thought she would back up a step when I didn’t try to evade her whip but instead, she smiled bigger and when the strike came, I understood why. The abnormality I had noticed on the end of her whip was a small blade, painted so that it would not glint in the sunlight. Thanks to my toughness I was not butchered like a slab of meat, but I gained a long and shallow cut from my left collarbone to my abdomen.

            I quickly jumped back when I felt the searing pain and saw the blade, now red with my blood. My opponent was frowning slightly, probably due to her weapon not working as well as she was used to. In any event, I needed to avoid taking too many hits from that thing, especially in the face, if she takes out my eyes they aren’t coming back.

            She came forward again, this time at a casual walk, looking for all the world as if she was a cat playing with a mouse. Most people in the arena are here because they are forced to fight, others seem to take a liking to violence and enjoy their time in the arena. This girl seemed to be one of the latter sorts. She had probably been thrust into killing people at a young age and had developed sadistic tendencies as a result.

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            In any event she was almost on top of me again and with the range of her whip I would not be able to land any blows on her. Thinking on my feet, I began to run sideways along the walls of the oval arena. The girl snarled when I didn’t stay put and started running after me. No doubt this girl has lost her humanity, she is snarling like an animal.

            I managed to gain some distance from her and then turning around I drew and threw one of my daggers at her. She saw it coming at the last second and tried to dodge it, but it still managed to lodge into her hip. Now she was standing there with rage in her eyes. She had to move her whip to her other hand so that she could steady the dagger in her hip, eyes daring me to come closer.

            Come closer is exactly what I did. As expected, she lashed out wildly with the whip, trying to keep me at bay. Now that she is injured, she has become quite predictable, behaving like a scared animal. Her panic was taking the accuracy out of her whip and so it was quite easy to dodge it once and then while still moving closer grab it with my right hand.

            Before she had time to realize that I had grabbed her weapon I used my left hand to punch the handle of my dagger still embedded in her thigh viciously, her face turned pale but she neither let go of her weapon, nor did she cry out in pain.

            She was still snarling at me and jerking her arm on the whip as if still trying to strike me with it despite being in such close quarters and me having a firm grip on it. After all those nights chopping down trees with a weighted axe and practicing with a weighted dagger there was no way I was letting go.

            I could have kept hitting the dagger, but it felt a little cruel and so instead I raised a foot and hooked her knee from behind, dropping her to her knees. As she fell, I used my free hand and grab the wrist that held the whip, now letting go of the whip I punched her in the forehead and her head snapped back. This time her hand when limp for a moment and she let go of the weapon.

            After my assault she ended up falling into the dirt backwards. I turned away a moment to discard her whip and when I turned back around, she was up and lunging at me, the bloodied dagger pulled from her hip and thrusting towards me while held in both hands, her eyes filled with a savage light.

            I had expected her to stay down for a moment so she caught me off guard, the dagger catching me cleanly, only the turning motion of my torso saved me from taking it straight into the heart, instead it pierced my shoulder and got stuck there.

            As pain lanced through my mind and all I saw was red the fate of the young lady in front of me was sealed. By the time I could see again my second dagger had cleanly glided out of its sheath and passed into the side of her neck. Damn, this might be better for her than a lifetime of violence, but I would still probably lose a little sleep over it. So young.

            Once again, the crowds were cheering, excited by the blood and once again I headed for the side gate which was rising to allow me to exit the arena. Soon goblins would come out for the corpse and then the next two gladiators would come to test their strength against one another.

            I waited until I got back to the resting room to pull the dagger from my shoulder. I didn’t bother to bandage it, simply pinched it closed and fell into meditation for the healing spell. My dagger is very sharp, and it was a clean stab. Probably no more that two or three weeks for an ordinary person to heal. It is still pretty early; I can probably do by breakfast tomorrow. Sixteen to twenty-four hours tops.