“No more waiting, ya stinking human!” bellowed Thor the Furious, as he plunged his arm into the wall.

Arthur had made the mistake of walking on his own that morning, carefully following the same route Saturn would take him along. Why should he wait for her, he figured. He had now bested several vampires in combat, and he had been spending months now in what was essentially a lavish death trap.

When caught in a death trap, one's first instinct is, naturally, that they’re going to die, both horribly and quickly.

But after spending some time in a death trap and surviving, it can have quite the opposite effect. One starts to fancy themselves invincible.

Living in a den of vampires for so long, Arthur felt a certain sense of destiny.

A feeling that was very quickly dissipating.

“Wait, before you kill me…”

“Shut yar trap!” shouted the vampire. “I know how ya thinkin’ types work. Ya’ll use all of them fancy words to confuse me, make me want to spare yar life. That’s why I’m gonna kill ya before ya have the chance! Filthy swine.”

“Wait,” said Arthur, as the vampire seized the handle of his axe and swung it down, sharp steel slicing through stone. “We should fight properly. In the arena. Honorably!”

The axe froze, the blade half-way through the wall. Thor considered the humans' words. Then his face went red and his muscles tensed, causing his tattoos to dance - no, they must have been magical, as the images were literally moving, as pictures of Thor ran across his many muscles, decapitating and disemboweling his enemies, drinking beer and setting fire to villages.

“Yes! Fantastic! I like the sound of that!” he said, a horrible grin cutting across his face. “A proper duel to the death! Yes, that’s marvelous!” The vampire returned his axe to its holster and started down the hall, still chuckling to himself. “Now come along human! And none of yar tricks, do you hear me? Try something and I kill ya on the spot.”

“Yes, here I come,” said Arthur.

He peeled himself from the wall and followed after Thor, keeping a safe distance - approximately a battle axe’s worth - hoping he would turn the corner and see Saturn, or perhaps even Octavian. He knew Saturn would not let Thor kill him, if only to save the privilege for herself. And Octavian would not approve of his double being killed, would he? Mamed was fine, but killed?

Certainly not.

“Come on now, don’t overthink it,” said the vampire, slapping Arthur on the back, possibly breaking a few bones. “You might have coughed it up back there, but ya did just challenge me to a duel. Now no one can interfere till the battle is done. Not even ol’ Octavian. That’s vampire code for ya.”

“Is that so?” said Arthur, turning pale.

“That it is.”

Arthur felt the sweat on his palms. He had a few tricks in mind, in case they actually fought, but the real battle - the battle he had any reasonable chance of winning - was taking place right now, through narrow corridors and down spiral staircases, past giant doorways and over old, sunken cobblestones.

He had to find a way out of this fight before they reached the training grounds.

He glanced out a window. He noticed they were only five stories up now, and there was a large oak only two stories below them.

He could probably survive the fall down, that is, if he managed to land on a branch. And from there he could climb into an open window and...

“Caesar has been training you, ain't that so?” asked the Vampire, glancing back at Arthur.

“That’s right”, he said, darting away from the window, hoping the vampire had not followed his gaze down to the old oak.

“I gotta say, he’s done a fine job. That blow back there was meant for your skull, not the wall. I still can’t figure out how you managed to dodge that one. Seriously!” He laughed, beating a fist against his bare chest. “Man, hard to believe I’m saying this, but I’m getting awful excited for our fight! How about you?”

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But Arthur ignored his question, too busy remembering a key detail.

He had forgotten about Caesar.

Well, that’s not entirely accurate. He had considered the possibility - no, the strong probability - that Caesar would be at the training grounds. But he could never imagine him trying to stop a fight. If anything, he would probably insist on officiating the whole thing, standing close enough to get covered in Arthur’s blood, close enough to yell “you can do it!” at him, all while his limbs were being ripped off and his skull getting crushed.

But he could imagine Thor challenging Caesar to a fight, and he could easily picture Caesar accepting. Saturn had crushed Thor’s arm, so there must have been nothing in the vampire code against the generals fighting one another.

“So what do you make of Caesar?” asked Arthur, trying to get Thor in the right mindset.

“Well,” said the vampire, tugging hard at his beard. “That’s hard to say.”

“Hard in what way?”

“Hmmmm. How do I put it?” The vampire squinted, clearly out of practice at conversation. “I suppose, well, when he looks at you, he doesn’t see a person, does he? He sees the idea of a person, ya know? He sees someone more beautiful and strong than they actually are. I mean, no wonder folks find the fucker so endearing.” He ducked under a door, but not low enough, walking straight through the solid stone archway, sending debris falling onto Arthur.

But Thor hardly seemed to notice.

“When he looks at Octavian he sees a king,” continued the vampire. “When he looks at you he sees some wonder child, and when he looks at Saturn, he sees a proper vampire. And as for when he looks at me?” He turned around and spread his arms out wide, beaming from ear to ear. “He sees a perfect body, the ultimate, most honorable fighter in the whole fucking land.” He turned the corner, leading them into a large room with high ceilings, dimly lit by scattered torches. “I guess that’s why we get along somehow. See, I am the ultimate fighter! What you see is what you get.”

Arthur was not sure what to say to that, so he went with the truth.

“I’m surprised,'' he said.

“That so?”

“I mean, the two of you are so different.”

“Really? In what way?”

“Well…”

“In every way!” he wanted to say. Just from talking to them, he could tell they were nothing alike. Talking with Caesar felt like dropping a stone in a well, only without the plunk. Meanwhile, talking to Thor felt like throwing a stone in a cave, the sound echoing back at you, becoming louder and louder, yet somehow less clear. They were the least alike of all of Octavian’s generals.

But Arthur settled for saying:

“Skin.”

“What’s that?” asked the vampire.

“Your skin is different. Caesar’s is smooth and perfect, while yours is covered in scars.”

The vampire raised an eyebrow. “You know where these scars come from?” he asked.

“No,” said Arthur. Then, noticing the vampire’s expectant gaze, added “but will you tell me?”

“Oh, various battles,” he said, puffing up his chest, causing the scars to stretch. “At least, that’s what I tell people. Most of them I put there myself.”

Arthur raised an eyebrow.

“Why would you do that?”

The vampire scowled.

“Well, one day I was wooing a lady and she said all of my war stories must have been made up. She said it made no sense - I’d been in so many battles but didn’t have any battle scars? How is that even possible? Meanwhile, this one poser had all sorts of scars. “Now that’s manly,’ she says. The fuck she mean by that?” Thor, who had been in an uncharacteristically good mood up to this point, started to turn red, plunging his hand into the wall, pulling loose stones out as he walked. “You only get scars if you get hit, so I figured it’s cool I had none, but apparently they're manly. So I handed her a sword and told her to carve one out. A big ol’ scar. And so she did. It’s kind of like an autograph book now.” He waved a hand over his chest. “Each is a beautiful lady or some warrior I respect.”

“That’s a lot of scars,” said Arthur.

“A lot of beautiful ladies,” said Thor, nodding victoriously.

Then the vampire slammed into a wall.

Arthur had decided not to say anything, but they had been going the wrong way to the arena since they first ran into each other. He figured the vampire must know the castle by now, that he must have been following some shortcut. But the vampire was clearly lost. Perhaps now he would lose interest in their fight.

“I think we’ll have to loop back around,” said Arthur.

“No we don’t,” said the vampire.

In one fluid motion, he pulled his battleaxe loose and swung it down, causing the wall in front of them to collapse and then turn to dust. The entire castle shook as a blast of air shot through layer after layer of stone, forming a series of makeshift doors.

“Shit,” said Arthur.

“I know, right?” said the Vampire.

As the dust settled, Arthur could make out a face at the end of the newly formed passageway, smiling back at them. Unfortunately, it was a face he recognized all too well.

“Why, if it isn’t my two favorite people!” said Caesar, waving at them. “What brings you here?”

“A fight!” said Thor, slapping Arthur on the back, pushing him forward. “A proper one. To the death!”