"Okay," said Sam. "That, I didn't see coming."

Mr. Ayres grinned savagely. "Magnificent, isn't she?"

My tongue suddenly felt very clumsy and dry in my mouth. I swallowed as best I could and muttered something that could have been an agreement.

Anna—or rather, Artemis— walked slowly, confidently, to the center of the arena floor as the animals backed away in response, snarling balefully at her. She began to turn in a steady circle, hunched low to the ground, twirling the javelin slowly above her head as the spectators waited with bated breath to see who would strike first.

It was the lioness. With a hair-raising roar, she tore away from her mate and lunged at Artemis, who planted her feet in the sand and readied her spear. As the lioness closed the gap between them with terrifying alacrity, Artemis took careful aim and loosed her javelin. The missile streaked through the air and, just as the lioness leaped at her, lodged itself straight into the beast's mouth. The lioness died instantly, crashing into the ground in a bloodied heap.

The hyenas cackled insanely in response and charged the huntress as one. With inhuman quickness, Artemis drew her kris and slashed open the throat of the lead hyena with the curved, asymmetrical blade. It hadn't even died yet when the second hyena jumped over its collapsing body, salivating jaws wide open. Artemis drew her left arm up instantly, lodging the buckler into the hyena's mouth. As she fell to the ground beneath the beast's weight, Artemis lashed out with her bare heel and caught the third hyena squarely in the snout. It yelped out loud and backed away long enough for her to bury her dagger into the second hyena's heart. Even in death its jaws remained locked around the buckler, and she ended up having to quickly remove the chain-mail protecting her arm to free herself. By the time she had scrambled to her feet, the last hyena had recovered and, along with the remaining lion, began encircling her.

"Move, sweet sibling," hissed Mr. Ayres beneath his breath. His jaw was tightly clenched, beads of sweat forming on his forehead.

I found myself mesmerized by the way Anna moved, by the way she fought. It was like watching a human dervish, or a mongoose fighting a cobra. She moved with a skill, quickness and ferocity that reminded me of the characters in the animated Japanese shows I watched at home. Completely inhuman.

Completely amazing.

She avoided the lion's charge by diving out of the way at the last second towards the lioness' corpse. As the lion reversed its massive bulk and hurtled towards her, she pried the javelin free and rolled onto her back, the spear held erect into the air, impaling the lion through the heart as it landed, stealing its life away. It moaned pitifully for a few seconds before Artemis finally landed the killing blow by sinking the kris into the soft tissue beneath the chin and into its brain. It gave one last massive shudder before finally laying still.

The surviving hyena stopped suddenly and began to whine. As Artemis rose to her feet the beast began to backpedal and eventually turned around and ran … directly into the waiting grizzly, with crushed its skull with a single swipe of its paw.

Just over a minute had passed and already it was down to Artemis and the bear. The two circled each other cautiously: the bear taking swipes at the air with its razor claws, Artemis tracing figure-eights into the air with her dagger.

"Fucking PETA's going to have a field day with this footage," I said, panning the camera back and forth between close-ups of the two.

As the intensity of the stand-off escalated, the crowd began to stamp their feet to the rhythm of war drums beating from somewhere I could not see. It was a low, steady beat which eventually picked up in pace and tempo until the crowd could no longer keep up with it. Soon enough all rhythm was lost amidst the rapid pounding of fifty-five thousand pairs of uncoordinated feet.  

When the drums finally reached their crescendo, Artemis gave a blood-curdling war cry and leaped high in the air towards the grizzly, her dagger clutched tightly in both hands. The bear rose up on its hind legs to meet her, but before it could even rear its paw back, Artemis was already upon it, burying her blade directly between its eyes.

The bear slumped backwards to the ground, with Artemis collapsing on top of it. For a good long while she just lay there with her head on the bear's chest, exhausted. After several excruciating minutes had finally passed, she pushed herself up into a straddling position, and raised her fist in the air in triumph.

"She, um, she," I stammered, words escaping me as fifty- five thousand people began screaming themselves hoarse, "she just killed a fucking grizzly bear with a knife."

"Magnificent," repeated Mr. Ayres as he led the roaring applause. "Absolutely magnificent."

Down on the bloody sands Anna removed the crown of antlers from her head and threw it to a section of the stands. The patrons there immediately interrupted into a fight over the souvenir as the rest of the crowd cheered the melee on.

Sam let out a long, low whistle. "Woah," she said, shaking her head. "I think I'm in love."

I barely heard her. I was transfixed solely on the woman below, who turned slowly on the spot, as if soaking in the adulation of the audience. Eventually she was facing our direction, and I felt my heart literally skip a beat when her eyes caught mine. She looked at me expressionlessly for a few moments before the edge of her lips curved upwards in a slight seductive smile just as the gates rose once again and more than a two dozen men pulling several large carts came pouring out. Quickly and efficiently, they began loading the carcasses onto them. The gigantic bear, however, needed to be sliced into pieces in order to fit. I looked away from the grisly scene just in time to see Anna walk back through the eastern gate. She paused at the threshold and looked back over her shoulder at me. It lasted less than a second, though, and before I fully registered it she was gone.

Something came over me then, clouding my mind like a heady perfume. "Uh, you know what?" I said to Sam and Mr. Ayres, backing up as I talked. "Maybe I should go and, uh, get a post-match interview. You know, try and see how a gladiator, um, feels right after a fight."

I could feel myself withering beneath Sam's suspicious gaze. "Fine," she growled. "But get back here soon. Shadow's fight should be coming up."

I wasted no time sprinting back to the hypogeum. It was pandemonium down there: there was a static charge of pure adrenaline in the air, and I found myself struggling to maneuver myself past chaotic throngs of fighters. I called Anna's name out loud several times, but my voice was lost amidst the drunken cheers of celebration and the wailing moans of the wounded. Eventually the roiling sea of humanity thinned out enough to the point where I could catch my breath and recollect my self. Determined to find her, I straightened up and walked as quickly as I could deeper into the bowels of Warworld, peeking into every room I passed, desperately hoping to find her.

My fruitless search continued for more than fifteen minutes, however, and I was just about to give up and head back to the floor when I heard the sound of movement behind me. I turned and saw a young boy, no older than thirteen, running up to me.

"You are the man who film us, yes?" he asked, pointing to the camera.

I looked him up and down. He was deeply tanned and almost unhealthily skinny. Dressed only in a ragged pair of stained cutoffs, his body was already heavily lined with scars.

"Yeah," I said.

"You are coming with me, okay?" he said. "The lady, she tells me to bring you to her."

He led me back towards the way I came and into a narrow passageway half-hidden behind tall wicker baskets that I hadn't previously noticed. It was moldy and unlit, and I had to squint just to keep track of my guide's fleeting outline.

"What's your name, kid?" I asked.

"No name," he said. "No name. No need for name. Just the fighting."

"Your scars," I said. "Have you already fought in the arena?"

"No. But very near. They training me very hard."

"And you want to fight?"

He stopped so suddenly that I almost walked straight into him. He looked at me over his shoulder and even in the near pitch-black I could tell he was staring at me with the kind of expression that normally said "well, no fucking duh."

"Never mind," I said. "Dumb question. Well then, carry on, my wayward son."

A little while later I found myself at a brightly lit four-way intersection. The kid pointed towards the one on the left with a grubby fingernail.

"Down there," he said.

"You're not coming?"

He shook his head. "Back to the fighting," he said, and ran back the way he came.

The hallway to the left was lit with fluorescent tubes, and I was in it less than a minute when it abruptly ended in an open doorway. Inside was a small, spartanly furnished bedroom; cozy, warm, and far enough from the arena that the noise of the crowd diminished to a dull, nearly inaudible murmur.

Anna stood with her back to me, facing a full-length mirror. She was still dressed in her costume—or lack of one—and smiled when she saw me in the reflection.

"You're quicker than I thought," she said. "I was hoping to have made myself pretty by the time you got here."

"Um," I said, and pointed to the door. "I could come back?"

"Don't be cute," she said, turning to face me. She looked at me for a while, as though inspecting me. "Tell me, Max, could you feel it?"

I was feeling quite a few things at the time, but I doubted she was referring to any of them. I lowered my camera to the floor and tried my best to look innocently oblivious.

"Feel what?"

"The terror," she said, coming closer to me. "The exhilaration and the rush and the excitement. Did you feel what I felt while I was down there?"

"I thought you said you guys didn't do this for the thrills."

She stepped into me and rested her hand on my shoulder and her head on my chest. She smelled like sweat—which, I discovered, wasn't necessarily a bad thing—and something else entirely. She smelled like, well, she smelled like she was bleeding pheromones. Before then I've never had a use for that particular word, and I doubted that I ever would again, but right then it was the only one I had to describe the scent coming off her glistening skin.

"No," she said softly. "But it's a sweet fucking bonus."

I felt that same strange sensation again, like a heavy fog descending over my mind, and something finally snapped into place.

"You called me here, didn't you?" I said. "When we looked at each other right after your fight. You did something to me, and you called me here."

She laughed lightly—a delicate laugh that rang like the chiming of tiny bells.

"Well," she whispered, running a hand gently against my cheek, "didn't you hear them chant my name? I am a goddess, you know." She placed the palms of her hands against my shoulders, and I felt her—slowly, inexorably—push me downwards. "And as such," she said, breathing heavily, "I demand my tribute."

It never occurred to me to resist. I sank to my knees like a stone and buried my face in the warm wetness between her legs. My hands moved seemingly of their own accord, fumbling to untie her sash and the white linen around her waist as I drank every drop of her in. Relentlessly, furiously, savagely; every ounce of sense and sensibility overridden by the carnal desire she instilled in me. There was a thirst there, a burning, maddening longing; and as I gorged myself on her juices she opened her world to me, showing me what it felt to have my blood set on fire, what it sounded like to hear my name invoked by tens of thousands of people, what it was to break a blade off in someone else’s heart and see the life flee their body, and what it meant to finally accept death as the one true life.

"Yesss…" she said, moaning as she placed her hands on my head and guided me deeper inside her. "That’s it. Worship me. Worship me, child."





In the end I found myself hungrier than ever, and I walked back towards the arena with her last words to me still fresh in my mind.

“Are you feeling alive yet?”

My mind was so lost at the time that I hadn’t even noticed Shadow at the time until I walked straight into his titanic bulk. I grunted out loud as the camera flew from my hands. With incredible quickness for someone his size he reached out and caught the camera neatly in one ham-sized hand.

“Um, thanks,” I said as he handed it back to me, flustered. “I, uh, wasn’t paying attention, I guess.”

He gave me an amused and knowing look with his beady blue eyes.

“I told you she was a special lady,” he said.

I pretended to not hear him and busied myself in filming the gigantic champion. From the look of him, he seemed ready to go to battle. He was bare-chested, with a dark gray wolf’s pelt draped around his neck and shoulders, the slain creature’s upper jaw and face crowning his head, lining his scalp with its teeth. A bandolier of animal bones hung from his throat, forming crude armor, while tethered to his leather belt were two obscenely sharp-looking daggers that seemed to have been carved from obsidian rock. In his right hand he held a giant war hammer: a solid, massive block of stone mounted on an ebony pole reinforced with steel bands.

“Is it time?” I asked, zooming the camera in and out to capture his every detail.

He nodded solemnly and started walking towards the gate. I stayed behind him, hoping to eventually grab a good shot of his silhouette against the lights that would be flooding in from the arena. The hallway was packed with gladiators, but they parted before him like the Red Sea. Many of them bowed their heads respectfully as he passed while a few reached out to pat him on the arm and shouted words of encouragement.

“Your companion came to see me again some time ago,” he said softly.

“What did she want?”

He laughed grimly. “A guarantee,” he said, “that I would not lose. She wanted me to promise her a victory.”

“And what did you say?” I asked, surprised.

“I reminded her that the god-wolf would not allow me to die with our own battle unfulfilled.” He paused, and I saw him hang his head slightly. “But fate is mercurial at the best of times, and I told her that if it is my time to die, then there is little I can do to change it.”

“And?”

“She would not relent. She insisted I give her my guarantee.”

“Did you?”

He didn’t answer for a few moments, and when he did, I had to strain to hear his whispered response.

“No. I gave her something else.”

I waited for him to elaborate. He didn’t.

“You, uh,” I began, wondering how to best phrase it. “You fucked her?”

I expected him to burn a hole straight through me with an icy stare, or even knock my head off with a casual backhand. Instead he laughed. It was a deep booming laugh, full of humor, as though it belonged to someone who wasn’t about to engage in mortal combat.

“I believe Miss Lane prefers women.”

“She told you that?”

“No. But I assumed so.”

“Christ,” I said, shaking my head. “I thought that was just an act.”

I was about to ask him what it was he gave her, but suddenly I heard Shadow’s name chanted repeatedly by the crowd. The call was slow and steady, accompanied by the dull thundering of the war-drums and thousands of stamping feet. It was distant at first, but as we neared the gate it escalated in volume until it turned into a beating, deafening madness that threatened to bleed my brain out through my ears. The steel gate rose majestically when he reached it, casting out the shadows that covered him and delivering him to the gaze of fifty-five thousand spectators who shook the entire colosseum with their joyful cries.

“Fuck me,” I breathed as I followed him out onto the sand. Slowly, deliberately, I swept the camera around the crowd, trying to capture as many faces as possible. I saw men in elegantly tailored suits standing next to teenagers in ratty t-shirts and torn jeans, and women in evening gowns and coiffed hair next to men who looked like they hadn’t seen the inside of a house in years. So many different men and women, and all of them repeating Shadow’s name as though he were God.

And in that moment, he was.

I couldn’t believe the electricity in the place. It was a permeating, almost palpable energy, and more and more I came to understand Anna’s words about the celebration of life through the art of death.

I caught Sam’s eye in the crowd, and her mouth widened in a tiny O of surprise when she saw me down there. The makeup around her eyes was smudged, and I knew that she had been crying.

I shook the concern from my head and zoomed the camera in on Shadow’s opponent, Titus, standing across from him at the western gate. I found myself whistling mentally.

He was nearly as large as the champion and equally imposing, with ebony arms the size of tree trunks erupting from thick plate armor. He had an incredibly long claymore sheathed on his back and held a wicked-looking spear in his powerful hands. He wore a horsehair-crested helmet that obscured much of his features, giving him an even more sinister look. And as unnerving as he was though, what gave me the most concern was the man’s mount.

Titus was riding on the back of a warhorse that dwarfed the both of them in comparison. Fully armored and bridled, spittle dripped from the beast’s gaping, snarling mouth, and its sharp hooves kicked up sand in barely restrained impatience.

The two men bowed to each other from across the ring, and I hurried over to one of the walls, hardly daring to believe that I was actually down there. Before I could even grasp the fact that one of these men wouldn’t be leaving the arena alive, a large gong sounded from somewhere, Mr. Ayres yelled for the two to begin, and Titus kicked his steed into a full charge.

Shadow evaded it easily enough, blocking the spear thrust with an upward swipe of his hammer, but as Titus sped past he quickly turned around in his saddle and let his spear fly. I wasn’t fast enough to follow it with the camera, and before I knew it I saw a large section of Shadow’s left bicep erupt in a spray of blood and torn flesh. The crowd gasped in shared horror and I felt my stomach churn. Shadow, however, didn’t even seem to notice the wound. He simply gripped his hammer tighter and bent down low to the ground.

Titus withdrew his claymore and turned the warhorse around, readying another charge. With a feral snarl he kicked it into a gallop once more and headed straight for Shadow. That time, however, Shadow was prepared, and swung the hammer with incredible strength just as the horse bore down on him. Three things happened then: the hammer’s head exploded into chunks of stone, the horse’s head disintegrated into brains and bone, and Titus’ head slammed full-force onto the ground.

Shadow threw the ruined hammer away and withdrew the short blades as Titus staggered dizzily to his feet. Unaware of my own newfound bloodlust, I silently urged Shadow to go in for the kill while his opponent was still dazed, but he allowed Titus time to recover, a gesture that was vocally appreciated by the majority of the fans.

The two then began to battle it out with their swords, with Titus pressing the advantage of his claymore’s range while Shadow relied on his blades’ speed and maneuverability. For a long, agonizing while, neither held the upper hand, and after nearly half an hour of fierce combat and masterful swordplay, both were down to their last reserves of stamina, suffering from various nicks and scratches but no serious injuries. They retreated a short distance away from each other, both looking the worse for wear. Titus, it seemed, was still slightly concussed from the blow to his head while Shadow was beginning to look pale from the steady blood loss from the spear wound on his arm.

The suspense had baited the crowd into absolute silence, and for a few minutes the only sounds heard in the great hall were the drops of Shadow’s blood falling on the ground. They stared at each other, breathing heavily, waiting for one to make the first move, the first mistake. I panned the camera back and forth, from one face to the other, my heart threatening to beat right out of my chest when, without warning, I saw a smile begin to form on Shadow’s face. It was barely noticeable—innocuous, even—but the moment I saw it I knew what the only possible outcome of the battle was, and I realized that Shadow had known it all along as well.

It was the smile of someone who had lived his life and was finally prepared to die.

And suddenly I knew what it was he had given Sam.

Horrified, I could only watch as Titus returned the smile and nodded. Both warriors then let out a mighty roar and charged one another. As the crowd gasped loudly, Titus halted abruptly, using the momentum to swing the claymore around with incredible speed, and even from down in the sands I heard Sam’s pained cry as the blade slashed through Shadow’s thighs, throwing the old gladiator down to his hands and knees. Titus swung the blade up into the air in one continuous movement and, after a harrowing pause that seemed to stretch into eternity, brought it crashing back down to the ground, decapitating Shadow and sending his head rolling away from his body.

A few seconds later I found myself on my hands and knees as well, vomiting violently onto the sand, trying to purge myself clean of everything I had witnessed that night even as I knew that it was useless.

There would be no going back now, and I remained on the ground as the crowd yelled out Shadow’s name in remembrance and triumph, in joy and despair, in agony and ecstasy. I remained on the ground as the gladiators carried off both men on their shoulders, both victim and victor, both the living and the dead. I remained on the ground as the spectators slowly filtered out of the arena until only Mr. Ayres remained on the stands, still solemnly clapping his blood-soaked hands, and even after he eventually left and the torches shut off I remained on the ground until I heard Sam come up behind me.

“Max?” she said in a wavering voice, and without looking at her I knew she had been crying.

I got up slowly, wiping at my mouth, dazed, shocked, and feeling empty inside.

Tears were still making their way down her face, leaving black trails of mascara behind them as they ran. Her hands were trembling as she handed me a small package wrapped in a dirty cloth. I reached out numbly, taking it somewhat reluctantly, and as soon as she let go she lashed out and slapped me hard across the face, her sharp nails drawing beads of blood.

I stared at her, too stunned to feel much of anything, and before I could speak she pulled me into her and pressed her mouth violently against mine. There was no love in that kiss, I knew, just hurt and anger, confusion and abandonment. She bit down on my lip, hard, and my mouth filled with the taste of my salt blood and her salt tears.

She let me go, slowly, and walked a few steps backwards, staring at my eyes the whole time. She stepped out of her shoes and hooked her thumbs into the waistband of her skirt, pushing it and her panties down into a shimmering pool of fabric around her ankles. She straightened up, wiped at her watery eyes and exhaled loudly through quivering lips.

“Make me feel alive,” she said.

I took her there, standing up, and when she came screaming she dug her fingernails into my back deep enough to pierce the flesh, and I could only cry out in both bitter pleasure and enraptured pain as the blood trickled down my back and legs and onto the merciless sands of Warworld, where it mingled with that of men and monsters, heroes and madmen, gladiators and gods.





“So what’ll you do now?” she asked me later that night.

I stood at my apartment’s window, watching the sun paint its gory crimson entrance over the horizon. We had fucked three more times that night, tired as we were, fueled by cocaine and alcohol, and now we were spent and sore, wired and wasted, broken and bleeding.

I turned to face Sam, leaning my back against the wall. She was still naked, laying on my couch surrounded by empty bottles and used condoms, her face still beautiful after everything she had seen.

“Now?” I said, hearing my own voice as if from far away. “Now we’ll finish the fucking film.”

She arranged herself into a sitting position with some difficulty and rested her arms on her knees, brushing the hair from her eyes.

“And then?”

I picked up the small wooden box with the inlaid pearl and removed the cover. Inside was a curved dagger wrapped in a length of vellum marked in black ink, detailing a crude map that led deep into the Saskatchewan woodlands.

“And then?” I repeated, hefting the knife in my hands, and in my mind’s eye I pictured a god-wolf that was stronger than any bear, swifter than any deer. An ancient creature with hair as coarse as needles and black as tar, old, hurt and alone, waiting for the sweet release of a death born in the purity of combat and the savage celebration of life.

“And then I’m going hunting.”