Hell on Earth (Boyxboy)

Chapter 17: Weakness

Okay so I didn't feel that great about last chapter (kinda boring and short and just kinda grody) so hey here is another update! Tada!

17

Present Day

Anduil opened his eyes.

The room he was in was white, blindingly white. The walls, he could tell, were metal, then, behind that, solid rock. He smirked to himself. So the humans had learned.

Anduil looked down. He was strapped, by metal restraints, into a cot that was in turn locked into the wall.

Yes, they had learned. Too bad for them, though, that the Karzayk was almost extinguished. Even now, he could feel its power withering, his people moving in to retake what was rightfully theirs...

It was time...

A human opened the doors, ones with guns following. It had the intent to attend to, probably sedate, Anduil. That would not be the case today.

Anduil smirked at the human, watching it cringe as his golden eyes pierced into the pitiful creature's very soul.

...Time to leave.

***

Aziz watched as Joseph vanished from sight.

He will be safe, if only he doesn't act like an idiot and get lost.

Aziz shook his head, he had much worse matters to worry about at the moment...

The smell of sulfur grew in potency, seeping through the broken windows and past the mutilated doors. Aziz shuddered. What he had done, he was not proud of. But what was going to happen next, Aziz would be even more ashamed of.

The room was silent. All sounds had ceased, the world seemingly coming to a halt. Aziz knew better, though. This was only the calm before the storm... The silence before the arrival.

Steadying his shaking hands, the afrit gathered all the wits he could spare and, pulling it towards the center of the room, sat in a slightly burnt chair.

And so the wait began.

***

17 BCE

Cassius felt numb.

They had moved him to a holding cell, a large cell with about thirty people in it, to wait until he was called to fight in the Arena.

Oh gods. I'm as good as dead.

And he was. For the Arena was a place to be feared. It was a large coliseum type of a structure, mostly open to the air, with a plethora of seating surrounding a large, open field of dirt. It was mandatory that each human in the city, by order of the gods, view a 'showing' at the Arena at least once a month.

Most enjoyed going much more often than that.

The 'showings' that happened in the Arena were fights. Fights that were terrifying, deadly and surreal. Fights that ended with all dead, save one. Sometimes even one did not live. The fights were usually one on one, but could be as large as a small battle.

Who fought? Sinners. Prisoners. War criminals. People who questioned the gods and their wills. People who committed crimes, or merely were at the wrong place at the wrong time. Sometimes it would be human against human, (if you were lucky), though at other times it would be a human against a demon, or fae, or dragon even, or any other form of magik imaginable.

Though sometimes they would even the odds, pre-wound the dragon, give powerful weapons to the human.

But more often than not, that was not the case. What is the fun of seeing a battle that is already half over? Where is the joy out of watching a magik, who tend to make themselves scarce and therefore hard to come by, die due to weighed odds? It is not easy to gain such creatures, so the ones that are in the Arena tend to live longer than any humans. Humans were disposable. Humans were nothing impressive.