DEATH ARENA - 19

KOMA

“Well this is it…” Mistress Muleya begins with a beam on her profile as we face each other.

“What are you going to give me a little motivational speech like the one you gave that one over there?” I mock.

“Hey it worked didn’t it?”

“Worked? If Lubona hadn’t changed his mind at the very last second then she would have been very much dead by now”

“I’m standing right here!” Nomsa counters.

“We know attention whore!”

“Koma!” Mistress Muleya lambasted me with a stern look on her profile.
“What is it?”

“Are you nervous?”

“Where the fuck did you get that from?”

“Just an observation”

“Yeah well keep that shit to yourself now get out of my way”

“So rude” Mistress Muleya ripostes as she steps to the side with an easy going beam on her profile.

“I would tell you not to die but I could never say it with a straight profile”

“I’ll be done in a couple of minutes” I riposte as I continue traipsing forward.

The first thing that hits me is the loud cheers from the spectators and the bright lights. The sable sand beneath me feels so familiar and I already feel like home.

The other Gladiators are already in the Arena but I only have eyes for Chidani even though neither one of us will out rightly go for the other from the beginning of the combat but would much rather play chicken with each other and eliminate every other Gladiator in the Arena before it is just the two of us. We have done this so many times before that I have it deeply engraved in my brain, like a dance that I have known since childhood.

“Chirwans! This is the combat that you all have been waiting for! Forget those novice Gladiators of yesterday, this is what the Cyclical Death Games are all about! So without any further palaver let the combat begin!” Empress Matawandi divulges through the speakers placed all over the Arena and then, pandemonium begins.
Everywhere I look Gladiators are going after each other and lapis lazuli blood has already begun to sip into the sable sand beneath us making me feel even more at home than before.
Unlike the other Gladiators, I do not charge for my opponents but rather close my eyes and clear my crown to allow myself to drown out the cheers of the spectators and the screams of the Gladiators.

When serenity takes over my senses, I can now clearly hear my practice music and before long, I am in a trance-like state. With eyes wide open, I begin to traipse with a steady pace, one step at a time as credence comes off me in waves.

Gladiators come for me from different lines but I easily evade them and strike them down with my twin axes as I continue on my approach forward, never faltering. A few minutes pass by and it is only Chidani and I left in Arena, which nothing new.

“Are you ready for this?” Chidani questions me with a beam on his profile.

“Always” I riposte, equally beaming.
With Doctor Limpo not physically here to watch me, I am less distracted and charge straight for Chidani but it is as though he can already see my moves before I make them because he easily evades my blows.

“So predictable” He states before he aims his flail straight for my chest.
My blood forthwith gushes out of my soma and I am amazed by all this because it has been such a long time since another Gladiator has caused me any trauma but then again one might argue that Chidani and I are equally matched.