The bugs, handling their spears with calm efficiency, spreading out out so as to surround these three competitors. There were five of us, and three of them, they thought, this would be an easy fight.
They were wrong.
As they advanced, Ben -still in human form- drew a longsword from a sheath concealed in his pant leg. He moved to the left two, and engaged with fanciful footwork maneuvers. At the same time, Scar leaped the separating thirty feet, and took down the rightmost Thrikeen as he landed. The second-rightmost bug was despatched with equal ease. Ben and Scar then turned to the fifth and middle man, who had been left alone with Lance. They needn’t have worried, for as they turned, Lance wrestled the spear from the bug, and whacked him where the neck meets the top shoulder, hard. He dropped like a stone, unconscious. Ben and Scar were surprised, thinking that Lance would have had a hard to keeping away from the dangerous spearhead. Lance nodded, assuring them he was alright.
Benidir kept sending more and more warriors out to fight, some not even remotely humanoid. Ben and Scar became fighting demons, and Benidir started sending out two teams at a time, so much so that there were no longer gaps between fights, and when they were, Ben and Scar called out, mocking Benidir, covered in the blood of his “hard-won” warriors.
Two hours, seven fights, and thirty two of Benidir’s gladiators later, Lance was running on pure adrenalin, and getting pretty good with the spear he picked up from the first bug. It was well balanced and not to heavy, though Lance still felt it wasn’t the weapon for him. Ben and Scar had shown no signs of tiring, but Lance had run out of energy long ago. The only wounds Lance received were a few non-lethal nicks on legs or arms, which healed at their normal rate -not a mark ten minutes later.
With a start, Lance realized there were no more enemies, they’d stopped spewing forth from behind the portcullis at the other end. Then, an impossibly quiet voice compared to the battle came across the Arena’s audience.
‘Audience, I promised you a fight between vampires and ogres. These three werewolves have fought through all my other warriors-’ -a grudging note had been taken there- ‘and I’m sorry, but that won’t be happening.-’ groan from the audience. ‘But I’ll tell you what will be happening. The ogres will now feature in the next fight, Werewolves versus Ogres!’ The audience cheered as ten ogres walked through the raised portcullis at the other end of the arena.
Ogres weren’t beautiful. They were at least ten feet tall -dwarfing even Scar- and had dirty beige skin. They wielded a crude assortment of weapons, spears, swords, maces, one even had a wicked-looking mace-and-chain. Three went straight to Scar, thinking he was most threatening and three on one would be good enough odds. Little did they know, Scar was just thinking the same thing.
Leaping onto the closest ogre’s leading shoulder, Scar ripped out his neck, leaving the head dangling from an inch of flesh. As it fell, Scar turned to the other two, growling. With bloody teeth, eyes filled with the fires of hell, and the fiercest form Scar could summon, the ogres weren’t eager to engage. Instead, they started sneaking - if a ten foot mountain of fat could sneak - up on the annoying figure of Ben, already engaged with four ogres, employing dazzling swordplay to counter and parry every attack from the three angles. He fought like a fencer, one hand behind his back, the other whipping the longsword about faster than lightning.
Lance however, wasn’t fairing as well.
He prepared to throw the spear-
‘Do not throw the spear. It is your only weapon, and you cannot fend off three ogres with bare hands. Brace the butt on the ground wait for the ogre to run it’s stupid self up the shaft.’
