Hell's Coliseum

As the crowd's excited screams grew louder, I knew fight time grew closer. In a matter of moments armored guards would come around to the cell doors and release us a couple at a time. The guards would take us through various tunnels and out into the center of the Coliseum. Then we would fight to survive.

The clanging of metal caught my attention, murmurs began from the others that were locked in their own cages. I tried to block out the noise as the guards began screaming at the slaves.

"They disturbing you?" Came a husky female voice from the cage to my right.

"Not as much as you are." I said.

"Someone is in a lovely mood." She said.

"Sorry. It's not you, some really annoying woman keeps speaking to me."

She laughed. "It's good to hear your voice again Prather."

"Yours as well Caelia." I said as I sat back against the stone wall. "You feel prepared?"

"You know I am. No matter what goes in with me, I'll be the one returning." She said.

"Good. I would be bored if they placed a different slave next to me for years."

"At some point they will. We're not all some sort of animal man like you, the rest of us are human and will die in there eventually."

"I am human too, but if something were to happen to you, I'm sure Germanus would get me another pretty slave to keep me company."

"He owns us, you can't really call him by his first name." Caelia said with a hint of humor in her voice. "And don't think I didn't notice you calling me pretty."

A sudden explosion of cheers from above told me the fight was over, and judging from the sound of the crowd one gladiator wouldn't be returning.

We both sat in silence after the crowd noise lessened, we both knew what was next. No matter how many times I entered the Coliseum and left victorious, it was hard to keep my spirit up for long. Caelia always put on a tough face, but she felt the same.

Not every gladiator fight was meant to be to the death, it just happened that every one of mine ended that way.

A few more silent moments passed before I heard voices moving toward me. As the voices drew closer I recognized one of them.

"Germanus is here." I whispered to Caelia.

"Let's do this." She whispered back, trying to sound confident but her voice wavered.

A small man stopped in front of Caelia's cage. He had short black hair, with a long crooked nose and was clean shaven. He wore colorful, expensive clothes and carried himself as someone of great importance.

He stopped between our doors and looked back and forth between the two of us.

"I hope you're rested and ready to fight." He said with an unhappy look, that made me uneasy. This man loved nothing more than marching us out there to show off what we do best. Whatever we were fighting today must be bad if he wasn't excited about it.

"What is it?" I asked.

"You'll see soon enough. Both of you. Come now."

We followed him and two armored guards silently through the tunnels leading us up toward the battle field. As we drew closer the murmuring of an impatient crowd swarmed my ears.

We reached the end of the tunnel and only a metal gate stood between us and the arena. The sunlight shone through the gate, it seemed to dance off of Caelia's dark skin. She had long black hair that fell past the small of her back, but today was tied as tight and short as possible. Her tarnished armor could not hide her feminine figure, which the guards took notice of as we approached the gate.