The Minotaur was a great beast, standing at least a dozen feet tall. So far, it had been staying back, allowing the grunts to do most of the work for it. Its pride did not allow it to fight merely anyone. A gladiator had to prove themselves before it would face them. So... prove himself, Perseus would.
He made his way along the edge, light footsteps pattering on the sand before he was noticed by a monster with a large snout. Perseus leapt forward at cut the beast in half, but not before it let out a cry that rallied eight or so monsters around it. Perseus grit his teeth. Eight against one were not favorable odds, especially at once.
He made a sudden jump at the monster farthest to his right, Anaklusmos cutting through its heart in the blink of an eye. The audience cheered at the brutality, making Perseus' ears ring. He twirled around to parry another monster's claws, pushing it backwards into another two monsters. A monster to his right clawed at him, but the claws luckily slid off of his armor.
Perseus kicked the off-balance monster to the ground, proceeding to shove his sword hilt-deep into the head before quickly pulling the blade back out, sand sprinkling off of the sides as he lifted it. Two monsters approached from behind, but he whirled around and slashed through both, turning them into dust. While he was still finishing the swing, though, he heard another growl from his left side as a hellhound bared its teeth at him. 'Crap!' He thought. 'I'm too off-balanced to parry!' He braced himself for the blow, but it didn't come.
Instead, the gladiator he had saved had shield-bashed the hound, crushing its head like a sheet of glass. The man stood up, turning to Perseus. "I see the one you're going for, the big one, eh? I respect that. Kill it, and we can get out of this mess alive," he told him, turning back to another monster and smashing it with a warhammer. By now, most of the original eight monsters were dead, but four more had come due to the commotion.
The Greek clenched his jaw together, ready to bolt through the newcomers to get to his target. He readied his blade, the Romans' cheering fading to nothing more than a distinct thud in the background as he started to focus entirely on the fight, adrenaline pumping through his veins. Two steps forward, a slash. Sidestep, one step forward. A quick elbow to the head, impale through the back, rip out and slash. Pivot and kick. Jump, impale. The four monsters were gone in under twenty seconds, but Perseus couldn't care less.
His target, the Minotaur, was close. He ran up, surprising the beast, leaving a deep scratch in its leg. The beast stumbled, looked around wildly for its assailant, but Perseus was quick. As a slave, he had been heavily worked constantly. His muscles were larger than most of the Roman Legionnaires out fighting. And he was quick, too, a deadly combo. He tore through the back of the Minotaur's other leg, the monster's stability and mobility both heavily weakened.
Finally, the Minotaur caught sight of Perseus. It threw a quick punch at him, but Perseus was ready. He angled Riptide right above the monster's arm then pushed down, the angle letting the blade glide through the beast's flesh. However, the blow still glanced the sea green-eyed gladiator, throwing his back, into the sand. Riptide flew a few feet away, and he scrambled for it.
The Minotaur grabbed its battleaxe, a large weapon with two omega symbols for blades, and swung it at Perseus. He knew there was no chance of blocking the strike, so he opted to redirect it into the sand, using its own energy against it. The excess force of the blow still sent him reeling, though, and he slammed into the Colosseum wall. The monster reared back its arm and let the blow rain forward, but Perseus rolled the side. Bits of rock and dust went flying into his face, and he started coughing.
The monster growled, enraged that it's pray wasn't dead yet. Another monster tried to swoop in and finish off Perseus, but the larger beast crushed it with a closed fist. The fighter was HIS prey. He stepped back and leveled his horns, aiming at the puny mortal. He swarmed forward, but missed. The beast growled and moved to pull its head back, but... the two bull horns were embedded in the wall. The beast growled and pushed on the wall in an attempt to remove them, but it's own strength proved to be working against it.
Perseus saw his opportunity. Scaling up the Minotaur's leg, fingers digging into one of the cuts he had made earlier, he found himself quickly on top of the monster's backs, its entire body trembling as it attempted to be free from the wall. Quickly, Perseus made his way over to its neck, the monster's black blood dripping from his hand, and stabbed it right through the middle of where the head connected to the body. For insurance, Perseus made sure to twist the sword as far as he could. The monster froze, slumping into the wall, still held by its horns as it dissolved.
Perseus grabbed onto one of the horns in order to avoid falling off, and, to his surprise, once the rest of the monster dissipated into golden dust, the horn he held onto remained intact. Holding onto the horn with his hands and pushing off of the wall with his feet, the horn was removed, and Perseus fell eight feet to the ground, the fine sand softening his impact. The three other remaining gladiators bellowed their might, and, belatedly, Perseus realized that the Minotaur had been the last monster left in the arena.
The roar of the crowd grew louder, and the Romans started thumping their feet. In the grandstands, the Emperor, Gaius Octavius, better known as Augustus, smiled, and let his thumb raise up. The crowd roared with their leader's approval, and the gate from which they had came opened up. Back in the grandstands, near the Emperor, his Lord smiled, and Perseus smiled back.
He picked Riptide back up, and for a strange second, he felt a wave of warmth wash over him from the blade. 'Did it... accept me as its owner?' He questioned to himself, but was given no further time to contemplate as the Roman Overseers lead him and the three other surviving gladiators to a much more lush room than the one they had originally found themselves in. Behind them, the Romans filed out of the Colosseum, clutching their free bread as they made their way back to the city, content with their miserable lives for a few days more.
Perseus suddenly found himself investigating the faces of the other gladiators, hoping to find the face of the man who had helped him earlier. The other three gladiators in the room did not match, their faces and hairstyles different as their weapons were taken, and their armor stripped. That meant the man had died, which wasn't as surprising as Perseus wished it was. He had been heavily struck by an arrow, and was no doubt heavily hurt throughout the rest of the fight. Perseus could only hope that in the Underworld, the man knew that he had been victorious.
Watching the citizens file out of the arena, Augustus sneered at how easily the masses were controlled. Give them a bit of bread, a bit of entertainment, and they were content with their terrible conditions. He grinned as all of the lost gold bet on the monsters made their way into the tunnels beneath the arena, straight to the Royal Vault.
He frowned. The lost gold bet on the monsters... he hadn't seen it coming. In his lifetime, the Minotaur had never been bested. He turned to a close friend, who happened to be the slave's owner, Marcus Vipsanius Agrippa, a great general and architect. "Where did you get the boy?" He asked Agrippa, who thought for a second.
"Delos. An island in Greece. I have trained him well, no? He shall bring us great glory." Augustus pondered this for a second. Perhaps the boy was a demigod? He shook his head. It meant nothing to him. He would just keep throwing monsters at the boy until he died. The last thing he needed was a descendant of the gods challenging his place as emper- Ahem, Imperator Caesar of Rome.
I hope you enjoyed this chapter of the story. As I promised, your weekly update! I did not get much reception on the last chapter, but I hope this one is okay! Please favorite, follow, and review, thank you!
- PJO Fan Power
Finished 1:52 AM, 2/2/2020.
