Strength's Bestowal
Author's Note: Enjoy the poem and R&R.
Disclaimer: I do not own anything related to or of the House of the Dead series.
Summary:
A poem based on the "gift" of Strength, set during The House of the Dead 2.
The relay to the Colosseum is Goldman's set. Penultimate act before flame rises to illuminate first sin.
Gladiatorial lizard men crawl and fall down pipes and ducts annealed by prison vigour.
Greened greatswords come at them from the archaeological past.
Something terrible has happened to Amy and Harry. They have to hurry.
Goldman hails them as a Roman emperor on the jumbotron, so assured of his secular divine right.
A present, AMS! From me to you, a contest of unnoticed champions!
Your people, penned with the chainsaw brute!
Man violated the circle, imposing his will upon the natural world.
Erected is a cenotaph to this blunder in the stadium's oval, angular walls subdividing order.
Stones fly. The large combatant bulldozes unpredictably through the slave-built warren.
Travertine-crushing footsteps clop, hooded barbs binding the barbarian's bloodier and bloodier head.
His saw roars like a lion battling its captivity, cuts like claws bared over his dead yet lithic muscles.
Erratically mauls whatever's ahead of him, stomping forwards, back, around, and above with a groan.
He pulls the axe between unfeeling halves of grey, unbothered by the blade wedged in his thigh.
Fast-paced and careless or intentional and slow-witted?
Retaliation for Harry. Retaliation for Amy. An odd maze, the repeated despair.
No…Why? My God, Goldman and the gold-blooming injury his monster dealt!
He was two hundred five, born once, a single-minded enforcer.
I can't be guilty, for sprees were all I was made for. What is it to take responsibility, but to accept BLAME?
So unspectacular, the cheer leaving the cage.