The Cost of Control
BlackSand Warrior Gauntlet
The air in the coliseum always changed right before the fight.
Victor felt it in his ribs, an invisible pressure drop like the arena itself took a breath it never meant to return. The torches along the walls didn’t flicker, but they leaned just slightly, as if something unseen had stepped into the sand before him.
He stepped forward anyway. Slow. Heavy. Measured.
The lavender fringe of his double-blade caught the torchlight, glinting like soft lightning. His helm’s twin horns gleamed with a cruel polish, curved forward like they were made for retribution. The crowd began to chant, not quite his name, not yet, but something close.
They could feel it. The storm in his stride. The threat in his stillness.
He didn’t look at them.
He looked for Romeo.
The jaguar padded in from the shadows, silent and sleek as oil. Purple paint streaked his fur like war stripes, still damp from the ceremonial basin. They didn’t speak, never had, but Romeo gave a soft growl that said what needed saying:
I’m here. I’ll bleed before I let them touch you.
Victor nodded once. Just once. His heart was already in the rhythm of violence.
He rolled his shoulders and bounced once on his heels. He didn’t need the crowd. Didn’t need fanfare. All he needed was an opening, and a mistake.
Across the arena, Hurin Crumbler of the Rock soaked in adoration. Leather cloak. Flashy grin. A golden sports band glittering like a champion’s halo. The man was shirtless, tan, bearded like a war god, and preening like a songbird. He waved to someone in the stands. Blew a kiss.
Victor hated him immediately.
He was everything Victor wasn’t. Loved. Loud. Immortalized in other people’s stories.
Good. Let him underestimate me. Let him laugh.
Victor raised his blade and shield. Not in salute.
In promise.
If Hurin charged, he’d meet the horns.
And if he didn’t, Victor would make him wish he had.
They circled. No referee. No start bell. Only instinct and stare.
Victor tracked every flex of Hurin’s heel, every dip in his shoulder. The man moved with the rhythm of someone who expected to win, and had, many times before. A crowd-gladiator, born from cheers. That bo staff spun in his hand like a toy, but Victor saw the wrist. Tight. Controlled. The casualness was armor.
Romeo growled low. It wasn’t a warning.
It was annoyance.
Victor feinted left.
No response.
He kicked up a cloud of sand. Still nothing. Not even a blink.
Then the staff snapped forward. Fast. A flick at Victor’s ankle meant to trip, not injure. A test.
Victor leapt, pivoting mid-air, and brought his lavender blade down in a wide, brutal arc. It was meant to end something.
But Hurin wasn’t there.
He’d already turned. Already side-slipped. Already smiling.
Victor’s blade bit nothing but wind and sand. Dust hissed around his boots.
Hurin winked at a section of the crowd. Women screamed.
Victor exhaled hard through his nose.
He’s faster than he looks.
He adjusted his stance. Circled again. Shield raised. Mind clearing. The crowd noise faded until only his own breath remained.
Romeo, ever-aware, slinked toward the flanks, looking for an opening of his own.
This wasn’t going to be a clean fight.
But clean was never the plan.
Victor didn’t care how pretty a loss looked.
He came to win ugly.
The third exchange should’ve been clean. It wasn’t.
Victor closed the distance with a high feint, dipping his shoulder to draw Hurin’s guard upward, then swept low with the lavender blade, a move meant to bite deep into the monk’s flank. He expected impact. Resistance. Blood.
Instead, he cut only sand.
Hurin had already turned, spinning out of range like a dancer caught in his own rhythm. The staff cracked down over Victor’s shield, sending a jolt through his entire body, bone-deep. He gritted his teeth, grounded his stance, and absorbed it, but the monk’s speed was sharper than expected.
Then Romeo cried out.
The sound shattered his focus. It was short, guttural, and wrong. Not the cry of an injured beast, but a betrayed one.
Victor’s eyes flicked to the side, and his heart seized at the sight of his jaguar limping, thrown off balance, kicked mid-air during one of their well-rehearsed flanking maneuvers.
Hurin had timed it perfectly.
The bastard knew the routine. Read it like a poem.
Victor turned his head, only slightly. A mistake. And pain followed.
Hurin's staff collided with the side of his helm, just below the horn ridge. The world shifted violently. The sand tilted beneath his feet. Lights exploded behind his eyes. His balance faltered and he dropped to a knee. Vision reduced to static and blood.
He could taste iron. Feel his heart thudding behind his teeth.
The crowd roared, but it came through muffled, like he was listening from underwater.
For a heartbeat, he almost broke.
But Romeo rose. Limping. Breathing hard. Alive.
The cat limped along the edge of the arena like a shadow made flesh. And that was all Victor needed.
Rage threatened to overtake him, but he didn’t let it.
He banked it. Focused it. The weakness in his bones hardened into something sharper.
He stayed low. Let the shield dip. Let his shoulders slump like he hadn’t recovered.
He gave Hurin the image he wanted. A staggered warrior barely clinging to his feet.
It was a dangerous bluff. But the monk had an ego. And Victor was counting on that.
Sure enough, Hurin surged forward with the confidence of a man who had already won. His smile was wide. His steps casual. The staff raised, not as a weapon now, but as punctuation. A closing act.
Victor struck first.
His shield slammed forward, edge-first into Hurin’s abdomen. The sound was brutal. Not the clang of armor on armor, but the dull, meaty thump of air being forced from lungs.
Hurin's eyes widened. The staff jarred loose from his hands.
Before it hit the ground, Romeo struck again, hurling his weight into the monk’s calf with a silent, brutal crash. Not an attack. Just enough to send him down.
The monk collapsed. Not gracefully. Sand erupted where his back landed. His limbs jerked toward the staff, but it was too late.
Victor stood over him now. Tall and still. Breath steady behind his helmet. No roar. No taunt.
Just the rising hum of the moment. Blade in hand. Horns lowered.
This wasn’t the end.
It was the beginning of Hurin’s unraveling.
The arena wall loomed behind Hurin like a promise.
Victor didn’t speak. He didn’t need to. The rhythm of the blade was speaking for him now, every swing a question Hurin couldn’t fully answer.
The monk had recovered fast, but not fast enough. The blow to the gut had taken more than his air.
It had taken his tempo.
Victor pressed his advantage. Step by step. Like a tide refusing to retreat.
He kept the strikes tight and purposeful. No wide arcs. No wasted motion.
His blade crashed against Hurin’s defenses, chipping away at the monk’s rhythm with relentless precision.
Hurin blocked the first blow with his forearm guard, but it still pushed him back half a step.
The second landed lower, against the ribs. Not clean, but enough to jar.
The third caught his shoulder, and this time, the monk’s teeth clenched visibly.
His cocky smile had vanished.
The crowd was still shouting his name, but the calls no longer had the same heat.
He wasn’t showboating anymore.
He was surviving.
Victor’s breathing slowed.
This was the moment he trained for.
Not the first strike. Not the kill.
The drawn-out dismantling of someone who had been convinced they were better.
Romeo stalked the edge of the skirmish. Limping, but alert.
His eyes tracked every shift in footing, every twitch of muscle.
The jaguar didn’t need to leap again. His presence alone was a pressure point. One more variable Hurin had to account for.
Victor advanced again.
Hurin lashed out with a wild staff swing. Wide. Desperate.
It scraped Victor’s shield and knocked it slightly askew.
But the blade came down a second later, carving into the space just above Hurin’s hip.
Not deep.
But enough.
Blood welled.
And for the first time, Hurin Crumbler of the Rock looked mortal.
He stumbled back. Staff lowered for a breath too long.
His eyes flicked to the stands. Maybe looking for those women who screamed his name. Maybe hoping they’d scream it again.
Victor didn’t give him the chance.
He charged.
The blade angled for the throat, then twisted mid-swing. A feint turning into a knee, right into Hurin’s midsection.
The monk bent forward instinctively, coughing hard.
Victor shifted the blade to his off-hand and hammered the hilt into the side of Hurin’s jaw.
A clean crack. Bone against bone.
The monk dropped to one knee.
Victor paused. Blade raised.
He looked down, breathing hard, sweat dripping under the lip of his helmet.
This was the moment he should end it.
But something held him there. Not hesitation.
Observation.
Hurin still had one hand on the staff.
Even broken, he wasn’t done.
Victor respected that. And he hated it.
With a slow exhale, he stepped back and let the moment breathe.
The crowd roared. The coliseum was pulsing with sound now. Boots stomping. Hands slapping stone.
The energy rose, begging for blood.
Victor didn’t answer it yet.
He watched the monk rise.
One more breath.
One more round.
This wasn’t over. But the ending was taking shape.
And Victor would write it in violet.
The air had thickened.
Not with dust or blood. Not yet.
But with the weight of inevitability.
Victor could feel it in the way Hurin moved now. Slower. Tighter. Like a song running out of notes.
But that was when fighters became dangerous.
Cornered animals didn’t bluff. They bit.
Victor circled him. Slower now. Deliberate.
The show was over. The audience might still howl for spectacle, but Victor no longer heard them.
He was inside the silence now. That rare stillness between two warriors who both knew the end was coming.
Hurin’s staff twitched, angling up in a defensive diagonal.
His knuckles were white.
His left eye had begun to swell, and a thin line of blood traced the corner of his mouth.
The grin was gone. The arrogance had cracked.
But not the will.
That still burned, stubborn and fierce behind his eyes.
He’s not giving up. He’s daring me to take it.
So he did.
Victor lunged. Not with the blade, but with his shield.
A full-body thrust. Horned helmet angled low.
Hurin raised his staff to block.
Victor slammed into it, driving the monk back with sheer force.
The wood groaned.
The shield’s edge caught his ribs again.
Another grunt of pain.
Hurin spun with the impact, using momentum to flick his leg in a wide arc.
A low kick. Sweeping.
Victor jumped. Just high enough to avoid it.
And in midair, he twisted. Blade-first.
Hurin dropped low. Barely ducked under the slash.
Sand exploded beneath them.
The monk came up with a vicious uppercut from the base of his staff. It clipped Victor’s chin, snapping his head back.
The helmet held.
But the lights danced for a second.
Victor’s boots hit the ground. Unsteady.
The follow-up came fast.
Hurin surged forward. Staff hammering toward his chest.
Victor threw the shield up just in time. The impact reverberated up his arm like a lightning strike.
Pain. Sharp. Real.
Hurin had power left after all.
Victor reeled back a step. Then two.
The monk came at him. Screaming now. Not words. Just fury.
The staff blurred in a flurry of brutal strikes.
One caught Victor’s thigh. Another scraped the rim of his helmet.
He blocked the third.
Then, Romeo moved.
The jaguar didn’t leap.
Just stepped between the two men for half a second. A shadow with eyes of warning.
It was enough.
Hurin hesitated.
Victor did not.
He dropped low. Shield forward. Drove like a battering ram straight into Hurin’s legs.
The monk went over him. Slammed into the sand. Shoulder-first.
The staff slipped from his hands.
Victor rose above him.
Blade reversed in his grip.
He looked at the man beneath him. Breathing hard. Face bloodied. Hands empty.
Still glaring.
“Do it,” Hurin spat. “Or don’t.”
Victor paused.
Just for a breath.
Then he struck. Blade-first. Clean through the throat.
No hesitation.
No show.
Just the wet crunch of steel parting cartilage.
Hurin’s breath caught, half-formed into a curse that never left his mouth. His eyes went wide. His limbs twitched once.
Then stopped.
No roar from Victor. No glory in it. Just a necessary end.
He stood.
Let the blade drip.
Then raised it to the crowd.
The purple haze began to rise.
Slow. Serpentine. It coiled from the cracks in the sand like smoke from a forgotten war.
The Rune of Mars pulsed faintly beneath Victor’s skin.
Not glowing.
Just warm. Satisfied.
Above him, Verus roared the result to the crowd.
“VICTOR, ELIMINATOR OF THE RUNE RAIDERS, ADVANCES BY DEATHMARK!”
Romeo padded to his side. Limping, but proud.
Victor didn’t smile. Didn’t wave.
He turned, letting the haze follow him into the dark of the tunnel.
Behind him, the crowd exploded in sound.
And somewhere behind that noise, Hurin Crumbler of the Rock lay in the dust.
Not broken. Not beaten. Just dead.
Entered by: 0xB9D1…4eA5
