The Gladiator's Downfall Read online

  The Gladiator’s Downfall

  Age of the Andinna 1

  Kristen Banet

  Copyright © 2018 by Kristen Banet

  All rights reserved.

  Cover Illustration by Merilliza Chan

  No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events, locales, and incidents are either the products of the author's imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

  Created with Vellum

  Contents

  1. Mave

  2. Mave

  3. Rainev

  4. Mave

  5. Matesh

  6. Mave

  7. Mave

  8. Mave

  9. Matesh

  10. Mave

  11. Rainev

  12. Trevan

  13. Mave

  14. Matesh

  15. Rainev

  16. Mave

  17. Matesh

  18. Mave

  19. Mave

  20. Mave

  21. Zayden

  22. Mave

  23. Luykas

  24. Mave

  25. Mave

  26. Brynec

  27. Mave

  28. Mave

  29. Matesh

  30. Mave

  31. Zayden

  32. Alchan

  33. Mave

  34. Mave

  35. Luykas

  36. Rainev

  37. Mave

  38. Trevan

  Dear Reader,

  Andena Glossary

  About the Author

  Also by Kristen Banet

  Sometimes falling is the best way

  to learn how to fly.

  Special love to Leigh,

  thank you for everything.

  1

  Mave

  Mave stood silently as the crowd drowned out her thoughts. The roar of those bloodthirsty viewers was a common sound. She was long used to it. She was no longer unnerved by the idea of thousands of people wanting to see blood on the sands as they sat perched in the comfort of the stands, drinking wine and eating bread.

  Down below, two Andinna males fought. One just had his tail cut in half, spraying blood over the sands and some of the spectators, who wildly accepted the blood offering from their entertainment. That marked the quickly-approaching end to the conflict, but he wouldn’t die without proving he was a great warrior. He wouldn’t die without taking his opponent out with him. Mave had seen this before: an almost mutual suicide, both knowing this was the end of them, since they did not wish to continue without each other.

  She always thought it was foolish to make friends in the pits. It always ended this way.

  The other wasn’t in good shape either. One of his black, leathery wings was torn open to the bone, rendering it useless for the rest of his long life, if he did survive. He had as many holes in him as his comrade.

  They had been on the sands for over an hour, in a gruesome show. They were both dripping out their lifeblood, panting from the heat that suffocated them in the middle of the Colosseum. She knew they would both bleed out, still swinging until they fell.

  It always ended this way.

  “Slave, what do you think of these two males?” a chilling, ethereal voice asked her. Mave was the only slave that Empress Shadra would speak to. “Never mind. They were both old, past a good breeding age. One day, I’ll breed you and have the next generation. First I need to find a male worthy of it.”

  You’ll never find a male worthy of me, you old hag.

  She didn’t respond to the Empress, though. She had nothing to say to the her. She never did. Shadra knew she would get no response and no amount of beating Mave, torturing her, or starving her would change that. She would not play the games of her owners, end of story. Not after centuries of always losing.

  Mave tried to drown out the bitching of the Prince, sitting next to his mother. Once again, he made a bad bet and lost money. He asked the Empress to spare one of the males, but there was no mercy from her. There never was, not for the Andinna. Shadra cared about one thing: how the Andinna could die.

  This means nothing. We’re all slaves. We mean nothing. We are worth nothing except the price our owners put on our heads. We are trained to fight and we are only worth the cheers of the crowd.

  “Stop, my son. If you threw away your allowance on this, then I’m sorry.”

  “I would gamble on your Champion, but it’s not like anyone is foolish enough to bet against her,” Prince Lothen muttered angrily.

  “She is quite the specimen,” Empress Shadra agreed, glancing her way and holding the gaze for too long. Mave ignored the stare. She was no one’s Champion except the sand’s. The only reason she held the title was because she refused to die. “Ah, it’s finally ending.”

  Mave saw that as well. One dropped to his knees, both his wings now drooping, ruined. His tail, while not sliced off like the other, was broken in more than one place. Blood covered his face as he fell. His opponent fell before him and he pulled his head into his lap, leaning over him, to shield his face from the crowd. She could no longer see either of their tattooed faces. She almost wondered if they were lovers, with the tenderness of the action and the privacy they were trying to claim.

  Comforting a companion. Dying together.

  She watched them both take their last breaths, locked into that position until someone went to drag their bodies from the sands.

  It always ended like this.

  Friends, and maybe more, until death - and even that could not part them, it seemed. She promised herself never to make the mistakes they did, like she promised herself every time she saw fighters on the sands as punishment.

  I want that.

  A foolish want.

  Skies damn this existence. Damn it all. If I could kill her, I would. If I could end this and never see this spectacle again, I would.

  Empress Shadra and Prince Lothen talked quietly about Anden, a place Mave tried her best to never think about. Anden. Home.

  “I don’t want to hear their moaning right now. We send them troops, money to hire hunters, and our own mercenaries to deal with it - and still, they beg for more and give us little in return. A thousand years of their lawless bitching. I swear, I’m going to need to reinvade the damn place if they don’t get their acts together.” Empress Shadra was obviously annoyed. Mave was beginning to find her chilling, sharp, and holier-than-thou voice aggravating. She could only handle so much of the Empress in a single day. Hours in the royal box was too much.

  Mave just kept her eyes on the slaves raking and cleaning the sands, laying down fresh new bags of it for the last fight of the day. The old males had gone on for a long time. The last fight would be near sunset, and probably end by torchlight. She didn’t like that. The crowd was more dangerous at night, and more likely to throw things into the arena to cause problems for unpopular fighters.

  “Slave, you may go get ready,” the Empress commanded mildly.

  Mave turned on her heel and walked out of the box to the back staircase, one that led to the halls the royal family took beneath the arena to visit the pit. She didn’t need to get ready, since she was already in her armor. She just needed to get to the entrance of the arena and claim her swords.

  It was a long walk, but thankfully, a silent one. It was late enough in the day that many of the fighters with the day off were at dinner; they would show up once the fight started. Normall
y they harassed her as she made this walk, hoping to trip her up, unnerve her.

  They never succeeded, but they always tried.

  Pros and cons to an evening fight. The fighters weren’t bothering her, but the crowd was going to be a pain if she didn’t end it quickly and get out of their line of sight.

  Mave made it to her entrance, the large gate that could be hoisted up. She checked the buckles of her armor, then put on her belt, which held the two plain gladiuses she always used. She didn’t need fancy, like some of the other fighters. She just needed a sharp edge. She wasn’t here for glory, only to survive where they all wanted her to fail.

  The creaking and cracking of wood and metal, paired with the roar of the crowd, meant that she had been announced. She took a step out of the dark tunnel and onto the sands, the falling sun still overbearing and hot. It felt like she had stepped into the fires of hell itself.

  At least I can see the sky.

  She saw her opponent on the other side of the long stretch of hot sand. Her sandals, broken in and worn to be comfortable, did not have enough padding on the bottom to protect well from the heat, but it was something she got used to centuries before.

  “Are you ready to die?” the male opponent asked as they drew closer together in the center of the arena. He was older than her. With some silver dusting his facial hair, he had to be much older than her, with a half-broken horn, showing he had battled hard for a long time. The red glow of the dying sun made everything seem washed in red, even his black wings that the Andinna were known for. It made the scene look more sinister, more serious than just the hot midday sun’s glare.

  She raised her chin arrogantly, knowing her own horns were unbroken. She didn’t bear black warrior markings on her face like he did. She didn’t seem to be a fearsome opponent, but that was only because she won enough to only have one visible scar on her face, compared to his many. Her legs and arms had a myriad of them, but none were vicious or disfiguring like his. She was tough, certainly, but she was female. She would never look as imposing as the male before her.

  He turned and bowed to the Empress. Mave just waited patiently. The Empress knew she would not bow to her. Mave owned the sands; here, she was in charge - no one else.

  “Are you?” she asked back as the warrior straightened and looked to her. She wasn’t going to die. That much, she knew.

  “Arrogance doesn’t become the slut.” The male said it like a wise proverb.

  “Foolhardiness doesn’t become the fallen,” she retorted back mildly. She knew it would piss him off, but she didn’t appreciate being called a slut, not by one of her own people.

  “I wouldn’t be fallen if it weren’t for you. The Empress’ trophy. Her Champion.” He spat at her feet. “You make a fucking mockery of our people.”

  “All of you say that. Every time I meet one of you on the sands, you all say it. In the nine hundred years I’ve fought in this arena, none of you have beat me. Forgive me if I’m not impressed or intimidated by the speech,” she told him. She hadn’t even drawn her swords yet.

  She knelt down slowly to the sand and grabbed a handful, rubbing it between her palms. He watched her with disgust. She didn’t even know his name. He was a male of her own race and another fighter in the same hell she was, and she had no idea what his name was. She only knew that he hated her.

  They all hated her.

  I can’t blame them for it, even if I wanted to. The world is unfair, but that doesn’t mean I have to die for it.

  She rose back up as the herald called for them to engage in combat. To the death.

  Like always.

  She drew her short swords quickly and rolled from the overhead, two-handed slash that had wanted to cleave her in half.

  She danced back, circling around him. She considered going for his wings as he spun to meet her, realizing she was much faster than him. She held back, not wanting to cut them free. They were bound like hers, so they couldn’t spread them and fly. He wore the same thin metal collar she did, a slave collar that stopped any magic use, with a ring in case they needed to be leashed or chained. He had the same single right ear piercing as well, emblazoned with a symbol and number. The symbol was for his owner, the number was just his designation, since their names were unimportant to their owners. He was Number Forty-Nine. That was the only name she could give him.

  Cattle. That’s all the Andinna were now. Cattle.

  Not that she could remember a time when they weren’t. At one thousand and four years old, Mave didn’t remember what freedom looked or felt like. She just knew they were all slaves now and it was her fault.

  It didn’t matter anymore. It had stopped mattering a long time ago, since there was nothing she could do to change it.

  The only things that mattered now were what happened on the sands and continuing to breathe another day. Those were the only things she ever focused on. That’s what had helped her survive for so long, while others fell to the sands and died. They thought those things really mattered, those things a thousand years past now.

  “I’ve seen you practice. You’re a fast little bitch,” Number Forty-Nine commented, holding his two-handed sword close, in a defensive position.

  “I pick lighter weapons,” she replied calmly. “You would be fast too if you didn’t use a slow weapon.” She pointed at his huge sword with one of her own. “Sure, if you hit me with that, it’ll do damage, but you won’t hit me with it. I’m the fastest fighter in the pits, not another slow male with another slow weapon.” They all wanted the big weapons that did a lot of damage. Too bad none of them could hit her most of the time.

  “Don’t play teacher. I got my ink ages before you were born, in wars that would make your hair stand on end. Ink you’ll never earn. They prove I’m a master at war and an accepted member of our people, which you never will be.”

  Oh, he was so right about that. She would need to first make friends among her people if she ever wanted to be considered one of them: an Andinna, one of the warrior people of the skies. That was never going to happen, which meant she would never get the tattoos that decorated the older male. She had earned them, though. Every time she walked onto the sands, she earned them. They were just withholding the right to them from her.

  She wished she could say she got over it, but she wasn’t in the habit of lying to herself, not about that. I would give anything for the ink. Anything.

  “Stop trying to taunt me and fight,” she said mildly, twisting her wrists to cause her blades to flash in the dying light. He might have fought in wars, but she was trained in this arena and the pits below.

  He roared the Andinna battle cry and attacked her. She let him get so close that she could see the long canines of her people. She lifted her right blade at the last minute to block, causing his heavy sword to slide off its target and to the side. With her left hand she delivered a quick upward slash, one he had no chance to parry to evade. He’d let that Andinna temper drive him to make the mistake of getting too close to her.

  It was over in seconds. She gutted him.

  It was a night fight. She needed it to end quickly before the crowds grew too dangerous and the Empress grew bored after such a long day.

  She backed away as his body dropped. He stared in horror at the wound. He wasn’t dead yet. The crowd booed at her, since they had wanted more blood sport. Mave never gave them what they wanted. When they gave her someone who was marked to die, she gave them a long duel instead of an easy slaughter. When they wanted an epic battle, she ended it quickly.

  Their wants could go to hell, for all she cared.

  “You grew up free and carry the anger of losing it. You never learned how to adapt to the new world order of slavery,” she said to him, knowing only he could hear her. The crowd was too loud. “I only know slavery, only know the ways to kill a single opponent on the sands. I’m a master at this.”

  She severed his head and turned away as his body crumpled to the ground.

  I hate this.
r />   She shoved the thought away, the pain and regret with it. She had to survive, she always had. It was her or him. She wouldn’t die on the sands, not today, not ever. She would never give the crowd or her people what they wanted. She was never going to die for them.

  She didn’t look back as she walked towards her exit. She didn’t feed the crowd’s emotions or revel in glory. She just left, her duty as a slave done. She sheathed her short blades, and rested her hands on the pommels as she walked, ready to pull them if she needed to. There was always a chance, after a fight, that she was going to find trouble.

  She was inside the door, and it was closing, before they began to show up. Of course they would be here. Mave was spotlighted under their stares in the dark tunnel.

  “What?” she asked, keeping her cool. “It wasn’t any different than normal. You keep sending people to me to fight. I’m not exactly going to lay down arms and die.” She looked out to the group, maybe ten of them. Andinna males. The black eyes, the black horns, the black wings bound together, the tails waving back and forth in irritation. They all had the damned ink, the facial and body tattoos they denied her. Because she was the outcast who only ever killed her own people on the sands.

  Not like they don’t kill their own people out there for their own lives. No, they only hate it when I do it. Of course. The vicious unfairness was something that rubbed her raw, but she never let it show.