Blood&Silver Book 2: A Fallen Hero Part 1

A Fallen hero is what is I can describe myself the best. I used to be the greatest warrior in the Legion. An inspiration among soldiers and a dread to the foes. Now I fight one last war.

A Fallen hero is what is I can describe myself the best.

I used to be the greatest warrior in the Legion. An inspiration among soldiers and a dread to the foes. I fought through a hundred campaigns and had fought and bested the most vicious foes with both bullet and brain. For two hundred years of Standard Imperial Years I had only known war. In a way, my ‘death’ was a blessing to me. For two hundred years I had butchered and slaughtered the enemies of the United Alliance of the Republic, Romanian Empire and the United Rebellion Kingdoms and had suffered to keep them from dying another year. For one hundred and thirty years I have been battling the demon inside and killing to sate the ever quenching thirsts. For two hundred years I have never had any ties to any family, never been able to raise a family and settle down.

After two hundred years, I have been banished from the home I bled so much to protect against the Forces of Darkness and have been thrown from the Greatest Warrior and right hand to the Demi-God Slashu and his host and his great crusade against the New Imperial Kingdom to hiding in the Darkness of a world where I am among the most vile criminals to have ever lived, some of which remember me all too well.

But no more, I made a plan and I have nothing to lose other than my legacy. I may be two hundred and twenty year old, but I have known war since I was of age to be conscripted into the Imperial Army of the Romanian Red and Blue Throne and I’m ready for one last campaign.

I am going to win my freedom.

Then I’m going to finally relax and settle down.

In order to do that, I will kill them all.

Death or Glory.

 

 “So it’s only you, No one else? Well boys, let’s have us a good practice round on this weedy frame of a guy!” Jeered the gang leader. He looked six foot tall with a flattened nose and a really broad build. He had around him twelve others that looked as nasty as him.

I rolled my shoulders back; my ebony one handed axe was clenched in my hands as I grinned innocently. “Well this is not fair, not in the slightest, for you!” My grin widened as my shaggy brown hair fell over my grubby face.

They looked a bit hesitant at first and thrown back that I would grin evilly at what seemed to them like a simple kill.

“I can just predict the fight. I will crush the leader and four of you will run at the sight of my wrath, while the rest of you will come at me, maybe kill a few of the runners to get them in line. I see no guns and so you will be pretty much fighting in combat, in which I will kill you, and you will know this, so you will come at me at once and overwhelm me… Well, you can find the rest of the story out for yourself.” I laughed as while I was saying it I remembered this was the first thing ever muttered to me by my teacher, Samius Slashu, or later known as Old Man Sam. Back then I was only a grunt and he was two hundred years old. His prediction was true enough, on this very planet as well. It was twenty five of us versus him and yet he spared three of us.

“You really think that a pitiful old man such as yourself will beat Pirate King Cede Gold-tooth and his grand army?” He blushed with anger but that small boast cheered up him and his excuse for soldiers.

“Well someone beat you before I will, so you know the meaning of defeat!” I beamed brightly. His eyes went from laughing to cold and deathly and my smile just widened even more, nothing like plucking a nerve and making for an easy kill out of them.

He foamed at the mouth and roared to the sky, grabbing his chain and whipping it at me. I rolled to avoid it and stood up, limply holding my axe, a fighters ease.

His mood brightened slightly and he whipped his chain at me. No more games, I seriously want to get home!

I felt the rage trying to force itself out, testing the barriers I made in my mind. My other side wanted to try and get out like it has done since I had been on my deathbed, ready to leave this world in a world of war a hundred and fifty five years ago, but it had allowed me to live, to live a life of War and Death. To give me a second life to kill and slaughter and I had since loathed it, thinking why me. I now know.

I must live, to live outside of war and death and violence.

But now’s not the time to unleash for what I hope will be the last time.

He whipped the chain at me and I grabbed the chain with my gloved hand, tugging with all my might. The surprised thug was pulled off his feet and his arm gave a sickening pop as it whipped out with the chain. It left his hand and I coiled it in mine, putting it in the backpack on my back.

He got up, testing his shoulder and then unsheathed his broad sword, grinning a fake smile.

“You die now!” He laughed and charged at me.

He swung clumsily at my head, clearly a first timer.

I rolled away at the last second, moving onto my knees behind him and spared a quick glance at his other cronies before I dug my axe into the back of his knees. He cried out as I got up with my axe gleaming at the blood, but I could feel it wanted more death, the thirstless axe.

He fell forward as his cries turned to screams.

I stalked to his front and grabbed him by the head, and that shrill scream echoing through my skull.

“Oh will you be quiet!” I spat out. He would not shut up so I grabbed his long blond hair and yanked him to his feet and turned him around to look at his goons to say ‘help me’ before I drove my ebony axe into his skull. Blood sprayed everywhere as I be-headed him, cutting through sinew and bone like it was butter.

Blood sprayed all over me, covering me in this precious Life force.

His head parted from his body and his body crumpled, spasming slightly as it bled out on the dirt.

I lifted the mangled head of the once ‘great’ Cede Gold-Tooth.

I threw the head onto the ground. “So who’s next?”

 

I creaked my neck as I lay in a fluffy push back chair, listening to my kids and laughing. My wife comes over and I grin over at her, eating her nice puff-cakes.

I wish.

I’m in a hole in the ground, scrap metal over my head and my hard pack for my pillow. I built a controlled flame (like there’s anything to burn on this forsaken hole) and now am roasting a Goretail I just caught straight out of the Wood of Living Insanity, a wood that spreads throughout the entire planet and where you can die a more horrible death than anything someone can imagine.

Around me are six others; three were soldiers of the Resistance that ditched after they were falsely accused of a crime they didn’t commit. That was a year ago, and they’ve all become close to me so we can benefit. They were scouts in their Company of ten thousand and have served me well this last year, gathering supplies so we have a few luxuries in our cold and miserable life.

The leader of the group was a gaunt and pale man named Testis Redwhip; a man who was armed with, you guessed, a red whip, a cat-o-five tails to rip up people and to hang people. To protect and bury our pasts, we change our names to suit us.

My born name, my actual name, was called Romaan, one of the best Romanian generals to ever live. But when I turned on my own flesh and blood when the time came to choose between them or Slashu, I chose the cold hearted soma b***h that was named Slashu over my country because in the few short years before I had to choose, he had my back and I had his. So I changed my name to Valkan the Bloodied, after a fairy-tale character I grew up with that was a Warrior of the Red and Blue Throne, but had a dark, deep secret that eventually leads to his fall in battle. The whole time during the story, he is depicted as the bad guy, but I couldn’t find one thing we didn’t have in common other than that he used it differently than I. He used it to kill and slaughter in battle, but I haven’t used it since when I was chained up and tortured for fifty days and nights by a sick Vampire Lord by the name of Faros who mistook me for my Vampiric friend. I got out when Slashu came to save me and freed me. I got out and as soon as my ebony war axe hit my hands I gave into the Rage and killed Faros slowly, savouring the moment, or so I hoped. I’ve never been able to see through my rage. When it dies out, I re-take control, but never do I know what to expect, so I have to be careful.

Anyway, the second scout goes by the name of Earthsnare the Ghost, a small dwarf with black hair and a huge flowing beard all barbed at the tips of his beard and unruly hair were tips of sharp pieces of metal and other small debris. He is a master of traps and a born engineer.

The third was a female going by the name of Diocal Highstalker and was who was rebuilt as a part cyborg during their first engagement, when a Romanian plasma grenade landed in her fox hole and tore off half of her body, disintegrating it to dust. It was rare though to have a woman in the Military, as some follow differing customs and she came from a hard-core planet where only the strongest survives and are conscripted into the Resistance. She had long ebony hair, as deep a black as my axe, and a pure grey eye, the rest of her was fake skin and whirring machinery, but this made her an asset to have to the team, as she can quickly hide and shield herself with her machinery, and then deliver a nasty blow to the enemy.

The other three were random people I had gotten to know throughout my few years here. One was a Vampire Halfling thrown into this hell hole because of her race when she was just five years old. To clear this up, Vampires never have lived longer than three hundred years old, before dying. All they are is powerful channellers who had found the recipe for raising the Undead by alchemy. Other than that, their only difference to us was that they had lived in almost dark originally, so had mastered the ability to heighten all their senses and to become one with the dark, so have become faster and stronger than us. The only reason we envision them as these killers of the night and horrors of the world was when the First Vampire Kingdom rose and started defending their homeland and we provided them with an easier caught meal. They defended their homes and we defended ours until we both died, but then when the Vampire Kingdoms, in an effort to end the First Vampire War, they assassinated a Republican senator who began the War and made the Republic agree with him through his charming smile. He died horribly. But it worsened the situation and after they attacked my Mentors homeworld of Slash V and their stealing of the Eighth Sword or as it is now known, the Sword of Darkness, from the final resting place at Slash V, Slashu lead a campaign and after fifteen years of hardships against a superior foe with limited support, Slashu and his new mentor then, Shade, who was also my Mentor, had won and over thrown the Grand Kingdom of Vampires, and then scattered the Vampires and forced them to either join the Darkness forces or live in the very nations who sought to destroy them. But it was at great cost, as not only did the Darkness gain a valuable ally in the Vampires, but his own right hand, Shade, had become one of them by a rare case of a Blood Transfusion, which kills almost all, no matter what race, it killed their cells and killed them, but Shade reacted differently. But to this day, I thank him for that sacrifice. I found the Vampires and have made valuable allies out of them, as well as the most important thing of all, he taught me to contain my other side. The rage and anger has slowly dissipated because of him. Neither he nor Old Man Sam treated me any differently. She was now in her prime, about fifty years of age, but looking as a young teenager, as they age slower than most, with ashen hair and deep red eyes and was smaller than I, around five foot one or two, but her fangs were starting to sprout in earnest, probably another two inches more and she could rip out the throat of a Triperior with ease and her claws were already elongated quite long and were rock hard. She told me her original name, but I had told her to forget that life, for your never going to see it again, so she made a name for herself, Nocte, and for her last name I gave her the name of Lapsis-Eques. Night Fallen Knight, a suitable name for a girl of her history.

Another was once a leader of a mercenary group going by the name of the Ground Guardians, a light armed force of foot soldiers. A raid went bad and his gang was butchered by a Romanian regiment, but not before they killed quite a few themselves. He was marshalled and thrown here. His name was Exoflayer Gorespreader by his men-at-arms before he came here. He dressed himself in a mis-match of Federation and Romanian armour with the weapons to suit them with pistols and rifles. He was six foot tall and the age of forty and the brown grey hair.

The last one was a middle aged man who looked like a business man with a family, with warm eyes and a warm smile but underneath that fake man crap was a cold hearted soma b***h who was also the first man I met on this planet that at first didn’t try and attack me, well considering I saved his life, you know that helps too. He had no family though and I was just his hired muscle for work when he smuggles arms and drugs into the World from a destroyed ship in the middle of nowhere. He goes by the name of Everywhere, because he’s got spies and agents everywhere to help you or (woe to) those who wrong him, a deliverance of justice.

But he wasn’t here for that, and neither was the trio of ex-Feds or the mercenary. I had adopted the little Vampire as my own and fed her with my kills and the hunt I had brought from the forest and taught her like my mentor before me, especially how to be human and to protect herself outside of my protection, like a father would protect her daughter from other boys who wanted to take advantage of her.

We weren’t having a feast and talking about old times, neither were we all here to eat over a roast.

We were here to deal with War, With Death, violence, mayhem and betrayal, But with that, a promise of Freedom and peace out of this.

There was only one way to escape this hell hole of a planet.

To take part in something so vile and horrible that unless freedom from this planet was the prize, no person other than Khaos Lovers would ever compete, a competition where it is kill or be killed and where only the most adaptable survive.

 To destroy all that stands in our way

We will win our freedom, or die trying to get out.

But I will not let that happen. I will not let my adopted daughter go on living in fear, a shadow in this grim place. I will get a nice place to live, settle down, get a wife, raise her and some kids and live out a peaceful existence knowing I made a difference in life and saved a life, to know I save one of my own, a shadow dreamer, living on the edge of society. To know that after two centuries of mindless slaughter and war for no cause, there is one life I saved and therefore in her, my redemption lies.

“You paid well my friend, and have eighty of my men, including me, ready and waiting for it, all fully kitted with basic equipment I expect from your part of the deal.” Exoflayer pronounced in a proud voice as I passed him a plate of Goretail with some herbs and other edible things from the forest. I was never fond of army food, so normally made my men something at least a bit more edible with the things I found. I passed the Scouts a plate each and then especially for my darling girl, I got the least cooked part of the Goretail and served it to her. I had nothing.

An age ago, when I was introduced as part of the galactic secret organization of the Assassination Guerrilla Overkill Night-fighters or the AGONs, I was on an assignment with my first Battalion leader, when we got caught in an ambush and I was shot through the stomach, tearing the actual stomach muscle in half. They had to sew it up and shrink it in size to let me live, and so they sewed it up and they told me that if I eat more than one meal a day, my stomach might burst open, killing all my insides. It was my main weak spot, and surely I would die a horrible and painful death.

“As does my Centurion Valkan and I don’t want any failure to uphold your end of the bargain.” Everywhere nodded his head as I passed him a plate of Goretail. They all dug in while I proclaimed the situation.

“I have among the best in the business to get your weapons. I paid you and your men will get their promised weapons, a firearm each and some protective gear and I have got the contract upholding this agreement in blood.” I nodded, and of course I was telling them the truth or half of it anyway.

They wanted a firearm and protective gear each. They were going to kill me and take the prize themselves when (or if should I say) we get to the Landing Zone of the ship. The only people I could trust were me and Nocte. So I had hired the three Feds to grab pistols with five rounds in each and for protective gear to bang together scrap pieces of metal and make an olden Rebellion Paladin styled-suit of armour.

So this way they will be easier to kill if the time comes and the pistol will run dry. But they’ll probably get their own s**t and leave mine at the first chance.

The Feds were good people and I didn’t mind the trio, what I did mind was that they were scouts, shifty and easily bribed. But I think their more scared of me after I stormed a gangster hold and butchered everyone in there to get them, which really was number two, the first one was teaching Nocte to hunt people and how to slaughter with ease, and to see which role she was more suited to and what style of combat. She was a Blades-woman, one of the finest I’ve ever seen, after Slashu and even rivalled that of the Vampire Kingdom master swordsmen themselves in my opinion, but I had started her with a knife gifted to me by Slashu when he found me when I just got out of the Crusade and had ‘died’. This charcoaled forged quadruple edged Shiv was his way of saying ‘You have served the army and the AGONs well my friend, you are relieved of service’. She carried it with her even now, it hanging off her belt. This axe has an even bloodier history.

It was when I was fresh out of the Triperior Campaign on the Planet Trask IV. I was still the fire-arm of the group and a pretty proficient one, killing all my marks, but had little combat skills other than the Bayonet charges when I was back in the Romanian Army force. We were ordered to kill the Khaos leader of Aeon Head-crusher, a Disciple of Gnorhnekh. He was heading a band of mutants and outcasts that had a common cause of Death and Blood in their God’s name, like most fanatics of the God of War and Combat. They had now attacked a fuel and trade planet of Beamiron II, a race of peaceful Dwarven miners but when the hoard went there, every single soul grabbed up arms in response but were getting slaughtered, already the Dwarfs had lost three of their cities and the Khaos worshippers on the planet had allied forces, swelling their ranks considerably. The final city was at stake though, a city by the name of Great pit, which was really an open cut mine. They had a plan to smash apart the Khaos forces by Surprise attacking them from the ground, but the Khaos Sorcerer Izesalik of Slaenzsh had done a summon to the animals of the world. Trolls, feral Greenskins, Burrowing Eels and worse awaited the final battle, digging underground or joining their ranks in the battle.

Every single able-bodied Dwarf had taken up arms with what little they had. Some were armed with Kitchen Knives and bats, while some heavy support vehicles and even a small depleted air-borne force (Dwarfs were afraid of heights and were no help there, but a few Republicans had gotten together and started a small airborne force).

The battle was well under way, a barren open field that provided a heap of cover despite its desert landscape. It was on a Boulder field so the Dwarfs fashioned up ground hills and trenches. But already bodies littered the floor and the combat Dwarfs were in a bloody melee for their lives against the grinning and insane-driven marauders of Head-Crusher’s clan.

We dropped into the field of battle by skydiving in. I wasn’t part of the Rage then, so I was scared shitless as I drove my bayonet into the nearest Khaos berserker and then shot it in the head. Our plan was to land near and slaughter the Shaman and Head-Crusher who were both on the planet. At the head of the Dwarf throng was Senator Cteln Grimmelter, who battered past the melee and ran for the berserker lord. He was de-capitated in an instant.

The Dwarves were in a state of breaking and ammunition to cover their retreat was low. But Slashu had gotten stuck in and to this day I do not know what I did, but I had killed, but how is a mystery. Out of all the battles and wars I’ve ever been through, this dry, windswept desert was the worst thing I ever experienced. Animals burrowed out of the ground and went into the ground again, a warrior in its teeth. Bodies fell and the berserkers had ripped into the Dwarfs lines like a machete into a young tree and yet the Dwarves held the line. We seemingly glided through the swirling melee as if in a dream, bodies and blood flying everywhere. We got to the Head-Crushers lines. Shade chose me and we ran for the Priest of Sin, killing all those who stood in our way. But suddenly the Priest disappeared and we were left dumbfounded.

But we wheeled around to see Arnold be beheaded and Slashu slowly lose a fight. I charged, firing my weapon wildly, slicing through the side of Head-Crusher and he reeled back, roaring, before drove his blade through Slashu and threw him to the floor. I tried to bayonet him, but he smashed me down beside Slashu. Shade hit him with his twin scimitars, trying to kill Head-Crusher, but Head-Crusher head-butted Shade and Shade fell like a sack of Potatoes.

I got up despite my broken ribs with the thought that I was least hit and had a duty to protect my tutors. I saw the Ebony axe lying beside me on the floor, the axe that belonged to the Senator himself.

I picked it up with all my might and believe me it was heavy, and swung at the Disciple of Gnorhnekh. It buried between his shoulder blades and he roared and turned to me, eyes blazing fire. But I smiled and my combat knife found its way into Head-Crushers eye. The once mighty warrior of legions was now wreathing in pain on the floor. I grabbed out my pistol and leant down and his brains splattered all over me.

“Valkan!” I jerked my head quickly at the bark.

“What?” I demanded.

“I said how many people have you got under your command?” Asked Everywhere sceptically, eyeing me closely, and waiting for my response. I sat back in my chair, grinning inwardly.

“Two hundred and fifty-five people in my small band of merry people.” I laughed. I wasn’t laughing at their faces as they worked out that I had more people under my command than they did, or the fact that they were going to try and get out of the deal when it was written in blood as their chances of Freedom was thinning every time we talked. It was the fact that I was playing them straight into my hand to be on a lease until the first round, where I was going to turn them onto each other and leave me with hopefully the scouts and my daughter and if need be, me. I know if I die, the ex-Federation soldiers will protect her.

After the first round, I had no plan, no strategy to earn Freedom.

“Your bullshitting me Valkan!” Everywhere stared into my eyes, trying to decipher my lie, trying to pull a string and unravel the mystery and the fact that I have only five others outside the two gangs, which were the scouts, Nocte and I. We had a hundred and eighty men and women at arms ready to slaughter the five of us, so I had to keep them on a lease, and a very tight one at that until the end.

When it ends, only then the lease will slack and then I will crack it, breaking their neck.

“I bullshit you not Everywhere, why would I lie to someone who could end my life as easily as I might kill a Goretail?” I asked innocently.

“Well true enough, but I will still hold you to that.” His eyes darkened with fury and hate, trying to see right through me.

“If you don’t deliver the good stuff, I think you can say goodbye to your life as you know it. No cheating this time, as you saw the last people who tried to cheat me.” Exoflayer grinned as I remembered the Underground Square of the town that we live in right now, going by the name of Klas-Kaz for which the Ancients, the first race to inhabit this rock, named it. Five bodies were found in the Middle Ground Club when it opened, all of them naked and bleeding to death, three of them were dead before the Romanians got to them; the other two were executed by the soldiers. They were strung in a way though that each of them had a word carved bloodily onto their bellies, deep wounds. Don’t Cheat Exoflayer or This, was the sentence carved into them. I had to restrict Nocte from eating them, because one of them was actually the infamous Gang Leader Arkhah, who lead a particularly nasty gang that scammed Exoflayer out of a shipment of weapons and armour worth around fifteen million and then planned to smuggle them into the Eastern Fringe Empire and the shipment was meant to go down the night before, with him and his small band of thugs with the supplies. But it went pear shaped, and the next day, that happened.

I didn’t want that to happen, because I know I would just carve out their skulls and feed on them. The Rage would never forgive them.

They will die, all of them.

But only when the time comes and they have lived out their usefulness.

I felt that thought warm me to the core, a thought that I won’t let go, a feign hope to life itself and my plan, however risky and sacrificial it is, I will make it.

But for now, the Gladiatorial arena awaits, and I made sure to put in every single name that I gave them and the numbers, and then at the last minute say they were destroyed.

I had to, or otherwise I would be held a Liar.

I spat on the ground as I felt vomit rise in my stomach, a horrible sensation of when I have eaten too much.

I walked out of the tent and threw up on the ground, the acidic taste burning my throat and hitting my core. It was a painful process, but it’s what happens when I lose half of my stomach acids along with half of my stomach muscle.

I only had one thought in my mind as the fresh air was circling around me, an uncomfortable stuffiness that was annoying me and warming me, but was also countered by a cool breeze from the south, in a hazy darkness, caused by the worst pollution of a once Factorial Force Planet, where at first it was home to mighty Factories and Building Rafts of the Romanian Throne, before the War of Scy-Inc, a new Machine Program built on returning the Fallen soldiers to war by keeping their brain alive in a metal shell and keeping them awake, and it worked, so they started using Mechanical Machines, the first designs mainly called the Nomads and the Fliers.

It was slaying so many Republican Armies, but like animals introduced to a planet, the Republic started to adapt, and after a while, the Machines started to turn on the Romanian Empire and the Machines, under the control of the First Machine ever made, called Dread I, they started to declare independence, and when the Throne of the Romanians started to get anxious, they attacked the Machines, and Worlds once flourishing with beauty and wealth were turned into desolate wastelands, and this was one such world, but this world was lucky, as most that were affected by that war became uninhabitable rocks by the Laser Bombings, a missile that used Warheads filled with Nuclear Radiation to crush entire armies but which, unless it landed on them, the Machines were invulnerable to.

This Prison World came soon after, where the Machines were still roaming around, but had no contact to the Machine Armies and the War, so the Romanians put any criminals there, and slowly too, the Republic after they tried to colonize the world and were utterly crushed. So it became this. The Machines had shut down a long time ago though, as they couldn’t get the Hydroxide fuel they needed to power their cores to keep them alive. But on the odd occasion the Fifteen hundred year old Machines sometimes are seen roaming in the most isolated places of the World, their brains still alive and their bodies still working.

I cracked my back and stretched, easing the stress of the past nine days and letting it slowly melt away.

Tomorrow was the Day of Reckoning, the place where the First Round starts.

The Gladiatorial Round, the first round of three.

It was a straight Death-match, where the Hosts pitch everyone in an arena. They give you nothing, so you have to arm yourselves. Some use Shivs, small elongated knives common on this Scrap World as their usually made out of scrap metal. Others use cruder weapons like clubs and some use Missile Launchers and firearms, or other more exotic weapons. Only fifty per cent of people go through to the next round, so teams usually fall out in the first round and break apart, causing new teams.

The second round is a bonus round kind of, as every year it changes. They never tell you what it is or how what you do until you’re in the round. Fifty per cent of people go into this, but the reason I said it was a Bonus Round was because you get a thing of your choice from the so called Armoury, which you go in one at a time and grab what you can, and this depends on how many kills and other points you get which decides where you are in the grabbing process from first to last.

The third round is the hardest of the three, because you have a race to the finish, a Death Race as you would like to call it.

A field surrounds it and the first team in there gets the ultimate prize, Freedom, in the place of a ship to take them out of Exodus. Everyone else still there dies.

There are three things that really decide whether you live or die:

The first is that you only get what you carry, and this includes everything from Weapons and armour to food and medical supplies. This is why the Second Round is so important, as the Five minutes in there might decide whether you live or die.

The Second thing is that there is a different theme every game and so you will have to adapt to survive. This also means it could be as spread out as possible or enclosed. You could have a cage, where everyone is a meter from each other at the start and the destruction will change you no matter how much experience, or it could be a luscious rainforest full of snakes and death spitting carnivorous plants. But you won’t know until you’re in the arena itself, and only one thing is for certain, they will hold it on Exodus and nowhere else.

The third thing is that there are no rules, so you have to be on your guard at all times. Some people will bring back the dead to fight with them, or even will call in air-strikes from above to destroy every soul on that arena except that team. So you have to get in and under and hope everyone plays by the rules.

Tomorrow was the first round.

Tomorrow was the day I both meet my match and fall in the Sands of the Arena with the other fifty per cent or I will stand triumphant as a God of the Arena, alongside the Old Gods and the New Gods and become a step closer to Freedom.

But one thing is for sure, I will protect Nocte and until my last breath, I will not abandon my only hope in this world, a girl who has shown me that all is not despair and destruction and that I can feel emotion and there is another release from this cruel and dark universe other than the Final Release of Death or giving my life to the New Gods of Khaos.

I vow to never kill unless necessary and to try and find peace, and release the Rage inside of me.

She has given me a reason to live. She may turn on me one day and kill me like most Vampires do when they start to hunger, and I will embrace that, or I might die in peace.

The only thing standing between Freedoms and settling down to be a Surrogate Father and a mentor to my daughter is the game of Bloodshed and Death.

A Game that is known only by the name of Stadium.