The serpentine dragon relinquished its metallic meal, spewing the captain’s lifeless body onto the sand with a loud, wet smack. An ocean of blood poured from the man’s chewed, crumpled corpse. With the ag’drurath’s focus no longer fixed on the captain, Amaris saw her window for amputation close. She escaped from where she had been mangling its hacked, bloodied leg and shot away from the snake. She counted on the silver gleam of her hair to pull its eyes to her movement while Gadriel slid under its belly. It was his turn to take a swing at the leg with the anger he held by the power and might of twenty years of his fallen men. The rage of Raascot rained down on the monster’s leg as Gadriel unleashed his strength to the sound of crunching and shattering bone, relying on Amaris as she sprinted away to hold the giant, beady eyes of the serpent.

The crowd wasn’t alone in feeling the change that crept through the coliseum. As the people panicked, hope filled the two lone warriors on the sandy battlefield. Renewed adrenaline surged through Amaris. The people’s screams were a beautiful music, a shrieking wail of optimism that flooded the coliseum with their magnificent, horrible song. From across the sand, her eyes touched Gadriel’s in the briefest of moments as his powerful arms descended on the beast and its leg. His teeth glinted in an angry, terrible smile.

There it was. They saw their escape.

The queen, amplified by whatever enchanted magic object allowed her to be heard throughout the coliseum, screamed to her archers. The men responded in a flurry. The archers loosed metallic arrows aimed at Amaris and Gadriel, their weapons intent on execution. Though charged to slay Gadriel and Amaris, these centurions had been chosen for their numbers, not their skill. Their action succeeded only in drawing the pain and fury of the ag’drurath, luring its beady eyes away from the dueling warriors to the men and their agonizing, glistening arrows fifty feet high.