The stadium screamed the gladiator's name like a horde of fanatics in full delirium, which profoundly shocked Atlas. The world opening up to him was nothing but a universe where absolute brutality had reclaimed its rights, to exist within it, one simply had to be the most savage.
Hercles returned with slow steps under the deafening cheers of the crowd, his torso stained with his opponent's blood dripping onto the stone. He placed the spear back on the wooden rack without even bothering to wipe the blade. It would only be soiled again today anyway.
He then passed under the arch, disappearing from the public's view, still wearing the same jubilant expression, that of a sated predator. The other gladiators huddled in the gloom watched him pass with genuine reverence. In their eyes, the spark of survival had morphed into a dangerous illusion, they told themselves that if they fought like him, with the same ferocity, they too would be acclaimed. They too would become gods of the arena.
For the first time since their arrival in this hell, they no longer felt fear, but a feverish excitement.
Atlas was not fooled.
'Poor fools', he thought, his face like marble. He coldly estimated that nearly fifty percent of the men in this corridor would die before the day was over. 'Hope truly is the bane of mankind...'
Hercles looked at them all without uttering a single word. His gaze, however, held no warmth, only a haughty coldness. His mind was surely crossing the exact same conclusion as Atlas. Then, the bald colossus plunged his gaze into the young man's azure irises. The eye contact lingered a fraction of a second longer than with the others, heavy with tacit recognition, before the giant willingly walked toward the back of the hall where armed jailers awaited him. After all, he might be the king of the arena, but he was not free either.
Before the other gladiators could even break into nervous chatter to relieve the pressure, the bell rang. Three sharp, heavy, definitive tolls.
A jailer abruptly stepped into the ranks and grabbed one of the men by the shoulder. It was the nervous young man, the one who had asked the scarred veteran questions a few minutes earlier. Number Two.
Galvanized by Hercles's triumph and completely intoxicated by the cheers still echoing, the young man puffed out his chest. His terror seemed to have evaporated. He walked toward the light with false confidence, already imagining himself a hero. Reaching the weapon racks, he grabbed a short, chipped hatchet, a nervous but determined smile on his lips.
But the arena was no fairy tale. His opponent entered, a stocky butcher, his body covered in swollen scars, his eyes devoid of all humanity. He held a heavy curved blade.
The single toll of the bell shattered the air. The massacre could begin.
Number Two charged, screaming at the top of his lungs, clumsily trying to copy Hercles's fierce and lightning fast assault. He raised his hatchet high, putting all his weight into a desperate attack, thinking his sheer will would be enough to cleave his enemy.
He had neither the technique, nor the stature, nor the instinct.
The stocky veteran didn't even blink. With a simple side step, executed with clinical fluidity, he dodged the uncoordinated charge. Number Two struck empty air and stumbled heavily into the reddened dust, completely thrown off balance by his own momentum.
In a fraction of a second, reality caught up with the illusion.
Before the young gladiator could even turn around to understand his mistake, the heavy curved blade came crashing down on the back of his neck with a sinister crack. The sound of his severed spine echoed all the way into the archway.
The young man collapsed face-first into the dirt. His hatchet slipped from his grasp. He rolled onto his side, his eyes wide with absolute terror, vainly trying to stem the geyser of blood spurting from his throat. In his final seconds of agony, his gaze met the dark archway from which he came. He died miserably, his face twisted in incomprehension, drowning in his own blood without ever realizing why his hope had not been enough to save him.
The crowd, meanwhile, exploded with joy. The spectators roared and burst into sadistic laughter, swept up by the same intensity and visceral hunger. Their thick laughter echoed through the amphitheater, completely indifferent to the identity of the meat that had just been thrown to them.
In the shadows of the corridor, the other gladiators' excitement evaporated instantly, snuffed out like a candle flame. A deathly silence reclaimed its hold among them, broken only by the chattering teeth of those who had just realized what awaited them.
The Rohar had just reminded them of its one and only law.
...
The fights followed one another in a litany of blood and dust.
Some clashes lasted longer than others, but a cruel trend quickly emerged, the fighters from the South proved to be formidable. All more vigorous, more massive, and terrifyingly sharp, they seemed tailor-made for the savagery of the arena. Atlas had underestimated just how terrifying this arena could be. Nearly seventy-five percent of the men from their camp were decimated before his very eyes.
The dirt floor was nothing more than a scarlet mire. To satisfy the insatiable appetite and sadism of the audience, each execution had to be more spectacular and brutal than the last, systematically tearing those same dehumanized bursts of laughter from the stands.
Even the scarred veteran, the one who seemed to know the workings of the Rohar, met a tragic end. Despite his experience, he was no match for the frenzy of a Southerner who eventually drove a heavy saber straight through his heart, before letting his body crumple like a cheap, disjointed puppet.
Suddenly, the bell rang. Three heavy tolls, their morbid echo vibrating deep into Atlas's bones.
"TWELVE!" roared the guard at the entrance of the arch, his voice hoarse from the successive calls.
It was his turn.
For the first time since waking up in this nightmare, a cold sweat broke out on the back of Atlas's neck. His analytical mind may have dissected the movements and flaws of every previous duel, but his frail body refused to ignore the violent nausea rising in his throat.
He was nervous. His hands, usually so calm, trembled slightly. He had seen so many men die, their lives swept away in the snap of a finger, in such a ridiculously short amount of time. The metallic scent of fresh blood and death saturated the air, enough to make one dizzy.
A ball of anguish knotted heavily in his stomach. This was no longer theory. This was no longer a mindless mutant dog. He was going to have to walk into that blinding light in front of thousands of fanatics. The visceral idea of having to tear away the life of another human being... or feeling the burning steel take his own... terrified him.
Atlas stepped toward the arena. Although a deep reluctance still twisted his guts, his mind had resigned itself a while ago. He had made his choice, he fully intended to prove to this new world that he existed.
As he crossed the archway and finally bathed in the pale light of the pit, he noticed that the crowd's screams had weakened. The thousands of spectators in the stands seemed bored. One sided fights and a string of swift massacres had eventually dulled their bloodthirsty frenzy. But Atlas couldn't care less. His sole concern was not putting on a show, but surviving the moral dilemma that threatened to paralyze him.
He walked with measured steps toward the wooden racks where the weapons provided for the condemned rested. He stopped before the rusted iron and blood-stained steel, letting his analytical mind take over.
'This is the very first time in my life I'm using a real weapon... What should I take?' he thought
His eyes rapidly scanning the arsenal.
'I'm far from having regained my full physical potential, so heavy weapons are out of the question. With my current weight and my reflexes entirely geared toward dodging and agility, an axe or a spear would only throw me off balance.'
His azure gaze finally settled on a short sword. Its dark blade, about sixty centimeters long, wasn't the most impressive, but it looked light and quick. He grabbed it, instinctively testing the grip on the sticky leather handle.
"I'll take this", he concluded with a strange detachment, a slight smirk touching his lips. "Besides, I've always dreamed of trying one."
While Atlas weighed his short sword, his opponent entered the arena. He was a big fellow, without being gigantic or excessively muscular. Slightly hunched, he didn't possess the titanic build of the other Southerners, but a dull, almost animalistic threat emanated from him. He walked heavily toward the racks and tore away a spear with a half-broken shaft.
Atlas evaluated him from afar.
'Looks like we're getting a remake of the first fight' , he ironized internally, noting the choice of weapon.
The two men slowly advanced toward the center of the pit. The audience, previously distracted by the boredom of the swift massacres, gradually ceased their chatter to focus their attention on them. Something in this silent and cautious confrontation seemed to reignite their curiosity.
The tension was at its peak. Atlas felt his heart hammering against his ribs, gnawed by anxiety at the thought of taking the life of the human being facing him. Despite himself, his mind refused to turn him into a simple monster of flesh, he couldn't help but humanize him. He studied his short hair, his feverish brown eyes, and that deep scar crossing his right eye, the dark remnant of a life of struggles. They didn't exchange a single word. It was much easier that way.
The bell rang, cleaving the heavy air of the amphitheater.
But neither of them moved a muscle.
They remained frozen on the packed dirt, observing and analyzing each other with the coldness of predators. Each knew full well that in this deadly game, the first to rush into the assault would be the one exposing themselves to a fatal mistake.
The silence was broken not by a roar, but by a dull scraping sound.
With a swift, underhanded movement, the Southerner swept the dirt with his foot, kicking a handful of sticky dust and bloody sand straight into his opponent's face.
Caught off guard by the dirty trick, Atlas instinctively closed his eyes. The frozen grains of sand under his eyelids blinded him for a fraction of a second. It was the opening the scarred man was waiting for. Closing the distance with terrifying speed, the Southerner pivoted his broken spear, aiming directly for the young man's throat.
Plunged into darkness, Atlas's hyper-focused mind had to rely on the only things he could still perceive, the play of shadows filtering through his half-closed lashes and the hiss of the air. Driven by pure survival instinct, he violently shifted his axis to the left. The rusted tip grazed his neck, drawing a thin line of blood.
Regaining his sight by blinking frantically, Atlas countered. The observation phase was over, the chaos of the melee took over.
The two men traded blow for blow in a messy, visceral dance. The Southerner, using his reach, wielded the wooden shaft of his spear with suffocating brutality. Atlas dodged and parried with the flat of his short sword. His first movements betrayed obvious clumsiness, it was his very first time truly handling such a weapon, and his uncertain footing showed it. Yet, his brain recorded every trajectory error. With every parried assault, with every clash of steel against wood, he improved at a frightening speed, his wrist and posture adapting in real time to the chaos of combat. Just as he gained fluidity, trying to find an opening, the man with the brown eyes feinted a low attack and sharply brought up his shaft. The splintered wood violently struck Atlas's right shoulder, burying a few sharp splinters into his flesh.
A blinding pain numbed his arm, but Atlas used the momentum of his own recoil to counterattack. He slipped under his opponent's open guard and delivered a clean slash with his short sword, gliding the blade along his ribs.
The Southerner grunted in pain, stumbling backward. This was the decisive moment.
Taking advantage of his opponent's imbalance, Atlas pivoted on himself and powerfully swept the colossus's supporting leg with a precise heel strike. The man crashed heavily onto his back in the reddened dust, the wind knocked out of him. His weapon slipped from his hands.
He was at his mercy.
Atlas stood over him, arm raised, the short sword ready to come down and pierce his heart. The execution was perfect, logical, inevitable. But at the moment of sealing the man's fate, the latter anchored his gaze into his. Their eyes locked. Atlas met those brown irises again, clinging to his with unbearable intensity. The scar. There was no animal fear distorting his features, no silent plea, only a fierce gleam, an absolute defiance. The man refused to look away, judging him with all his humanity, as if silently daring him to cross that point of no return. This direct eye contact, this burning refusal to die a victim, made the tension explode in Atlas's chest.
He's a human being.
That simple thought, heavy with all the morality of his past life, crushed him like an anvil. His hand trembled. The fear of becoming a murderer, the atrocious dilemma of taking a conscious life, paralyzed him for one miserable second.
One second too long.
The Southerner cared nothing for mercy. Sensing his executioner's deadly hesitation, he reacted with the fury of despair. He unleashed an upward punch of unheard-of violence that slammed into Atlas's temple.
The impact was devastating. A white flash blinded the young man. The world tilted. His eardrums rang, and he staggered backward, his vision blurred, on the verge of slipping into unconsciousness. He fell heavily on one knee, unable to breathe, while the Southerner straightened up, spitting blood, grabbing his spear to finish it.
That was when Atlas felt it.
Suddenly, something snapped inside his mind. It wasn't his fractured skull, nor a torn muscle. The sound was silent, diffuse, echoing from the depths of his own consciousness. A sensation he had experienced before.
He tensed, expecting the same mental tearing as in the snow. But there was nothing. No pain, no anger. Just... absolute silence.
The ball of anguish in his stomach? Evaporated. The fetid nausea at the thought of killing? Gone. The empathy that had paralyzed him a second earlier had detached itself from him like dead skin, falling somewhere into the abyss of his own consciousness. Atlas didn't understand how or why, but he felt sickeningly light.
The idea of plunging his blade into the flesh of the man opposite him no longer made him feel anything. It had become as mundane as drinking a glass of water.
He had no time to marvel at it. The Southerner was already roaring, charging to skewer him.
Atlas looked up. There was no longer the slightest hesitation in his clear eyes, only an empty pragmatism, vibrating under the rush of adrenaline.
His frail body still trembled with exhaustion, but his mind no longer held him back. Rather than backing away or attempting a parry, he let himself fall heavily to the side. The movement had absolutely no grace to it, it was raw, desperate, just strictly necessary. The blade of the spear grazed his cheek in a breath of icy air.
In a purely mechanical reflex, Atlas extended his arm and thrust his short sword toward the Southerner's throat. It was not a perfect strike. The tip scraped against his opponent's collarbone with the sound of grinding bone, before plunging clumsily into the flesh of his neck. The man let out a muffled death rattle, collapsing with all his weight onto Atlas, forcing him to push with all his might to avoid being crushed.
Sticky blood spurted onto his face, into his eyes, onto his lips.
Before, the sensation of this hot liquid would have made him vomit. But there, lying in the dirt beneath the twitching corpse of the gladiator, Atlas simply blinked. He breathed heavily, his muscles locked tight from the effort.
He heavily shoved the lifeless body aside and rose to his knees under the ecstatic screams of the crowd. He looked at his red, sticky hands. He searched for guilt. He searched for the horror of having taken a life. But the echo of his own conscience was terrifyingly silent.