The Cosmic Princess

His Coliseum

Recap: "Nothing is ever fair during wartime. If you are weak, you are conquered. It's that simple. My people will look upon me one day and see me as the hero I am because I saved my world from destruction, beautiful disaster, and so will you."

Gaze blank, I shook my head, hands reaching for the strings of hope slowly fading away from me. Quiet words tumbled from my trembling lips before I could stop it.

"Or your people will look back one day and see you as the villain you are. You conquer, but you destroy in the process. You allow your people to kill, rape, practically commit mass genocide and erasure of cultures. When your people look back at you, they will see a cruel, wicked, evil bastard. You can lie and deceive and have your people rewrite your history as beautiful as you want it to be.

But the truth always comes out. There's always one who remembers. Then the stories are retold and the masses will awaken no matter what you try to do. The heroes of your history will not be you or your puppets, but the conquered people themselves. The ones who took the ashes of the lives that you burned down and replanted something new and prospered, despite every trick you and your people have used to stunt their growth. The resilient are the heroes and you and anyone who follows you are simply the villains of time."

And that was how I ended up fighting a monster in a dress.

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Song: Lorde - Glory and Gore

The rough red soil brushed against my flesh, my hands meeting the ground as I was carelessly thrown into the arena. Whipping around, eyes narrowed at the two laughing Dynoats who had dragged me struggling and yelling the entire way down. The desire to wipe those sneers off their face erupted, and I hopped up only to be knocked flat on my back a second later. A quick stream of electricity zipped through the vessels of my body while my chest tightened into an alarming clench and I struggled for air.

Increasing crescendos reverberated through the chaos of the arena, the crowd cheering as they all watched my collar knock me down a peg. Just from their excitement, I could tell I wasn't a crowd favorite.

Seconds flew by as I tried to regain my will. Slowly, feeling air pumping through my lungs once again, I began to push myself into a sitting position, hating the trembling after-effects of the collar.

"Ladies and gentlemen the time has come for another suitor face off..." His words began to drift out, my eyebrows furrowing in bewilderment. The feeling of dread quickly followed.

Scrambling to my feet, I watched the arena walls slowly descend down around me. Panic begin to seize my already shaking limbs.

Three of the other 11 suitors were in the ring with me. All of us were equally spaced out, each placed into our own little corner.

One creature stood to my right with distinct bird-like features. Skin a pale yellow, the small wings that sprouted from her forearms were a striking obsidian color. Talons protruded from under the similarly colored blue dress she was wearing.

Curved, light-colored horns, like a ram, protruded from the suitor to my left. Her face was gentle with a small flat nose and large expressive eyes. The lower half of her body resembled a ram with two extremities leading to hooves.

Straight ahead of me stood a creature that looked the most normal. Body mostly human-like, the only trait odd about her that physically differentiated from me was the long, furry pointed ears sticking out from her hair.

Like mine, collars were wrapped around their neck indicating who currently owned our physical form.

The announcer's boisterous voice buzzed back into my hearing. "...here these four suitors will fight to the death. Only one will remain."