Most of us long to "Be" but when the path gets too costly, or steep, we take solace in what we "Have." Remove the trappings of what we own and then what is the sum of us?
They were the survivors, abandoned by the allies who swore to protect, in...
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Aran was relocated from his cell to another larger, brighter one. His chains and iron collar were removed, and when he did wake he was naked on a straw pallet freshly shaven and washed. He sat up abruptly, the change in his environment a shock to him, he was disoriented.
Vaguely he could recall his struggle and the fight against the creeping suffusion of the drug he had been given. He was still tired, but felt much better. He rose and stretched, looking out onto the arena floor. There was as most always nothing of interest to catch his eye. He looked about him, he was in a Spartanly furnished room. It was still naught more than an iron cage. He sat back down on the bed his head in his large hands still not himself.
Aran was about to lay back down when a movement in the cell beyond caught his eye. He saw the face of the shaven headed man staring back at him, blunt featured and boorish. He knew that face, and had hoped never to gaze on it again.
He was at once arrested and his ire rose in him with startling force. Aran was face to face with his vanquisher with only the space of one empty cell to divide them. Control may have been his to command were it not for the man's words. "If it ain't my bitch." The champion laughed mercilessly. Aran looked across the expanse of iron bars steeped in vitriolic hate. He felt sick, shamed, and angry all in the same breath. He had a raging desire to kill this man who stood just feet away, this immutable desire had the intensity of nothing he had ever experienced before.
"I will kill you." Aran rasped softly, hatefully, with all the passion of a lovers promise. The champion gladiator just laughed.
"Yeah, like last time?" He goaded.
Aran snapped, attracting the attention of his keepers. However they did not interfere. They let him vent his ire as he burnt out his wrath smashing his solid body into the bars achieving nothing but his own hurt and subsequent exhaustion.
Unbeknownst to the incensed warrior, Keith and Master Jacques were both standing on the arena floor observing Aran's unrestrained fury. Jacques said nothing as he studied the seemingly crazed slave. In his long career since the war he had seen more than a handful of captives descend into the maw of madness, but the slaver had to admit he had never seen anything akin to this in all his days. Could this kind of unstoppable fury win against experience, and cold calculation? He was not sure, but in a few days he would find out.
He looked across at the grave expression on Keith's face. He wondered what the man was thinking. He had after all made an immense wager on the strength of his judgment. He admired the belief in his man, there were few who would so readily put their welfare where their mouth was.
*****
For three days Aran listened to the goading threats and jibes of the man so close to him, yet so out of reach. He erupted into punishing fury often, he simply couldn't help it.
