Stumbling to the bucket, Cesare scrubbed himself down with hands that trembled with exhaustion. Taking a long moment with the wolf, Cesare left the room with more questions than he’d gone in with, all of them centering around one woman.

The heavy jacket weighed on his shoulders, ebony folds glittering with stygian mystery. Students watched as he cut through the crowd, jerking out of his way to let him pass. He was a walking plague, the center of any problem. The one whispers said the Thagirion were gunning for.

The guards to the Ludus Noctis gave him half nods. Tamlin's class was on the far side of the castle, making it a sure thing that Cesare was always the last one to arrive. The castle was hard enough to get around in, without a mass of kids clogging its arteries intent on escaping for the day.

Taking the archway at a good clip, Cesare swept the area with a quick look. A good rabbit always paid attention to who was in the grass. Walking across the yard, he noted the looks that drifted his way.

A low speed bump like ridge marked Cesare's territory from the courtyard. Every time his foot came down inside the land crafted by Elizabeth, lush grass cushioning every step, his smile widened with memories of her claiming the land. He might be in Ludus Noctis, but he was worlds apart. Elizabeth would forever be its true creator. Soil, plant, root, and stem, woven together by a heart that beat with the blood of the earth. She'd birthed this place, leaving Cesare as nothing more than a caretaker. He never could've created this garden of carnage. He was a spiteful thing, his womb a sterile, dead place. He fashioned abominations, never things of wonder.

The students waited in a line around the sparring ring. He’d set them up with a training schedule, that he wouldn't be teaching them weapons gave him a laser focus on what he could teach. He’d never wanted to teach kids how to gut children, no, he'd teach them to kill and bleed for themselves.

They were working out every day before school, alternating muscle groups to only hit them once a week, that was separate from the runs he had them doing before bed. He was forging them into jackals, able to run down the cougars that plagued their lives. When they weren’t doing push up’s or running, they were sparring. They wore the bruises, cuts, and swollen faces as badges of honor, marks of an exclusive club.

Cesare admired the hunting wolves woven of gun gray as he leapt over the fence. His black jacket snapped out behind him, cascading in waves when he hit the ground. The first student was already in the ring, shuffling from foot to foot. It was a strange thing to accept pain was coming your way. That mind set was the start of winning any fight.

Tamlin had been right, this allowed him to see how fighters learned to use their weapons. More importantly, it hardened Cesare to fighting against them. The most dangerous part of any weapon wasn’t the pointy end, it was the fear that wrapped around the heart. Planted deep from the first flash of steel, the seeds of defeat burrowed into the heart, strangler vines choking a man with his own fear.

His opponent came at him quick and hard, her gladius sweeping out with a cutting whine. Moving back, Cesare snapped a kick at the girl’s hand, sending her weapon flying. Her guard flashed into place, eyes darting to where the weapon landed. The fight didn't stop when your weapon hit the ground, it ended when you hit the ground. Cesare expected them to fight, no matter what they had in their hands.

He moved in quick, slapping her clumsy punch aside, fist taking her in the stomach, slicing behind it, his elbow hammered her face. Even pulling the power, it left her stumbling back, unsure of the world. Catching her balance, she realized he'd controlled the exchange to put her next to her weapon.

Stalking toward her, Cesare gave her the time she needed to dive for the ground, rolling, she came up with her sword, pivoting, blade stabbing out at where his body had been. He’d burned that lesson into their flesh, there was no recovery time, always attack, only the dead are still.

She wasn’t the best, but she sure wasn't the worst. Sidestepping around her, he made her work for every slice and stab she sent his way. He knew where she was going before she did. That was the problem, she was still thinking. Only through repetition would barriers break, turning thought into something alien.

Jerold came to the fence as Cesare was ending the spar. Dodging a desperate downward cut, Cesare caught the girl’s hand, freezing it in place. Looking into the girls sweat streaked face, her fevered breath washing across his face. “Better. Keep working on your strikes. Work until your arms fall off, until blood pounds in your ears, when you can't do anymore, you know your close. They have to become more natural than breathing.” Locked onto Cesare, her eyes were threaded with a fey thing.

Letting her go, he turned and faced Jerold. Arrayed behind him, the murmillo's dismissed Cesare, starring down the Cherrie’s. Jerold didn't seem to be able to wipe his ass without his flunkies holding the paper. It was the two kids at his side that were the surprise. Mrs. Machete stood on his right while Yoshisune anchored the left.

“This is where Cesare is helping me with the … beginner students. One of your standing would be better served by an apprenticeship with the murmillo.” From the sour faces of the murmillo, Jerold was the only one who thought that was a good idea.

Yoshisune's voice was quiet, eyes steady on Cesare. “But I’m a beginner.”

“Yes, you are. But do you want to remain a beginner forever?” Jerold said, uncaring of the stony expressions of the Cherrie’s. “You’re coming to this late, and you'll need every advantage to make up the time. All the murmillo had personal trainers before they could walk. If you want to learn anything but the basics, you'll need their expertise.”

Yoshisune’s face locked down at Jerold’s words. “I want to learn here.”

Sighing, Jerold motioned at Mrs. Machete. “Atalanta is one of our greatest finds. While she isn’t a murmillo, she’s trained most of her life to be a gladiator, earning her place at the Ludus Noctis.” Cesare got a bad feeling about this. “Cesare keeps the Cherrie’s out of the way of the real gladiators. They might pick up enough to get away from a bully until a teacher can save them. But if you want to learn to fight, you need real training.”

Jerold gestured for Atalanta to enter the arena. “Atalanta will show you the difference between a thug and a warrior.”

Cesare took a careful step back into the center of the ring. Atalanta was taller than Cesare, built out of dense, heavy muscle, neck blending seamlessly into shoulders. Her long arms rippled, mountains and valleys of meat transforming with each step. Flat black trenches cut into her physique, accentuating her powerful build. Teasing the eyes, the carvings of flesh formed snarling bears, blurring into the abstract with a shift of flesh.

A vest of brown leather molded to her chest, showing a body she’d burned, molded, tortured, into a machine. Her small breasts were all that was left of the fat on her chest, everything given over to the enormous muscle’s underneath. Dark with sweat, the leather pants strained to contain massive thighs, bamboo machetes riding her hips, swaying with every step.

She drew the wide blades, leather wrapped hilts creaked in the sudden quiet, adding an edge to her grin. They knew the score, there was no way Cesare was going to win against a gladiator like her. But he didn't play games he couldn't win, which meant he wouldn't play by her rules.

Aleph sliced reality, flaying its skin, laying it out in quivering strips before him. The organs of existence pumped before Cesare, displayed in all their crass elegance. Pulpy senses of rotting flesh went silent under Alephs ruthless hands. The Root Chakra snapped open, unleashing a flood of crimson energy.

Grinning, Cesare stepped into the middle of his arena. For a second, doubt shadowed her eyes, seeing the pupil of his eyes swallow the color, an umbral darkness as impenetrable as the void between stars. She knew the world had shifted around her, but she wanted this too much to back out. Atalanta wanted to hurt him, thirsted to see him humiliated and ground into the dirt. She couldn't see past that desire.

He was already in motion when her foot crossed the scarlet boarder of his territory. He didn’t have to worry about her body, not when she held her talismans of faith in her hands. Twist, slash, stab, a machete's edge only cuts in one direction.

The wooden blade slashed across space. Stepping forward, Cesare went horizontal, head and pelvis dropping under the blade. The second machete whistled down in a chop, snapping out its way, Cesare jerked upward and to the side.

Fancy swords didn’t mean a fucking thing once a fighter was close. The wide, heavy blades, were meant to cut through meat and bone. Stripped of finesse, her strikes were brutal things designed to power through armor.

She'd always fought the same fight. The faces changed, but she never had. Two people with big weapons and armor trying to cut each other down. She fought in an arena with rules, tried and true strategies, honor and prestige. For Cesare, it was simple, winning meant living, losing meant death. No honor, no code, no rules, just a driving need to win at any cost.

His elbow rocked her skull, sending her stumbling back, eyes rolling in her head. Ducking under her flailing arm, he snapped a kick into her stomach, folding her over with an explosion of air. Leg going high, the ax kick hit her dazed face, carving across flesh in a spray of blood and teeth.

Silence held the arena as Cesare stood over the shattered girl. It had been quick, brutal, and final, she hadn’t been prepared, had dismissed the threat he posed. He'd never doubted how dangerous she was, knowing he had no room for mistakes. Every wolf was dangerous, the mangy starving cur that slunk around garbage’s was treacherous in a way the pack could never be. Stripped of place or honor, he'd do anything to win.

The white of her eye roiled around pinprick pupils. Rolling onto her back, a smear of blood turned her face into the poster child for helmets. A trench sliced down her face, the torn flesh weeping a steady stream of claret off her chin. Trembling, she pushed herself up, only for the arm to buckle, sending her sprawling to the ground. Holding his hand out, Cesare faced her angry confusion. “You can take the hand or stay on the ground.”

Hoisting Atalanta up, Cesare slipped an arm under her shoulder as he led her to the fence. Once she had a good grip on the gray roots, he let go, turning to face Jerold’s cold anger. “You cheated. This is a pure place, two creatures meeting with only skill to guide them. A sacred test of arms stripped of the advantages of race.” Frost crawled along the gray roots around the mans clenched fingers.

The murmillo glared at him from behind Jerold. Athletes got to where they were by following rules, they were the measures that defined the best from the rest. And the murmillo were the top of a world formed on rules, without those rules, they'd be back in the sewer with the rest. Their career, family, life, and dreams relied on rules. This courtyard was their alter, a sacred place were dreams of carnage and glory were grown. To see a nothing like Cesare spit on their rules in this place, had to bite at their delicate bits.

Looking at the incensed teacher with stygian midnight eyes, Cesare couldn’t help his small smile. “No, I didn’t.” The words brought a pregnant stillness to the group, everyone waiting to see what he’d say next. “I’m not a gladiator. I don't care about your game of grab ass you call fighting. Combat has no rules, no restrictions, no stopping point. You fight with everything you have, or you go home in a box. A wolf kills, it’s what it does, and it doesn’t ask forgiveness for being a killer.”

He stopped, gathering the eyes of Atalanta and murmillo. “You fight with rules because you think it'll make you safe. Combat isn’t safe, its bloody, smelly, and disgusting. You hurt and you bleed, if you’re lucky, you kill them before they kill you. You come against me, and I’ll screw you into the ground until your bones break and flesh ruptures. That’s real, not this silly pageant you put on. Do you think any of that shits going to help you in a real fight?”

Gesturing at their weapons, Cesare continued, “You think the Hounds will let you get your sword? You think I'd let you get your sword? I’d break your legs and tear your head off before you even got it out of your pack, if you even had it on you.” Watching with wide eyes, the Cherrie’s nodded along, lost in the tide of savageness. “If you want to be a gladiator, go back to their sand box and play with the kiddies. You want to survive when they come for you, stay here. But if you stay, I promise you won’t go to bed without hurting. We don’t train to fight by the rules, we train to win.”

Atalanta ducked through the fence, her feet steadier than when he’d helped her up. The long gash along her face might scar but if she got lucky, no one would notice. Knowing her, she might like the look of a good scar.

“I’m staying,” Yoshisune said, eyes never leaving Cesare. “You could teach me how to be a warrior, he can teach me how to survive. My father always talked about the honor of standing and dying for what I believed in. I saw what that got him, my family slaughtered and me dodging cocks on the street.”

Taking his hands off the frost coated fence one finger at a time, Jerold nodded. “Very well. The offer will remain open when you decide to take me up on it.”

Cesare watched the group leave before turning his attention to Yoshisune. The boy was small and thin boned, born with the androgynous look woman flipped over. Still, he’d lived on the streets for a year, that meant he had to be stronger than he looked.

“Get him a weapon and settled in,” Cesare said, the girl he’d sparred with coming up to stand beside the kid. “I teach people to bleed for what they want. To sear strength into their bones, carve it into their flesh. I'll strip you of good, leaving you raw, an exposed nerve burned by the air. But I won't teach you how to use whatever steel you need to feel safe.”

There was a conviction in Cesare's words. He called to something broken in them, a child that grew up deformed and grotesque because of life's hate. “You're at the bottom of the food chain. You can reach for the sun on the corpses of your friends or by supporting each other. Are you a pack of wolves or a pride of cats?”

He wanted them to support each other, but the choice had to be theirs. Only the choices we make ourselves mean anything. He wasn't here to give them what he thought they needed; he was here to give them what they wanted.

“Is that what you do .…” The girl’s words trailed off under his eyes. She didn't think she was worth listening to. The laughter of friends, parents, and everyone she loved, had taught her that her opinion didn't matter. It was a hard thing to get past, to believe everyone you loved was wrong about you. It was so much easier to believe in others than to fight for yourself. Mastering herself, she met his eyes. “Is that what you do in the Furies?”

The group stilled at the question; the Furies were never mentioned in this place. It was an unspoken rule, this place was out of step with the school, here only Cesare ruled. “I’d die for them.”

“Would they for you?” The girl asked, eyes going wide as the words slipped out.

“It doesn’t matter.” Leaning on the fence, his smile caught the kids off guard. “You can’t control people. Not their thoughts, feelings, or actions, all you can control is yourself. People fall in love with people who don't give a damn every day, that doesn’t make their love worthless, no matter how shitty the choice. The only thing you have at the end is being true to yourself. Sometimes that means loving people who only ever hurt you.”

He looked over at the girl. “You have to decide for yourself, who your friends are, what you prey on, what you stand for. The answers change, but the questions never will. Today, you have to decide if the people standing next to you are posts to sharpen your claws on or friends to work with.”

Walking away, he returned to the center of the arena. There was a time to talk, but it wasn’t when they needed to be fighting. The kids scrambled back into line with the girl taking Yoshisune off to get him a weapon.

Each was an individual and had their own issues, in the arena that didn’t mean much. Here they were meat. Misshapen animals less than food. Each wanted to be more, longed to be something strong and beautiful. To be the person they dreamed of. That road led through Cesare; he was the only one that had ever given them a chance to be that person.

As the last one hit the grass, Cesare smiled at the dejected faces of the kids leaning on the fence. “Endurance.” The word captured their attention. “You can’t win a fight if you can’t go the distance. A fighter gets good by fighting. If you run every day, you become a runner. Lift steel and you become a weightlifter. The key to a fighter’s success is fighting, he gets good by doing.”

As he left, the Cherrie’s split into two parts. One half heading for the wooden men while the second paired up and started working together. They had over an hour before the gladiators would come to collect them.