Alexandra gave a nod, agreeing with some private thought before kneeling in prayer. Nothing and no one was more important to her than God, today she'd go into battle with his grace in her heart. Anastasia gave Cesare a troubled look before folding herself into a chair and putting her earphones on. Soon she was lost to them, communing with the Ebon Flame in a world crafted by Cesare.

Shaking his head, Cesare set the weapons on the table for one last check. Running his hands over the spears, he traced the spiral of copper welds. He’d spent a lot of time working on making the piping as smooth as glass. The spears shone in the dim light, steel and copper polished to mirror brightness from the time he’d poured into them over the last weeks. He hadn’t gone into it to make them beautiful, but they’d turned out that way. In the sunlight, they shone like the mythical spears of Lugh.

Setting the spears aside, he pulled Anastasia’s backpack to him, taking out the heavy footballs. They were made of leather he’d stitched together and hardened with a water form. Wire glinted in the light, woven into the dead flesh of the weapons, each end terminating in a point that pierced deep into the plastic explosive.

Kali and Elizabeth sat next to Cesare as he went over the weapons, talking quietly of small things, plants, dresses, and weird news stories. If today was his last, he wanted to spend it with the people he loved. Alexandra and Anastasia had their own ways of getting ready, talking to God or falling into a mind didn’t appeal to him. He wanted to hear the voices of his friends, to glory one last time in having them beside him.

Standing, Elizabeth hesitated, fingers unconsciously rolling the rind around her finger. “It’s time.”

Cesare nodded, already laying his hand on Anastasia’s shoulder, bringing her out of her trance. Clear, untroubled eyes looked up at him. With a smile, she nuzzled against his hand. Sharing a private smile with her, he moved away while taking up Alexandra’s spears.

Flowing to her feet, serenity enfolded Alexandra in an almost visible blanket of grace. Accepting the spears, her fingers ran over his in a caress hidden from the others. Giving her a tight smile, he started for the door.

He liked this place, it was dark and safe, close walls of roots and earth, the beating heart of something good and true. In the velvet darkness, with the creature of the wood around him, he could almost believe this day would be right, even while fantasies of slaughter danced through his soul.

Coming out of the tunnel, his body shifted into a prowling, dangerous walk. The darkness was safe, it cradled the mind and body, soothed the broken hearted and shattered souled. The light stripped away that protection, leaving you exposed and vulnerable. It hurt the eyes, burnt the flesh, favored the strong over the weak. The sun was the bringer of fear, terror marched in its golden embrace.

Alexandra fell into step on his left with Anastasia taking the right. A fairy tale staircase of shining wood had been crafted into the wall, spiraling up in delicate steps to Elizabeth’s box seats. Pale, butter soft wood shone with a polish that softened the suns harsh gift. The banister was done in gentle white, branches curling out into the empty space between stairs and banister, perfect in form, shaped with love, shoots of green leaves feathered the branches. It was delicately elegant, like the woman that made it.

She met his eyes with a quirk of an eyebrow. “You didn’t think I wanted to stand for the fights, did you?” Cesare bowed slightly in invitation for her to lead the way.

Crow’s feet wrinkled around her dancing eyes. She knew why he wanted her to go first, he’d never tried to hide his appreciation for her voluptuous figure. Shaking her head, she started up the stairs with an exaggerated sway to her hips.

He might be dead in the next few hours, but watching that swaying walk, he couldn’t help the smile that spread across his face. Death would come for him or it would pass him by, right now, he was face to butt cheek with the woman he loved, and life was good.

The staircase let out into her box seat through a half door carved with wolf cubs playing. Tracing the carvings, he could almost feel their fur as they tumbled over each other. It was whimsical, honest, what every childhood should be, and totally inappropriate for this place dedicated to carnage. Yet, smoothing his fingers over the soft wood, he couldn’t help thinking this was the perfect place for them.

Grinning, he entered the box and sat down next to Elizabeth with a sigh of contentment. Kali shared his grin, claiming the seat on his other side, leaving the far seats for the girls coming up behind her.

“Bet if I had an ass like hers, we could have done more than talk last night?” Kali said archly, motes of desire floating through her eyes.

Cesare laid his hand across her face, looking beyond the desire and confidence to the shy uncertainty that stood as the bedrock of every being. “No, you're perfect the way you are. I wouldn’t want you any other way.”

Kali kissed him gently. “Dangerous, very, very, dangerous,” she whispered, relaxing into her seat.

Greg’s voice boomed through the stadium. “We’ve been waiting! Speculating! Wondering! Today, all questions are answered! Today, Thagirion will face Thagirion! For the first time in history, Titan will face Titan! Master of the Woods against the Lord of the Mountain!”

The crowd screamed its approval, the noise breaking through the stadium like the bellowing of some colossal beast. Into that base rumble of savage lust came the high piping of the Bacchante. The sound slid into the brain as sharp as a straight razor and as loving. Stropping across the soul, it sliced off the veneer of civilization. Bleeding muscle and bone parted as the animal at the heart of every being pushed its way out.

“Then ... the Main Event!” The roar was felt in resonating bones more than heard. “The Hitokiri from the land of a thousand demons against the newly formed Furies!” Piercing the ear, the Bacchante sent a shrill whistling tone skittering along the nerves, high enough to kill the unseen things in the ear, only dying screams left in its wake.

Threaded into the primal sound was the roar of brutal want that blasted from the students. Pure and undiluted by right or wrong, they threw off their veneer of humanity, tried and true instincts shining in gnashing teeth and eyes that shone with mad desires.

It was beautiful in the way of an obsidian machuahuitl. A wooden club lined with obsidian knives able to decapitate a horse. The weapon was brutal, savage, black need wedded to unstoppable savagery. The Umbrae Lunae were perfect in a way humanity could never be. Humans ran from the carnal desires in their hearts, they lied, schemed, and buried the beast, choking it on the shit of civilized life. The Umbrae Lunae embraced their nature, glorying in their pure animal desires, at least for this brief time, the sacred butchery giving them permission to be true for an hour.

Blaez took the field in full Kveldulf, nine feet of mean temper. The wolf had never been pretty in full form, but now he was a grotesque mockery of what he'd been. Leathery canyons dug trenches down the things face and muzzle, disappearing into the patchy fur of its chest. Lips bled and drooled in rivers that left bare skin glistening with spit threaded blood.

Velociraptor legs dug up the ground with each lumbering step, always on the edge of collapse, only stable while moving. Muscles deformed the things upper body, lumps of dense meat bunching and relaxing as the misshapen monster stumbled forward. Long, scything claws brushed its knees, dripping blood in a steady stream from split fingers.

He'd been arrogant and sure of his invulnerability, now he was a scarred, lumbering thing dominated by his deformity. Anastasia had come through her crucible of torture stronger than ever. Agony burning off the dross, leaving her with gleaming steel eager for the shaping. Cesare wondered what would come out of the crucible that had enveloped Blaez.

Pantagruel came from the opposing arch, from his first step into the arena, the man grew. Naked, he was the image of obsession. Mounds of muscles bulging, warping his shoulders and arms, turning them into tree trunks that swung in narrow arcs. His waist was tight, with a perfect wash board stomach. As the giant rose higher and higher, his legs thickened into meat wider than most the columns of the school.

Pantagruel was an engine of primeval power, an unstoppable force. He wasn’t just big, he was immensely strong, able to uproot trees, punt cars, and demolish buildings. At over twenty feet tall, his hands could crush a man with as little effort as Cesare would a kitten. While the giant had been taken out by Akachi, it was only because the wily honey badger had never allowed the giant to connect. The werewolf wasn’t that nimble.

Cesare leaned back as a thrill chased itself through his heart. It was the fight he’d wanted to see since he’d heard about it. This didn’t have anyone he cared about in it; he was free to glut himself on the butchery. Cesare liked fighting, no, that was too light, he loved fighting. It was part of him, pure in its magnificent brutality. It had come to him slowly but as inexorable as the tide. He fought, he killed, and he liked it. He was born for slaughter, a predator birthed in the flesh of sheep.

It was just one more way he’d failed, another shade of midnight sliding into his being, warping an already crippled soul. He envied the Umbrae Lunae with their simple acceptance of their nature. But he wasn’t Umbrae Lunae. He was a misshapen thing, broken pieces of his soul grinding against each other, no pleasure without pain, no freedom without self-loathing.

Cesare watched the two walk to the line of slaughter. Both were close range fighters with nothing to gain from distance. The two monsters faced each other with only five feet separating them. A twenty-foot-tall giant of muscle and force, and a thing of tearing death.

The crowd held its breath as the two sized each other up, the whistling frenzied pipes of the Bacchante plucking along the spine, drawing nerves tight in anticipation. The Thagirion had always been pitted against other schools, never each other. It thrilled the school as much as terrorized, emotions twisting around the heart like stranglers vines. The breaking of over a thousand years of tradition was a hard thing to see in front of you.

“Without further words let the fight ... BEGIN!” The crowd surged to its feet cheering.

Blaez rocketed forward with a hungry howl, claws reaching for the giant. Cocking back, Pantagruel’s kick was slow but carried the power of a wrecking ball. Maybe a careful werewolf could have dodged, but not Blaez. Not a boy who'd never had to dodge before, a boy raised to run at things and kill them in a frenzy of teeth and claws.

The soccer kick hit the wolf squarely, lifting the thousand-pound monstrosity into the air, flinging him through the air head over ass. Blasting through emptiness with a confused wail, the werewolf hit the ground with a solid thump felt in the bones of the watchers. Rolling over the ground, the snapping of its bones rode above the screaming crowd, the Bacchante’s song galloping along with the wolf’s wild tumble.

Slamming against the wall with a bone breaking crash, the wolf quivered in a lump of fractured bones, torn flesh, and writhing skin. Pantagruel sprinted for the wolf, each step shaking the ground. Sliding across the ground on his knees, the giant kneeled over the beaten wolf.

Coming down with unstoppable force, the giants fists hit the wolfs body in detonations of wet meat. Each brutal punch joined by the sound of breaking bones as the giant tenderized the werewolf. The ground shuddered with each devastating hit, force running through the werewolf, tremors radiating out from the titans.

Boiling from the ground in a storm of teeth and talons, the werewolf sliced up the giant’s hands. Flesh hanging in strips, Pantagruel yanked his hands away from the crazed werewolf. Blaez’s talons hooked into the giant’s body, foot-long claws digging into meat, tangling in the giant’s bones.

Stumbling back, the giant dragged the wolf with him, giving everyone a chance to see Blaez. His head was caved in along one side, leaving only one eye and half a jaw. White ribs tore through wet muscle in spines of jagged ivory. Twisted wrecks, his legs were a broken jigsaw puzzle of shattered bones and mangled meat.

Climbing the giant one fistful of meat a time, ripping and tearing at any piece of flesh within reach, the werewolf was far from out. Sprays of blood and flesh littered the grass as the wolf gouged out chunks of the boy, looking as if it was trying to burrow into the body and carve a cave of meat.

Steeling himself, Pantagruel gripped the burrowing werewolf with both hands. With an agonized yell, the giant tore the wolf off, throwing Blaez across the arena. Without hitting ground, the wolf slammed into the wall with a wet slap, blood splashing across wood.

Pantagruel’s thigh was flayed open, strips of muscle and weeping meat hanging in tatters, white bone peeking out through half eaten trenches carved into his legs. Wet quivering organs could be seen in the canyon the wolf had dug into his stomach.

Blood ran down the giant’s legs, pooling on the ground. “He’s done.” The words were less than a whisper but captured the attention of everyone in the box. “He can still win, but at the price of crippling himself. Blaez will heal, Pantagruel's looking at years of physical therapy to be a fucked up version of himself. The wolf won by being too much of a sonofabitch to stay down.”

Screaming in ecstasy, the crowd roared its approval. It was a brutal assault of mindless arousal, ripped from monstrous souls, the sound a physical thing filling the arena. Alexandra leaned forward with needy intensity, soaking in the agony. Relaxing into her seat, Anastasia's mouth was parted in satiated pleasure. Kali watched the fight with a smile hot with desire, caressing along his arm, her touch suggestive. Elizabeth watched with studied elegance, heat rising on her cheeks.

Pantagruel raised his hand, voice booming over the arena. “I yield.” The words caught the students by surprise. Uniting as one, they yelled their disgust at the shrinking boy, even as medics ran onto the field, streaking toward the brutalized boys.

Released from mad desire, the women relaxed with satisfied smiles. Their sexual enjoyment taken with the morality of gods. Utterly sure they were in the right, that their pleasures were blessed by profane gods. A cat loves to see other things suffer, taking innocent pleasure in the pain of its prey.

“It’s time,” Cesare said, meeting Alexandra at the gate to the stairs