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[hafrogman]

The darkness in the slave pens was opressive. I could see the dirty flicker of torches from the guard station, casting just enough light for me to make out my surroundings. It didn't help. The sound of heavy footsteps heralded the arrival of a guard to escort some of us to the arena. A scaled hand reached down and dragged me to my feet.

"You'll do, Pinky."

I was thrown in a room with my gear and two other gladiators, a dragonborn and a human. The door was closed and locked behind us, and the only other exit was a long corridor, with the faint glimmer of daylight. I could hear the faint sounds of the arena echoing down the hall. My fellow gladiators glared at me as I stood there, and I hurriedly donned my armor, grabbed my sword, and followed them down the hall. We stood at the portcullis, watching as a dwarf delivered a killing blow to his opponent. The dwarf retreated through another portcullis, and slaves quickly dragged the body of his late foe away. The steel bars in front of us began to raise, and my companions pushed me out onto the sands as we watched to see who we would be facing.

I stood on the sands flanked by the other gladiators, and watched as a large gate opposite us slowly opened. The roar that issued forth was my first clue that this would not be quite as I expected. Three gladiators against three gladiators would have been different from my days as a Gladia Prima, but still fundamentally the same. A match of warrior against warrior, for the show, for the glory. A large hulking creature was prodded into the light and the gates slammed shut behind us. This was no warrior, this was a beast of the wilds, angry, hungry and vicious. It swung its shaggy head around sniffing at the air, and then focused on us. My companions were already spreading out, and the human identified our foe for us.

"It's a cave bear. The gods! It's huge."

I gripped my sword tightly, and watched as the bear reared up, roaring a challenge. Then it dropped to all fours and charged at me. This was no contest, this was my life. I barely ducked out of the way of the huge paw that swiped at my head, and I tried to duck away to one side, but the beast turned faster than I expected and swiped at me again, sending me sprawling. While I had it distracted one of the other gladiators screamed and launched an attack at it's back. The dragonborn's axe seemed to just glance off the creature's body, but the bear roared and turned away from me. I scrambled to my feat, and added my own swing to the assault, as the human joined is as well. The three of us tried to hack at the bear and keep out of reach of it's claws and teeth. No matter how many blows scored its hide, the thing wouldn't die, and we were rapidly tiring. The bear spun around quickly, swiping at all of us, roaring in protest. The human and I were knocked to the sands, but the dragonborn hit the wall and fell unconcious in front of the bear. It's jaws latched on to the scaled one and ripped off a limb, spraying blood onto the sands. Horrified, I turned away and glanced at my remaining ally, he had taken wounds of his own, and was struggling to his feet.

I hurried to him, and helped him to stand.

"Stand firm, man. If we are to survive, we must stand firm!"

He nodded and straightened up as the bear turned from his downed foe and refocused his attention on the two of us. We both charged at the beast, striking it again and again. It, too, was beginning to slow, it's blood slowly staining the sand beneath it, but it was still stronger than either of us. I dodged the wrong direction and took a nasty swipe across my chest, falling to the sands. Undeterred by the blows the human still rained down on it's back, the bear lunged at me, and I stared into the very literal jaws of death. I suddenly felt the fey magic in my blood flare up as it had not done since my youth, and the world flashed green around me. The bear suddenly halted, gave a pained snort and swung it's head around, as if looking for something. I took my chance and swung my sword as hard as I could at it's head as the human stabbed once more into it's side. Everything we had was in those strikes, and our foe finally succumbed to his wounds.

The other gladiator and I looked at the corpse of a once noble creature, the bloodied remains of our fallen ally and our own broken bodies. This was not what the arena was supposed to be. The crowds cheered their blood lust, but it rung hollow to my ears, as I made my way back to the slave pens, to await the next day.