Chapter 99: Back Against the Wall
The gong’s deep vibrations still rippled through the heavy air, impregnating every dust particle suspended beneath the harsh torchlight. It was no longer just a sound it was the pulse of a monstrous, relentless heart, resonating down to the marrow of every fighter’s bones.
A deafening beat, immense, that seemed to liquefy the sand underfoot with every reverberation. The crowd, held in a suffocating silence, collectively held its breath a single, voracious entity hungry for horror and blood.
Mordred narrowed his eyes under his blue-plumed helmet, the cold steel pressing against his damp temples. In a fraction of a second, his gaze swept the arena, calculating, assessing. Death had entered the stage.
The Vhulks of R’daz...
They advanced in an unnatural silence. Their translucent bodies shimmered like crystallized smoke under the moonlight, diffracting the light into sickly, shifting prisms. Their floating glide gave the illusion of lazy sluggishness almost hypnotic.
But it was a cruel deception.
With a hiss like air escaping a gaping wound, one of them darted forward. A burst of speed so extreme it warped the air around it, creating visible waves of distortion.
Before the young gladiator in the front line could even raise his shield a desperate gesture doomed to failure a luminescent tentacle brushed against his shoulder.
Just a touch. A mere breath of phosphorescent light.
The young man froze instantly, locked in a grotesque posture, his eyes wide as if trying to flee from their sockets. His mouth opened for a scream that never came.
Then his entire body convulsed in a macabre dance.