The Arena

From a distance, you see it. Rising over the tops of the trees, the round sparsely decorated lip of the white stone Arena you have heard mention of far and wide. As you near it, it disappears behind a copse of tall trees. It isn’t until you are nearer that you realize the vast scope of this large structure.

An arch before you, tall, wide enough for three chariots side by side to enter. The once-grand demons and dragons that guarded that entry are now all but broken by time and wear. You pass beneath their still-vigilant gaze, and into a great gladiator’s stadium!

All sides are filled with tier after tier of benches, curving around and away from where you stand. The wide aisle you walk down now leads you past the stairways that go up to the seats on either side, and through a tall rock-hard barrier several feet thick. Into the center ring!

Now you walk in dust and dirt, packed down hard by hundreds of scuffling feet and the wheels of time. You can smell the heat of battle, the sweat of men and women jockeying for position, shoulder to shoulder. The songs of war, grunts of effort and screams of pain, ring in your ears like blades striking.

Or maybe it’s something else, maybe something else goes on here. As you look around, you see the telltale signs of sex matches and slave duels. Look there, rings pounded into the inner arena wall, likely for holding slaves still while others are ravished and used in front of the eyes of eager spectators. And see here to one side, a bevy of chains and links, some broken, some with open padlocks.

A lever to your side begs you to pull it, and you do. And down from a pulley far above your head comes a temporary staging ground, a low platform of smooth, polished wood. You hop up onto it, and fall to one side. The surface is slick with oil…and something else…

Sex matches?

You can picture it now. Dueling submissives finally called forth to aggressiveness, battling each other with oiled bodies, forcing each other to give in to tantalizing pleasures and yield themselves to the victor.

Back on the arena floor, the aeons seem to call out to you, and you can imagine the memories that were made here, the battles fought, won, and lost. This stain near your foot, deeply ingrained in the flat stones beneath the dirt and the grime – could it be blood? Or the wine of victory celebrations not so long past?

This is the Arena. And as you turn and gaze upon the seats you thought were empty, the eyes of a million people watch you, waiting to see what you have to prove.

Is that a chip on your shoulder?

This is where you test your mettle! This is where legends are made!