Slave Girl 2: Chapter 123 (Patreon)

In the dozens and hundreds of times that I had run this moment over in my mind I had always imagined Toke and I’s battle beginning with long grim stares and some final words as the tension gradually grew.  At the very least I had expected some sort of clear signal that it had started, his now infamous ‘go!’ perhaps.  After so long of a build up and the stakes involved the gravity of this moment deserved some ceremony.  But neither come to pass as the exact instant that my trailing foot touched down on the platform the fight was on.  Toke’s hands snap up, one to protect his chin and one out front to jab or grab, while the rest of his body turns and lowers into a familiar combat stance.  Familiar yet…opposite?  I’d barely come to terms with the fact that we were already fighting when the realization strikes that Toke was fighting southpaw!  He’s never done this once in all of our long weeks of training together.  Our audience as well notices it as murmurs of surprise ripple all around.

I am forced to adjust quickly as a pair of snapping jabs spurs me to action.  Instinctually I slip to my right so that the jabs hit nothing but air.  Big mistake.  CRACK!  Despite the cloudy sky and the canopy cover I see stars as I end up stepping straight into the rattling left hook that the jabs had set up.  My friends let out great gasp in unison.

Covering up I stagger to the center of the platform shaking the cobwebs as quick as I can.  Not quick enough.  Toke shuffles in at me and fakes a jab.  Clear headed I would have recognized the faint for what it was but still a bit loopy my only thought is to protect my head, leaving my gut wide open for the straight left kick that he buries into it.

“Gnngh!”  The air is forced from my lungs in a low grunt.  I try to grab for his leg but it was gone before I could even get close.

My bearings somewhat regained I am able to stave off a knee and an elbow but receive a hard shin into my knee for my efforts.  Gods!  Over six weeks of hard training and I felt like I was no better off than that first time he and I met on the streets of Grumentum!  The cunning old wolf had kept a trick up his sleeve as I wasn’t fighting Toke, I was fighting his mirrored twin.  Of our group only Quique fought left-handed so I at least had some preparation for this, but while Quique was a competent fighter in his own right he was nowhere near Toke’s level.  Regardless I am swiftly able to reset my mind into fighting a left-hander and start the battle again, this time already sporting a sore jaw, belly, and knee.

Still trying to press his advantage the northman stutter-steps in then lunges for a take down.  Mistake on his part.  Knowing damn well that nobody in this group, Toke included, ever took to me to the ground while I was still fresh enough to bring my full strength to bear I allow the lunge and meet it with an uppercut.  KRUNK!  The punch flattens Toke’s proud nose as his skull painted head snaps upward.  Blood streaming from his nostrils he staggers backward and nearly off of the platform.

As our audience lets out another collective gasp I stand a moment in the center of the square allowing the cool drizzle that reached this part of the platform wash over me to clear my head and make my flesh as wet and slippery as his was from his walk over.

Toke wipes the blood from his lips and chin, though it is instantly replaced by the steady crimson flow, and he spits.  “Lucky shot, whelp.”

“You better have some more tricks waiting for me, old man.”  I wave him onto me.  “I’ve taken your best shots and I’m still standing.”

“Hardly.”  He scowls.

Back into his stance he prowls forward, far more cautiously this time.  The blood streaking down his chin and neck to make his visage even more horrifying in the flickering firelight.  But I wasn’t fighting this blood spitting skull monster.  I was fighting a man and I narrow my focus onto the details that actually mattered.  Slowly we circle around the round copper plate at the center of the platform, our eyes keen for every lapse or flaw in our opponents guard.  Once, twice, three times we come together to trade blows, blocks, counters and dodges and three times we come apart none the worse for wear.  Yet each time I come out ahead.  A faint but growing frustration in my teacher’s cold blue eyes builds as blood steadily dripped from the tip of his chin.  

“RAH!”  He lets out a booming bellow and feints right then spins back the other direction, his fist looping through the air in an arc of pure devastation.  Devastating if it lands that is.  I duck the back fist and dig a hook into his ribs.  THUNK!  The force of my brutal blow echoes off the tree trunks and knocks him to the side a step.  “Ngh!”  Pushing my advantage I throw a series of rights and lefts, none of which find their mark but batter off of his arms and shoulders to do at least a bit of damage.  He shoots a kick from his hip in return but I am able to dance back  just enough for it to miss my ribs by an inch.  CRACK!  I let loose a hard downward hammer fist which clubs him square in the meat of the thigh.  Wincing in pain he pulls his leg back and tries to shake off the effects as we square in the center once more.  He goes to jab but I jab back faster, striking him clean between his dazzled eyes.  He goes for a big left hook and I duck it and land a heavy body shot.  The blows were adding up.

As a roll of thunder passes overhead voices low and awed whispered all around.  The fight was unfolding not at all like any of us predicted.  Toke was bleeding, limping, his long hair frazzled from the force of my uppercut and his left elbow was pinned to his flank to protect the ribs I had just hit.  Despite the hollow skeletal face that stared back at me Toke was no monster of myth.  This great painted man of the north, larger than life in all of our eyes, was all at once looking all too human.

I can barely hear the cheer rise up around us as in a flash of insight gifted by Minerva herself the truth opens up before me.  After all of my worries and fears after all these weeks what was right there in front of me this whole time is revealed like it had never been before.  Toke really was old.  He was old and worn down by decades of porridge suppers, too much unnecessary violence in the arena, and a cruel master’s neglect and beatings.  A month and a half of honest living and good meals could not erase a half a lifetime of the grinding existence of a slave.  I hadn’t noticed until now thanks to my respect for the man and that, in training, we always held back.  But in this true fight to the finish secrets had nowhere left to hide.  In his prime he could have given me the fight of my life.  But standing here on this day, if nothing changed, this long awaited battle was only going to go one way.

Seeing a new calm confidence wash over me Toke bares his bloody teeth and lets out a savage snarl. “RRRAAAHHH!  ROMAN DOG!”

Before I can attack he launches himself at me with a wild flurry of punches, kicks, grabs and elbows that takes me aback through their sheer feral ferocity.  The blows were looping and sloppy but unpredictable.  I block and parry most of them and get a few back myself, but still they came one after the next after the next.  A stiff blow to the sternum that would have staggered most men doesn’t so much as faze him and the snapping punch across his branded cheek he doesn’t even feel.  He twice clips glancing blows off the top of my skull but I immediately return the favor with a hard strike to his temple.  A fresh cut opens up at his brow but he was suddenly impervious to pain and damage!  After a particularly wild fury in which I am forced to turtle up I peek out just in time to see him throw his body at me with reckless abandon.

“UFF!”  I grunt as the pair of us tumble to the ground in a chaotic flail of arms and legs.

Two wet, slippery, muscular body twist and writhe for position.  We wrestle like we hadn’t done since back at Aristocles’ shop, fighting to finish.  In the flurry of limbs I see another opening and I take it, striking the point of my elbow across his broken nose, but again he soaks the damage with barely a flinch and uses the twist of my body to take my back.  In a flash his battle hardened experience shows its worth and he suddenly has his legs wrapped around my torso as his arms scrambled to encircle my neck.  I desperately try to fend off the choke, wondering exactly where things that had been going so well took this unfortunate turn.  It was, of course, the moment that Toke abandoned our well drilled techniques to fight on pure warrior instinct.  A final lesson from him that I would not soon forget.

With his blood streaming across my neck and shoulder I hold him off for a while but each time that I think that I am making progress I am hit with a series of elbows and punches which forces me to retreat into pure defense again.  Gradually, inexorably, the huffing, snorting Toke gets closer and closer to getting my neck into the hold that would finish me.  With a final surge I try to buck him off and it is in that very motion where his bicep slips beneath my chin.  Toke squeezes.

As his powerful legs crush my body as his long, strong arms constrict around my neck everything…slows.  The shouted voices around us become distant and muffled until I cannot hear them at all.  I hear only Toke’s hard breathing against my ear and feel the slow drum of my heart pounding in my chest.  I watch the raindrops fall like thick honey rolling down the edge of bottle.  And I feel…calm.  It was a calm reminiscent of that state of bliss I found myself under my Lady’s bondage, yet also different.  It was not a calm of surrender but of focus.  It was as if Saturn had slowed time just for me to provide the chance to think and act.

With both hands I push up on Toke’s elbow with all of my strength while at the same time tucking my chin tight to my neck.  Slippery from the rain my chin slips past his arm to deny him his choke.  Echoing in my ear is his huff of frustration.  My moment was soon.  I could sense it in my bones.  Indeed it comes just five beats of my heart later.  As he goes to turn me and shift to recenter himself I lash out with all the wild strength he’d shown me just moments ago.  There is another scramble, during which the world speeds back up again, and without even really knowing how I got there I find myself back on my feet again.

Across from me Toke’s chest and shoulders heave up and down as he gulps down open mouthed breaths.  Crimson streams from his nose and various cuts around his face to trickle down his long body with the rain.  His fury, his costly grapple, and a day of heightened energies had now sapped him of valuable vigor.  I was bruised and my knee hurt but with the deep rest of last night and the evening of focused preparation my reserves had barely been tapped.  Whether Toke wanted it or not, the fight was over.

I offer my hand.  “Let us end this as men and as friends.  I offer a draw.”

Taking the moment to steal deep, gasping breaths he whispers.  “You…are my masterpiece.”  He laughs at some private joke then swallows hard.  “You are my only legacy, Quintus.  And it has been an honor.”  With that he slaps my hand away and bloodies my nose with wicked cracking jab.  “But we fight to win!”

“Son of a…!”  I spit and raise my hands again toward the battered, smiling berserker.  “Alright then.  Let’s end this.”

Just then there is some sort of commotion behind me.  I couldn’t make out the details but just by the tones of voices Rosa was upset about something and Cassie was trying to calm her down.  And rightly so!  I loved my Lady slave as much as any man could love a woman but NOW, at the cusp of my victory, was not the right time for distractions.  Toke grins a bloody grin as he notices my attention split.

“Your slave is calling for you, Quintus.”  He chuckles.  “Better check on her.”

“She can wait.”  I hiss back.

“MASTER!”  Rosa’s scream pierces the humid night air.

“Fuck.”  I mutter under my breath.  I knew I had to look, but unfortunately so did he.  For a moment we stand frozen, each of us waiting to see what I did.

“MASTER!!!”

I take a leap backward and spare just the blink of an eye to glance Rosa’s way.  She was on her feet halfway between her blanket and the platform with Cassie in front of her holding her back.  Her huge magenta eyes, as wide as they could go, were locked onto the center of the platform.  Locked and focused.  Rosa was seeing something!  And the look of sheer terror across her demon face left me shook to the core.  She looked as if our harpy had returned from the afterlife to seek revenge.

“OOF!”  The wind is knocked form me as Toke shoots in on me to grab me around the waist.  Only by hours of repetition and training do I instantly sprawl and grab onto his back so as not to be taken down.

As Toke and I struggle for advantage in each other’s arms I spare a look toward the copper plate at the center of the stone square.  In the long shadows of the dancing orange firelight I at first see nothing but the sheen of rain across the patina surface.  In the jostle of my wrestling I could see nothing amiss.

Until…movement?

I blink my eyes against the drizzle and when I focus again I then notice that the upper ridges of the maze design was only wet with clear clean rain.  All of the copious amounts of dark blood spilled by Toke onto it had settled into the recessed grooves of the circular labyrinth in a way that could not be natural.  Thick, glistening, dark, and undiluted by the falling rain Toke’s blood collects to form into one unbroken ruby-black snake then begins to move through the twists and turns with an eerie life of its own!  Magic!

“Toke!”  I cry and try to push him away.  “Toke!  Wait!”

He ignores my pleas and continues to try to haul me to the ground again as that ribbon of blood slithers its way to the center of the labyrinth where the Minotaur waits.

Chapter 124