Page 72 of Rise of a Fallen Man

Mine was next.

Doing a new act was always nerve-racking. But we’d practiced it enough times for it to go well. I just needed to focus and stick with the script.

I set the mug on the floor outside of the cage. Fixed the helmet on my head and got up.

The floor of my cage shook. The trap door above my head opened, momentarily blinding me with sunlight. The noise of the crowd embraced me as the cage rose to the surface.

I played my part, growling and lunging at the bars until they were lowered, setting me free.

Lerrel took the idea for my newest act from the extensive lore about the Great Goddess’s children who defeated the legions ofmonstrous demons that plagued our world at the beginning of times.

According to the legend, the demons captured Nus’s daughter, the Goddess of Governance, and chained her to the top of a mountain for dragons to tear her apart. However, her sisters killed the dragons and rescued her.

Lerrel decided to give the story an unexpected twist by having a wild mountain man rescue the goddess. The games master hoped that the audience would find the unique premise of a man rescuing a woman fresh, entertaining, and fun.

My cage delivered me to the north end of the oval arena. In the south end, the mob of the terrifying monster-demons were already dragging Nave, the actress hired to portray the Goddess of Governance, up a prop mountain.

Nave was wearing a costume designed as ancient armor and looked like she was fresh out of a battle. Her breast plate was dented and scratched, her arm splattered with blood-red paint, and her helmet and sword were missing.

I was supposed to ignore her struggle for now. The savage man I played had to hunt for his dinner first.

Paying no attention to the demon-monsters and the goddess, I went about the prop forest, looking for Daisy, the unicorn goat, that I had to catch for the amusement of the crowd.

Like she was trained to do, Daisy peacefully grazed on a patch of grass behind a brook with a waterfall. I approached her in a crouch from behind and launched for her, but tripped on my bear cape and fell.

Instead of jumping up right away, I stretched on my belly and grabbed her by her hind legs.

The goat bleated, jerking her legs. She turned her head, trying to reach me with the long horn that grew in the middle of her forehead.

I kicked my feet, pretending the struggle was harder than it actually was.

The crowd laughed and cheered. People shouted advice about how best to tackle the goat.

My fall had been accidental, but the rest of it was not. The sound of laughter felt just as rewarding to me as the screams of adoration. It meant people had fun.

The gladiators often took what we did too seriously. They aimed for the image of a perfect, infallible hero without a single fault, which was hard to attain and even more difficult to maintain.

Lerrel often said that there was nothing more lethal for entertainment than boredom, and I discovered that the crowd responded well to an occasional mistake, as long as the mistake was entertaining.

I made it look like Daisy was winning by letting her go, then recapturing her to the utter delight of the crowd. Finally, I hauled her on my shoulders and stomped into the nearest cave.

Inside the cave, a pile of goat bones waited for me with a collar and a leash attached to a ring in the floor, and a carrot.

I put the collar on Daisy. She bleated one more time before I gave her the carrot and knocked on the floor. A trapdoor opened to below, and the goat safely descended to her handlers under the arena floor. I tossed the goat bones out of the cage, as the proof to the crowd that Daisy had met her untimely end as my dinner.

Some in the audience gasped. Others shouted and cheered. But overall, everyone seemed to have a good time, which was all that mattered.

Now came the hard part.

A vibration through the ground signaled the gears were turning, opening the tunnels for the giant fire-breathing worms.

Each worm was about as thick as me and about twice as long. Their proportions made them look more like huge maggots than worms. Pale and blind, they spent most of their long lives underground in the marsh along the shore of the Western Islands, causing no harm unless forced out into the open. If disturbed, however, they spewed fire.

Lerrel had mechanisms to pull the chains through the tunnels below to irritate the worms by bringing them to the surface at certain intervals. She had also marked the openings to the tunnels for me and the others to see where the danger might come from.

The first opening was right in front of the cave. I had to get out or I’d get fried.

I rushed out, and the fire blasted behind me, spurring me forward. Another burst of hot air and flames exploded to my right.

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