Outside the arena, the gilded armor of the high knights gleamed with a cold, ominous light beneath the twilight.
With a barrage of sharp military orders, fully armed soldiers surged forward like a rising tide, sealing off the ancient coliseum in an iron ring.
The praetorians stood ready, their silvervine tendrils weaving together into massive shields that locked into formation at the entrance.
The pampered High Knights were seething with frustration. They would have preferred to remain hidden in their gilded palaces, sipping fine wine and basking in flattery.
But the situation had spiraled beyond control; every second of hesitation only fanned the flames of rebellion.
They had to crush the uprising before it spread. If the fire leapt from the slums' thatch to the nobles' silken canopies, the entire city would descend into a hell from which there was no return.
Boom!
The beastmen smashed through the arena's bronze gates, the thunderous crash heralding the collapse of the old order.
Their knotted muscles were slick with the gore and viscera of the praetorians they'd torn apart. Shredded silvervines hung from their flesh like badges of honor, oozing blood with every breath.
But the wounds only fueled their fury. Their eyes constricted, and with a thunder of hooves, they charged into the waiting praetorian phalanx like an avalanche of death.
"Claudia!" The roar shook the golden halls. "Do you realize what a disaster you've caused? A High Knight is dead, you will answer for this!"
"Enor." Claudia's voice was soft and lazy, like a feather drifting down. She didn't even look up. The shattered drone crashed beside her, scattering sparks across the marble floor.
"My lady," Enor bowed her head.
Claudia chuckled through her nose. "I'm not your lady anymore. Don't you have a new mistress now?"
Enor trembled. "No matter what happens, you will always be my mistress."
Claudia's red lips curved into a wicked smile. "Relax. I keep my word. Until your death, your life belongs to Mira."
"Yes, my lady." Enor's slender fingers twisted at her skirt unconsciously. "But my soul belongs to you."
"Come closer, Enor," Claudia's voice dripped like poisoned honey. "Tell me, Enor… how would you like to be my daughter in the next life?"
Enor's lashes quivered, casting faint shadows across her pale cheeks. "It would be my honor."
"I'm quite serious," Claudia murmured, tilting Enor's chin up with a finger. "My dear likes raising sons, not daughters. Maybe he dislikes me because I've never been a mother. So… which of you would like to be my daughter? After all, I am your mother already."
"Lady…" Enor's voice was barely above a whisper, fragile as a dream. "We… we might not survive your love."
"Don't be afraid," Claudia lounged lazily in her throne-like chair. "Just an ordinary mother and daughter, like my dear and Angron. I chose you for your purity, from the endless ocean of souls, out of countless upon countless, I picked you."
Her words trailed into infinity, but Enor trembled, for she knew those weren't just numbers.
"Alright, no more teasing." Claudia suddenly smiled like a mischievous child and flicked Enor's nose. "Go now. The fools who dared invade my palace must pay the price. My dear and the child have other work to do, help them finish it. Clean the palace of every last intruder."
"Yes, my lady."
Enor stepped back silently. Her gown swept across the marble floor without a sound.
As her silhouette faded into the gilded shadows, several graceful figures gathered around her like ghosts in moonlight.
The maids moved with feline grace, their faces pale and beautiful, their fingers curled delicately around elegant weapons.
"Sister Enor," one whispered.
"Go," Enor said softly. "Cherish this second life. Do not waste the mistress's gift."
In the Octavia Palace, there were only women.
Claudia's praetorians were women. Her maids were all women. And yet their souls, tempered through endless lifetimes, were deadlier than any male warrior.
The High Knights had no idea of the truth. They rushed toward the palace with their finest troops, eager to capture Claudia as the supposed mastermind of the revolt, as if this revolution were hers alone.
A blade kissed a knight's throat before his silvervine could even hum a warning.
A maid caught his falling body gently, like embracing a sleeping lover.
Barefoot, she hooked a silk cloth with her toes, twirled it gracefully, and wiped the blood-slicked floor spotless, without a single sound.
They danced the ballet of death with terrifying precision.
Their blades struck throats in perfect silence; their blood-soaked cloths caught every crimson drop before it reached the marble.
The palace remained eerily calm, no crashing candles, no fleeing birds, no echoing screams.
Even the reflections on the marble floor stayed untouched.
They were elegance incarnate and death itself.
Barefoot maids glided through gold-lit corridors, smiling serenely as they slaughtered.
Every noble of Nuceria flaunted madness in luxury, each one desperate to outshine the others.
Some glided through the skies with mechanical silver wings like Claudia's, others hovered with anti-gravity gloves and boots. A few reclined lazily on floating silk sofas.
Their bestial masks were obscene masterpieces: molten-gold lion manes studded with gems, peacock-feathered eagle beaks worth entire cities.
They perched above the world, determined to prove their superiority.
Despite their numbers and their technology, the high knights held overwhelming advantage.
Tens of thousands of commoners in the arena couldn't fight; they had no weapons. Angron would not let them die for nothing.
"Vermin! You've shed sacred blood!" shrieked a High Knight, voice warped through his gilded helm. "You will pay with your lives! Praetorians, attack!"
The praetorians surged into brutal combat with the beastmen.
Their silver vines, extensions of flesh and will, served as both armor and weapon.
But the beastmen, armed with chain-hammers and power axes, turned slaughter into art.
The chains roared, ripping through praetorian ranks. The power axes split the shimmering vines like butter, cleaving soldiers apart.
The praetorians had numbers, but dozens of metal tendrils wrapped around each beastman, constricting like webbed steel. The more they struggled, the deeper the wires dug.
The praetorians closed in, weaving a noose of silver death.
"For freedom!" roared Oenomaus leading the rebels to Angron's side. The gladiators, forged by lifetimes of torment, turned pain into perfect killing skill.
Their power blades blazed blue, melting through silver vines.
"That bitch Claudia!" a knight screamed. "Did she hand our armory to these maggots?!"
"For freedom!"
Clest and Mira charged together, the latter's psychic shield scattering every noble weapon, a shimmering rainbow barrier that broke sound and flame alike.
Sonic disruptors rippled across its surface. Plasma detonations burst like surf on rock. Even a molecular disintegration beam, capable of turning steel to dust, fragmented into fireflies against Mira's shield.
From behind their gilded visors, the high knights' eyes widened in fear. For the first time in millennia, they remembered they could bleed.
Clest laughed and sang as her bladed mount decapitated two of them in a single swing.
But casualties mounted.
One beastman fell, his flesh atomized by sonic fire. The other was crushed by vines that shredded his organs.
Angron clenched his fists. He could have saved them, with a word to the Warp.
But he didn't.
Because to let them live in agony would be cruelty.
They longed to die fighting their masters.
Angron raised his hand toward the knights in the air, pointing his axe. A challenge.
They answered with gunfire.
But the praetorians, reflections of this rotten world, carried no true weapons, only their silvervines. The nobles had forbidden them ranged arms. A single bullet could erase the line between slave and master.
So the armories rusted.
When the sonic wave tore through the air, Angron only smiled.
'You dare oppose one who has a father?'
The sound crashed harmlessly against his unseen shield, then the knight who fired it was seized by an invisible hand and flung before Angron's feet.
"Draw your sword," Angron said coldly. "Face me."
The knight obeyed, trembling. His ornate blade flickered weakly before Angron's axe split him in two.
"Blood for blood!" Angron bellowed, pointing to the next knight. "Fight us! If you can win in fair combat, you may live!"
He hated duels, but his people needed them.
The rebels had spent their lives fighting for the entertainment of nobles. Only through duel could they find meaning and closure.
This was not slaughter. It was justice.
The arena roared back to life. Tens of thousands filled the seats once more.
"Comrades! People of Nuceria!"
"Do not cheer! Do not shout!"
"This is not an execution, it is a fair duel!"
"Any man, praetorian, knight, or gladiator, may choose his opponent. Win, and you live!"
In the red sands, knights faced the gladiators they once owned.
Hatred clashed like twin rivers in a canyon of history.
Oenomaus stepped forward, pointing his bloodied axe. "Tarc! I challenge you!"
Tark sneered. "If I win, I go free?"
"It is his right," said Angron.
Tarc's smirk faded. "Even if I kill him?"
"It is his right," Angron repeated.
"Then die, slave!" Tarc screamed.
"Your last words?" Onomamos asked quietly, raising his axe.
The duel was brief. When Tarc's head hit the sand, Oenomaus stood tall despite his missing arm, smiling through the blood.
The crowd roared.
Freedom, at last.
Spears, swords, and chains rose across the arena as every gladiator challenged their former masters.
And one by one, the gilded tyrants fell.
When the last knight's blood soaked the red sands, for the first time, the ground drank the blood of its masters instead of their slaves.
Angron had stripped them of flight and guns, but not their implants. It was fair combat. None survived.
"This is the first time," Angron thundered, his voice echoing across Desh'ea's arena, "and it will be the last."
"Let this day be the fracture of history! Let this judgment ring forever!"
"From this moment, Desh'ea will bury slavery forever. The privileges of the high knights are history. The bloody arenas are no more!"
"In this reborn city, bloodline shall no longer define worth. We are all Nucerians, sharing the same blood, the same language, the same dignity, the same freedom!"
.....
If you enjoy the story, my p@treon is 30 chapters ahead.
[email protected]/DaoistJinzu