War God for Hire- Gladiator by David Burke (books under 200 pages .TXT) 📕

talked about nerves. It was so common that sports psychology largely centered on how to calm oneself to better produce. But for a few this wasn’t an issue. Very few of them could actually put it into words, yet it always came down to the same thing.

They all felt the same rush of fear, anxiety, excitement that blended together into a cocktail that made you both feel more alive than any other time and at the same time more on edge. What set these top competitors apart was the way that they would pass beyond that. They walked through the hurricane of emotion and found their way to the eye of the storm.

It was a place of calmness and peace. The world might rage around them. Teammates might be so excited that they couldn’t sit still, but for these few, they were never more in harmony with themselves than in that moment.

This was what Kyle felt as he walked into the arena. The dome overhead made the night sky look fuzzy. The lights all lit it up to be both nearly as bright as daylight and yet still have that mystery which was an attribute of night. An excited hush came over the audience as they watched Kyle proudly stride out to the center of the arena.

He noticed that on all four sides there were screens projected in the air. Apparently, they had a magical way to zoom in and show the fight with more detail. He noticed, but then put it out of his mind. The crowd was here for him, not the other way round. He only had eyes for his opponent.

The half-troll was nearly ten feet tall and massively wide. Kyle took in his slouched posture but noted that even Skrug was anxious. To the untrained eye, he might have appeared relaxed, even bored, but Kyle had seen him over the past few weeks. He was definitely showing tension with his body. It was just subtle.

The arena floor had been altered slightly. The light layer of sand still covered most of it but in the middle, there was a ring that had been cleared and was nothing but raw stone. That was where Skrug was waiting for him. He didn’t hesitate.

As Kyle reached the edge of the ring, Saber came running over. “There have been some changes based on the requests of Lord Soren’s guests.”

Kyle looked at him but only raised an eyebrow in question.

“Give me the maul; this is going to be a weapons free match,” Saber said.

A moment of worry threatened to interrupt Kyle’s stillness, but he pushed it aside. The storm couldn’t affect him here. He was the calm center. The world moved around him but he remained unfazed.

“What are the rules?” he asked, simply.

“Same as before, try not to kill one another. You fight until one of you is unconscious, surrenders, or is thrown from the ring. Not that I think this is necessary, but I caution you against surrender. Crowds don’t like it, at least not until the fight has gone on for some time,” the trainer instructed.

Kyle handed his weapon over and simply said, “Very well.” Then he stepped into the ring across from the mini-giant.

No sooner had entered the ring than the ground beneath him began to move. He felt a surge of Earth Essence. His time learning to feel and absorb it paid off so that he wasn’t shocked as the ground beneath his feet began to push up into the air. A ring thirty feet in diameter was soon elevated twenty feet.

He thought to himself, at least there would be no ambiguity about whether a fighter had left the ring. While he had been calm about the earth moving beneath his feet, it had clearly disturbed Skrug. The huge man, if he could be called that, was trembling. Kyle took better stock of him. He was muscled but had flaccid skin. His belly was slightly distended, but despite his appearance and the obvious fear he felt, Kyle knew only a fool would underestimate the man’s might.

The command to begin was shouted, and time almost stood still for Kyle. He watched as his opponent was too slow. Skrug lifted his head and roared. For a moment, Kyle thought he might be able to end this quickly. None of the training that they had done was for unarmed combat, but Kyle thought about a variety of old martial arts flicks he had watched as a kid. What guy hadn’t, after all?

He remembered the way they moved their bodies. Much of it might have been controlled by wires and fancy camera work. Kyle didn’t have that, but what he did have was superhuman strength and speed. That, and he possessed somewhere within him the memories of a being for whom combat in every form conceivable was as natural as breathing.

For the first time since arriving here, Kyle consciously reached out for those memories. He still didn’t want to become Krig, or to lose himself, but he would be a fool to turn down knowledge that could win this fight for him. When it came to winning, Kyle was no fool.

It wasn’t like he suddenly knew kung fu, but he did start to feel a rightness to it. He knew his body, even this new body, and knew what it was capable of. Many of the lessons about movement and guarding were the same with weapons as with his body. Now he was the weapon. He surged forward in two quick steps and left the ground to plant both his feet into Skrug’s chest.

The drop kick hit like a wrecking ball with the weight of Kyle’s densely muscled body behind it and powered by his great strength. The blow caused the troll to stumble backwards almost to the edge of the ring. Unfortunately, the half-troll fell to the ground before he left the ring and his long nails dug shallow furrows in the stone while he brought his backward momentum to a