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

every martial arts movie he had ever seen, any time someone pulled out a weapon like this or nunchaku they always began spinning them around in a supposed display of skill.

That part of him that was Krig murmured in approval. Weapons were for fighting, killing, and defending. They were not toys to amuse children, and war was a way of life. A holy sacrament taken to purify the soul. Whether because of Krig’s influence or not, Kyle was pleased to see that Kierra took this seriously.

Lash’s whip suddenly retracted until it was only four feet long. It was thicker, but not enough to account for all of the whip’s length, and while it looked like a staff in some ways, it was clearly more like a very long riding crop. It flexed in the air as Lash went on the attack for the first time. She lashed out at Kierra’s head, but the middle pole of her staff raised up and blocked it.

Blow after blow got traded as both women displayed great mastery of not only their weapons but their bodies. Nary a foot was misplaced as each danced around the other. Kierra sought to club the side of Lash’s head only to have her duck underneath and then drop to try to sweep her legs.

A moment later, Lash was unleashing a series of rapid-fire blows with the retracted whip. It was so flexible that even as it hit the tri-staff it would wrap around it, threatening to yank it from the lycan’s hands. Had she been a pure human, Lash’s technique likely would have worked but Kierra’s claws dug into the wood of her staff and she managed to hold on.

When she pulled free, Kierra spun around, extending the tri-sectional staff out in a whipping motion. Lash reacted in an instant as though she had been waiting for exactly that type of extended attack. Her own leather staff snapped out at the chain section between the piece Kierra was holding and the middle section.

Kyle witnessed a surge of War Essence and the metal gave way before the leather.

But Lash wasn’t done with that. The sudden loss of two thirds of her weapon and the accompanying change in momentum caused Kierra to stumble. Lash was already moving forward so that she brought up a knee into the face of the off-balance lycan. The knee slammed with bone crushing force into her nose and caused her to fall back. To her credit, Kierra managed to hold onto her weapon but still put her free hand to her nose, which gushed blood everywhere.

Eyes blurry with tears brought about from the broken nose didn’t give her enough warning so that when the leathery staff snapped out repeatedly, it hit her forehead, then the hand holding the weapon, and finally took her leg out from underneath her. Each blow was punctuated by a burst of War Essence and in an instant Kierra was laying weaponless on the ground with a broken wrist, broken kneecap, and cracked skull.

Her howl of pain was cut short as Lash dropped a knee on her throat, crushing it and causing her to gasp for breath. Out of the corner of his eye, Kyle saw Selma and her team lining up and ready to rush to Kierra the moment the fight was called. Saber looked on but couldn’t end the fight until the lycan was either unconscious or tapped out. The proud woman was unlikely to do that, so the audience watched on over the view screens that magically zoomed in to see her gurgling and gasping, trying without success to draw air into her crushed windpipe.

After a long minute that seemed to drag on forever, she finally went limp. Several times, Kyle had started to stand up. Competition was good, but watching a woman as she struggled to breathe because of some rule was just insane. Each time he stood, Hilde barked in his mind, “You are the war god. You have seen worse. You have done worse.”

Saber yelled for Selma the moment Kierra stopped struggling, and then announced Lash as the winner to the audience.

She held her hands up and smiled as though she were a model walking down the runway. Then she turned her head towards Kyle. For just a moment, he felt her eyes settle on him. An unspoken threat came through, and he couldn’t help but feel that he was staring down some demented Bond villain.

Chapter 24 - Shocking Match

The brutality of the finish left Kyle feeling uneasy. Just knocking Kierra out had been enough of a challenge for him. He couldn’t imagine intentionally crushing someone’s throat, even in an attempt to win the World Series. Of course, to him, that was what these matches were, a game.

Kyle didn’t question for a second his ability to destroy an enemy that was trying to kill him. It was one of the things that he had been asking himself repeatedly since the quarry. He was sure that there would be no hesitation on that account, but this wasn’t the same thing.

Or was it? This world definitely had different standards. What he witnessed minutes ago would have been shocking even for MMA fans in the modern world.

As the sand was cleared, Gilthan stood up. Without looking back at Kyle, he said, “I respect what you did with Kierra before, but we have to take this seriously. I won’t hold back. Neither should you. Or do. That is up to you.”

Then he strode out towards where Saber was already making announcements about the next match. The name Warborn seemed to be catching on for him, so he would just go with it. He raised his hands and let the crowd cheer for him. Earth or Verden, Kyle knew how to work a crowd, and it was pretty obvious who the favorite to win was. Maybe that was because the crowd was uniformly human, but whatever the reason, they were already shouting his name, or the name that