Creative Writing Gladiators Common Task

They say I was born to fight. That with my first breath, the blood of a true gladiator pumped through my veins. They think that I cannot be defeated, that I am an unstoppable beast tearing its own path. The truth though, how laughable it is. I was not born to fight, rather I was forced to when I was enslaved by the Romans after they slaughtered my family and imprisoned me. I was sold to a slave dealer known as Syphax, who soon realized my potential as a gladiator. I was put into a gladiator school and trained for many years to kill.
         At first they thought I would never amount to anything. They assumed I would lose every fight I ever fought against another gladiator until the crowd booed for my my death and the emperor signaled for my demise, and I was killed right there in the sand of the arena.
         It did not happen quite the way they imagined it though. My first fight in the arena was against a gladiator by the name of Crispus. A curly haired fellow with not much going for him. He had grown up a Roman citizen, but he had been such a social outcast that he had decided to be a gladiator. He was no the fighting type and was looked down upon for his actions. People didnât like him and expected him to fail just as much as they did me, so it was almost, in a way, an even match for us.
         I had always favored using a scimitar in battle. It was my weapon of choice along with a shield, which was all I had to fight with. They called fighters like me Thracians. Crispus however was a Samnite. He had a much bigger oblong shield, along with a sword and a helmet.
         I knew that to beat him I would have to use my advantage of speed. I had no helmet and a much smaller shield, so mobility was my key to winning. It would be my only advantage and I would have to use it in any way I could think of. Crispus would do anything he could to win too. I had seen him too many a times laughed at by others. He wanted too desperately to win and would not give up a fight so important, so easily.
         Before our fight was the pompa where musicians came to play and entertained the audience. When the musicians finished, all of us gladiators entered the arena through the east gate, the gate of life, and as the last of us entered, we all said our salute to the emperor, âWe who are about to die, salute you!â Saying that left a bad taste in my mouth. How could I salute some rich powerful man who might have me killed? Either way, the day went along, first with the beast fights. Bestiarii gladiators fought all sorts of beasts like hippopotamuses and lions. When the beast fights had ended, the rest of us gladiators came back into the arena to warm up for our fights. The crowd loved to see gladiators who were fighting for the first time but they were even more interested in gladiators who had volunteered, so naturally the crowd was very interested in Crispus. Eventually we had finished warming up for our fight and had a weapons check. Once it was done, we returned to below the arena and waited for our fight to begin.
         When it was time, I was brought into a tight space and pulled up through a levy system by a nearby slave. I was revealed to the cheering crowd and stepped out into the open space with scimitar in one hand and shield in the other. Crispus laid opposite me in the arena. He had the visor of his helmet down, shielding his face from the crowd as if he did not want the crowd to know it was hin. I chuckled at the thought that there was point since they all knew it was him and he seemed to take it as some sort of taunt. He began to charge with his sword pointing straight at me. He seemed not to be thinking clearly as if he were to nervous and scared to put into motion everything he had been taught for so many years. I must admit I had not the most focused mind at that moment either, but all I really needed to know was to move around. When he reached me, he swung almost instantly. It was a barbaric swing, imbued with raw power with a clear motive to kill me where I stood. He wanted to end the fight quickly, and so did I. I knew that I did not have to kill him, only beat him. Then his fate would be left to the audience, not me.
         I parried his first swing quite easily with my scimitar and surprised with by ramming his chest with my shield as he staggered backwards. The blow from my shield had momentarily dazed him and I saw my chance. I dashed to his side, hoping to make use of my speed, and swung at him. I knew he would be quick enough to block it with his shield, which I had expected, but I knew he would not expect my next move. I dashed once again to his other side, the moment he saw me move to his side, he brought out his sword to parry me but I had already struck him as I dashed. The moment he had blocked my scimitar I had brought it near my chest and lashed out at him when I had dashed again, knowing that he would not expect me to attack him while on the move and so soon.
         When he noticed the wound, he fell to his knees and dropped his weapons into the sand. I knew now what was to become of him next. The emperor stood up from his seat in the arena and surveyed the crowd. They had all been so interested in how he would fight considering him being freeborn and it his first fight, but now that he had been beaten, so quickly, they had lost their interest. One second they could not wait to see him fight, so intently focused on him, and now they cared not if he was killed right in front of them. Some people even raised their thumbs and shouted, "kill" to tell the emperor exactly what they wanted. There was one person in the crowd that I noticed though. One person had raised down their thumb and was shouting and sobbing as loudly as they could, "release, release." I could see the similarity in the woman's face. It had to be Crispus' mother. I looked down at Crispus, he was staring at the ground, with his visor still closed. I looked back up at the emperor, who still had not made his choice, and so I made my own. I placed my hand upon his shoulder, and as he looked back up at me, I took off his helmet. I held out my hand to help him up and left the arena with him. The crowd, who had been cheering for me, for my first victory, had begun to go silent, with only a few whispers of what I was doing. I did not look back as we left. I did not look back to see how the emperor had reacted or if Crispusâ mother had stopped crying. All I did was keep walking.
         We went into the same lift that brought me up and went back to our rooms under the Amphitheatre. We did not exchange a single word and neither did anyone who saw us pass through the hallways. That night, I knew not what I had done, whether the emperor sent soldiers down to kill Crispus and to kill me too for what I had done, but I was so exhausted that I somehow managed to sleep, even with my ocean of thoughts flooding my mind.
         After that day, the arena was never the same. Every time I entered through the gate of life before my fight or through the lift when it was my time to fight, the crowd seemed different that the first time. It was like every single person that had been there that first day was there now to see me fight. I felt their watching eyes on me every second of every fight, waiting for me to slip up and take a hit. Their stares made me feel hated. I felt like they all wanted me to die and the moment I lost my first fight, every single one of them would shout, âkillâ and raise their thumbs so high up in the air that the emperor would my my throat slit right then and there in the arena.
         It seemed that it just would not happen though. Every fight I went out and won, sometimes I would just barely manage to get by and it would seem like I was done for, but every time I managed to do it somehow.
         That is, until they got too fed up. One of those rich men, the ones that fund the gladiator games and pay for it, he must of gotten to his boiling point and gotten too fed up with me winning all my fights. He finally decided that he would no more let me live. He would not have me and my heroic actions stand and live any longer. He wanted me dead and dead again and he used every resource he had to make it happen. He talked to the men that organized the matches to do something so tricky and twisted and evil that I never saw it coming.
         When it was first announced, I was outraged. I was to fight three gladiators. It was a four way fight between us though I knew that they were all part of a plan to team up on me and take me out. It was a dirty trick to kill me. They may as well of cut my throat in my sleep, but no one would be able to see me die then. Either way I was already dead. The moment that fight starts I would be killed and there was no way for me to live.
The day finally came upon me. I had my warm up and weapons check where the crowd waited with anticipation. My fight was the first of the day. By now, beast fighting had been banned from gladiator games so I had the luxury of being able to die right in the morning.
I came up from my lift and watched as the other three gladiators assembled in their own positions.          I could tell that they had been trained long and hard for this. The nobleman who had put them up to this wanted to make sure I would not make it out of this alive. As the fight started, an official stated aloud to us and the audience, "In this match today of four different gladiators, there shall be two winners, and two losers as by the emperor's orders."
Why would the emperor order something so strange? Why not have only one loser, me? Either way, I had to focus on the task at hand. Even if I was to die today, I would like to at least try and live. The fight was over quickly, two of the gladiators had quickly disposed of the other and then moved onto me. I was no match for both of them and was defeated. The emperor then got up from his seat and surveyed the crowd, as I had assumed, they wanted me dead. They shouted, "kill," like it was they only word they knew. The emperor quickly made his decision and the crowd went silent to hear it.
"The two winning gladiators are dismissed from the arena. The two gladiators that lost the fight shall continue. The winner shall receive a wooden sword, to give them their freedom, the loser shall be not so lucky. With that the emperor sat down. The two gladiators who had beaten me left the arena and left me alone with the other.
         At the time I had not recognized him, but slowly I began to realize why this had happened. The reason they had this fight was not to kill me, it was to make me repeat my very first fight. The other gladiator in the arena was Crispus. These people wanted me to fight him again, and this time kill him, for my freedom. I wanted to be free, I really did, but the thought of what I was doing, what these evil Romans were going to make me do, was too much. I would not do this, I would not succumb to their evil ideas of fun entertainment in the form of killing other people. So I threw down my sword. I threw it into the sand and surrendered myself. The crowd stood in utter shock at what I had done. They did not believe that I would do such a thing. I, though a gladiator, had never killed anyone. I, not once, killed someone in the arena. I did not do it before and would not do it now.
         The crowd shook their heads and mumbled about my idiocy. They could not understand why anyone would ever do what I had done. The whole time this happened, Crispus had walked over to me. He had with him his sword, and only his sword. His curly hair was free, no helmet and no visor restraining him and no shield to protect him. Crispus had brought his sword over but soon threw it aside. I smiled up at him and began to stand up. As I was standing back up, I tumbled over. Crispus had not pushed me, I had just lost my balance. I thought I was just clumsy but the reason I had become so dizzy was that I had lost so much blood. Blood was pouring out of the huge gash on my stomach where Crispus had sliced me. He had dropped his sword only so that he could pick up my scimitar. I guess that he had wanted to do the same thing that I had done to him, to me. He had gotten a big ugly scar across his stomach from what I had done to him. I donât think I was going to just get some scar on my stomach though. Whether or not the crowd or the emperor wanted me did, it didnât matter because no one was going to be able to save me at that point. I know that I was supposed to die an honorable and with bravery, like I learned in gladiator school, but at the moment, while I was dying, I really did not care how I died. I just stood still as my blood soaked into the sand, and I laid there, dying.