Blood on the Wall

Dark streaks spread unevenly out from the lone point of impact. The single spot where she had ended the fight was now a vaguely head-shaped chunk taken out of the far wall of the arena. The other fighters had told her that it was simply something that happened to everyone. It was natural. They had taken her frozen form away amid the cheers of blind ecstasy the crowd had heaped upon her, but the moment she had pressed the green skull into the stone she had known. She had seen fleshy blood splurt out as his dark brown eyes had bulged from the pressure and his inner light was summarily extinguished. It had been fast, almost immediate, but she had killed a man.
At the same time, it could have been her on the other end of the same treatment; a head pulped into stone-like shebizi against a grinder. That thought should terrify her, drive her to tear her hair out, and race home to see her family. Yet, that wasn’t her reaction.
Instead, the knowledge that she had conquered the odds and come out so utterly victorious that her challenger would never again enter the arena had lit what felt like a flame within her. Even now, as she returned to see the remnants that the arena owner had left to stain the wall, she could almost taste her growing legend and how it was linked to the ring.
She could feel that same stirring within her. Many called it the fury of Rahz Pluoht; the ability to embrace battle so utterly that it became your identity. That feeling called to her, yet a deep foreboding turned in her stomach, a need to avert the worst of it. If she could so utterly end an opponent many had judged as her equal… then the same could be done to her.
She couldn’t allow that, couldn’t let herself be a wisp on the embers of time. There would be a way to find a step that led far into the future, a method to see past the last tomorrow the giants had afforded her and escape the finality of Armide’s tender clutches. There must be a way.
She looked at the blood one last time before she turned to face her next opponent. The tiny goblin looked like a feral dog with snarling teeth and razor claws, but she was ready. There would be a way, she would just have to find it. No matter the cost. She wouldn’t be remembered as just a stain.