Orcus
THE FINAL ARENA
His cloak was already off when he walked over the diamond-pattered, durable floor. His hair whipped gently to the rythmn of an inexistent breeze, gleaming under the lights of the show, showering his tanned muscles in the same radiance. To the waiting audience, he might as well have been a bronzed demigod, as every fiber of him radiated with the desire for battle, yet his wicked face was relaxed, as a baby in the bosom of its mother, or an angel in the repose of God.
A grated gate shook and closed behind him, and Orcus looked upon their stage with the same confidence he bore in every fight of his life. Metallic grids shielded the outside from everything that would happen on this elevated, wide square. Behind, in front, to the sides and above, deceptively resilient iron bars supported one another in parallel and criss-crossed welds, faintly glaring every which way with the reflections of the spotlights. And across the way, trapped in the same cubic cage, were the Primal's opponents, standing nearly as far apart as he was from each of them.
There was enough space to run, to cut that distance in savage lunges, and even for a demon or a different thing to stretch wings, but it ranged no higher than any of them could reach in a jump of less than a second. In this sacred feud, there was no escape, no terrain to render meaningless, and no definition but the shape of their strength. Orcus could almost drool.
(And if masks fell or cracked, what lay behind them would be everyone's reward.)
"An astounding and unexpected premise we have here," he echoed, patting his stomach while he laughed. He went on, but swallowed the sound through the words, as though forcing respect to something dire. "It's a joy to first meet you both where I can taste your fists. But this is also unfortunate. I didn't mean to be a third wheel."
