Pete threw himself sideways in a graceless, desperate dive that had all the elegance of a sack of falling bricks. His body hit the sand hard, driving the last of the precious air from his lungs in a pained whoosh. He rolled frantically, a panicked turtle trying to tuck his head, trying to make his body a smaller target.
The spiked ball missed his skull by less than an inch. He felt the displaced air, a hot, violent gust that ruffled his hair and made the skin on his face prickle. He felt the heat generated by the ball impossible speed, the friction of metal carving through air. He felt—
Pain.
A sharp, searing line of fire erupted across his shoulder.
The ball hadn't just been spiked; the iron surface had bloomed with them. Jagged, wicked-looking teeth, each a good six inches long and razor-sharp, angled backward like a shark's teeth. Dozens of them, waiting to catch and tear.
One had caught him. Just a graze, barely a touch, but it was enough.
The spike tore through his simple tunic like wet paper and carved a furrow through the meat of his shoulder. Skin split open like overripe fruit. Muscle parted. Blood vessels, small and insignificant, ruptured.
A spray of arterial arced across the sand, spattering the ground, painting a sudden, shocking streak of vermilion against the pale yellow.
The crowd went absolutely, supernaturally fucking insane.
"FIRST BLOOD!"
"THE MORTAL BLEEDS! THE MORTAL BLEEDS!"
"MAKE HIM BLEED MORE!"
"RIP HIM APART!"
Their bloodlust was a palpable force, a living thing that pressed against his consciousness like a humid, suffocating blanket. This was what they craved. This was the drug they'd come here to mainline: Violence. Suffering. Death, all served up for their entertainment.
Pete scrambled backward on his hands and feet, clutching his shoulder. His hand came away slick and dark, coated in his own lifeblood. The wound wasn't deep—not immediately life-threatening—but the pain was a lightning storm of sharp, stinging agony that radiated down his arm and made his fingers twitch and spasm.
"THOSE THINGS HAVE FUCKINGSPIKES NOW?!"
The giantess grinned, showing teeth like worn, yellowed tombstones. Her expression was pure, predatory satisfaction.
"You like that, little man?" she laughed, the sound a deep, cruel rumble in her chest. She spun the meteor hammer again, slowly this time, deliberately, letting him get a good, long look. "Let me show you more!"
The spikes grew.
They extended from the iron spheres like quills from a monstrous porcupine, lengthening, multiplying until they were a foot long, a forest of sharpened steel. The balls transformed from simple bludgeons into instruments of total evisceration. Each spike gleamed in the sunlight, sharp enough to split the very light that touched it.
"Oh fuck me. Oh fuck me oh fuck oh—"
She swung.
Not a feint, not one of mercy. A killing blow. Both balls converging on Pete's position from different angles, the spikes angled to shred, to snare, to rip him into pieces small enough to be scattered like confetti across the arena.
Pete's instincts fired—
BLINK.
The world twisted, his stomach heaved, and a flash of white-hot pain shot through his skull as he was pulled through that non-space.
He reappeared.
But something was wrong.
His legs wouldn't hold him. A wave of exhaustion, profound and absolute, crashed over him. Every teleport was draining him, pulling energy from a reserve he didn't know he had, and the well was running dry.
Pete stumbled. His knees buckled. He nearly collapsed.
The giantess was already there.
How?
She'd read him. Read his desperate, instinctual pattern. She'd known where he'd appear and moved to intercept, a hunter anticipating the rabbit's dash.
She brought the hammer down like the fist of an angry god—straight down, both balls together, spikes extended, aimed at Pete's head with enough force to crater the ground and turn his skull to powder.
Pete threw himself to the side—
Too slow.
The leading spiked ball missed his head but clipped his leg.
The spikes didn't just hit; they punched through cloth and skin like they were wet paper. Three of them—three long, wicked teeth—impaled his calf, driving deep, deep into the muscle.
And then the ball's momentum carried it past, and the backward-angled spikes did their grim work.
They ripped.
They tore three long, deep furrows from his mid-calf to his ankle. Skin peeled back in ragged, flapping strips. Muscle separated from bone with a sickening, wet tearing sound. Blood poured out in thick, pulsing streams, painting the sand in a dark, spreading pool.
"AHHHHHHHH!"
Pete's scream was not a word; it was a raw, primal thing torn from the deepest part of him. The pain was beyond anything he had ever known—a white-hot, world-ending agony that turned his vision red and made his brain short-circuit.
Stars exploded behind his eyes.
He collapsed, his leg completely useless. The wounds were horrific—bone-deep. He could see the slick, white gleam of his tibia through the shredded, ragged meat.
The crowd was in a state of religious ecstasy.
"BLOOD! BLOOD! BLOOD!"
"KILL HIM NOW!"
"TEAR HIS LIMBS OFF! FEED HIM TO THE BEASTS!"
They were standing on their seats, jumping and screaming themselves hoarse. This was it. The main event. The sweet, final moment they'd paid to see.
The giantess stalked toward him slowly, confidently. The meteor hammer spun lazily at her side, the chain making a soft, metallic clink-clink with each rotation. Blood dripped from the spikes—his blood—leaving a dotted trail in the sand.
Her expression was almost gentle. Satisfied. The look of a hunter who had finally cornered her wounded, exhausted prey.
"You fought well, Boy from Beyond," she said, her voice surprisingly conversational. Almost respectful. "You have courage, I'll give you that. But this is over."
She raised the hammer high, taking her time, letting the crowd savor the suspended moment of judgment. The iron balls cast long, grim shadows across Pete's broken body.
"Any last words, mortal?"
Pete couldn't speak. Could barely draw breath. The pain was his entire world.
The hammer reached its apex.
The crowd held its collective breath.
And then—
Clang-scrape-scrape.
A sword skittered across the sand and stopped directly at Pete's hand.
He looked up, his vision swimming with a haze of pain. Three tiers up, in a lavish, opulent box, a giant in ornate golden armor nodded once. A sponsor. A patron. Or just someone who had paid a small fortune to see more suffering before the inevitable end.
Pete's fingers closed around the hilt.
"OH FUCK... THIS IS HEAVY."
Heavy didn't begin to cover it. The blade was six feet long—a proper giant's sword, forged for someone twelve feet tall with proportional strength. The steel alone probably weighed a hundred pounds. To Pete, it was like trying to lift a car door made of solid lead.
His arms shook violently just lifting it an inch off the ground. His shoulders screamed in protest. His wounded shoulder blared with fresh agony, the torn muscles simply refusing to cooperate.
But it was a weapon.
And right now, that was all that mattered.
The giantess laughed—a genuine, delighted sound that boomed across the arena. "You can barely lift it! Look at you! Your arms are shaking like a sapling in a storm!"
"YEAH, WELL—" Pete forced himself to his one good knee, using the sword as a crutch, pushing himself up. His wounded leg dangled uselessly, a gruesome faucet of blood. "—LET'S SEE HOW YOU LIKE IT ANYWAY!"