Time flies when you are happy. Three weeks passed faster than a dream, full of ribbing and measuring dicks. I was in heaven, but everything ends.

Messalina Augusta spared no expense on the games that opened the season, and the masters of stagecraft pulled out all the stops at the Colosseum.

The weather, too, cooperated. Like on the day in history that we were celebrating, the sky was clear. It was warm enough to sit on a stone bench without your teeth chattering. The artificial lake created in the arena glistened in sunlight. The ice crystallizing at its edges intensified that glimmer.

Closer to the middle, the water steamed, warmed up by a clever piping system, though still a far cry from a hot spring. My toes curled inside my socks from just looking at all this, and I congratulated myself for wearing them, despite hating socks with sandals combo. The spectators with less foresight or more fashion sense, warmed themselves on pastries and beer.

Dead center in the frigid water, rose an island piled with marble blocks, which was supposed to represent the historic fort. It would offer the fighters cover and supplies, if they won time to search for stashes of spears and nets. If they made the landfall at all, rather than go under ingloriously like it often happened on this night.

Please, Mithras, let them reach it. Mars? Jupiter? Or should I pray to some nameless barbarian gods to protect their own, since most gladiators on the boat were barbarians? Including my men, Victor and Junius. Because, of course, Junius was in. Rufius Fulgentius made sure of it, like I knew he would.

Barbarian gods? The Great Hunter? Let Victor and Junius reach the island safely. Please. There, I covered all the bases and there was little left to do, but to wait for the trumpets.

I bit off a broken nail and spat it out. The place was so packed, there was barely space for it to hit the ground. I didn't know if I was envious or anxious. Envious, probably, because it was too late for worries now. We did what we could in our three weeks together. All that remained for Victor and Junius was to take their places on the boat, sail into the arena, and let the Fates weave as they would.

Speaking of the boat! My eyes swept to the exit from the gladiatorial tunnel, praying for it to come out already. A giant arch decorated the mouth of the tunnel, symbolizing the portal between the two worlds, and the backdrop was our Lost Earth. They painted it with the brightest colors I had ever seen in my life, including so much green pigment that one might have thought it was as common as dirt.

To the sides of the arch, the artists painted figures—our venerable Roman ancestors. At least twice life-sized, they huddled, surviving their first winter after the Crossing. Nanciscor was alien to them. The barbarian tribes were unfriendly, and the Romans had no idea about the dangers of the Barea River—dammit, Victor!—the Tiber in the spring.

The painter even added a foaming tidal wave angling for the camp, but the bedraggled legionnaires turned their backs on this warning. This artistic touch was probably accurate. According to the annals, it was the mating season for the behemoths, so they came up the river and fell upon our clueless ancestors out of the blue.

It could have been the end of civilization as we know it, if not for the centurion Marcus Caelius. In September, he led the survivors through the portal to Nanciscor. Now, after the harsh winter, and the less-than-balmy spring break up, he rallied his men again.

He had nothing but the power of his giant brass balls to count on, or had the foggiest how to kill the behemoths. But he girded his loins, and sick, exhausted, starving men closed ranks and fought like Mithras.

Our historians said it was a glorious battle and wrote volumes about the movements of the units and the positions they had occupied. There were maps with arrows and everything... The textbooks also said that the barbarians gathered in the hills that night, waiting to finish what the behemoths had started. Only the prowess of the legionnaires in the face of the beasts' onslaught kept them at bay.

That was the official account, but my first lover made me into a skeptic. Eleven years that had passed since only increased my doubts.

Senators, I'm a gladiator, not a general, but in my mind, the barbarians hoped the herd would breach the fort, and they would pick out the survivors once the walls were down. So they gathered in the hills, roasted some nuts to snack on, and settled on the blankets to watch, much like the spectators were doing today in the Colosseum.

Alas for their cleverness! The Roman fort, built immediately after our ancestors had crossed, withstood the attack. The barbarians probably hadn't known yet how sturdy we could build. Under pressure, alone at Nanciscor, with winter coming, the legionnaires did all they could to be safe. That first fort must have been a marvel of over-engineering and saved more lives than any prowess.

That night was probably an ugly piece of slaughter, fought in the dark by men who really didn't want to die. I had fights like this. By their end, I wasn't sure how I was left standing on the sand, but somehow I was...

This, Senators, is how the City of Fidelium and the Fidus Empire on Nanciscor had begun, according to Maximus. Viva!

It seemed I wasn't the only one to doubt that men could defeat the behemoth through the combination of grit and the power of their balls. Messalina Augusta ordered the archers to take places around the arena. They stood thicker than barley in a field, and their quivers bristled with the broad-head arrows. There were not one, but two ballistas installed in the top rows to the chagrin of those who hoped for the free seats.

I would have clapped if the Empress could hear me in the din. She wanted nice Sacred Games this year, not the behemoths running rampant over her citizens, if the gladiators came up short in the valor department. They were barbarians after all, not our illustrious Roman forefathers.

The citizens of Fidelium happily delegated the responsibility for their safety to her. Once the gladiators' boat finally slipped into the lake, they screamed themselves hoarse. My favorite sound in the world, the sound of the new season opening, grew to my left and right, and high above me until it was deafening to everyone but the gladiators.

Their oars rose and fell rhythmically, propelling the craft around the arena. The energy charged it as if Jupiter struck it with his lightning bolt. Goosebumps run up my arms. Mithras' bull, the men on the boat must be pumped out of their minds! I would give anything to be there, with Victor and—

I accepted the rod.

So, Maximus, shut your teeth and sit on your prick like a former champion you are. Why was it Messalina Augusta's voice that said this on the inside of my head? And why was it so much harder to obey it than my own? However, I did just that. My job was to keep my guys coached so well they didn't die, and hope that Victor would become the next Champion of Champions at the Great Games.

I found him among the sixteen fighters who were selected for this epic fight. Junius stood next to him, shoulder to shoulder. Over the last weeks, the two men developed a mute bond, while Victor's every word to me outside the arena still dripped with poison. At least his eyes shone whenever he parried my blows. That was all I needed as a lanista. Naturally, I paid him back threefold. And yet, and yet, and yet...

Whenever we came together, rudis to rudis, I imagined us fighting with sharpened swords. Steel ringing on steel, the wicked point of the gladius to menace one another with. I couldn't imagine a greater joy than facing Victor in a lethal contest. The pain and pleasure of it! Blood and sweat on the sand! Victor unleashed!

I even craved it at night, to warm myself in my lonely bed. My intoxication was such that I fancied Victor's blue eyes kindle with the same passion. We could have fought to exhaustion or until we found out which one of us was the better man. We could have—

The boat sailed past me.

"Luck!" I shouted to the contestants.

Junius raised his hand in a salute. "Luck."

Victor said nothing. He didn't even flinch, only stared at me with dead eyes as the boat drifted by. I suppressed a sigh, averting my gaze, looking anywhere but at Victor. I wouldn't give him the satisfaction! Because I averted my eyes, I spotted the familiar indigo curls. Even if those curls didn't fall into matching indigo eyes, there was only one man in Fidelium who had hair like this.

Quintus!

Crows take it! This was head and shoulders above his abilities. Was he nuts? Had a death wish? Why, why, why? Oh, who was I kidding? The answer stared me in the face, I just... I didn't want it. I didn't have time for this bullcrap!

I pushed from the railing, shouldering aside my neighbors, rushing somewhere to protest Quintus' stupidity. Maybe kick some teeth in. What overseer could have missed a freaking half-blooded boy? A blind mole with a sack over his head? Quintus stood out, not blended in! For better or worse, it wasn't in his nature to blend, ever.

The horns sounded their brassy, reverberating call, silencing the arena.

I twisted on the spot in despair, working on an absurd, useless plan to stop the show. Someone could still stop this from happening. Messalina Augusta.

Messalina Augusta? I waved at the Empress like a madman.

She rose, clad in gold and green. For a heartbeat, I had a baffling notion she had seen my desperate call for attention. Then her arms rested protectively on the shoulders of her two sons.

Of course, she couldn't have seen me in this crowd, let alone hear me in the uproar. Even if she did, she wouldn't help me. The gears of the sacred machinery were already in motion. Quintus was irrelevant. If he died for his stupidity, he died. Were I on that boat, even at the height of my glory, I would also have been too small a reason to stop the ritual.

"Ave Fidelium!" Messalina Augusta exclaimed. The arena's acoustics carried her voice as clear and as far as the stirring song of the horn.

The gladiators on the longboat chorused their response. "Ave, Messalina Augusta!"

I hallucinated hearing Quintus' breaking soprano with their gravelly voices. "Morutori te salutant!"

"No," I whispered, biting my lips bloody. "No. No. No."

The iron grates rattled and rolled upward on the four sides of the arena, releasing the water behemoths. Their square maws gaped to show off their tusks and tongues. The enraged growls erupted from their hairy bodies. They lunged into water, raising waves that rocked the flimsy craft.

The gladiators pointed the bow of their boat to the island. Half of them put their backs into rowing. The rest fought to keep their footing on the unsteady platform, spears hefted, eyes scanning the water for surfacing heads.

Ready or not, the Sacred Night of the Behemoths had begun.