The Secret He Carried
They had met in the shadowed gardens of Emperor Hadrian's palace, shielded by cypress trees under a silver-struck sky. Cassia, the Emperor's niece, with her auburn curls cascading over her shoulders, had worn a simple yet stunning stola of ivory and gold. Her laughter had carried like the sweet melody of a lyre. She had not seen a champion in Artemion but a man—one as bound by chains as she was within gilded walls.
“Promise me," she whispered one forbidden night as they stood by a fountain engraved with Greek symbols of love and longing. Her hand lingered near his cheek, yet she hesitated to touch him. “Promise me you’ll find a way out of this, away from Rome. From all of it. For us.”
He had nodded, though the heaviness of their reality was not lost on him. That promise—the weight of it—drove him now.
Blood and Strategy
A flash of steel pulled Artemion back to the present. Axios charged again, forcing him to parry and duck with precision. His mind raced. Strength was not his advantage; guile was. He needed to exploit Axios’s brute recklessness. The crowd—nobles shimmering in purple and gold, commoners drenched in sweat and dirt—watched in mounting frenzy as the fight raged on.
A deft maneuver placed Artemion behind Axios, his blade slicing cleanly into the back of the giant’s knee. Axios collapsed, howling in pain, his axes falling to the ground. But Artemion didn’t strike the killing blow. Instead, he turned to the dais where Emperor Hadrian sat draped in a purple toga trimmed with threads of gold. Hadrian’s eagle-like gaze bore into his soul.
“Mercy,” Artemion cried, dropping his sword. Gasps rippled through the stands like waves breaking upon jagged rocks. A gladiator begging mercy for their opponent was unheard of—a seditious act against Rome’s thirst for carnage.
Chains and Keys
Later, chained in his cell deep beneath the Colosseum, Artemion replayed the events in his mind. Was it foolish to defy the crowd? Perhaps. But he understood the game he played. Mercy enraged the mob but intrigued Hadrian. He had supplanted the simplicity of bloodlust with a story of honor, a tale the emperor could exploit for his power’s theater.
As the torches flickered in the humid corridor, Cassia emerged from the shadows, her hood drawn low. Her breath hitched as she saw him beaten but alive. She knelt before the bars and passed him a key wrapped in silk. He took her hands, calloused and scarred meeting soft and trembling.
“Tomorrow,” she whispered. “During the festival—when the city is chaos, I will wait by the aqueduct gate. If you do not come…”
“I will come,” Artemion assured her, though his voice trembled, betraying his fear. “Run to Brundisium and board the ship. I’ll find you.”
Their eyes met, a farewell unspoken yet understood. She disappeared as swiftly as she had come, leaving him alone beneath Rome’s weighty stones.
The Final Fight
The festival descended upon Rome, a cacophony of music, laughter, and masks. The Colosseum swelled with bodies, golden sunlight glinting off helmets and chariot wheels. Artemion was led into the arena once more, his wrists shackled but his spirit steeled.
Facing him was no ordinary adversary but a lion—with fangs of ivory and muscles rippling beneath its tawny pelt. The beast lunged, and Artemion sidestepped, narrowly evading a mauling swipe. But his goal was not victory—it was distraction.
As the lion circled him again, Artemion’s keen eyes scanned the arena’s walls. His shackles concealed a blade Cassia had smuggled to him. A desperate plan formed: use the chaos of the beast’s attack to scale the walls, to vanish into the city’s labyrinth and find freedom.
The Bid for Freedom
The crowd’s shouts shifted from joy to rage as Artemion climbed the sandstone walls, his muscles screaming in protest but hope igniting his veins. Arrows flew, narrowly missing him, embedding into the cracks around him. Above him, the sunlight streamed like the gods’ golden favor.
The lion roared furiously below, and for a moment, everything was noise. Then, he reached the top and sprinted through the upper galleries of the Colosseum, knocking over stunned guards before dismounting into an alley. The sounds of pursuit echoed faintly behind him, but he pressed on, breathless and driven.
Reunion
Cassia waited as promised, cloaked like a commoner but unmistakable to him. Tears shimmered in her eyes at the sight of him, battered but alive. They embraced hastily before mounting two waiting horses, galloping through the gates just as the city guards raised the alarm.
Under the cover of twilight, with the silver of the Tiber behind them and the dark unknown ahead, their future was undefined but their freedom real.
And so, Artemion was no longer a gladiator, no longer a pawn in Rome’s games. He was a man—flawed, scarred, but unbound—a promise fulfilled.
Genre: Historical Fiction
The Source...check out the great article that inspired this amazing short story: Wealth, Privilege, and Social Responsibility - The World of the Superrich
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