War God for Hire- Gladiator Read online

  War God for Hire- Gladiator

  by

  David Burke

  License Notes: This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events, and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental. This ebook is licenses for your personal enjoyment. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this ebook with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

  War God for Hire- Gladiator

  Copyright © 2021

  David Burke

  Cover art copyright

  © David Burke

  Cover art created by Yanaidraws

  Contents

  Prologue - To End War

  Chapter 1 - Grim Beginnings

  Chapter 2 - Rough Landings

  Chapter 3 - Reincarnation?

  Chapter 4 - Not So Mundane

  Chapter 5 - The Essence of the Matter

  Chapter 6 - Career Counseling

  Chapter 7 - Digging for Trouble

  Chapter 8 - Harsh Realizations

  Chapter 9 - Saber

  Chapter 10 - Speed First

  Chapter 11 – Introductions

  Chapter 12 - Finding a Place

  Chapter 13 - Training Time

  Chapter 14 - Harsh Realities

  Chapter 15 - More Lessons

  Chapter 16 - Focusing

  Chapter 17- Can’t Wait

  Chapter 18 - Waking Up

  Chapter 19 – Guests’ Arrival

  Chapter 20 – Wrestling

  Chapter 21 - Memories Unremembered

  Chapter 22 - Training for the Lash

  Chapter 23 - Girls’ Night

  Chapter 24 - Shocking Match

  Chapter 25 - Learning Himself

  Chapter 26 - A Fiery Welcome

  Chapter 27 - Getting Reacquainted

  Chapter 28 - Interruption

  Interlude 1 - When Exes Meet

  Chapter 29 - Clean Up

  Chapter 30 - Behind the Scenes

  Chapter 31 - To the Victor

  Chapter 32 - A Plush Prison

  Epilogue - All Eyes Upon Him

  Prologue - To End War

  The hellscape exploded around Krig. He was tossed from his mount. Skylar would have to fare for herself, but she was an elder dragon, so he put her out of his mind. Legions of devils, dark undead mages, and the other minions of his sister, Dod, awaited him.

  He scoffed. He might not be the strongest of the gods, but none of them could face him in single combat and win. Nor did Dod possess the power on her own to wrench him from the void between worlds and pull him into her nightmare realm.

  No, the mere fact that he was here meant that more of his family were gunning for him. Bring it on. He was the god of war, after all. Coming up next to the hellish troops of his sister were the giant, lumbering stone elementals favored by his sister, Jordan, goddess of earth and stone. And on the other flank, the wyverns, dragons, and even swirling elementals of his brother, Himmel, god of the sky.

  That left only four more unaccounted for. Begaer, goddess of lust, would never join in. She might hate him, but fighting was not her way. She preferred more horizontal activities and had even propositioned him over the eons. Gross, but true.

  Bedrag, his deceitful brother, was probably hiding somewhere, ready to strike at the losing side. Hav wouldn’t come here. She and her minions were ill-suited for battle in the hellscape and, truthfully, she got along with him better than any of his other sisters. All she cared for was the depths of her great oceans.

  And, of course, the oldest of them, Lige, would watch but not intervene. He named himself god of justice, but truthfully was just a busybody who liked to get into people’s fun.

  It was then that a golden light appeared overhead. Lige’s booming voice that so grated on Krig sounded forth, “You stand accused of disregarding the council of the gods. Your incessant warfare consumes too much of our time and that of the mortals. It has been decided to put an end to this. I will stand judge over the only type of trial we know that you would accept, little brother, trial by combat.”

  Horns sounded behind Lige. That must have been the signal, because all the troops moved forward. He noticed that his siblings stayed put. Even outnumbered three to one and without any of his minions beside him, they still feared him.

  So be it. He leapt into combat. This was the place he felt most at home. His sword cut in great sweeping strokes that were the end of existence for those who faced him, be they living, dead, or animated. His shield absorbed fireballs, spear thrusts, great boulders flung at him, and so much more without giving way.

  Krig knew that this battle would have looked impressive to any mortal onlooker, if such could survive. But the true battle was so much more impressive. Divine power met divine power. The crimson aura of war split asunder a green shield of Jordan’s earthen power and pierced her chest. Flickering flames of purple and black death danced from Dod towards him, only to be crushed and shattered by hammers of crimson force.

  At least that was the way that it would have looked to a mortal viewer. In reality, they were wielding power faster than a mortal could perceive. A greater degree of subtlety went into it all than one might expect. It wasn’t just the brute force of power against power and the strongest god remained standing.

  No, there were a thousand feints, thrusts, parries, and counter thrusts every second. Most took place on wavelengths imperceptible to the mortal eye or ear. Many even took place in adjacent dimensions. The real victory came from getting an enemy to overextend themselves. Then they could be destroyed with little effort and less risk.

  If any of them was an expert at this, it was Krig.

  It wasn’t that he fought dishonorably. That wasn’t the kind of war god that he was. Nor was he the blind smashing type either. He pushed himself to excel at all that he did and believed that there was no greater way to test yourself than upon the field of battle. Only then did a man know what he was made of. And what were the gods, but simply overgrown men with long lifespans and wondrous powers?

  Up above, Krig caught sight of Skylar. She fought for a place in the sky against three of Himmel’s minions. Her ebony black scales were as dark as a moonless night. So dark, in fact, that any but the eyes of a god would have missed the blood seeping out from numerous wounds.

  She was powerful, else she would not have been his mount, but she was also outnumbered by her lesser kin. The three cerulean wind drakes twisted and swirled around her with a speed that she could not hope to match. Claws lashed out and peeled open a scale. The whip of a tail struck her wings. Magical winds buffeted her flight and razor-sharp fangs bit her softer underbelly.

  Krig gave a huzzah inside as he saw a great gout of flame burst forth from her mouth and scorch one of the wind drakes. Its fine wings and delicate features shriveled up before the intense heat. In an instant, the enemy drake twisted and careened, slamming into the side of a nearby volcano.

  In mindspeak, he told Skylar, “Beast, be gone. I would not have my favorite steed killed today.”

  “And what of you, my Lord? How will you leave this place? You have none of your allies here. None to carry you home. None to watch your back,” came the reply.

  “Obey me, Skylar. Know that you are my favorite mount and I will miss our rides, but know also that I shall return. The sun has not risen on the day yet where the god of war would lose a battle to the likes of these. The war may just take longer to play out than I might have like
d,” he said with a laugh and then commanded, “Now go. I will buy you a moment of respite.”

  With a laugh, she leapt into the void, but her parting words came through in mindspeak, “Perhaps when you return, you will finally consent to mount me properly.”

  A roar escaped Krig’s lips. She was always jesting with him, but now was a time for battle. He stepped forward and shattered a dozen skeletal mages against one of Jordan’s elementals while at the same time transferring so much force, it turned the earth creature red hot and caused it to lose cohesion. He then activated his mastery of battle and in one instant took in the state of the entire field.

  This allowed him, with one movement, to shatter Dod’s scythe into pieces while sending a kick into Himmel’s blue robed chest that shattered every bone. Neither attack was what it appeared to be. His cutting strike was intense, but it was his divine essence that reached out and found the smallest imperfection in his sister’s scythe. It was a divine artifact, but perfection did not exist in all of creation.

  So, his power, driven by a relentless will, cut in two the device she used to reap the souls of fallen mortals to her realm of the dead, then spread up and down its length, fragmenting it further. It deprived her of a weapon, but more than that, it cut her off from her greatest source of power.

  The goddess of death was clearly terrified of death herself, and she flew back and moved a legion of her elite fiends into the spot where she had been standing. She cried out in bitter anger, “What have you done? The mortals shall suffer as much as I!”

  He pondered Himmel for a moment before responding to Dod. Just as the attack against her weapon had not been one of mere force, so too the kick against his brother had been more than a kick. Tendrils of Krig’s power had forced their way into every aspect of Himmel’s body. The gods needed bodies, but they weren’t just their bodies. Their divine essence was what made them who they were.

  In that same way, the bodies they formed were invariably reflections of that essence. Himmel was the god of the sky. His body was agile, light, and fast. It was also rather fragile, and easy for Krig to shatter. So he did just that. He broke every bone in the god’s body and dissipated his form, his divine essence effortlessly returning to the sky that was present even here in the hellscape.

  Beyond this realm, Himmel’s control of his domain faltered. The birds of the air became feral, banding together in great flocks and attacked anything that moved. The very essence of the air burned, and new terrors were born.

  Further above, the air pressure dropped, and great storms formed in the atmosphere. Thunder, lightning, and pelting rain whipped up from nowhere. The very sky rained death and destruction upon those mortals living beneath its canopy.

  “Think you that I care for the suffering of mortals? The worthy shall survive. That is what none of you have ever understood. I take no joy in death. I am not brutal because I want to be. I am these things because they are the only true crucible by which a mortal’s value can be measured.”

  “So narrow-minded. Don’t worry though. We shall educate your followers. The priestesses of battle that you take such pride in shall be converted to whores in Begaer’s temples. Even now, she is out gathering your little battle princesses. She finds it hilarious, that those who have sworn wedding vows to the god of battle shall soon learn the ways of lust,” Dod taunted.

  Her words angered Krig, but he was no fool. If she spoke like this, it was to take his mind off another attack. There it was. He felt the subtlest shift in an adjacent dimension. The buildup of essence thrust forward at him.

  Bedrag was good at hiding, he was good at lying, but he didn’t understand how to apply that in combat, at least not at a level that could surprise Krig.

  Bedrag phased into the hellscape, simultaneously thrusting with a serpent-shaped dagger. It was suffused with a fuzzy gray energy that made it impossible to follow with the eye. Krig didn’t need to see it to respond, though. He accepted that he would take a wound to deal a greater one to his enemy.

  The gray blade cut into his body and injected a deadly poison into his blood. It began coursing through him, and Krig clenched his teeth at the agony as his cells were shredded. But it was worth it. He brought his blade down Bedrag’s face. His enemy’s skull was shattered, and a great gash was cut down the left side of the deceit god’s cheek. Krig forced his essence into the wound. As his blade had shattered the body, so his power shattered his brother’s essence.

  Bedrag collapsed to the ground and Krig raised his hands up in a cry of victory. “Call this matter over. Or do I need to cripple all of you?”

  It was then that a subtle motion beneath him alerted him to another attack. Jordan’s essence surged up around him. The stone liquified and flowed around him faster than he could respond. Krig found himself bound. Tendrils of earthen essence began to force their way into his form. He solidified his body and enhanced the muscles. Surging with power, he pressed and strained against the stone that had him trapped.

  He had to accept, though, that as much as he was the superior warrior, Jordan was physically the strongest of them all. Krig wouldn’t let that be what did him in. He prepared and focused.

  Dod came in close now, thinking that he was trapped. “All that you have will be ours. Your essence will be stripped from you. It shall make us strong. Your soul shall be bound to that mortal frame, and I shall break you. Play with you. All eternity shall become torment for you and a game for me.”

  Krig watched Dod’s form ripple. Her feminine curves disappeared. The dark beauty she possessed became a hellish shape, all lust and no love, all sharp edges and no curves, yet it was still strangely beautiful.

  Three divine essences came together in a single moment. Krig sent his essence out like a drill to a hundred different locations to bore holes into the earth encasing him. Then he flexed and burst it apart. Jordan was strong, but always too slow to react to sudden change. As the stone body she had formed was shattered, her control over the land in the mortal realms wavered.

  The world of Verden shook. The mountains trembled. Great rents in the earth opened up. In other places, mountains became valleys, while lowland plains surged upward to become mountains. All around, chaos reigned as the very face of the planet was reshaped.

  New races joined the humans of the surface. Stout dwarves walked out of their mines and engaged in trade with the remaining cities. Dark and silent glytharen slipped out, and the humans were not prepared for the exquisite skills and dark arts they brought to bear, for they worshipped none of the eight deities, but instead served the voice of chaos.

  Perhaps even worse, an assortment of monsters poured out. Hideous trolls, rock-eating monsters with a name that no man knew, and deadly worms which seemed harmless until they latched on. These were just the most numerous of the new horrors.

  Even as he freed himself from Jordan’s hold, Krig’s torso was slashed, cut open by the dark claws of Dod’s new form. The poison breaking down his body, a hundred cuts opened by spikes of stone that had pressed into him, and now these great claws opening his armor to cut the flesh beneath, all took their toll.

  Dod was hardly known for mercy. She struck again and again. While some blows got through, Krig was a weapons’ master. His shield lay upon the ground, but he blocked with his vambrace as best he could and parried slashes with his sword.

  He was spent, though. Krig knew that wars did not just consist of one battle; the great secret was that he who ran away, lived to fight another day. So, with a rocket of power, he shot into the red hellscape sky with its black clouds.

  Dod cried out, her form making the words come out all garbled, “Stop him! You will gain no essence if he escapes!”

  As he prepared to part the dimension and leave the hellscape with what remaining power that he had, Krig found his way blocked by the eldest of them, Lige. A spear the size of a small tree, tipped with a glowing, golden head, blocked his way.

  Krig prepared to sell his life as dear
ly as possible. They would not have his essence, even if he had to scatter it into the void between worlds. But getting past Lige would be difficult. The god of justice did not often fight, but it was not for a lack of strength. Krig knew that had he done more than watch the battle take place, this would have gone very differently.

  Still, there was nothing for him to do but charge. It was less a physical attack and more an act of will. His essence gathered together to face Lige.

  Then the god of justice made a fatal error. For a moment, he acted as though Krig would fight as he did.

  Lige bowed his head and gave the salute of the gladiators to Krig. Krig knew that the truest honor of battle was to survive. He didn’t cheat. He excelled where others might not, but he wasn’t above striking first.

  If he had to strike hard, he would. And now he showed no mercy.

  His blade and a sliver of essence lashed out. The blow caught a bowing Lige upon the left side of his face. His eye was punctured and Krig willed the sliver of essence to war against the clarity of sight the self-appointed judge of the gods took pride in. He blinded his brother’s eye and in the moment that bought him, Krig ripped open the dimensional wall and stepped into the void.

  The grayness welcomed him but Krig did not feel himself. He was leaking blood from his body and divine essence from his soul. He cast his vision out into the multiverse and found a like-minded soul.

  A mortal, of course. It wasn’t perfect, but it would have to work. Live to fight another day.

  Chapter 1 - Grim Beginnings

  Kyle was shocked by the sudden rush of cold over his head and down his back. It drenched him from the top of his head to the bottom of his jersey in an instant. A Gatorade bath was a long-standing sports tradition. He really shouldn’t have been surprised, but the reporter’s blue eyes were so captivating. It almost seemed a crime to allow such a beautiful woman into the locker room.