Lucius

The battlefield burned with torchlight, the flames throwing long shadows across the churned earth. From the press of Spartacus’ rebels surged Lucius — a young gladiator whose physique had been carved by years of brutal training in the arena. Stripped for battle, his bare torso gleamed in the firelight, each powerful muscle flexing and straining as he swung his blade. His chest heaved, his abdomen ridged and taut, alive with the raw strength that had made him a champion in the sand.

He carved into the Roman line with reckless fury. Steel clashed, sparks leapt, blood sprayed. His sweat-slicked skin glistened under the flames as he hacked and drove forward, his broad chest rising and falling with each savage strike. For a moment he seemed unstoppable — a vision of defiance, a young god of war bare-chested beneath the moon.

Then a Roman’s shield slammed against him, the impact jolting his arm. His grip slipped, the sword wrenched from his hand, vanishing into the melee. For a heartbeat Lucius froze, suddenly unarmed in the storm of steel.

He hurled himself back into the fray with his bare hands. His massive fists crashed into helmets and faces, battering soldiers aside with sheer strength. He seized one man bodily and hurled him into the dirt, his torso glistening under the torchlight, chest heaving as he fought like a wild beast.

The Romans swarmed him. Shields pressed from every side, swords slashed toward his bare chest and belly. Lucius swung wildly, battering them back, his massive frame shuddering with strain as he forced space around him. Alone now, cut off from the rebel line, he stood encircled — three soldiers closing, their blades darting toward him in the torchlit chaos.

From his flank, a Roman soldier lunged in, sword raised high for an overhead slash. Lucius turned, crouched low, and drove his shoulder into the man’s gut. The impact lifted the soldier off his feet. With a surge of raw power Lucius heaved him high overhead, holding the armored Roman aloft for an instant before hurling him through the air. He crashed into the other two soldiers pressing in, and all three went tumbling to the ground in a tangle of limbs and steel.

Lucius straightened, chest heaving, arms still flung wide from the throw. Torchlight flashed across his bare torso — the sheen of sweat glistening over thick slabs of muscle on his chest, rising and falling with each desperate breath. His abdomen flexed and loosened in rhythm, the ridges of his abs tightening, then slackening as he fought for air. His black leather belt had slipped lower on his hips in the chaos, leaving the full breadth of his powerful torso glistening, unguarded and wide open in the firelight.

It was in that vulnerable heartbeat — when he seemed almost invincible in his fury, yet utterly exposed to the Roman steel taking aim from the distance — that another Roman burst from the pack. Both hands gripped a long spear, and with a brutal cry, he drove it forward, ramming it deep into Lucius’ wide-open, densely muscled abdomen.

ssssssSSST!!!

“AAAAHHHH!!!” Lucius roared, his torso jolting forward, arms flaring before both hands clamped desperately onto the shaft buried in his abdomen.

The finely sharpened steel head slammed into his unguarded bare belly with a crisp, aqueous snap, driving deep through the wall of muscle. His mouth gaped in a ragged gasp as his bare torso flexed and twisted helplessly, the hard ridges of his abs splitting apart as the steel burrowed deeper into him.

Lucius tried desperately to wrench the spear back out of his abdomen, his thick arms straining as his fingers gripped the shaft. But the Roman pressed forward with a snarl, shoving with all his weight, relentlessly driving the finely sharpened steel tip a bit deeper into the gladiator’s core.

Lucius’ chest heaved, his massive frame quivering, sweat and blood streaking down his bare torso in the torchlight. Only moments before, he had battled half a Roman cohort single-handed, unarmed — but now, in a cruel twist of fate and a momentary lapse in his defense, he writhed helplessly at the end of a Roman’s spear.

Lucius’ body convulsed around the buried spearhead. His abdominal muscles clenched tight, ridges hardening in spasms as though trying to repel the steel. Each contraction only deepened his agony, the muscle wall gripping the lethally honed spearhead lodged in his gut. His face twisted between fury and disbelief — the expression of a man who had trusted in the invincibility of his living armor of muscle, only to find it pierced with a belly full of Roman steel in a single, unguarded moment.

The Roman’s arms began to tire; their relentless drive faltered. He eased the forward pressure of the spear. In one final Herculean burst of raw strength, Lucius tore the spear back out of his abdomen, wrenching it free from the Roman’s grip.

He swung the spear low, sweeping the soldier’s legs from under him. The Roman crashed hard to the ground. Lucius staggered forward, blood streaming down his abdomen, pooling dark around the leather belt at his waist. With fire blazing in his eyes, the gladiator lifted the spear high and slammed it down with all his weight. The sharpened head smashed through the soldier’s armor and bit deep into the flesh beneath.

“AAAGGHH—” the Roman wailed, clutching the shaft with both hands as the weapon pinned him to the earth.

He writhed once, twice — then lay still, dead a few moments later.

Lucius’ burst of strength was short-lived. The mortal wound burned inside him. He staggered back from the slain soldier, every muscle across his upper body flexing hard, straining as he fought to endure the fiery pain tearing through his core. His massive chest heaved, his abdomen quivered around the wound left by the spear. Death was already inside him.

The Roman soldier whom Lucius had lifted overhead and hurled aside like a straw dummy moments before was back on his feet. Rage enveloped him now, his vengeful sword thirsting for the blood of the gladiator who had tossed him aside like nothing. He strode forward from behind, closing in on the staggering rebel.

With a snarl, he clamped his left hand down hard on Lucius’ bare shoulder and wrenched him violently around. The dazed gladiator stumbled, his massive arms flailing wide, chest and belly left exposed in the torchlight.

The Roman didn’t hesitate. He drove his sword forward with an explosive thrust, brutally stabbing Lucius in the gut —

ssssssSSST!!!

He tore the blade free, blood spraying as the steel slid wetly out of Lucius’ abdomen. The gladiator staggered, his chest heaving, his massive torso flexing hard as he fought to withstand the agony tearing through him.

The Roman stepped back for a breath, his eyes roaming over the stricken giant before him. Torchlight gleamed on the sweat-slick slabs of Lucius’ chest, the ridges of his abdomen trembling as he strained against the pain. A cruel smile touched the soldier’s lips. He knew he could never have defeated such a man in open combat — the very thought of standing against a muscle-bound gladiator like Lucius in a fair fight was absurd. Yet here he was, fortune’s hand upon him, the mighty warrior swaying and defenseless, offered up for slaughter.

With a snarl he lunged forward again, clamping his left hand hard on Lucius’ shoulder to steady him. With a tribal cry he pulled back his sword and furiously drove it forward —

ssssssSSST!!!

“UUUUHHHHH!!!” Lucius groaned as the blade ripped into his abdomen just above the first wound with savage force, splitting fresh muscle and flesh as it punched deep into his core, bursting out through his back once more.

A shaft of blood sprayed across the torchlight, splattering one of the watching soldiers in the face. He threw back his head and laughed aloud, the crimson streak running down his cheek as he reveled in the gladiator’s torment. The others grinned callously, delighting in the spectacle of Lucius’ mighty torso run through again and again.

The Roman jammed his left hand into Lucius’ bare chest and, with a vicious wrench, tore the sword free. The steel slid out in a gush of blood, leaving the gladiator reeling, his abdomen shredded as he lurched forward with the momentum of the blade pulled out of his body.

Lucius staggered only a step before his legs buckled. The strength bled out of him all at once. He pitched forward and crashed face-first into the dirt, his hands flying to his abdomen in a desperate, instinctive clutch. His fingers pressed hard against the gaping wounds, trying vainly to hold in what could not be contained.

For a few moments his massive frame writhed in the dust, his back arching, his muscles convulsing in broken spasms as blood streamed between his clutching hands. His chest heaved raggedly, the sound of his breath harsh and wet in the torchlit chaos.

One of the Romans stepped forward, planting his sandaled foot beneath Lucius’ shoulder. With a rough shove he flipped the dying gladiator onto his back. Lucius’ arms flopped uselessly to his sides, his palms slipping away from his wounds. Blood coursed down the ridges of his naked, muscular torso, running in thick streams along his flanks to pool beneath him.

“Uhhhhh…” he breathed, his chest giving one last faint rise, muscles trembling as though straining for one more breath.

Then it fell slack. He was dead.

The soldiers who had cut him down gave him no further glance. They melted back into the shifting press of the legion, their shields locking once more as the tide of battle rolled on. Around them the clash of steel and the cries of men swallowed the moment whole.

Once a vision of raw power, Lucius lay broken and forgotten in the dust — just another body ground beneath Rome’s relentless advance, another gladiator who had seemed invincible until the instant he was struck down.