Kyra knew that that Spartacus was only toying with her, that if he wished he could take her head clean from her shoulders and send it whirling into the sand.

All of Capua had its eyes on the two young people down there fighting their battle in the sand of the arena, both of them naked, their toned bodies bare beneath the sun. The crowd bellowed, drunk on bloodlust, on the sheer spectacle of young folk sent to die for no other reason than the pleasure of those who watched.

Diana, owner of the gladiator school that produced the young Spartacus, watched in delight from the governor's box as her magnificent stallion parried each of the blonde gladiatrix's blows with ease. She couldn't help but keep glancing over at her rival, Apollonia, who was slumped in her seat in resignation, sighing repeatedly as she waited to see her girl's head roll.

“By the gods, his form is flawless” remarked the governor, who was sitting in the middle of the two ladies.

“Haha, that's nothing, illustrious Praefectus. Wait until you see Spartacus fighting against real gladiators and not against this junk from Apollonia's third grade ludus.”

Apollonia gave her a hateful look but forced it into a smile when she saw the prefect chuckling softly.

“I hope you can bear to just watch for once instead of getting into the fight yourself, Tiziana?” said Diana to her friend, who sat to her left.

“I admit, I'm getting itchy fingers when I see those two down there. On the other hand, it's nice to sit in the shade and let others do the killing for once,” said Tiziana, grinning as she waved her purple hand fan.

Meanwhile, the swords of the two gladiators clashed on. Sweat and oil trickled down Kyra's bare body, mixing in places with the sand and dust of the arena. The hilt of the sword in her right hand was soaking wet already. Her strength dwindled visibly and finally she refrained from attacking altogether and just tried to block the blows that came at her like a hailstorm. She wanted to scream in fear and despair as Spartacus' razor-sharp blade whizzed close to her naked body again and again, each time threatening to end her young life. The crowd held its breath, sensing that the fight would be over in a few strokes. Everyone craned their necks in anticipation, waiting with open mouths to see how the young demigod would dispatch his powerless opponent to the afterlife.

Kyra was already beginning to see stars in front of her eyes in her exhaustion when Spartacus suddenly knocked her gladius out of her hand. The silver weapon flew high through the air and finally fell point-first into the sandy ground.

The mad mob cheered and applauded, Diana, Tiziana and the prefect clapped while Apollonia sighed again.

Kyra, all of a sudden empty-handed, glared with her blue eyes at the cold blade Spartacus held under her chin with an outstretched arm. Slowly, she sank to her knees before him without taking her eyes off the iron, raising her right arm and extending her thumb, index and middle finger while keeping the other two clenched.

“Ah, the missio... She's asking for her life, Prefect,” said Diana.

Apollonia turned to the governor. The girl had cost her a few denarii, and seeing her walk away with her life could prevent this day from turning from humiliation to utter disaster.

The prefect leaned back in his throne, took a sip of wine and said:

“I leave the choice to you, Lady Aquilina. My birthday present to you”

“A generous gesture, Praefectus, I thank you,” said Tiziana.

The young Roman turned to the girl kneeling below her in the arena. In the meantime, Spartacus had moved behind Kyra and thrown her blonde braid over her right shoulder so that she offered him her bare neck.

Tiziana grinned her sinister grin and looked at the trembling girl down there in the sand, who still had her hand anxiously raised to the missio. Her soft blue eyes screamed up to Tiziana's tribune, cried out for mercy, pleaded for her life. The aristocrat looked at the lovely creature for another moment, then folded her fan and ran it along her throat in a gesture. A short applause went through the crowd.

The young gladiatrix's jaw dropped. Her eyes widened in horror as she stared up at the Patrician who had just ordered her death on a whim.

“No! Please! Please have mer...”

A sudden icy shiver raced from her nape to her throat and put an end to Kyra's plea. Reflexively, she wanted to grab her neck with both hands, but her arms no longer obeyed her. The grinning Patrician disappeared from her field of vision as her head slid helplessly from her neck, mouth and eyes wide open, and fell in a crimson waterfall into the sand of the arena. Kyra's head rolled some more and finally came to a halt so that she had to look at her decapitated naked body, still kneeling before her executioner, jerking violently, as it shot her blood vertically into the blue sky like some perverted fountain, until her headless corpse finally lost its balance, tumbled forward and landed with a thud in the dust.

The girl stared straight into her severed neck, clearly seeing the black blood spurting from her severed arteries. Kyra wanted to scream in her agony, but no sound escaped her lips. She wanted to close her eyes, but they wouldn't obey her. She had to endure the sight of her beheaded body until she finally drifted off into deep blackness.

Spartacus approached the decapitated gladiatrix, whose blood was slowly staining the sand dark red, took her head and hoisted it up. The crowd roared and screamed like some mindless beast, their faces twisted in ecstasy, in fury, in that strange and ancient hunger for blood that no feast nor war had ever sated. Some flung coins the slayer, while some of the women tore off their garments to present their hero with their naked breasts. Tiziana, Diana and the prefect looked down at the headless girl with amusement while Apollonia rolled her eyes, her patience worn thin.

Kyra saw none of it. She was already gone. Born in Thebes twenty-two years past to a mother who loved her, torn from that life and sold into bondage, passed from hand to hand like some mute and senseless thing only to find herself in the ludus of Apollonia where they put a sword in her hand and threw her into this human slaughterhouse for the sand to swallow her young blood to the amusement of a maddened crowd.

She might have lived another fifty years, seen children grow at her breast, grown old in some quiet corner of the world where no one called for her slaughter. But fate had not wished it. It had seen fit to cast her down here in this place where men and women were torn apart for the pleasure of others, where life was cheap, poor, nasty, brutish, and short. And so, she disappeared naked and headless into one of the dark gates of Capua’s arena...