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arrived within minutes to aide in the struggle. Shouts of the creatures’ weaknesses were called from Cyprian’s century, and the fresh soldiers quickly helped turn the tide. The last of the creatures were put to the sword, and soon there were none standing. Cyprian took command of the relief column, and instructed them to search the rest of the compound. The order had already been given to kill, defile, and enslave every living person in the compound, so no stone was left unturned.
    Cyprian chose two of his century’s best surviving men to accompany him into the temple. The five Romans found the door unbarred, which was unusual for these curious zealots of Judea. Typically great treasures of gold and spice could be found within their temples, and after the hardest fight of his life the centurion intended to claim it. They descended the shallow stairs into the center of the temple, and there found the golem.
    To the eyes of a Roman soldier, the golem looked like any other man, though with a strange tattoo on his forehead in the language of the Judean tribes. While his men ransacked the temple, Cyprian knelt down, bringing himself to eye level with the tattooed man. The centurion looked into the man’s eyes and recognized the same feral hatred and hunger as he had in the rabbi and the other rebel-creatures. And yet, the tattoo intrigued him. As such, the centurion did what any good Roman soldier would do, he cut the man-creature’s head off.

THE LANISTA
    Lanista Atticus Laeca was troubled, though being a man of perfect pragmatism it was not the moaning severed head on his desk that gave him concern as much as the accounting ledger in his hands. It was simple mathematics, he told himself, there was more coin going out than coin coming in. The cost of maintaining Ludus Laeca was greater than what the reward of his house’s participation in the games. A shame that, he thought to himself as he poured a measure of wine into his goblet and walked to the window of his small office. I have but two gladiators who have it in them to one day be champions, he thought. Bricius and Agathias, though neither have been granted a primus or even a secundus match in the games. Heraus the Boar was a brutal killer, undefeated yet too fearsome a man to ever win the love of the crowd.
    Atticus looked out through the open window into the training yard of his modest ludus. On the sun-baked sand nearly two dozen men trained in the fighting arts, sweat pouring off of their well-muscled bodies as they struggled to keep pace with each other. The sound of wooden practice swords connecting with shield and flesh was a constant staccato. Once that sound had sent the lanista’s heart to racing, when he was a younger man and fresh to the world of games. His grandfather had founded Ludus Laeca upon his return from nearly twenty years in the Legion. A decorated veteran, the lanista’s grandfather had used his lifetime of careful savings to found the ludus. The old man had several barbarian slaves he’d captured in his last campaign, and built his initial victories with their blood. From there it was a gradual growth from his grandfather’s small ludus of five gladiators to the proud Ludus Laeca of today, boasting nearly twenty five gladiators.
    From tiny seeds grow mighty trees, his grandfather had said, some barbarian saying he’d heard on campaign. The old man had commissioned a sign saying such, and put it on display in the training yard. Atticus supposed that for some of the men down there the saying could provide some small comfort, a saying from their own people, depending on which savage tribe they hailed from. Atticus had grown up in the ludus, the grandson of the lanista, and then when grandfather breathed his last Atticus was the son of the lanista, now the lanista himself. His father had been an ambitious man, possessed of a love of coin that was only matched by his love of the games.
    While his grandfather had focused on the training and