Wendy-Briese Thompson sighed as she looked out of the window, which overlooked the glorious city of Rome. How long had she wanted to walk through the storied streets of The Eternal City, viewing the wondrous splendors of architecture, the magnificent artwork of nearly three centuries of culture, the history of one of the true great cities.
The bloodthirsty roar of 50,000 spectators startled her, and she looked around, trying to gather her thoughts. Oh, yes. She was in the Flavian Ampitheater, here to watch the games.
She couldn't truly remember how she had gotten here, or even why, but almost mechanically, she walked towards an arch that led out into the arena. It was a state of bedlam, with thousands of people on their feet, watching the combat raging on the field.
Below, nearly a score of gladiators fought in a melee, already, several of the combatants were down, and Wendy was startled to see that three of the corpses were women. A fourth woman, blonde hair flying from her unhelmetted head, cooperated with several others in facing off against a man wielding a weapon that resembled a shovel with a sharpened edge. The man violently swung at his opponents, forcing all of them back. Beside him fought a young man, a crowd favorite by the looks of things, fighting valiantly against several other opponents from the same crowd. At their back fought a man, obviously from the Orient.
In the middle of the arena, however, seemed to be the main attraction. Three warriors stood back to back, while another three cautiously circled them. The three in the center could not have been more disparate. One of the men was huge, a virtual giant, weilding a massive axe. He fought shirtless, with black pants, his long black hair flowing behind him as he laughed and beckoned for the circling men to come on. The other two fighters wore face concealing helmets, although Wendy could tell one was a male, while the other, surprisingly, was another woman.
The three men circling charged as one, swords glinting in the afternoon sunlight. Wendy let out a yelp, sickened as the helmetted man shoved his sword into one of the charging men's belly. He looked like a Hun, one of the barbarians of the north. But no more, clutching his stomach, he dropped to the ground.
The other two fared no better. A massive swing of the axe took the eyepatched head of another man, so it rolled free to the cheers of the crowd. The helmetted female, using a brilliant thrust and parry, disarmed the third man, and forced him to his knees. Wendy saw that he had been painted as a mockery of royalty, an obvious attempt at humiliating the man before he was killed in the arena.
And killed he was. The female hesitated at first, but the crowd, screaming for the man's death, swayed her, and she thrust her rapier through his throat. The man fell over in a shower of blood, no stregnth left to even clutch his punctured neck.
The other trio was fighting well, but beginning to fatigue from the overwhelming odds. Suddenly, a coil slipped around the torso of the Asian man, and he was ripped away. Wendy turned, and her jaw dropped as she saw the biggest snake she had ever seen, over forty feet long. The head of the snake bobbed back and forth, massive fangs daring anyone to rob it of its prey. The Asian man struggled in the clutches, but with his partners so pressed by overwhelming numbers, there was no hope for him. Finally, with an anguished scream, the mans back was crushed by the coils, and the snake released the broken man, its head bending down to feed on the carcass.
The younger man, the crowd favorite, was disarmed, and grabbed by his assailants. As two of them held him down, a massive man with a goatee stood over him, taunting the young man as he struggled against his oppressors. The man raised his mace, and crashed it into the skull of the man, the crowd booing loudly. Again and again the mace fell, until the young man's head was nothing more than a mass of brains, blood, and skull fragments.
The crowd booed again as the remaining man's shovel broke, and he too was grabbed and held down. The blonde woman, smiling seductively, walked up to him, planting a kiss on his lips, then driving a knife into his back, smiling cruelly as her allies released him and he pitched face first into the sand.
All this had happened faster than Wendy's horrified brain could process it, and she gasped as the remaining survivors turned towards the trio still standing in the middle of the arena.
Before anyone could move, however, a blonde haired male member of the larger group grabbed a darker man from his same party, drawing his dagger across the man's throat, then triumphantly ripping the scarf that had been covering the now-dying man's face away and holding it high. The crowd roared with glee over this betrayal, although if it bothered any of the remaining combatants, no one showed it.
Then, the larger group charged.
Wendy watched as the massive axe took another head, this one bald and mustachioed, the kilted body crumbling into the sand. Then the onslaught hit the trio hard, although they more than held their own. The blonde haired woman shrieked as the helmetted woman slashed her behind the knee, and she fell, hamstrung. A small man, looking to be from the Eastern part of Europe, was run through by the helmetted man, and the giant grabbed the blonde haired betrayer with his bare hand, crushing his throat.
The crowd roared with glee as the man with the goatee and mace was stabbed by both the helmetted man and woman, the man twisting his sword so he was disembowled.
Within minutes, the every member of the larger group was down, the crowd roaring at the trio in the center, who had overcome the odds and won the day.
Or so they thought.
The helmetted woman screamed as the coils of the massive snake wrapped around her, hoisting her off her feet. Her two male companions charged the snake, although the bobbing head and massive fangs were quite the deterrent, and the woman screamed again as the coils around her tightened. Finally, a massive axe collided with the snake's head, and the woman was released, falling to the sand. Her partners continued to press the snake, but the woman didn't join in. Instead, she walked up to the blonde haired woman, still lying on the ground clutching her hamstrung knee.
The helmetted woman slammed her sandalled foot onto the blonde woman's chest, and looked down at her. The arena hushed at the action, the only sound being the hisses of the injured snake, and the pleas for mercy from the blonde. This wasn't killing in the heat of battle. This was personal.
There was no mercy to be had. Rapier steel flashed, and the tendons in the womans other knee was slashed. Another swipe slashed the woman's face and eye, and the blonde howled in misery. The rapier slashed a third time, digging into the woman's body just below her throat, and exiting just above her groin, a long vertical slash down her abdomen. Screaming triumphantly, thr helmetted woman kicked her over on her side, the blonde shuddering as her entrails leaked into a puddle. After a few agonizing seconds of shudders and whimpers, the woman lay still. Up in the stands, Wendy turned away, choking down the sudden urge to vomit.
By this time, the men had dispatched the snake, and the arena erupted into screams, cheering the victors.
The cheers redoubled as they realized the show was not over, and former allies turned on each other. The helmetted man struggled to find an opening for his gladius, the giant swinging his axe to keep him at bay. The woman, after spitting on the blondes corpse, ran to help the smaller man. Even then, the two combined could not match the gargantuan, as they struggled to find an opening.
Suddenly, the woman erred, and was too slow to dodge the axe. Fortunately, she darted close enough to where she was struck by the haft, and she went down hard. The giant roared in glee, raising his axe to split her in two, but paused as the man's gladius slashed a shallow cut across his belly. Snarling, the giant let out a backhand, sending the man flying ten feet, rolling into the sand. Howling with triumph, the giant turned back to the woman...
... and found a steel rapier sticking out of his heart. The giant stared at the sword blankly for several seconds. Then, with a soft groan, he fell to his knees, then face first into the sand.
The man staggered to his feet, and ran to the woman, the two embracing as the crowd roared the victors. The man released the woman, grabbed her hand, and raised it high in the air, raising his free hand as well, as the two soaked in the cheers of the audience.
The woman's free hand clutched her rapier, and drew it across the man's belly.
The man collapsed to his knees, looking at the woman. Although his face couldn't be seen, it likely registered the shock of the betrayal. The woman calmly dropped her rapier, picked up a discarded sbort sword lying nearby, and swung, the man's head flying free of his shoulders.
The crowd's roar intensified as the woman picked up the head, tore the helmet off, and raised it triumphantly. She ripped off her own helmet, although her back was turned , so all Wendy could see was the mane of flaming red hair that now cascaded down her back. But the woman slowky turned, acknowledging each side of the ampitheater, and Wendy felt her blood run cold as she looked upon the woman.
Red hair. Heart shaped face. Had she been standing close enough, she would have seen the irises of her eyes were an emerald green.
For the woman down in the arena was none other than Wendy Briese herself, triumphantly holding up the severed head of her husband.
MAY 27, 2010
THE NEST-MASTER BEDROOM
INDIANAPOLIS, INDIANA
5:55 AM LOCAL TIME
Wendy bolted upright in bed, breathing heavily. Brushing her flame-colored hair out of her face, she looked around her bedroom. No colosseum, no screaming mob, no score of dead warrior carcasses surrounding her. A quick glance to her right told her that her husband's head was very much on its shoulders, and snoring rather loudly.
Just a dream.
The third such one in the past week.
Wendy rubbed her temples, as if trying to massage away the memories of the nightmare, although her mind's eye still continued to dwell on the stunned look of betrayal on her husband's decapitated head. Noticing it was starting to get light outside, Wendy glanced over her slumbering husband at the atomic alarm clock on his bedstand. Almost six o'clock.
On the twenty-seventh of May.
Her twenty-ninth birthday.
Having no desire to go back to sleep and risk another nightmare, Wendy crawled out of bed, stretching and yawning as she stood upright. Knowing her husband, he still had a couple hours left until the batteries recharged. She might as well get a run in before he whisked her away on whatever birthday adventure he had planned.
She had never felt less enthused about a birthday in her life, she realized as she changed from her nightgown into her jogging clothes. She supposed it was because the wicked number thirty now loomed only a year away. She supposed it didn't mean too much, she was still in great shape, and, near as she could figure, she looked just as attractive now as she did five years ago.
But the cruel milestone also made her wonder how much time she had left in this sport. I was ironic, considering how she had just come back two months ago, but she didn't see too many ladies continuing on into their thirties. Heck, even Cobra himself had the audacity to call her a dinosaur, even though she couldn't be too much older than he was.
But what was age? She could still move as well as anyone in the ring. Like her husband, the five year absence from the ring could work to her advantage. While most wrestlers her age had a decade of constant never ending strain on their bodies weighing them down, she had three. With five years of healing since then. Barring a tragic accident, she knew there was a lot of fuel left in the tank for her.
But either way, she figured, as she checked in on her daughter, such a decision needn't be made in the pressing future. She was healthy, and she was finally going to get to do the one thing she had never been able to do before.
Compete in Summer Games.
Maybe she was being foolish, but she didn't think she had ever placed this much pressure on herself before. The only other time she could think of that came even close was before her third match with Misty, which had been her last chance at regaining the Cruiserweight Championship.
She had succeeded then, but could she now? She'd count herself lucky if her teamates didn't kill each other in the first round. And if they survived the opener- could this shaky truce actually survive until the end of the battle royal? Or would Terrence and Mandrake gleefully turn on each other the moment the contest became a free-for-all?
As for her, she mused as she walked into the kitchen, she was the smallest competitor heading into this, and her size would make it way too easy for her to be thrown from the ring. Even if her team continued to work together, she'd have absolutely no margin for error.
But as she grabbed a granola bar from the pantry she remembered standing in the ring in Victor's gym, being scolded by her unlikely mentor. She had always used her lack of size as an excuse. During her initial run, she had clung to the cruiserweight division. She had known that she had the talent to take the National, Double Crown, or even World titles, but she had refused to leave her box. For almost her entire run, she had played it safe, settling for safe wins against the likes of Evan Hurley, Chance Cassius, and Chris Saint, instead of risking her pride against the bigger, stronger wrestlers.
Now, that safety net was gone. The Cruiserweight Championship was now long defunct. If she was to survive in the 2010 World Wrestling Alliance, she had to get over her lack of size. She had to tap into that same inner stregnth she had found down in Mandrake's training room.
Ironically, Wendy realized as she exited the front door and began her run, her first round opponents were the embodiment of the type of opponents Wendy had made a name for herself against. All three- Kellerman, Davenport, and Cannon, were high flying Cruiserweights with a mixture of technical ability thrown in. If she couldn't defeat them, especially with the mighty Terrence Thompson and Victor Mandrake at her side, she'd have absolutely no excuse.
She was surprised Kellerman had remained so quiet. Of the three men of Team Appalachian wrestling, she respected him the most. She admired his positive attitude, and his patriotism. She wondered where he went.
Her other two opponents, Zortalk and Cannon, seemed to be dealing with issues of their own identity. Zortalk's 'should I really care' attitude astounded her. Despite the difficulties she had suffered as a result, Wendy had always enjoyed competing in professional wrestling. When it had stopped being enjoyable for her, she and Terrence had walked away. But she had always loved the puzzle, the wearch best way to bring your opponent down. And, of course, the glory of the victory. And there was nothing more glorious than the honor of Summer Games Champion.
If Zortalk didn't see that, if he didn't have the heart and desire to even try to win Summer Games, why even enter? He had gone so far as to bring in Edward White, as bitter a man as she had seen. Terrence had scoffed, and told her he was just a weakling who couldn't handle the pressure. But some measure of truth had rung through White's venmomous speech. She knew there was such a thing as too much success in this business. It could be embittering. It had embittered Ulfric. It had embittered Dane. It had even, to some extent, embittered her husband. But she had figured it had all been circumstantial. Ulfric had taken so much damage during his climb to the top, been in so many brutal matches, he had felt his sacrifice hadn't been worth it. Dane was obviously unbalanced, and Wendy doubted that he would ever find true happiness. And the controversy surrounding Terrence's championship had been so disheartening, especially since he had spent three years hunting that title.
But such a thing couldn't happen to her, right? She was too smart for that.
She hoped.
Chris Cannon was another matter altogether. It was as she had suspected- beneath Cannon's annoying, arrogant facade was an insecure man frustrated by his own failures. It was good that he had realized that his delusions had only hampered him, although she suspected such personal revelations and transformations didn't happen overnight. But she knew that, whatever happened to the man at Summer Games, his career and life would be better now that he had abandoned his gimmick.
Now, if only she could find the stregnth to abandon hers.
Wendy stopped in the middle of the sidewalk, stunned by the thought. Is that all it was anymore? Her kindness, her compassion, was it just an act she put on to make the fans like her? She didn't want to believe it. She had always thought of herself as a good person. She went to mass most Sundays, she tried to remember the Golden Rule in everything she did. She wasn't perfect, but she genuinely tried to care about everyone she met, whether it was family, friend, or even opponent.
But she could get angry. She could feel hatred in her heart. She remembered her dream, the absolute cold, calculated evisceration of the blonde woman. She had been sickened, but there had been a sense of satisfaction to the action as well. Wouldn't that be great, to give the same fate to her real-world enemies? To let them stare in horror as their lifeblood puddled beneath them?
Why deny what she was? She was a human being, not an angel! And hatred was just one of the many emotions humans had. Other people hated her, why couldn't she hate them back? She already did. For the past two months, every time she heard names such as Heidi, or Greer, or Dane, or Defiance, her teeth ground, and her blood boiled. The effect was almost Pavlovian. So why not destroy them? And not just in the ring. Wreck their lives, completely ruin them to the point where they would regret ever hearing the name Wendy Briese. Why not?
Because, a small voice told her, its what Victor Mandrake would want her to do.
But was that really such a bad thing? Victor Mandrake was respected and feared. Twice now, he had strolled into Defiance, destroying anything in his path. She had showed up, and gotten humiliated. He was a favorite to win Summer Games. She was considered lucky if she made the finals. Nearly every single promo thus far had mentioned Victor. She had been barely noticed.
How amazing would that be? For her to stroll through the alliance, and people stare at her in awe and fear? To be left alone, because anyone who crossed you faced the most dire of consequences?
And their size difference didn't matter. She knew how to hurt people. Dislocate a few joints with her submissions. Cut off blood with a nerve hold. Her kicks could cause concussions. Heck, if she wanted, she could KILL somebody. Then no one would mess with her!
An overwhelming sense of guilt struck her, and Wendy bowed her head in shame. She was being selfish. Summer Games wasn't about her. It was about liberating the WWA from the clutches of Defiance. Everything else, including her revenges, had to come second.
For the greater good.
Wendy sighed and looked at her watch. Terrence would be getting up soon, she best head back. With great effort, she forced the thoughts of her dream, and of Summer Games from her mind. Today wasn't a day for hatred, or revenge, or anger. Today was her twenty-ninth birthday, and it was a day of celebration. As she began the long run home, she idly wondered what exactly Terrence had planned for her.
Because anything else would just have to wait for another day.
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