It was an age where men took their rare pleasures from grisly spectacles. Even a woman’s embrace offered little refuge against a dying world. Savage games for a savage people. The crowd drew strength from their champions, and imagined themselves standing high atop corpses heaped at their feet. Bread and sport kept the mob distracted, though bread remained a fantasy.
When their champions fell, coin was lost, and sometimes lives, but new champions arose, new illusions with which to beguile themselves. For those chiefs willing to risk the dusty wilderlands, and the forests caught in eternal fall, and the plains baked under a capricious sun, champions were to be found. Only the mighty or skilled could tame these beasts, these titans.
For the crowds: such extravagance! Such glory! Their minds soared to heights they could never reach with their weakling bodies and feeble ways. For a time, they’d forget their grumbling bellies, and retell the tale, with great embellishment, as if they’d had any part beyond another voice in the crowd.
Yet for some, the tale needed no embroidery, no exaggeration. For some, the game became reality.
