text: TW: Graphic descriptions of violence **Cassandra steps out into the coliseum, and the floor thick with black mud. It's storming, and the raucous crowd in the seats behind her seems to loathe her name. To her left is a cliff, where the mud sloughs off little by little into the abyss, and ahead of her is her Reputation.** **The doors shut quietly behind her as she stares up at the beast. It's stranger looking than her, and it's much taller, and rather lean. It’s eyes glow and its horns seem out of a functioning state. It holds an axe the size of her in one hand, and its tail seems to be amputated. Even still, it looks like her. Like looking in a carnival mirror. She ties her shotgun to her belt, revs her chainsaw, and rebuckles her shield.** **The announcer shouts over the comms that the fight is about to begin.** **It opens with a charge directly at her, feinting with a sidestep and a swing for her neck. She blocks with her shield, and counters with a blast of her shotgun. The shot sinks into its chest, and it sputters up somewhere on its face grey liquid for a second before pausing and letting out a deep, reverberating cacophony of what sounds like laughter. It retreats and fades into the background for a moment.** **The crowd cheers.** **It reemerges and takes a heavy step towards her. She backs up, two steps. It takes another step towards her. She steps back some more. She’s retreating. Like a coward, which is strange. She feels like prey. It's been a long, long time since Cassandra has felt like prey.** **She runs and slides between its legs and attempts to sink her now spinning chainsaw into one of its arms. And then her saw** **gets** **stuck.** **It grabs the blade in its other paw and rips the chainsaw, straps and all, from her wrist and tosses it off into the abyss on the other side of the cliff. It bops her on the head, removing the top few layers of her horns, costing her most of her teleportation charges. The monster begins the next round of combat.** **She pulls out her shotgun out of fear, and lets a shot loose into its face, Tenderizing it for double damage on her next attack. It grabs the gun from her, and tosses it too off of the cliff. She blocks a swing of its axe with her shield. And then another, and another, and another. Her first shield shatters into crystal shards that sink into the mud. The monster steps on a few as it advances towards her, either not noticing the glass or not caring. Cassandra retreats a few feet, and it throws its axe at her. She recalls her second shield to block it. Two charges left in her horns. The axe deflects off the shield and embeds itself into the crowd. The monster climbs up to get it, giving Cassandra a few moments to think.** **The rain gets heavier as the fight drags on. One swing of the serpent’s axe is blocked by a now broken shield, and it goes for one more. Cassandra reacts fast enough to catch the blade between her two palms. The rain makes her slip, and she lets go for just a second.** **The axe does not forgive this mistake.** **The metal is freezing, tearing through her shoulder and becoming embedded in the floor. Bone leaves its flesh, and she can’t hear her arm plop into the mud below her over the storm. She summons her wrist cannon to her remaining arm and loads it with mud from the floor while the beast attempts to remove its axe from the floor. It gives up, and rushes at her barehanded. It slams into her, and it's almost rotting human face stares down at her as she readies her cannon. She pulls back the drawstring with her teeth, and lets go. The force of the mud being flung staggers it, and she ports scrap metal into her cannon while the serpent recoils. There are no charges left in her horns now. It stomps back over to her, and she pulls back the string one last time, aimed between its glowing, empty eyes.** **The crowd goes silent.** **As Cassandra stood there, standing over the corpse of her Reputation, she began to wonder. What the fuck had she gotten herself into? It had taken her arm from her. And her gun, shields, horns, and saw. Even though her opponent was dead, the door on the other side of the arena was still shut. So she got to tearing its head off its neck with her claws. After 10 minutes of sawing off the beast’s newly donut'd skull and lugging it with one hand and two legs, getting it stuck in the mud beneath her a few times, fifty feet to the door. Lightning sans thunder flashes in the background as she presses the monster’s ugly mug against the scanner on the pristine, metal double doors.** **The doors creak open. She steps out into the next level of the dungeon.