Athena quit pacing her cell long enough to inspect her new mode of dress (http://passionseed.com/adult_sex_toys/images/products_images/EM/EM-L5017.jpg) and grimacing as she did so. She wasn’t fond of the fact that her legs were bare. The pieces, at least, gave her unrestricted movement. She would have preferred to keep her own blood-stained leathers, but apparently that wasn’t up to her. She resisted, of course. However, after taking a couple nasty lashes of the whip to her back, she decided it was best to conform. For now. Her thought process was logical. If she hurt, she didn’t have the edge she needed in a fight. Before she started pacing again, wondering when in the hell something was going to happen in this god forsaken place, her cell began to vibrate. She hastily made a grab for the bars as the cell detached from the very ground it was on and started floating upwards. By the Oath of the Ancients, what the fuck was going on?<br/><br/>It soon became evident to Athena as she looked around her, amid the thunderous roar of the crowd that surrounded, that all the slave cells had been brought up from below and were spaced out in a circle, following the stone circle of the arena. That wasn’t all. Her eyes took in the spheres around them. Her eyes estimated  a fifteen foot diameter, each. Not a lot of room to work with, but she had been in tighter places. She was still clutching at the bars of her cell as she heard:<br/><br/><span class="bbc_font" style="font-family: verdana;"><em>"Fresh blood for our Princes! Today, these new slaves shall face their first challenge within the Arena! Are they fit to be trained for our Princes? Or are they merely meat for the slaughter?" </em></span><br/><br/>Two things happened at once, the lock on her cell door turned and two swords, well used by the looks of it, appeared on the dirt floor close to her newly opened door. Her eyes were glued to them. If she were going to survive whatever these denizens had planned for her, she would need them.<br/><br/><span class="bbc_font" style="font-family: verdana;"><em>"What say you? Shall we see how they fare? How will our newest candidates stand up against Hell's monstrosities?”</em></span><br/><br/>She didn’t wait. The door was open. She dashed through it, scooping up the swords, weighing them in her hands before brandishing them to get the feel of their balance.<br/><br/><span class="bbc_font" style="font-family: verdana;"><em>…..”Well then, let the beasts be unveiled..." </em></span><br/><br/>She looked up from her perusal of the weapons in her hands as a circle of runes blazed across from her. She back stepped once, twice. From the blaze of light stepped a multi-headed beast and a chained woman, riding on top of it. She would have felt sorry for the wench except for two things; one, the female seemed, upon studied contemplation, to be part of the beast and two, she had a mouth on her.<br/><br/>Athena counted seven furry tentacle like legs and seven heads. Perhaps they matched seven of the levels Hades held? There was only one way to find out. Gripping her weapons tighter in her hands, she darted toward the beast. This was not going to be an easy task. All legs and snapping heads. One wrong move, one slow move and she was going to be in trouble. She brought up her main hand with a wide sweeping arc toward those snapping jaws, forcing them to retreat for a moment, but a moment is all she needed to bring her main hand up sharply and drive it down toward that one hairy tentacle leg on  its left side, slicing it clean off. Athena didn’t waste time, for time was of the essence. No sooner had she cut off one leg, she swiftly brought the point of her blade upward, in a complete reverse direction that she had just used, ramming the point into the underside of the jaw of the head right there on the left side. One down, six more to go. Her body was sprayed with blood as the beast yowled in pain. She leaped backwards, yanking her sword free as she did, keeping her eyes on it and the sassy mouthed bitch.<br/><br/>This was not going to be pretty. In fact, she figured, it was going to get a whole lot uglier pretty damn quick.<br/>