Hi all,

Here’s a sneak preview of a bit more of the Last Gladiator! Enjoy!

The twisting series of hallways soon lead to a massive banquet room. Huge columns, so large ten men couldn’t fit their arms around one, held up a steel and marble ceiling, plastered and decorated with beautiful paintings of angels and gods. Servants in the same red and black tunics and white trousers wove through the crowd, like fishing vessels plying their trade. A nibble from a guest here, a nibble there, and the vessels would return to port to reload their silver trays with tiny morsels of food.

“Will we not be dining in the triclinium?” She asked, partially confused. The Imperial house wouldn’t make the most powerful members of the realm eat on benches and tables like the ludus, would they? Mergovin chuckled.

“I don’t think so. It’s different when your banquet is for, oh, five hundred people.” Women in puffy dresses with a strangely military uniform cut glided by, men in formal tunics with layers of embroidery and jewelry escorting them with bent arm. The diversity of styles and people here was intense. She had expected just nobility, but looking around she could see at least twenty familiar faces from the newsrags, including prominent industrialists and merchants. For a moment, she saw a familiar face from Neapolis, but she quickly guided Mergovin in a different direction. She could not mistake that nose, that hairstyle, that scar…Lucia repressed a shudder of fear.

Who is Lucia seeing? What does it mean? We’ll have to find out later!