I Enslaved The Goddess Who Summoned Me

Despite the wolves’ falling bodies, fatigue was finally beginning to press at Nathan. The beasts kept coming in an unbroken tide, a dark, teeth-bared wave that never seemed to finish. He sidestepped another lunge and let the charging predator slam into Ethan — who had been needling him all along — just to buy himself a breath.

Ahead, where the pack poured from the shadows, he saw the shape of a structure: a massive iron cage, its bars black with old rust and fresh blood. Wolves spilled through its open maw one after another, as if some invisible hand never ceased opening the gate. Yet, the gate needn’t be open forever — someone had to shut it. That, Nathan realized, was the trap’s true cruelty: grinding them down until someone — anyone — tried to close it and was picked off.

So fighting the entire swarm inside the den was suicide… unless someone closed the gate. That was their only chance. It was a bleak, brutal logic, but it made the purpose of the slaughterous design plain.

“This is endless,” a man nearby snarled between strikes.

“What kind of round is this?!” another cried, slashing wildly.

“Who knows! Just fight!” someone else barked.

A grudging complicity spread among the survivors — for once they fought as one against a common enemy rather than each other. Nathan took advantage of that shift. He lifted his voice and cut through the din so everyone could hear.

“We need to close the cage!” he shouted. The cry snapped every head toward him — even Benjamin’s. The gaunt man moved mechanically, more corpse than man, but his gaze flicked, briefly alive with attention. The gladiators clustered, breathing, bleeding, eyes shining in the torchlight. They wanted direction.

“There is a cage at the back,” Nathan said, steady and loud. “They’re pouring out from inside. We shut that, we stop the flood.”

“Close it?!” someone scoffed. “Are you kidding?”

“There are thirty wolves ahead!” another protested, voice trembling with panic.

“I’ll close it — you just draw their attention. Give me a path!” Nathan ordered.

A chorus of scoffs and curses rose instantly. “Why should we obey you?” “Yeah!” “Fuck off, Septimius!” They spat their jealousy openly: Septimius, the mercenary who’d risen fast in Rome, loved by women, trusted by Caesar — envied and hated in equal measure. To many of these men, Nathan was not a savior but a symbol of privilege they resented.

Nathan just sneered coldly. “Then you’ll die like dogs right here,” he said, venom clear in the words. The threat trembled through them like a cold wind. For a few seconds, the silence that followed was heavier than any roar.

Then someone stepped forward.

“I will hold them back — alone, if I must.”

A cheer rippled through the group. “Look! It’s Spartacus!” someone shouted. The mood shifted in an instant. Where Nathan’s presence had kindled suspicion, Spartacus carried reverence. He was the myth made flesh to these men: the rebel who had dared stand against Rome, the symbol of slaves and the dispossessed. Their hope found a face.

Spartacus’s eyes were hard as he looked at Nathan. “I will do it alone if needed,” he said. His voice was steady, not boastful — a vow. Then his gaze sharpened. “But are you capable of closing it, Septimius?”

Nathan gave a small, searching smile. “Do it, and I’ll close that damn cage.”

No sooner had the words left his mouth than a wolf leapt from the flank and bore down on Nathan from behind. In a blur, Spartacus vanished between shadow and steel. His fist connected with the animal’s muzzle in a thunderous impact — bone crushed, sinew snapped — and the wolf exploded backward, slamming into another with a dull, catastrophic boom.

The assembled gladiators gaped. For a heartbeat the tunnel held only the sound of ragged breathing and the distant clatter of the combat around them. Then Spartacus moved, not waiting for praise. He charged deeper into the den, a living wedge of iron and fury, drawing the nearest beasts like a magnet.

“Hurry up and get ready!” he yelled over his shoulder to Nathan.

The gladiators exchanged looks. Pride and fear fought in their eyes, but Spartacus’s courage was contagious. One by one they clenched hands, braced, then roared and surged forward after him, a ragged, determined host. Their footsteps struck like a drumbeat as they closed ranks, following the slave-turned-legend into the heart of the hunt.