#WritersCoffeeClub Day 7: Describe an action moment you’re most proud of. Share an excerpt.

This is from my novel Dying in Pleasure. It's an excerpt from a gladiator battle.

"Pompeii,” he said, "I give you Diana, the Virgin Huntress.”

The gladiators pulled the curtains and revealed Diana in the cage, helmeted so her face was covered completely; chains wound about her body; and wearing a spectacular bronze breast plate depicting the goddess Diana. The crowd quieted to a silence the Aedile hadn't heard before. For several seconds, not one person in the arena spoke. The slaves opened the cage and pulled Diana out into the open. She squirmed and growled like an animal. One gladiator lifted her helmet as two others unbound the chains enough to free her arms. Seeing Diana as a woman, the crowd jumped to their feet for a closer look at her huge form and long ratty hair. The chains fell from her body, but remained shackled at her wrists: she had ten feet of heavy chain trailing like iron snakes from her arms.

The crowd cheered. This sudden outburst, and the brightness of the morning, startled and confused Diana. She howled horribly and covered her face with her hands, the chains now looking like black streams of blood from slit wrists.

Their inexperience made the gladiators panic. In their panic, they ran. It was the worst thing they could do. Diana seized up the chain of her right arm, swung it round her head as if it was silk thread, and flung it toward the nearer of the two men. It caught him around the neck, breaking it instantly.

The second gladiator got caught in the leg by the chain on her left arm, dislocating his leg entirely from his hip, and leaving it hanging at perverse angles. He was dragged off the field screaming, as Diana pursued the last two gladiators. Diana caught one of them around the waist with her right chain, and then the left, yankingthem together so hard he spat out a large mouthful of blood. She pounced on him and tore at his face with her nails, roaring like a beast.

The fourth gladiator got away uninjured, and having pissed himself.

Diana let out a high piercing whistle, and her two hunting dogs ran into the arena.

Each dog had a small sword strapped to its side. At the same time, and from the opposite end, Narcissus cued the release of two lions that hadn't been fed in three days. One dog went straight for a lion, the other to Diana. The lion racing toward her she caught in the head with her right chain. It stopped, flopped on the ground and bled profusely.

Without breaking stride or speed, she seized the sword from the dog heading toward her.

She jumped the downed lion, clutched its throat and cutting through its body to its heart. She cut it out, and threw the organ with a war cry into the crowd.

The two dogs were now on the second lion; Diana jumped into the fray, slicing up the belly of the lion and extracting its entrails.

The entrails soared through the air to the crowd in the arena.