Even through the pungent smell, sheer emotion carried the strongest scent of all, as the air was thick with pure terror. Only the strongest men could resist the onslaught of looming reality swooning around the room. It would seem death itself was more welcome than the reality of having to think about it. Fear has many of the same contagious side effects as laughter, as it seemed to affect all in the immediate area.

Three lit torches spread evenly around the oval room cast distorted shadows which danced across the gray stone floor, each one flickering with an invisible breeze that couldn’t be felt, threatening to extinguish the only light sources in the room. Only to barely come back to life again and repeat the process with the next unfelt breeze.

The warrior sat back against the cool stone and began to take in the whole scene. A room full of dead men who could not accept the cruel reality of their fate, was nothing more than an annoying distraction to him now as he tried to clear his head for the upcoming test of survival—a test he not only didn’t fear, but found a strange sense of exuberance and even acceptance for. We all meet our end sooner or later. No sense fearing the inevitable. Continuing to let his mind relax, he found the cries and whimpers of the irrelevant souls in the room begin to fade into a muffled, distant hum, becoming nothing more than background sounds similar to wind rustling through the leaves of trees off in the distance. It was barely even a discernible sound at that point, certainly not out of place or even all that apparent.