These men could barely move.  They were stripped of almost all muscle; their skin dried, papery, and yellowed.  Where muscle and skin were not necessary, bones and internal organs laid open to the air.  One man lay prostrate on the ground, unable to move save for his head and his wheezing remnant of lungs.  His throat was an insect-thin membrane which crackled with each breath.  The second man pulled his head and chest up and looked – appealed – to the Council.

 

“Finish him!”, one member chirped.

The rest of the Council agreed, muttering “Yesss, yesss, finisshh himmm..”, in a repetitive frenzy.

 

The man crept excruciatingly towards his enemy.  Skin hung off his decimated hand as he raised it above the quivering membrane…  and brought it down.

 

“He is without breath!”  The one Human member of the Council pronounced this loudly, which bothered the others.

 

The man wrenched himself before the five and beseeched them with his eyes.  In his destroyed mind he imagined that he could still gain salvation – he could still be healed – at the whim of the Council.

 

The insects of the Council decided to eat his face. 

 

Their claw-tipped mandibles jerked spasmodically before their mouths as they raced forward with the determination only an insect could have.  The Human member of the Council turned to me and confided, “I make 500 million for a session like this, as do the other members.  You can help me steal it.”

 

He held out a bag towards me, showing off the glowing oversized coins.

 

“I’ll never get past the guards”, I hissed, picturing my own face eaten in such circumstances.   These Romanesque combats were the punishment for high treason and usually culminated in a frenzy of face-eating.  I looked back towards the small arena and saw that they had almost finished with the visage of the first-slain.  The other still twitched in the background, an eye dangling loosely against bone.