“The broken sticks! The sticks!” Jack yelled to the Spartan, pointing to the two halves of the stick that the scorpion had snapped.

The Spartan didn’t seem to understand the words, but worked out the meaning of Jack’s gestures and immediately seized the weapons. The fracture had left each half with a pointed, jagged tip, which the Spartan now drove into the monster’s back, mercilessly piercing the exoskeleton again and again in the search for a vital organ. Jack remained locked to the scorpion’s tail, the venom splashing onto his hands and face and burning wherever it touched his skin. The beast flailed like a mad bull, but it could not buck him nor avoid the Spartan’s attacks. Eventually, it shuddered and slumped.

Jack pulled himself free and looked over to see Trotsky and the panther-woman. Between the two of them, they had managed to pull the venomous stinger off the end of the scorpion’s tail. Trotsky, now in full rage, held the giant arachnid by the tail and, although it was at least as large as he, he now slammed it bodily into the arena walls, over and over with the force of an avalanche.

Jack turned to the balcony and called out to Sergeant Schmidt. “We survived,” Jack said. “We beat your little game. Now, how about letting us go?”

Schmidt rose from his seat and applauded half-heartedly. “Very goot, Herr Jack. Very goot. But you are not done yet. Zere are still four of you. You vill now fight until zere iz only one. Or ve vill machinegun you all.”

This post is part of an ongoing story set in the pulp-era world of Hollow Earth Expedition. If you are new to this series, I suggest starting at the beginning.

The pair of impossibly large scorpions scuttled out through their gate in a confusion of legs and claws. They moved rapidly for creatures of their size, their many limbs flashing dusky yellow beneath the bright Hollow Earth sun. In the spectator seats above, the Nazi soldiers and their chosen slaves cheered on the deadly creatures.

Jack darted across the arena floor, back towards his cage. The motion seemed to catch the attention of the scorpions, prompting both to pivot towards him and then rushed forward. For a brief, panicked second he wondered if he shouldn’t just crawl back into his cage, hold the door shut, and hope that the scorpions filled up their bellies by feasting on the other three unfortunates in the arena with him. But that wasn’t Jack’s style: he would rather become arachnid food than leave someone else to do his fighting for him.

The bars of Jack’s cage had been cut from a wood that felt as hard as iron, but Jack had been wearing away at the thin rope that tied it all together. He had been intending to use this weakness a means to escape, but now he had more pressing needs. With a swift kick to the corner of the cage, he burst the seams of the enclosure and scattered a small pile of deadly-hard sticks before him.

Jack scooped up several and tossed one to the Spartan, who caught it in one hand and whirled it expertly to face the beasts. He tossed a second stick to the giant called Trotsky. Trotsky was not nearly so deft: he watched it coming towards him and watched it bounce off his chest and settle to the sandy floor. At least the giant now had some kind of weapon within reach. Jack looked around for the third combatant, the panther-woman, but he didn’t have time to see where she had gone before he needed to parry the thrust of a claw with his own stick.

The crowd howled in anger from the stands. The games-makers had wanted a slaughter, but Jack had turned it into a fight.

This is an ongoing story about a lost world of hungry dinosaurs, sinister villains, and non-stop action. If you are new to Hollow Earth Expedition, I suggest starting at the beginning of the story.

When the cart was only a few feet away, the Spartan stepped out from behind the tree to block the path. He raised his shield and cocked his spear-arm to show he meant business. Jack watched from behind his concealing tree, wondering what kind of madhouse he had stumbled into.

The wagon train stopped, the slaves in the cages rose to their feet, and the Nazis fingered their weapons nervously as they eyed this strange figure blocking their path. The Spartan stood silent and still for a long moment, daring the Nazis to move. It was clear that he intended to pit his primitive weapons against the four soldiers and, more amazingly, he was going to let them have the first move.

Jack thought about joining in: his rifle might have increased the odds of freeing those prisoners, but it would still be two of them versus four armed soldiers. As difficult as it was to admit, this was not his fight. It was 1936 and the U.S. was not at war with Germany. Maybe things would change if his countrymen could have seen Hitler’s soldiers carting off cages of women and children, but right now Jack had an obligation to restrain himself. If you get yourself killed here, he told himself, there’ll be nobody to protect your crew.

One of the Nazis whipped his rifle up, but before he could get off his shot, the Spartan’s arm snapped forward and sent the spear whistling through the air. It plunged deep into the soldier’s chest, driving him back and to the ground.

The prisoners rose to their feet and cheered. The giant strained at his chains towards the soldiers, but even his colossal strength was not enough to break free of his bonds.

With a trill of metal and a flash of bronze, the Spartan produced a short sword and surged forward to continue the assault. The next nearest Nazi lunged in with his bayonet, but the flashing shield knocked the blow to the side. The sword came down on the rifle, cleanly knocking it from the soldier’s hands. But now the other two Nazis had their rifles up to their shoulders, and they let out twin booms and a white haze of gun-smoke before the sword could come down a second time.

One of the shots knocked a hole in the bronze shield but passed harmlessly over the Spartan’s shoulder. The other shot caught the Spartan in the thigh, knocking his leg out from under him. Obviously unprepared for the power of modern weapons, the armored warrior pitched forward onto the ground. The Nazi soldiers were on top of him then, smashing at him with the butts of their rifles. The Spartan grabbed for the hilt of his fallen sword, but one of the soldiers pinned it to the ground with the tread of his boot, and then brought his rifle down on the Spartan’s helmet. The blow’s teeth-clenching reverberations echoed through the forest.

The slaves in the cages openly wept as they watched, and the giant at the yoke slumped and let his big arms dangle in their shackles.

“Alright, that’s enough!” Jack stepped out into the path and leveled his rifle in their direction.

The soldiers stopped and turned slowly to face him.

Jack blinked as a trickle of sweat stung his eye. At this range, he wouldn’t miss. But there were three of them, and they wouldn’t miss, either.

Don’t miss any of the pulse pounding action! Get all the episodes of this story delivered to your inbox each month by subscribing to my free ezine!

Hollow Earth Expedition was created by Jeff Combos and is property of Exile Game Studio. For more Hollow Earth Expedition action, check out ExileGames.com

This is an ongoing story about a lost world of hungry dinosaurs, sinister villains, and non-stop action. If you are new to Hollow Earth Expedition, I suggest starting at the beginning of the story.

As the wagon train rounded the bend, Jack peered around his tree to get a better look inside the cages. He was relieved to see that none of the occupants had Scrumtumbler’s unruly white coiffure, Limefellow’s prim bow-tie and bolo hat, Celeste’s sparkling red dress, or Maia’s silky black hair. What he saw were the tear-streaked faces of men, women, and children. They were a diverse collection of people and must have been captured from a variety of tribes throughout the area. Some were tattooed and others were ritually scarred. Some had long, braided hair and others were cleanly bald. The one thing they had in common was the mournful look in their eyes as they peered out from behind the wooden bars or their cages.

The giant, scraggly man pulling the train of carts stumbled momentarily over a root, and he got a swift jab in the ribs from a Nazi rifle barrel for his troubles. The soldiers laughed as his oversized features twisted into a grimace as he struggled to get the wheels moving again. Jack didn’t know much German, but he recognized the name the Nazis applied to this big man: Trotsky, whose namesake was an outspoken opponent of Stalin and Hitler. The four soldiers seemed to think it was a good joke to call their colossal slave by the name of a pint-sized political enemy, but nobody else was laughing.

Jack looked from the bearded giant to the four uniformed Nazi soldiers to the eclectic collection of prisoners. Looks like Halloween came early this year, he thought. Then he spotted a person hiding behind a tree on the other side of the road. He was dressed up like a Spartan from an ancient history book, complete with a shield, spear, thick bronze breastplate. His face was obscured by one of those helmets with the big red horse-mane running down its center.

With one hand, Jack quietly unscrewed his canteen cap and took a sniff just to make sure no one had slipped him a mickey.

Don’t miss any of the pulse pounding action! Get all the episodes of this story delivered to your inbox each month by subscribing to my free ezine!

Hollow Earth Expedition was created by Jeff Combos and is property of Exile Game Studio. For more Hollow Earth Expedition action, check out ExileGames.com