Yasmin would have rather faced Vetger himself than participate in an execution.
She had hoped the last one was...well, her last.
For a moment she stood there, stomach twisting; it took a great deal to make that emotional and mental shift, to both resign and steel herself to murdering helpless people when she'd been prepared for animals. Vetger, however, showed no such hesitation. He flew into the fray, laughing, and effortlessly cut down the largest of the group in a stunt that would have been beautiful if it wasn't so ugly and bloody.
And then he was past the falling body--and tearing into the runners.
He went straight past the real criminals, the real fighters, and right for the frightened ones. The criers. The petty criminals that begged and sobbed and cowered as he hacked into them.
For a moment, Yasmin stared in abject horror and disgust. It usually went that they fought the aggressive ones first, and that, hopefully by the time they'd finished them, the timid ones would have transitioned from flight to fight. At least then she could try to goad them into an attack so it at least felt like self defense, sick as that was. But Vetger had also left her with all the true criminals as he slayed the weak ones, and as they saw their fellows get sliced into bloody meat, rather than freeze up, they got desperate.
Especially when they saw the other gladiator was just a woman.
While a group of them split off to try and get Vetger from behind while he chased down the runners, the bravest of the rest of them surged forward with yells and flailing weapons, and Yasmin snapped into action. It was her or them. That's what it always came down to. And her sympathies ended where her life was threatened.
She ducked low and swept the legs out from the leader of the pack, knocking him into the men behind him and finishing him with a quick horizontal slash to the belly that spilled his guts into the sand. He wouldn't die immediately, but he was certainly out of commission, so she turned her focus to the others as they swarmed her with clumsy strikes.
These were thugs, not fighters. Their brute strength and hard swings might work against the untrained folk they stole from, but not a trained gladiator who had been tested and survived time and time again. Yasmin twisted and weaved, her smaller size a boon in many ways. Her blade sang through the air, opening a throat here, a face there, her hands growing slick with blood as her own blood roared in her ears. But the will to survive another day was stronger than her own morality, so she let it go and went to the place she always did when it came down to this.
As she planted her foot on one corpse's chest and struggled to yank her blade out of his skull, another man armed with only a heavy chain looped it around her neck and pulled. She choked, genuinely surprised (and a little impressed) before she stomped hard on his instep and sank her elbow into his gut. A strong headbutt to his chin dislodged him, and she swung around and kicked him to the ground. Finally, she pulled her blade free and flicked the blood off of it.
The man, whose buddies had abandoned him, scrambled backwards from her on his hands, eyes wild with terror. The chain was far from his grasp.
Yasmin sighed and kicked a rusted sword toward him, one dropped by another criminal. "Come on. Get up."
This may be an execution, but she wasn't about to kill a man on his knees.