“One of them got away,” I remembered, scanning the surrounding forest. It was too dark to see anything, let alone hunt someone down. “Do you think he’ll come back?”
“If you buried an axe six inches into someone’s abdomen and they didn’t die, would you come back to try again?”
“Good point.” I said, searching for any orbs approaching in the sky. “Do you think I’ll get any prizes from this?”
“I doubt it, since none of them were monsters, but you do get to loot them.”
“Right.” I felt a tiny bit of guilt for getting excited at that, at least until I reminded myself that they’d all tried their best to kill me.
The false sun was almost gone, leaving the woods in near darkness. I stood, cradling Waffle over the woman that’d held a knife to his throat, feeling a sort of cold satisfaction as I stared at the corpse. Waffle squirmed impatiently in my arms. He was probably sick of being held, or more accurately, me fretting as I squeezed him against my chest…which seemed fair, considering what had just happened. Not wanting to smother him, I set him down, tilting my head as he waddled towards the body.
After a considerable amount of grunting and snuffling around the corpse, he lifted his hind leg in the air, standing with the bulk of his weight to one side.
What’s he—
“No—” I laughed, “Waffle!”
He craned his little head to look at me, giving a questioning chuff as he continued to urinate on the body. Had she not just tried to kill him, I would’ve chided him more. Since she had, I decided I had bigger things to worry about than where Waffle did his business.
A metally scent wafted through the air, spreading a stale reek of iron that seemed vaguely familiar. It was a moment before I realized what it was and where it was coming from. Me. I padded around the wet spots on my dress, frowning when my hands came away with blood.
“We really need to find you something else to wear.” Belial started, “you look homeless.”
“Technically, I am homeless.” I shot back, running my hand over the large rip on the side of my dress, which was now thoroughly ruined, “and I like this dress…do you think it’s fixable?”
“Fixable? I feel like any second some influencer is going to record themselves giving you money.”
“Uh…okay? I have no idea what you’re talking about. What’s an influencer?”
“You know what, it’s better you don’t know. Anyways, you should probably be more worried about the parts of your outfit that were actually contributing to your survival.”
Looking down, I found the spot where an axe opened my side. The wound there felt healed, but there was a six-inch gash where the chainmail was split. Somehow, the suit I wore underneath was intact, which was odd considering the blood staining my dress around it. I also very vividly remembered an axe-head being embedded there.
“How is my stretchy suit not ruined?” I asked, brow wrinkling as I felt along my shoulder. The chainmail there was pierced through as well, but I couldn’t find a rip or tear in the suit.
“It’s self-repairing.” He answered, the word making me blink as I realized something else.
“Wait, you had to heal me a lot…why didn’t I pass out?”
I’d lost a lot of blood and been wounded far worse than any other fight I’d been in, yet somehow, I was still conscious.
“Because I didn’t have to heal you. Normally I’d need to cannibalize other organs or do weird things to your mitochondria. Fortunately for you, the stim-cocktail from your shoulder pads did most of the healing, it’s the cancer I’m dealing with now.”
“Cancer?” I made a puzzled face.
“Ugh. How do I explain this…It’s like when your cells don’t know what they’re supposed to be when they grow up, so they all start growing into little artists and writers, then before you know it your body is full of unemployed little assholes who wont stop lecturing you about emotional intelligence.”
“What?!”
“Just--don’t worry about it—I’m handling it.”
I shook my head, again deciding I had bigger things to worry about.
Godrick was lifeless several feet from where I stood, the jaw I’d torn from his face resting at his feet. There was a deep laceration across his neck, and I wondered if I’d done that when I spun with the spear lodged in my shoulder. Next to him was the hole Godwin had charged in to, the sight of which sent unease creeping into my gut. If I survived falling that distance, there was a good chance he did as well. My legs wobbled as I moved to look over the edge. I may not have gone unconscious, but my body was spent. Carefully, I leaned over the hole, nearly stumbling inside as a voice came from behind me.
“He’s dead.” came the young girl’s voice.
I’d completely forgotten she was there. Swallowing, I wrestled my hand to my side, stopping it from jerking to my chest.
“How do you know?” I asked, narrowing my eyes.
Her head seemed to follow me as I moved, despite still wearing that bag over her head. Can she…see me in that thing?
“I can’t…feel him anymore,” she said, her answer wrinkling my forehead.
“Feel him?” I asked, a fair amount of doubt in my voice despite what I’d witness her do to Godwin.
“I can feel people…sense them. It’s one of my abilities.”
“And you used it to help them find me.” I accused, gesturing between us to Godrick’s mangled corpse.
“Y-yes.” she answered, suddenly flustered.
“Why?” I demanded, letting the anger into my voice. She shuffled nervously as I repeated the question, “why did you lead them to me?”
“I’m sorry,” she lowered her head for a moment, her body language turning from creepy apparition to ‘child that’d just been scolded’. I was about to yell again when she finally answered, “when they took me, I thought you could help me.”
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“How?” I spat, louder. “Have you been watching me?”
“No!” She took a step towards me, her body rocking forward slightly as I shouted, causing her to stop.
“Stay back!”
“I’m sorry.” Her voice broke as if she were close to crying, causing guilt to settle in my gut. “I really mean you no harm. I just heard about you on the feed and…we both had bounties, so when I got captured and I realized you were close, I thought…”
The more she spoke the more I realized how inexperienced she sounded. Could she be telling the truth? I exhaled slowly, unsure what to think. On one hand she had been their prisoner. I knew for certain that much was true, I’d even heard them beating her, but something didn’t quite sit right.
“Stay there.” I said, as she took another step in my direction.
“The feed?”
“It’s a sort of message board for gladiators participating in the games. There’s been quite a few mentions of you there ever since you shot up in popularity…which is all thanks to me, by the way.”
“So was the bounty.” I snapped, far too tired for any more of Belial’s bullshit, “do you think we can trust her?”
“I’d rather not trust anyone, but we could use help getting to the next floor, and that trick she pulled on Godwin could come in handy.”
“Unless she uses it on me.” I said, pushing an anxious breath through my nose as I remembered how confused Godwin looked in that moment. She made him miss me three times before dropping to his death. It was even more unsettling that she could tell he was dead without even seeing him.
“I doubt she’ll be able to with me here, if she tried, I could just take control of you.”
“Then you know how her magic works?”
“Mag—” Belial gagged as if he’d just heard something fowl.
“What?” I hissed, crossing my arms as he continued to sputter and cough, “what did I say?”
“You know how I feel about that word.”
“And you know how I feel about you wasting my time.” I said, feeling a twitch under my eye.
“I doubt her ma—ma—magic,” he finished after several dry-heaving attempts to say the word, “is any match for me, and the rest of her stats aren’t anything you need to worry about.”
I examined her warily, trying to decide whether she was telling the truth or not.
“Is there any way to tell if she really has a bounty?” I felt like it would be easier to trust her if she did.
“Let’s see.”
My head jerked back as an interface glimmered into view. Somehow, I still hadn’t gotten used to Belial doing that, or how strange it always looked. The words and pictures made of light. This time they displayed a scrolling list of moving portraits, each with a string of numbers underneath, repeating the same action in short five-second reels.
One of them caught my eye. An older man with long gray hair. He wore a flat brimmed hat and chewed on something that seemed to be burning at one end. His clip showed him twirling a sort of rifle in one hand before blasting something out of view. I was surprised they allowed anyone weapons like that, until I realized it was much older looking than the one I’d seen Oren carry.
More bounties scrolled past, some more intimidating than others. Forgetting the way my interface worked, I actually tried to lean in as I watched the next one.
“Who’s that?” I asked, with a small amount of wonder.
Belial, having heard the interest in my voice paused his scrolling to let me watch the clip in its entirety. It showed a shorter man dressed entirely in black. He was surrounded by what looked like other gladiators trying to kill him. Judging by the movements of his victims, the footage looked as if it’d been slowed. I gaped as he literally ran across the air, slinging sharp black spikes from his sleeves. He was fast. Too fast for anyone around him to react. Five men fell over as he landed, black spikes sticking from various parts of their bodies. I watched in amazement, wondering if I could ever be so fast, until suddenly a massive blur of metal flattened him, and I realized the man I’d been watching wasn’t the bounty at all. The camera panned outward, recentering on a towering figure encased in silver armor, with a blue cape flowing from shoulders that were wider than his victim was tall. The streak of metal had been some kind of sword, only it was almost as long as the man who gripped it. He slid the faceplate of his armor back to reveal a surprisingly handsome face. The man in black robes twitched on the ground, part of his body flattened below his ribs. I gagged at the sight as Belial resumed scrolling to the next bounty.
Most of the short clips showed each bounty doing something impressive, which was making me feel a tiny bit of excitement about seeing mine. Except when mine finally came, the clip made me scowl. That…woman, must’ve chosen it intentionally. It was from when I’d slept in the tree and showed me drooling with my head lolled to one side. That would’ve been petty enough. The part that made my jaw twitch was that she’d somehow managed to get a shot of me lazily scratching my crotch. Grieving widow or not, if I ever got out of here, I was going to pay that woman a visit.
“I told you she was awful.” Belial said, a hint of ‘I told you so’ in his tone, once again overlooking the fact that this was entirely his fault. “There’s twenty active bounties right now including yours, and six more that have already been collected.”
The scrolling came to an end, stopping on a middle-aged man with a patch over one eye. I recognized the word ‘claimed’ in red lettering stamped across his moving portrait.
“Where’s hers?”
“She doesn’t seem to have one. In fact, of the twenty-six I just showed you, the only one listed as a woman was yours.”
“So she lied…” A familiar chuffing sound pulled me back to the present, followed by giggling.
The interface winked out, and equal parts anger and fear burned in my gut. Not only had she moved from where I told her to stay, but she’d sat down near Waffle, and somehow coaxed him into her lap.
“Get away from him.”
“I’m sorry,” she said quickly, turning her covered face towards me. “I thought if you saw your pet trusted me you would see I meant you no harm and--”
“You could’ve just tricked him” I said, storming in her direction, “like you tricked that bounty hunter.”
I bent over to pluck a confused Waffle from her lap, my nerves making me move faster than I should have. He gave a startled squeak, his little eyes bulging as I pulled him into my chest. I stroked his fuzz to calm him as I backed away from the girl. She didn’t try to stand, leaning backwards on her bound hands instead.
“I didn’t,” she stammered, “I tricked him to help you—”
“You don’t have a bounty.” I accused, from what felt like a safe distance.
“Not like yours, but I do.” she pleaded, struggling to her feet without the help of her hands, “the people after me, they can’t afford anyone finding out who I am.”
“Then who are you?” I shot back, setting my jaw.
“I can’t...” she hesitated, letting her shoulders dip, “but I swear, I don’t want to hurt you or anyone. I’m not even here to compete.”
Her answer made no sense. “Why would anyone put themselves through this if they didn’t care about winning?”
“That, I don’t know, but it is possible she’s telling the truth about her bounty being a secret.” Belial said, sounding deep in thought.
“How? I thought no one was allowed to communicate with gladiators once they were inside?”
“That’s true, but someone could’ve hired them before they entered.” Belial suggested, adding yet another complication.
If that were true, there’d be no way for her to prove it, unless I could track down the one who escaped…My head perked up as something occurred to me, “She was being held prisoner.”
“She was.” Belial agreed.
“So there had to be a bounty.” I said, nodding to myself.
“Unless she used her powers to make them take her prisoner.”
I let out an audible groan, causing the girl to tilt her head. “You aren’t making this any easier.”
“Sorry.” he apologized. “If it helps, I do believe she’s telling the truth, but I’d feel better if we could get a look at her profile. It would at least tell us if she’s killed anyone in here.”
“Uhm—” the girl said, sheepishly, causing me to sigh in frustration.
“Yes?” I asked, annoyed.
“I know you still don’t trust me but, do you mind undoing these?” She spun round to show me the metal cuffs binding her wrists. The tremor in her voice told me she was on the verge of crying again. “They really hurt. I promise not to kill you or anything.”
I bit my lip, still unconvinced.
“Okay,” I answered after a moment, “but shouldn’t I start with that bag?”
“Oh.” She laughed, turning round to face me, “Yes, please. If you don’t mind.”
As I drew closer, I realized she was almost half-a-foot shorter than me. She tilted her head back as I approached, almost as if trying to meet my eyes, again making me think she could see despite the bag she wore. Or was this her feeling me? Either way, it was creepy, and I didn’t like it.
I hesitated a moment longer before finally pulling the bag off. She smiled, her yellow-green eyes staring back at me as she shook the tangle of long hair away from her face. I took a reflexive step back the instant I recognized her.
“Is she…”
“Yep.” Belial answered, with what sounded like an audible gulp. “That’s her.”
A portrait of her popped into view, still displaying the black border Belial had assigned it when Oren warned me to avoid her at all costs.
I need name ideas for this new character! Leave them in the comments, or vote below. <3
Also, checkout my friend JusTice's story:
What should we name our new character?
