The Pain on The Plains.
Construction of the venue for the final stage had been completed.
The arena in which The Kingdom of South-East Asia and Oceania's finest contestants would duel was a custom-designed, cricket-field-sized battlefield. Its terrain had been chopped up into mounds, pillars, trenches, and pits. Several dozen trapdoors dotted around these obstacles shook and roared.
For the audience, a sloped embankment surrounding the arena was being filled out by six thousand flag-waving Villagers, their young lungs prepared to heave encouragements for allies and insults for rivals. Tens of thousands more, who couldn't squeeze into the venue, were laying picnic blankets across the plains outside to watch via projectors. The atmosphere was fairly tranquil for a Slum event, the attendees relaxing in the late-night coolness. Everyone was a little drunk.
A single marquee tent overlooked the arena. On a guarded viewing platform in the front of it, The Kingdom’s Dukes and their esteemed guests had shown up to enjoy the bloody festivities.
Inside the tent, behind the screen of a silk curtain, their leader was preparing for the opening speech.
“Soldiers of Suchi, prove your might. Fight!”
Queen Suhita squeezed a clenched fist at her vanity mirror like a rebel igniting the flame of revolution.
After holding this heroic pose for a couple seconds, she glanced at the reflection of her hairstylist braiding feathers and bones through her hair, at the tailor pinning her leopard-fur skirt. They were dressing her up like a savage warrior princess.
“You two, thoughts?” she asked.
“Amazing, your grace.”
“My stomach’s twisting, your grace.”
Queen Suhita didn't trust her attendants' opinion. “King Ramiro, what mood should I close with?”
She'd addressed a cloaked figure peeking out through the curtains at the crowd, puffing away at his cigarillo.
Her fellow royal had made a surprise visit. He hadn't explained his reasons for coming, but she was happy to have him here.
Presently, The Empire was wedged between two great adversaries, The Church controlling Central City and the anonymous benefactor of the WBAE, both having united recently to undermine The Empire. Throughout the conflict, she and the other royals had been anxious about their indeterminate future. King Ramiro, though, had kept them calm, guiding them as he had during the hectic gang wars of unification, always with a cool-headed intelligence, meting out swift, effective responses to every trouble.
He'd warned them that out-right defeating The Church was an impossibility at this stage. Still, many viable options remained. If Suchi shifted to a free market economy, they’d amassed sufficient wealth and manpower to maintain dominance in key industries. Alternatively, their headquarters could always be relocated to one of the slums of Kanaru’s other major cities, where their graduated Villagers had established bases. Or, since they'd combined their wealth to boost King Ramiro in secret through The Trials of Nerin, they could purchase land as The Company had - although exorbitant property prices would mean a significant down-sizing of their operation.
Queen Suhita wasn’t part of The Empire’s inner circle, so the precise details were unknown to her. Nevertheless, she wasn’t worried. King Ramiro was their rock. His charming, ironic smile often gave the impression that he was privy to higher happenings beyond their comprehension and according to which their victory was guaranteed.
So long as she was queen.
Queen Suhita adjusted a feather in her hair to accentuate her driftwood crown, then her face became cold and rigid like granite. “Soldiers of Suchi…prove your might…" she stopped. "No, that isn’t it either.”
“Don’t worry, your grace,” answered Ramiro between puffs. “The brain prepares, but it’s the heart that finishes. Feel the crowd, feel their undying love, and the perfect path will open up before you in the heights of the moment. ”
“That's right!” She snapped her fingers. “You’re perfect, Queen Suhita, you’re stunning, you’re dazzling! Go out there and amaze them!”
Hyped up, she approached the curtains, a guard handing her a spear to wield and King Ramiro flashing his teeth before slinking out of sight.
Queen Suhita touched the curtain’s fabric. The silk had the softness of warm flowing water. Queen Suhita listened to the crowd catching its breath as the band raised their instruments, to the sudden attack of the first trumpet playing her entrance song.
The guards slid back the curtains, and she was hammered by the roar of the music, the spotlight, and cheers.
“My queen!”
“The Tigress of Sumatra! Dig your claws into me, my queen!”
“Make me your cub, mommy!”
A staunch warrior, she strode past her clapping Dukes to stand before the vast audience and the cameras, before the sea of subjects showering her with their undying affection.
-Ramiro: Act playfully scared. Forgive my shock. I expected to see lions out here, but not so many thousands! Pause for laughter. To those who’ve braved the savannah and the sun to get here, you have my welcome! Pause for cheers. Glance at Central’s delegation. To those who didn’t…trail off for booing…welcome!
Queen Suhita gripped her chest in fright. “Forgive my shock. I expected to see lions out here, but not so many thousands!”
Laughter tore through the venue, and the collective calls made her spirit soar. Thousands of eyes were consuming her every muscle movement, thousands of ears were tuned to the timbre of her voice, thousands of tongues were singing the music she plucked on the thousands of strings of their thousands of hearts!
With Ramiro himself feeding her lines, the Queen elaborated on the history of the Plains Day, related this crude duelling format to Suchi’s stubborn forefathers, begrudgingly welcomed the Citydwellers, and emphasised The Empire’s continued commitment to the cause. This speech was less fun with The Church censoring their most radical rhetoric, but she still managed to stoke the crowd’s fervour up for the climax.
“...a wise comrade once said that, ‘There is no royal road to science, and only those who do not dread the fatiguing climb of its steep paths have a chance of gaining its luminous summits.' There is no glory without struggle. Our greatest battles have never taken place in the safe, sterile comfort of an arena. I ask you, why should this day be any different? WE fought and WE fight ALWAYS amongst monsters!”
Queen Suhita stabbed her spear to the sky, like thrusting a lightning rod at a stormcloud. Through sympathetic magic from a Constructionist secondary Class, currents of energy channelled between the spear and the trapdoors dotting the arena that’d been built of the same material. They lifted at her command.
From the earth, an army of savannah beasts emerged. Leopards leapt out and charged the nearest human before being yanked back by the chains around their ankles. Lions roared across the arena to their chained pride mates. A hedgehog launched quills at the applauding crowd losing their minds, baboons with club-fists hammered the dirt, and a mammoth obliterated a pillar with the swing of its tusks. The Empire's poachers had brought the full smorgasbord of rhino-types: rhinophants, rhinolions, rhinohogs, and rhinoceroses. There were stranger monsters, too. A Goblybeast—a short, muscular biped with a dog head—snuck up on a nearby bison and, extending its jaw like a python, swallowed its prey whole; while the larger creature squirmed about in its distended stomach, the Goblybeast lay down on its side for a digestion nap.
“And the soldiers!” shouted the Queen.
At her signal, a gate was flung open, and the duellists entered.
Almost a hundred in total, they marched in like gladiators, emboldened by the mass’s adoration, sturdy in the vitality and strength of youth. Following an officiator’s orders, they were split into two groups, each half being directed to line up along opposite sides of the arena.
An announcer explained the arrangement to the audience. With previous restrictions on gear and abilities, the duellists would have to additionally account for the constant threat of the wild monsters. A thin, 2-metre wide safe strip out of the range of any beasts cut through the middle of the arena, over which, assuming the contestants could even get to it without being eaten, they would need to fight. To discourage stalling, once a duellist reached the middle, their opponent would have twenty seconds to do the same before being eliminated. The matches from each round were to be held simultaneously to save time for The Plains Day’s later events.
The duellists studied the arena’s layout carefully. With their lack of equipment, the monsters were unkillable - many would one-shot them. The arena's architect had laid traps throughout: some terrain features provided shelter from the beasts, others seemed to but didn’t. Ranges for the monsters overlapped, so what paths were safe would be in constant flux as the creatures’ focus shifted from one player to the other, creating a sort of labyrinth with invisible, moving, man-devouring walls. The beasts near the perimeter were made Sentient due to their proximity to high-level players in the crowd; the smartest ones, having figured out the rough plot, focused on the duellists and waited.
The Queen admired her gladiators, imprinting their current state in her mind to better taste the changes she would soon evoke.
-Ramiro: There is no glory without struggle…
“There is no glory without struggle," she proclaimed, "and there should be no struggle without glory. For a special one-off, I have personally prepared an additional prize for tonight’s victor myself.” She allowed her subjects to weigh her words, to imagine and wonder, stretching out the possibilities, then swept her spear across the duellists. “Myself! Whichever of you courageous warriors places first, you will have the privilege, at The Grand Hunt, of joining my personal hunting party. We struggle TOGETHER!”
The Grand Hunt was The Plains Day’s main event, during which the Villagers would disperse out across the savannah to compete over who could bag the most impressive kill.
“TOGETHER!” yelled a paid actor.
“TOGETHER!”
“THEY SHALL NOT DIVIDE US! LONG LIVE THE EMPIRE OF THE PEOPLE! TOGETHER!”
“TOGETHER!”
The venue went wild. The spectators and the previously-defeated moaned for their lost opportunity, the duellists were fired up by the prospect of an intimate evening with their Queen, and the monsters mirrored their lust for blood.
Only the Citydwellers were unmoved. From their perspective, The Villagers and The Slum Empire were like a swarm of rodents living in the dumpster outside one’s apartment – more numerous than oneself, perhaps, but not a threat due to sub-standard weaponry. Most didn't know who the dolled-up rat giving a speech was.
Two duellists were silent for their own reasons, a masked, slump-shouldered girl captivated by a private drama, and a muscular lad, also masked, whose panther-black eyes stared at the former in confusion.
Queen Suhita’s whole body trembled, her heart quivering and floating upon the outpouring of love for her, her, and only her!
-Ramiro: Soldiers of Suchi, prove your might. Fight!
As he'd promised, she felt no doubts. Queen Suhita tipped her chin towards the heavens, inhaled the climactic enthusiasm of the—
A grotesque shriek interrupted her.
“YEEEEEEEEP! HI! LIGHTEN MY FEET! HUHUHUHUHU!”
The Queen and the crowd’s attention snapped towards the arena. One of the duellists, an ordinary-looking teen, had begun a set of exaggerated, hyper-cringe stretches and shouts.
“PROTECT ME AS I PROTECT THE UNPROTECTED! WOLOLOLOLOLO!”
His manoeuvres reminded one of salesmen performing company-mandated exercises before the shop doors opened to customers. It was the same crazy, toupee-wearing, soul-crushing energy.
The disgusted crowd began to heckle him to stop, but the teen continued his obscene warm-up without an ounce of shame.
“YEEEEEEEP! ACCEPT HIS BLESSING, WOUNDED OF THE WORLD! BLEEEP BLEEP BLEEP!”
Queen Suhita spun around to her Dukes. Her pageant queen smile disguised the frantic string of questions she spammed in their group chat.
-Suhita: Who is this clown? Why aren’t any guards executing him for his impertinence? Which of you lazy morons is responsible for ruining my moment?
The Australian Duke shielded his face.
-Jack: Aww crikey, love, I guess you could say he’s one of ours, but we can’t control him. He’s a Company grunt. Actually, that's the same rude bloke from Team Turbonoobs who played hooky the day before yesterday. HF, the Tier-5 Scholar.
“Team Turbonoobs,” Queen Suhita whispered out loud with a hint of hatred.
Her royal countenance darkened as she recalled standing idly up on The Community Service Event stage while waiting for them. It hadn’t occurred to anyone in her team that someone would forgo receiving the first-place prize. After an awkward minute, Byzantium’s Village Head had come up and accepted it in their place.
The least they could have done was sent a notice of absence!
Another Duke, representing The Duchy of Thailand, took a composed drag of a cigarillo, a habit he’d picked up in imitation of a certain saviour. He’d risen through The Empire’s ranks through top-notch brown-nosing.
-Bhuimbol: Be at ease, my queen. When arranging the brackets, I spotted this nuisance amongst the contestants and paired him against Double-A for the first round.
Queen Suhita didn’t recognise the name, the players’ being hard to track when a new batch arrived monthly. The Duke had to explain that Double-A, or Ahristian Aamos, was a Filipino Crusader ranked 17th on the 1v1 ladder. He was the second-best duellist in their Kingdom, behind Justinian, who couldn't be utilised because he'd missed the tournament sign-up after being pressured by a shepherd to assist with combing their flock.
-Bhuimbol: Either way, the Company dog will lose. I mean, he was even beaten in a preliminary bout by a no-name Citydweller. How good could he be? Start the round, your grace, and let us listen to his last yelp.
The Queen sneered with satisfaction, glowering back at the rude Scholar who’d stiffed her not once but twice now.
“BLEEL-BLOOP! O QUICKEST ONE, WE WILL MELT THE SWORDS OF WAR AND FORGE YOU NEW SHOES! YAYAYAYAYAYA!”
-Suhita: A platinum gold e-assistant, that’s the reward for today’s deed, Bhuimbol.
-Bhuimbol: Your generosity continues to astound me, my queen.
With the Dukes sharing their jealousy and congratulations, Queen Suhita amplified her voice projection to drown out the teen.
“SOLDIERS OF SUCHI, PROVE YOUR MIGHT! FIGHT! FIGHT! FIGHT ON AND DIE!”
The moment may have been ruined, but the demise of an enemy would be adequate compensation.
With the round starting, she sauntered over to a driftwood throne amongst her Dukes, from which she would savour—
The crowd’s volume lowered suddenly.
Queen Suhita span back around, only to witness that same rude Scholar—vaulting over the shoulders of a Golden-Horned Wildebeest—speeding far ahead of the other duellists, who’d retreated back to the starting line to watch in amazement.
Unauthorized content usage: if you discover this narrative on Amazon, report the violation.
He zoomed across the arena, breezing past some monsters, changing his direction with a jarring abruptness to avoid others, but always zooming.
The way he was grinning, the way he zoomed—side-stepping the fist of a Baboon Clubber, ducking the acidic spit of a Corpse Cobra—had a mocking, goofy quality, like an Olympic marathonist flexing in an elementary school race.
Queen Suhita was certain the target of this ridicule was herself.
Strangely, after reaching his destination at the centre strip, the Scholar zoomed right onwards to the other side—dodging the talon strike of a Giraffe Ostrich—and zoomed towards Double-A, The Empire’s chosen champion.
Down in the arena, the Crusader Double-A was terrified.
The moneybags he’d trained against and normally beaten at The New Suchi Arena had been possessed by the ghost of a maniac. HF's usual impassive, tired expression had been replaced with an unsettling grin that blended a lion’s focus and the glee of a street evangelist who’s sniffed out someone willing to accept their cult's pamphlet.
Double-A glanced to the crowd for help, to HF—leaping into a trench to evade the flame breath of a Prairie Dragon, emerging on the other side, closer, still grinning, still zooming—to his fellow duellists. Help!
Frozen in fright, the Crusader found his feet being torn from the earth, his body cradled in an iron-gripped embrace.
HF grinned beatifically down upon him. “Have you heard about our lord and saviour, Mutambi?”
“W-w-wh—” Double-A’s lips were quieted by a finger pressing them shut.
“Shh, my child, don’t resist his pull.”
"Leave me alone!"
Panicking, the Crusader began to squirm and slap. His abductor, however, out grappled him while laughing with the cruel condescension of parent forcing cough medicine down the throat of a feverish child.
Struggling away, Double-A did not notice himself being dragged out onto the arena until he was lying with his back to its soil.
He stared once more into the maniac lion’s gaze.
The Many-Toothed Lion looming above inspected the dagger in the Crusader's hand, a canine pried from the gums of one if its juvenile kin. This human is fond of our fangs, thought the lion, the rose-pink in its Sentient eyes pulsing darker. Then, let him have some more! It stretched its mouth to reveal a cavernous maw crammed with a hundred glowing, razor-sharp teeth.
In the crowd, a boy of 11 watched the removal of the upper four-fifths of the Crusader’s skull with delight. The crunch of the meat and bone was audible over the boos and whistling and laughter and groaning around him. He admired the duel’s victor, who patted the head of a warthog as he left the stage and blew a kiss towards The Empire’s royalty.
“Awesome,” whispered the boy.
It was a potential fan!
He tapped his uncle's shoulder “What's that cool guy’s name? I want to join his fan club.”
“No. A Sabah Pangolin doesn’t support outsiders.”
“Isn’t he one of us?”
“He’s a Company goon.”
“Oh…”
It was no longer a potential fan.
Amongst The Empire’s leadership, Queen Suhita and the brown-nosing Duke who’d attempted to rig the match-up were suppressing their embarrassment, their cheeks glowing pink from the face-slapping,
From the curtain behind them came an ironic chuckle.
The fifth round, the beasts patrolling the gore-splattered arena, hissing and barking invitations at the surviving eight duellists to test their luck.
Although most of the contestants were deep in concentration, Henry was having a casual back and forth with his mates in the crowd.
“…you need to stop with this cheap tactic of yours,” Cathy continued to admonish him. “Listen to all these people complaining. They’re not having fun, Henry. You’re ruining the event for everybody. Henry, I know you’re capable of duelling in a normal, respectful manner...”
He smugly lifted his eyebrows. “Catherine, I can't help being brave enough to play according to the proper win conditions. My affliction's incurable. If it were my choice, do you think I'd be down here, still in the ring, about to score a hot date with The 'Queen', when I could be up there alongside you whining virgin losers?”
The crowd booed.
While the hero of this story was baiting the plebs, nearby, a British Beast Tamer and his wolf companion were slinking through the crowd, trying to get a better angle on the competition.
“His next opponent, the girl in the mask, is a mystery," said London Tremor. "To get to the quarter-finals, she’s definitely skilled. Based on the lack of Village insignia and her style not resembling any of Suchi’s current top 50, she’s either a Long-Term Villager maintaining anonymity or, less likely, a completely new face.”
The intern from Channel 5, narrating for 8,000 viewers on his live stream, glanced at the mysterious teen HF.
"Stop teasing them, Henry. You're a virgin, too."
"Not for long. After we get close hunting together, I'm going to fuck the 'Queen'."
The crowd booed.
London Tremor had followed HF's continued wins using Mutambi Death-Grappling, whose techniques for rescuing the wounded soldiers transferred perfectly to navigating the monster-riddled arena.
In the second round, against a Cutthroat, he’d repeated the zooming from his first, and the Cutthroat had responded by turtling at the starting line behind a carnivorous giraffe. Right when the teen was about to grab them, though, he spun around and zoomed away. While the Cutthroat scratched their head, their elimination was announced. The reason: failure to reach the centre strip within twenty seconds of their opponent.
A Fighter in the next round anticipated this trick and ran for the centre strip at the match start. This tactic failed, too. HF was so much faster that he reached the centre about a dozen seconds before anyone else could. Utilising this advantage, he merely needed to block the Fighter from crossing the centre point for a tiny amount of time. His arriving so much earlier to set up a defensive position, combined with Mutambi Death-Grappling's defensive grappling techniques against delirious wounded soldiers mistaking the cultists for enemies, made this trivial. In this way, the Fighter was defeated, and so was the fourth round opponent, neither of them receiving a fair or entertaining duel, both losing to the exploitation of a minor rule.
Alas, the arena's architects hadn't accounted for one contestant being substantially quicker due to having studied an ultra-specific art about safely running around a battlefield.
The mysterious teen's speed caused many to conclude he’d bribed the organisers for a sneak peek of the map. According to London Tremor’s character analysis, that was also entirely possible.
-Suplexed To Heaven: What are SaNguiNe-sama’s odds against her?
The intern picked a chat message to reply to. “Suplexed to Heaven asks what SaNguiNe-Sama’s odds are against the masked girl. Her sprint times have been comparable…”
He wasn’t filming the mysterious teen – 8,000 people would never tune in for that. Rather, the bulk of his viewers were fans of SaNguiNe or Suchi's general duelling enthusiasts. News of the muscled Miracleworker’s participation had leaked from a fan recognising his style and avatar during the first round. Most of the crowd had also taken to supporting SaNguiNe, too, the Villagers’ hoping the wrestler would save this tournament and their Queen.
It hadn’t been London Tremor’s choice to focus on the Miracleworker. Having come here to spy on HF, he was the only Channel 5 journalist present at what should have otherwise been an insignificant tournament, and Lake Hotferver was too distant from Suchi for anyone else to arrive in time. As such, he’d received an order to provide event coverage from a higher-up.
“….in the melee, though, she'll be smashed by SaNguiNe-sama’s immaculate Boulderfoot Wrestling...”
But, while pandering to SaNguiNe's fans, London Tremor retained sight of the bigger picture. He predicted that HF would beat him when the two met, the Miracleworker’s martial talent advantage being weaker than HF’s map exploitations. Some gaps couldn't be overcome. And once the mysterious teen won, much more attention should be poured onto his duelling feats. Then, London Tremor—having kept the emergency releases he’d prepared after The Community Service Event up-to-date—would emerge the foremost expert, his ship rising on HF’s tide.
This intern was about to be upgraded to a paid position!
London Tremor beamed. “Indeed, MingYatsen0513, Boulderfoot Wrestling is an atypical style choice for a Miracleworker, a primarily healing-based Class. This could be min-maxing for The Company’s recruitment tournament, or SaNguiNe may be vying for one of their smaller 6- or 50-man teams. In low-number settings, it can be valuable for a healer to have enough martial skills to fend off ambushers alone.”
While he was answering that question, a noob in chat asking whether SaNguiNe could beat a certain ‘cheater’ was inundated with spam from the Miracleworker’s fans.
“Oh dear, someone doubted the wrestling god." London Tremor laughed. "Rest in peace, lad.”
"FIGHT!"
The crowd surged around the intern with the match start.
He equipped a pair of binoculars and used an adjustable lens for close-ups of both the Miracleworker and wider shots of the others. The duellists, having learned the deadliest traps through witnessing the previous failures, moved through the monster maze at quick but cautious speeds. HF zoomed straight to the middle again.
It was fortuitous that London Tremor had kept the wider shots because he managed to capture an odd event.
The Earthfriend paired against HF had been stalled at the starting position, giving the teen an unblinking glare, refusing to move, refusing to be moved.
"Fuck The Company!” They suddenly howled. ”*Fuck The Tyrant! Fuck The Church! Fuck The Pope! Fuck SaNguiNe and the rest of you Central intruding fucks! None of you are welcome here. You,” they addressed HF specifically, “you lecherous, underhanded capitalist swine, you and the rest of our enemies,” they hacked up a thick loogie and catapulted it in his direction, “your BLOOD! Will DRAIN! INTO THE SAND! FUCK YOU!”
The Earthfriend was slightly butthurt at being denied a date with the Queen.
And then they blinked out of existence, deleting their character to a round of ear-splitting applause.
While a cackling HF stepped off the arena, London Tremor’s chat erupted with praise for the Earthfriend, many of SaNguiNe’s Villager fans denouncing their idol and their blindness for betraying their own freedom-loving faction.
Unnoticed amidst the excitement of this martyr's declaration, the second and third duellists to reach the centre strip had paused to talk.
SaNguiNe’s panther-eyes fixed upon the masked girl who, with her slumped shoulders and lifeless pallor, seemed like a corpse that’d been strung up by rope.
“What do you think you’re doing here?” he asked through gritted teeth.
“Searching amongst the ruins for something authentic?” she answered flatly. “Learning his attraction to these children’s games? I don't know. Whatever guides ‘me’ is as much enigma to myself as it is to you. Perhaps despair simply draws the absurd and illogical out of a man.”
‘Out of a man’ – the masked 'girl’ was speaking in the gruff, unmelodious voice of a dude.
“I was right...” muttered SaNguine, further disturbed by parts of the reply he couldn’t understand. “You stole her avatar.”
There was no one who'd recognise this body better than himself. From the weeks he’d sparred with her in Central’s arenas, her features had been seared into his memory, the lithe fingers that’d wrapped around his neck to choke him, the huntress gaze that’d cursed him and his gender with an eternity of suffering. This was Artemis…at least, her avatar.
When SaNguiNe had first spotted this imposter at the beginning of the finals, he’d spammed them with private messages, which they'd ignored. He’d interpreted this as Artemis being depressed and uncommunicative after whatever incident had caused her to disappear for days. However, over the course of the matches, he'd realised the grotesque truth. In fighting style, mannerisms, and bearing, this wasn’t her; this wasn't even a woman.
Around them, the other duellists collided and clashed, one immediately being knocked backwards into the snapping jaw of a giant tortoise. Despite the nearby carnage, the fake Artemis remained in a torpor, their misery-slowed mind taking a while to register the roots of SaNguiNe’s fury.
“Oh, my mask," said the imposter, "you fell for it.”
“Mask? Mask?! Fucking nutjob! Are you one of her perverted fans? Is this a fucking fetish?" SaNguiNe was beginning to boil over with a violent rage. "Answer before you die!"
In Saana, copying someone's avatar wasn't at all rare, people doing it sometimes as a prank, sometimes out of obsessed flattery. In light of this, his reaction was a bit over-the-top.
The truth was that SaNguiNe had fallen for Artemis. This wasn't his fault. Few interactions in life rivalled the level of intimacy and interpersonal intensity of sweating in the arena. While both of them had strived towards the common goal of entering The Company, he’d been touched by her confidence, passion, skill, and, yes, her beauty.
In these past days, he'd been suffering from the appearance of HF and Artemis going crazy seeking the rich, arrogant teen’s attention. He’d followed her to The New Suchi Arena; he would have enrolled in Byzantium, too, if he weren’t prevented by his embarrassment.
Later, he’d learned that there were worse pains than jealously when she'd vanished completely.
What he’d told HF earlier had been a lie. He’d accompanied his wrestling teacher to this Villager eventer for a change of scenery. When he happened to see HF signing up for this tournament, he'd joined to defeat him, to prove that it was himself who was most worthy.
So, to then have some demented sicko turn up wearing her skin, that was intolerable.
Across from the lovestruck Miracleworker, Hugo Nilsson, better known to the public as Loki, was studying SaNguiNe's anger with curiosity.
Artemis may have been too single-minded to recognise the kid’s growing affection. Loki, though, had certainly detected it, and encouraged it for the pleasure of manipulating another simpleton. As for Hugo himself, after shedding both those masks, he couldn’t decide what he felt about the matter. Subtle threads of childishness and patheticness stirred about inside, both for himself and the kid, and a bit of sympathy, but none of these had the substantiality to form a concrete impression.
What would Loki do? He wondered.
Hugo, channelling Loki, toyed with the kid’s anguish by striking a confident pose. In an instant, he exuded the deadly aura of a huntress. It seemed as though the seaweed locks, unable to be restrained beneath the hair-covering, burst out of to flow around his head like rays of moonlight.
Snorting, Artemis shot the Miracleworker with a man-loathing, ball-punching gaze as sharp as the arrow with which she would pierce his captured heart.
“That can’t be…” The kid staggered backwards in disbelief. “No…No? No! NO!” In a panic, with the subconscious thrust of a wild animal towards a thing it does not quite understand but knows it must destroy, he charged.
Hugo pondered the distraught attack. This wasn’t an alien situation to him. Those caught off guard by his tricks often reverted to a primordial state of bewilderment in their final moments, the reptile within clamouring to retain a hold on its fleeing life. Despite his familiarity, he found himself now unable to summon a response.
This was a malady that'd been hovering over him since being kicked from Asatru for not restraining Loki's arrogance. The grief from his ejection had passed when he’d decided to be finished with it, his experience playing various personas having given him exact control over his emotions. What he discovered, though, when he stopped being Loki, when he tried to return to himself, due to that very experience, there was no ‘himself’ anymore. By wearing too many masks for too many years, he’d worn down the face beneath until it’d become flat and featureless. He was a blank white slate on which could be drawn anything but which, on its own, conveyed nothing.
Oddly, this episode of depersonalisation had granted him an insight into The Tyrant’s mind, explaining why this long-standing enemy of his expressed such a comically strong aversion to roleplaying. Initially, Hugo’d assumed that The Tyrant’s hatred stemmed from the similarity between roleplaying and the acting of the personas employed by the spies like himself who hounded him 24/7, assassinating his NPC companions. That history, however, merely explained the intensity of the hatred, not the humourous flavouring. The latter, Hugo’d realised now, was The Tyrant, a veteran mask-wearer himself, laughing at the damage the spies, the 'roleplayers', were inflicting upon themselves.
That shared connection between himself and The Tyrant may have been why he'd signed up for this tournament. Hugo couldn't be sure. He'd participated in the earlier marathon, too. He'd wondered whether the 'he' stored inside somewhere would ooze out along with the sweat. It hadn't.
Hugo searched for a reply to the charging Miracleworker, finding hundreds, but none that belonged to himself.
Benedict29 poked out his tongue. “All this flopping about, little fish, you're about to attract the shark—" Hugo retracted his tongue, discarding the distasteful persona.
The Miracleworker closed in, his dagger speeding into a blur with the activation of Bullet-Time, aimed towards Hugo’s chest. The heart about to be stabbed did not quicken, even the instinct for self-preservation having been erased.
But it wasn’t Hugo's time to die yet; he still wished to meet The Tyrant.
Loki jabbed with the rapid, untelegraphed strike of a cobra.
The Miracleworker, his perception sped-up by Bullet-Time, ducked the attack.
"Pathetic!" Loki, with another movement double the speed of the feint, slapped the dumb kid's wrist, knocking the retaliatory stab off trajectory, and pulled the dagger in his jabbing fist back towards himself. The weapon’s point wedged through the gap in the vertebrae of the Miracleworker’s neck, severing the spinal cord, before angling up through foramen magnum at the base of the skull to penetrate the brainstem. He shoved SaNguiNe’s paralysed body toward a waiting rhino, and the monster gored the kid through abdomen out the shoulder blade.
Standing tall in the glory of the strong after preying upon the weak, in this ultimate affirmation of his own right to existence, Loki relished the futile struggle of the infatuated kid, who squirmed about to face him, guts spilling down the horn and the whites of his eyes screaming in horror, and Hugo felt nothing.
Amongst the confused onlookers, London Tremor watched a flood of question marks from the chat flashing past his vision. The story all of them had imagined was taking a bizarre turn.
The intern’s stupefaction continued through the blur of subsequent events.
Through sleuths matching body-types, the surprise victoress was revealed to be none other than the absentee Artemis. Just as celebratory news of her reappearance was spreading, a video was uploaded from a spectator who’d caught their conversation using Boosted hearing. In it, Artemis, supposedly a girl from Greece, could clearly be heard talking like a British dude. When the shock and indignation from this betrayal to her/his fans was peaking, a rumour emerged that the fraudulent persona was behind Artemis's earlier disappearance – that reprehensible fellow HF had discovered this fact first and used the threat of exposure to blackmail Artemis into quitting the game.
Due to HF being a member of The Company and his continual goading of the audience, no one in The Slums defended him against these accusations.
Trouble really started once the supposed act of blackmail was picked up by the local contingent of ‘Virtual Realists’. This pro-roleplaying faction believed that the online virtual space was where humanity would achieve universal equality by allowing people to shed the restraints of reality and become whatever they desired. If the British dude behind Artemis wanted to style himself a voluptuous beauty from Greece, then no one had any right to tell her otherwise. These radical roleplayers raised the Grecian goddess as a champion for their cause, her ascent through the tournament transforming into a harrowing story of revenge against one’s abuser.
There was also an undercurrent of Slum patriotism, Artemis being one of the few players to leave Central and to join The Empire when she’d signed up for Byzantium. Her defeating SaNguiNe reinforced this narrative.
Suffice it to say, by the time Artemis and HF were scheduled to meet for the grand finals, many were anticipating the conclusion to this absurdist poopshow. London Tremor’s stream swelled to 21,000 viewers,
Also, concurrent with these developments, a distressed Queen Suhita led a vote to prevent HF from achieving another non-interactive win exploiting his Mutambi map movements. Tens of thousands of spectators were almost unanimous in their decision, and democracy won. Thus, they were to begin in the arena’s centre, the monster labyrinth element having been abandoned to return to a conventional dagger wrestling duel.
The grand finals, a chorus of thousands shouting in harmony, those in the venue bolstered by the spectators amassed outside.
“Artemis!”
“Artemis!”
“Artemis!”
“Artemis!”
“Artemis!”
To the singular cry, Henry strolled out alone onto the arena floor, surrounded by hostile monsters howling for his blood.
God damn it.
He’d expected Loki to enact the next movement of his scheme tonight, but not quite this dramatically. Usually, he would have been thankful for the free publicity. However, the nature of the controversy had resulted in his fan club losing half its members due to harassment. All his hard-earned gains had been flushed down the toilet bowl of Suchi.
Oh well, he was acclimatised to hatred.
Alex randomly messaged him.
-Mayonnaise: henRY! henRY! henRY! yo, tuned in for ur first proper duel. what did u do to piss off the Virtual Realists? they're spamming our site to get u fired.
-Henry Flower: It’s just this trash, roleplayer-infested zone and maybe Karnon.
‘A cockblocked king’ – himself, the king of duelling, blocked from winning an amateur tournament, by a girl sporting a cock.
-Mayonnaise: lel and lel. oi, u gonna beat up Loki? his mental GQ's pretty close without the rubbish reaction speed
-Henry Flower: No idea.
-Mayonnaise: hope u lose m8
-Henry Flower: Remember that little Ortheerian rapier I lent to Caramel, Worldpiercer?
-Mayonnaise: nope
-Henry Flower: I'm extending her loan by two months.
-Mayonnaise: NO! THIS IS NOT FAIR—
Blocking Alex, he arrived at the centre of the arena.
Loki, or whoever they were pretending to be now, was already waiting. Having discarded their mask, they were observing the crowd cheering for them like a moss-covered statue observes the setting sun.
“Hey, if it ain’t the Greek goddess herself, come down from Olympus." Henry gave a friendly wave. "Hola, amigo!”
The spy, ignoring the jest, released a small, pitiful sigh. “You're fond of ridiculous bets. You win, I'll clear up this misunderstanding. I win, you tell me how you've managed it. Deal?"