On top of the falling pillar, Hugo, his eyes glowing with a Bullet-Time activation, watched the ground slowly approaching him and the mongooses gathering to catch his fall.
What a monster, he thought in defeat.
He realised now that the outcome of this duel had been determined much earlier. If he’d refused to race to the pillar, The Tyrant would have triumphed by using it for refuge. If he hadn’t gambled that attack at the mammoth, The Tyrant would have triumphed by perching on the giant beast. If Hugo’d remained by the mammoth too long, The Tyrant would have triumphed by The Gate he’d generated between the mammoth and the encircling mongooses. So Hugo chose the pillar, and The Tyrant triumphed by breaking it and dropping him to his demise. Whatever alternative pathways Hugo’d skipped would surely also have lead to his defeat.
What was especially terrifying was that his opponent had not merely conceived of these multi-pronged eventualities but generated them, utilising his body and arts as tools at each step to hammer the necessary nails into place. When The Tyrant had dodged the
And that was the true terror. For The Tyrant, The Tyrant, to also be The Cripple, for one person to possess two apex masks...didn't this confirm he was a monster?
Some of Hugo's ex-companions in Asatru thought of him literally so. Amongst the game's top Commanders, an alternative epithet for The Tyrant was The Hydra, because going against his armies had the futile doom of hacking at a hydra’s duplicating heads. This title had been developed further by the more delusional Asatru members who believed in the guild’s apocalyptic lore. Asatru were the reincarnation of their ancestor Gods destined to battle at Ragnarok. According to this story, The Tyrant, through The Hydra, had been connected to the mythological archetype of the ancient enemy snake then back to Jormungandr, the giant serpent whose decision to unravel initiates the world's end.
Hugo himself had never bought this nonsense. However, the recent discovery that The Cripple and The Tyrant were two masks belonging to the same person had been making him wonder whether his guildmates through their fantasies weren't indirectly expressing a metaphorical truth. They numbered in the thousands, millions if one included The Tyrant's other enemies, yet their amassed might had been insufficient to undo him. He’d crushed them, and, shockingly, he’d done so as a part-timer, someone who split his hours clowning about studying kung-fu. How ridiculous. The contrast in their dedication and that of their shadowy nemesis made a person feel puny. Perhaps The Tyrant wasn’t a mythological monster, but, to contend with him, it might be necessary to view him as such. One might have to strive for something beyond mortal limits, which could be conceptualised as 'godhood'. One might have to be willing to sacrifice blood and soul as though humanity’s fate was on the line.
One might have to accept defeat anyway because Ragnarok was inevitable.
-Henry Flower: ????? I already won, lad.
The ground was here, the end.
But as the end came, Hugo heard a mad echo within the vacant halls of his soul.
You craven milksop! Loki had been bellowing. You skirt-wearing child! Don't you realise Ragnarok also contains a 'metaphorical truth'?! Why do you think the ancients enshrined such a pessimistic battle in which all humankind but two perishes?! Where's the 'reward’ for dying with your throat slit on the battlefield in spending your after-life training to die again in this pointless war?! There is nothing! The reward was the myth itself! Your reward is the most important lesson in being a man! Know the impossibility of the task, see your failure inscribed in the stars, and honour yourself and your ancestors by still fighting on! To everything hopeless to come, you must answer Yes while sharpening your weapons! Even against Ragnarok, our steel will sing! An age of axes, an age of swords, all shields shattered, an age of storms, an age of wolves, and then the world drowns! No man will spare another!
Hugo, who was indifferent and saw no harm in it, decided to grant the screaming spy's wish to enact their final gestures.
“Come then, you mangy cats!” Loki roared as he plunged into the swarm of fangs.
Burning the second of his three available Bullet-Time usages, Loki puppeteered an ex-ballerina persona, who gracefully weaved their body through the slow-motion assault. They plied a bite to the throat, piqued a lightning blast from a variant mongoose. Pausing at a momentary clearing in the swarm, Loki resumed control to recalculate how to connect to next clearing nearer to an escape route. For this manoeuvre, he switched to the Water Tiger persona for a rapid three-step aerial climb between a mongoose pair. She kicked off the bicep of one, off the shoulder of the second, off the—
Henry, who refused to have his glory stolen by these varmints, leapt out of from the swarm like a lion from the long grass, his cocky glare glowing yellow, his fang plunging into Ex-Spy Bro's kidne—
Loki, spending his last Bullet-Time to eject that upbeat hussy, redirected the third step at The Tyrant. His foot pressed against his foe's chest, and the spy saluted as he soared away.
-Henry Flower: Seriously?
-Artemis8492: Till Valhalla.
The audience was stunned when Artemis emerged alive from the mongoose swarm. But what excitement they might have felt was clipped a few seconds later by a new worry. With the way the pillar had fallen, her only safe path ahead was to the trench bordering one side of the mongoose-mammoth trap. Several contestants had already been eliminated after failing to cross the chasm, which was calculated to be slightly too wide to be jumped by any man.
As Artemis continued towards it, though, the crowd began to wonder, their minds opening to a new possibility. Their champion wasn’t a man. She was a goddess. Thus, tens of thousands of souls joined their hands in hope.
When she barged onwards, heroically ignoring the restraints of mortals, when she launched herself over the chasm, leaping high and stretching out her arm for the other side like a basketballer reaching for the game-winning, tournament-deciding dunk, when the trench swallowed her, the crowd shared mystified glances.
That hadn’t been close to close…what was she thinking? Was this the ending? How dumb.
The rude Scholar, struggling not to be washed over by a tide of mongooses, screamed at the top of his lungs. “Why are you delaying?! Declare my win! HF wins!”
His statement was addressed to the viewing platform with The Empire's royalty.
Up there, Suhita was averting her gaze, tending her throbbing jaw after this excruciating teeth-pulling. Ramiro had reassured her that he'd attend The Grand Hunt, but he wasn't here now to give the needed support. Her heart, left alone, was unwilling.
“Hurry up! She fell off the map! She eliminated herself! That’s the rule! I win!”
Queen Suhita’s royal ear twitched at the desperate plea.
Rule?
Rule...
Rule...
Rules...
...this was Suchi.
The Queen suddenly crossed her arms in a pose of petulant protest. “There’s no official rule establishing that. Artemis has more HP than you. If you can’t rectify the difference, you lose.”
“WHAT?! Two contestants were eliminated by falling into the exact same trench! That’s clearly the rule! I won!”
Queen Suhita continued to act dumb. “I have literally no idea what you're talking about. If anyone forfeited in those circumstances, they must have done so incidentally of their own volition. Show me where it says otherwise in the rulebook.”
There was no rulebook.
“WHAT?! The rule's implied! Falling out of an arena’s official playing field in a way that renders one unable to continue fighting in any meaningful capacity always means elimination! Pitfall, Mesoamerican Ruins…this is the convention! I won! I won! I won! HF The Oracle wins!”
Queen Suhita, feeling this rude brat's jugular pulse between her fangs, threw her head back imperiously, flaunting the driftwood crown, the symbol of her royal mandate. “We, the people, are not beholden to your conventions. All in favour of the bottom of that trench being included as part of the official playing field, say ‘aye’.”
She'd changed the rules once already by making this duel start in the centre strip to remove this rude guy's advantage, so why couldn't she do it again? This was her right as Queen - neigh, her responsibility.
“WHAT?! No, you can’t keep changing the rules! I'll report these shenanigans to my superiors! Expect an inquisition!”
The crowd listening to their petty squabbling in the wake of this whirlwind match had been wondering whether this was real-life or even virtual-life, which was also real-life according to some of them. Their Queen calling upon them now instilled them with a second hope. Embers that'd begun to smoulder in their beaten hearts reignited at once into a violent flame.
The trench, they collective realised, down there, this slippery brat would not be able to zoom away while the monsters did his bidding. It would be him against Artemis, man against woman, Company dog against a goddess from The Slums, their Artemis who’d even bested the wrestling genius SaNguiNe when her power was unleashed.
“Aye!”
“Aye! Zugzug!"
“Aye!”
And thousands more added their support.
"Anyone who sides with me—fuck!" The rude guy, so startled by this turn of events, was knocked into the air by a mongoose. This mistake, however, inadvertently saved him as it tossed him over another mammoth
“Nay!”
“Nay!”
“Nay!”
And another eight more, some of whom were greedy, others convinced his feats were intentional, all of whom were then promptly apprehended by the mob and stabbed into soul-lights.
Queen Suhita sneered. “The people have spoken. Go now, fight and die.”
At The Tigress of Sumatra tearing this yapping pup apart, whistles and applause exploded around the venue. For all the might of one man, there was no conquering the collective. HF wins? No. Democracy wins.
“Trash zooooooooooooooone!” The rude guy yelled as he leapt into the trench, several mongooses diving after him and being yanked back by their chains to dangle above.
No sooner than Henry sailed over the trench’s lip, the facade of frustration vanished. He dug his fingers deep into the wall to slow his descent and, preparing his dagger, concentrated on Ex-Spy Bro waiting below.
Hugo stared up at the falling figure, wondering why The Tyrant had boosted him out of the mongoose swarm just then. “Are you throwing the match? I have more HP, more Stamina; there are no Gates down here.”
Unauthorized usage: this narrative is on Amazon without the author's consent. Report any sightings.
While asking this question, he still utilised the opportunity to position where his adversary was about to land.
Henry responded by pointing at one of his biceps. “Times have changed. Now, I’m making The Gates portable. Now, you pass from heaven to he—”
The bad-ass line was cut short by their colliding, Henry in a disadvantaged position when Ex-Spy Bro engaged him mid-air.
Their fists flashed.
Henry’s upper body tipped backwards with the heaviness of a corpse.
Hugo, his neck wrapped between The Tyrant’s thighs, was dragged down by the latter’s weight, which swung at the bottom of the fall and lifted Hugo off his feet.
Both hit the dirt.
Hugo recovered from the head-scissor takedown by rolling back upright. “The mongoose pile, the
Anymore Boost, that critical performance-augmentation resource in melee 1v1s.
“Two.” Henry lay with his back upon the cold soil, his eyes fading from yellow to their original brown as a Bullet-Time usage expired. “The mongooses, I handled raw - just me and a tool crafted by some loner monster hunters.”
“Can that be done?” Hugo—who’d needed Bullet-Time to escape the encirclement, a simpler manoeuvre than arranging the mongooses—frowned, intense confusion burning in one eye, a baby-lion-fang dagger stabbed into the other.
The weapon wasn’t ejected by any self-healing effect. His HP had dropped to zero.
“Not by a noob.”
Henry, tonight’s victor, got up and brushed the dirt off his ass.
To replace his loincloth, an odd disguise consisting of a blonde mullet wig, a blue singlet, and a pair of stubby shorts streamed out of his Spatial Bracelet. Additionally, he produced a Stamina-restoring bottle of beer and a vial of poison, the latter of which he tipped into the drink.
While he was downing the booze, a light thud sounded behind him as Ex-Spy Bro blacked out from blood-loss.
-Artemis8492: What happens now?
-Henry Flower: You uphold your end of the bet.
-Artemis8492: And the masks?
-Henry Flower: That wasn't the deal. Keep your coms open and, remember, no leaking the footage.
Henry’s fingers beginning to swell from the poison, he gathered a handful of Fauna Charges. He then
The scene above ground was sad. Although the final exchange inside the trench had occurred out of sight, a commentator monitoring the contestant’s HP had reported when Artemis had dropped to zero.
Many were the flavours of grief. Some of the Villagers were as limp as deflated party balloons - a single man could not conquer the collective, but the collective could not conquer The Company. Others channelled their hurt into rage, cursing this lapdog of The Tyrant under their breaths. Roleplayers wept for their battered champion, for the latest insult against their oppressed kind. The Queen’s throne was empty, its embarrassed occupant having logged out. A few who could not accept this result continued to hold onto hope, praying while a team of high-level players ventured onto the arena to retrieve the two duellists.
To the crowd’s shock, Artemis was raised from the trench in the most horrific of states, pale and unconscious with the nearness of death, a dagger lodged into her once shimmering huntress eye, blood running from the socket down her cheek like a stream of tears. The rude Scholar who'd defiled her so was nowhere to be found; he'd skipped the retribution for his crimes.
A Miracleworker from the retrieval team performed emergency healing.
When Artemis was lifted to her feet, her blank expression invoked the crowd's sympathy, causing them to break out in a wave of conciliatory cheers, half for her, half for themselves.
In turn, moved by her fan's support, she finally decided to break her silence. She asked one of her retrievers with a Peopleworker sub-class to press a finger on her throat and amplify her message. Many male onlookers complained jealously about this privilege.
“Efharisto olous apo kardias.” The goddess’s voice rang out with the clarity and sunny warmth of the Mediterranean, her tone softer than usual as the man-hating fury had been tamed by defeat. “Thank you all from my heart. Yes…I lost.”
“There’s no shame in being swindled by a cheater!”
“You won my love, Artemis!”
“Just wait! We’ll bag that vile reality denialist for you!”
Artemis disagreed with this last charge and others like it. “It seems many here are under the misunderstanding I was. HF The Oracle is not a reality denialist.”
The crowd raised a collective eyebrow. The Oracle?
“There was never any blackmail,” she continued. “I’ve just been bedridden with depression since HF rejected my romantic advances. Like many of you, I’d mistakenly assumed his refusal stemmed from an ugly prejudice against our kind, a denial of my reality, and so I came today for vengeance. However, after being stomped by him down in that trench in a way that wasn't even close, we had a civil discussion in which he clarified matters. He told me his rejection was unrelated to either my gender or nationality. Instead—and for the same reason he would have to now regrettably reject the hot date with the ‘Queen’—it was because that would be cheating. He’s already a married man.”
Hugo paused, The Tyrant cackling maniacally in his ear.
-Henry Flower: AHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA! Cough in embarrassment. “His wife's name? Winning. He's married to winning.” Do it, say the line. Do it! Go on!
Artemis coughed in embarrassment. “His wife's name? Winning. He's married to winning."
The audience was gobsmacked by this insultingly-moronic speech. What the absolute fuck!? In the breath before they could comprehend and respond, a booming, commanding cry cut first, instilled with the entirety of their indignation and drawing everyone’s attention.
“What a bunch of lying drongo cunts!”
In the section from which the shout had originated, the crowd split apart to reveal an obese fella whose bloated stomach, balancing a beer bottle, spilt from out of the bottom of his blue singlet.
By his hostile demeanour and his refusal to get up from his seat, the crowd recognised him as a veteran of The Slums, one of the original, freedom-loving, law-avoiding gangsters. By his sun-bleached mullet and the c-word he’d so freely exclaimed, they recognised the specific brand of miscreancy that’d lured him to this inhospitable, desertous land, being an average Australian.
“Yous hearing this cunt, mates?!” raged the Australian. “Either I need to be carted off by the booze bus or that there’s a puppet speech. Weren’t some fellas yabberin’ about that low-life bloke buying the map earlier? Bit of collusion seems in the same wheelhouse to me. I reckon this Art Mouse sheila’s in HF’s bloody cheatin' pocket. He slipped her a handful to let him win! And what about those flashy martial arts they both used. If this sheila’s a novice, then this stubby on me shelf’s a glass of orange juice.” He grabbed for his beer but knocked it over out of drunkenness. “Fuckin' dogcunt!” He shook his head in stubborn doubt. “Nah, mates, these drongos are in it together, have been in it from the start, coordinatin’, choreographyin’, schemin’, tryna pull a number on us the community. Bastards! Fuckin' dogcunt BASTARDS!”
After the average Australian’s analytic dissection of the situation, murmurs spread through the crowd discussing the merits of his claims.
Indeed, many had hypothesised that the rude Scholar had been able to zoom around the monster maze due to bribing officials for the map. If he was willing to stoop that low, then paying a fellow contestant to let him win was also conceivable. And who even was ‘Artemis’? A championess of The Slums? Up until a few days ago, she’d been living in Central City, only leaving it to join the rude teen’s Village. Nothing indicated she possessed any loyalty to them over him. Was she even a ‘she’? A true Virtual Realist wouldn't jest around this much, knowing their tragic history of oppression. As for the speech this Art Mouse bloke had given, the audience, being Villagers in The Kingdom of South-East Asia and Oceania who’d listened to the Queen’s speeches, were all intimately familiar with the tell-tale cadence of a script being read.
Fair dinkum cunts of Suchi…the story did not add up!
Of course, this reasoning was riddled with flaws, like how the two would have predicted they’d meet in the finals and how to reconcile this being a planned charade with them all observing the rude Scholar bumble his way through one fluke after another. However, these holes were quickly paved over by the collective's wounded will, and any doubters were drowned out by cries for these accusations to be answered. The Australian lead a chant demanding that Art Mouse cough up 'her' duel POV to prove 'her' innocence.
When 'she' offered no signs of complying, when 'she' stared back at them indifferently, tauntingly, the irate crowd surged down onto the arena floor. Villagers and roleplaying Villagers—what meagre civility they’d possessed abandoned, hundreds of them being devoured by the monsters on the stage—raced madly against each other to pummel the double-crossing crossdresser to death.
Outside the venue.
The spectators spread out on the plains on picnic blankets were having a merry time, laughing at the projectors showing a runner-up being paraded about as the new victor in place of the cheating pair. They raised their mugs in toast to The Slums, to democracy, to freedom.
Through their stinky, soapless midst, a cloaked figure was making a stealthy exit, his clothes becoming baggier as The Poison of Corpulence wore off and his body shrank to its regular teenaged size.
Winning the tournament, humiliating the slumtards, increasing his notoriety a moderate amount, laying a taste of the turd to come, popularising his chosen title to counteract the insidious rise of 'Big Bro', insulting Australia...Henry would have been surprised by how favourably events had unfolded if he weren’t a hyper-genius who’d orchestrated everything.
In the past, the mouth-breathing hordes who couldn't accept his domination of their idols had habitually denied his victories by attributing them to ‘cheating’. Today, he exploited this same idiocy to enjoy the catharsis of beating up noobs in anonymity and peace.
The most unpredictable elements had been whether Ex-Spy Bro would persist to the trench and whether the ‘Queen’ would change the rules on him again. However, failure at any of those points could have been spun into a satisfactory conclusion since Henry'd planned for dozens of contingencies.
Had all this been worth it? He'd earned himself a couple assassination attempts for his mockery. But those would be handled when they came. For now, he felt fantastic, as though he’d undergone a ten-day-long deep tissue massage of his soul.
His skin glowing healthily, the poison's bloating wearing off enough for him to become recognisable, he shielded his face in a cheetah mask without any shame.
Before the duel, Ex-Spy Bro had asked him how you go outside without one of these things. The answer, which Henry’d arrived at after many decades of consideration, was that you don’t.
His earlier conclusions about shunning personas wholesale had been naïve and idiotic. While acting too much could be damaging to the psyche, plenty of situations merited a bit of it. For example, if Henry went full-mask off with his kung-fu, he'd get apprehended by global authorities for being a cyborg. Or if you work in customer service.
More than that, for the development of the self, the occasional mask could be beneficial - it might even be necessary. From what Henry could discern, everyone went through this at some stage, trying on different personas like different clothing styles, selecting parts of those that fit and discarding the rest. Some people did this unconsciously, blindly mirroring the mannerisms of their family and peers. What was the 'authentic self' but the collage of the pieces that remained on one face’s long enough for their presence to be forgotten? From this perspective, Henry might be privileged. To still be uncomfortable signalled that his journey hadn’t finished yet, that the pathways for change and growth weren’t yet barred to him; to have encountered and worn more masks than most expanded his options.
Henry became a tad cocky as he logged onto the game's forums and used several Ring identities to mass upvote the people accusing him and Art Mouse of colluding.
This evolved, nuanced intrapersonal insight, his expert manipulation of the 'Queen' and crowd - could either of these have been produced by someone who supposedly had a trash Social IQ? Impossible! It seemed, dear friends, that after a century of existence, after consuming tens of thousands of novels with emotionally-complex characters, that Henry'd achieved ascendance in the realm of psychology without even intending to.
“Roleplayers, uncostumed!” Another masked figure joined him. “Slumdwellers, beaten with a bar of soap! ‘Artemis’, bitchslapped! Another spectacular duel, big bro! These noob settings with unjust resource restrictions can impede you no longer after your arsenal’s expansion with these latest tools, the tools of the fist…”
Henry listened to Rose praising his duelling genius, hamming up the fangirl compliments too much. After leaving the mute path, wasn't Geno's sister also in the awkward, fledgeling stages of constructing her own self? Henry supposed he should be kinder to the poor lass - at least until the therapy had finished repairing her crazy noggin in a week or two.
"Can’t I have one second of peace? Scram!”
“Who needs peace when we have battle, big bro! What’s that? I smell something on the wind.” Rose sniffed the air. “Ah, it’s the stench of old enemies peeing their pants in terror! Big bro, when does the world tour of your supreme martial art begin? I want to hear those losers try and whinge about ‘cheating’ with a mouth full of your knuckles!”
“Please go away.”
As if the situation couldn't get any worse, Silver Wolf appeared, having followed Rose out.
"Tell me you didn’t actually pay that girl to coordinate with you," Silver barked. "What’s the point? To meme on roleplayers? Explain yourself.”
Henry, using his skyrocketing William-James-Tier Social IQ, mind-read that the alpha pleb was really furious at him for engaging in these shenanigans while the Karnon issue hadn't been addressed. Alas, he didn't have a clue what to do about that. The cast in the God's prank, a sleep-deprived demon, a love triangle, a cockblocked king, and, for tonight's mystery guest, a set of divine genitals, remained a total enigma.
He shared a laugh with Rose at the alpha pleb’s ignorance.
“So what’s up next this evening, big bro?”
Henry rubbed his chin. “There’s a chair making exhibition scheduled to begin in seven minutes; this is a mountain that also interests me.”
His Overdream cabin's furnishings were in sore need of an upgrade.
"Stop dodging questions. Explain."
At that moment, a familiar character was hurrying past them, bits of wool sticking out of the joints from his golden armour.
Justinian halted upon recognising their voices. “Lady Zhangmei? Sir Henry? Lady...” He hadn't been given the title of Sir Henry's heliophobic guard.
Henry, scanning for anyone who’d overheard, grimaced in disgust at the golden roleplayer. The decades may have blessed him with social wisdom, but they had not softened his prejudice against this breed of scum.
The Crusader proceeded to inquire whether he’d missed the 1v1 tournament, his sundial being inoperable during ‘the hours of Selene’ and his avoiding anachronisms making him ignore the projectors clearly showing the celebrating crowd. The trio informed him of the bad news; he responded with a monologue that’d evidently been written while combing the flock that’d caused him to be late.
“…for God's lambs stumble seven times and rise again, but the wick—halt!” Justinian cut himself short when they began to inch away. “What of the tourney of the six warriors contending with the six warriors? My tongue for war grows light and nimble; have faith in me this morn, and I will guide your swords true.”
“The 6v6?” replied Henry. “I’ll have to skip it. I’m not welcome back there right now. You can go, though, Rose.”
"Hahaha."
Justinian rankled. “Sir Henry, Lady Zhangmei, disavow this selfishness! In our crusade to guard the flame of good, all men are needed, for only together might we fend off His icy and enshadowed clu—”
Henry gave the roleplayer a declarative pat on a golden spaulder. “Trust me, I’m an exception. You’ll find out why soon enough. Go on, give 'em hell!”
So they went their separate ways, the trio leaving to check out the rest of the festival, Justinian marching onwards to the arena.