Mask-Off
Yelena
He came charging at her with renewed fury. The crowd roared with tension. Every fleeting light that broke through the cracked slits in the ceiling seemed to light on them both - surface girl and Gnoll, Argent and freedom fighter of the sands, attacker and defender.
HP: 12/30
He was right – he could easily kill her. She saw it in his eyes. A timidness had overcome him that somewhat tempered his fury. But his desire not to lose face in front of his comrades burned brighter even than that little corrective fire that she’d lighted in his soul. Yet it was enough to show her that these beasts weren’t just the savages she thought they were. There was, incredibly, a sense of honor that dwelled in the depths of their hearts.
What am I doing..?
Her brain begged her to consider the question. Was this really the way she wanted to die, down here? Yet still another part of her – maybe the tipsy part that made her legs quake like she was some wobbling, newborn lamb – this part was telling her that those who watched her with hatred down there had to know that she was willing to give her life to prove herself. Surely to these people who had suffered under the yolk of her own Order, that was the least she could do.
My death or my triumph, she thought as Mendax grabbed her arm and activated his grapple ability again just as she’d goaded him.
Either way, you’d all be happy, wouldn’t you?
The grab came, he lifted her into the air. She felt her feet leave the stage and braced herself to feel the full fury of her life’s end.
Then the little switch inside her body flicked on, just as she’d needed it to.
The Gnoll’s eyes bloated to see the sight. The crowd wavered on the brink of collapse. And Marius, well, he just started laughing like a big, drunken kid.
She twisted the Gnoll’s arm like it was a piece of string, and in the wake of his cry of absolute pain she tucked it behind his back, pushed him down to the ground, and ended up on top of him, ready to snap his creaking elbow joint at a moment’s notice.
“H-how!” he roared from the floor, until her boot found his lower back.
She pulled, and his scream echoed through the whole hall.
“Yield,” she said.
Sweat glistened off her fringe and dribbled onto his thrashing body. The crowd went completely nuts.
“Mercy!” someone called. “Mercy for Mendax!”
“Yield, boy!” yet another screamed with glee. “She’s got ya beat!”
“Check his pants, Yelena!” a familiar voice burped from the crowd. “See if he’s pissed himself!”
But the only voice she was focusing on was that of the beast writhing beneath her.
“You think I’ll yield…” he snarled. “To a cheating Ch’alokk!”
Then all of a sudden he felt a burst of knowledge radiate through his churning brain as she squeezed his arm tighter:
Guardian Ability: Undaunted (LVL I)
Effect: 20% chance to resist effects that cause physical restraint including {TRIP}, {GRAPPLE}, {STRANGLE}
He looked at the letters unblinking. Unbelieving.
“I admit,” she said. “I didn’t know I could allocate a skill point during combat. Learn something new every day down here, huh?”
She felt him give a little shake beneath her. “You had a 20% chance not to die, and you thought those odds were good?”
“No,” she admitted. “In fact, they were terrible.”
“But you still tried it,” he grunted.
“I did.”
And amidst the storm of ‘mercy’ coupled with some guttural, throaty cried of ‘finish him!’ she heard the old Gnoll warrior start to laugh beneath her boot.
“Who the hell taught you to fight like this?” he asked.
She smiled as she found Marius’ dumb face in the crowd, riding atop a disgruntled looking Gnoll man with two pints of grog in his sweaty palms.
This story originates from Royal Road. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.
“He never taught me anything,” she said. “But I have to admit – I’ve learned a thing or two.”
Mendax gave an agreeable grunt.
“Alright,” he said. “At least let me surrender on my own two feet.”
“How do I know I can trust you?” she asked.
Another grunt. “You don’t,” he smiled. “You’ll just have to take the chance.”
She released his arm and the crowd fell into total silence, cowed by the unexpected grace with which she let him go and reeled back, still ready to take him on all over again.
He flexed his wounded arm, tested his right hook in the air, and then took in the crowd around him with a straight backed, almost regal air. Then he turned tail and walked right up to her, breathing heavy and harsh, ready – she felt – to literally topple over right then and there.
“Girl,” he said, mere inches from her face. “You got balls. And I don’t say that to every woman.”
He grabbed her hand and raised it high, nodding to the announcer with the final ounces of his drunken strength. For his part, the announcer took in the sight with total confusion for a moment, before he realized that he finally needed to do his self-appointed job.
“The winner of this duel is…YELENA!”
And with the crowd raising their glasses – to her and the humbled Gnoll both – Yelena looked up at him with weary yet proud eyes. She couldn’t deny that a crowd cheering for her was something a little more novel than what she was used to.
“Next time, fight me sober,” the lumbering Mendax told her, before jumping into the crowd, allowing them to embrace him as a Gnoll no less their brother, and proceeding to shake the hand of Marius.
The impish rogue could do little but accept the crushing grip of the Gnoll. But Yelena was sure he’d interpreted the gesture as another assault before he realized it was an offer of friendship. She had to admit even she was a little confused – it was as though the Gnoll had altogether forgotten why he was angry in the first place.
Is alcohol truly this powerful? she thought, suppressing the need to heave out a sudden belch.
“We true denizens of the Sands have always said that much can be known by observing the company one keeps,” the Gnoll said, rather with an air of refinement despite his intoxication. “You travel with a solid woman, Marius.”
“I…uh…thanks?”
Then, lifting the perplexed rogue onto his shoulders, Mendax brought the night back to its rightful atmosphere.
“Brothers and Sisters!” he cheered. “Let us drink till the Sands freeze over!”
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Marius
He really wished the walls would quit moving around so much.
Or was it him who was moving around?
Who cares?
All he knew was he was rat-faced pissed on this Gnoll swill, and he was happier than he’d ever been in a long-ass time.
As he tried navigating the long corridors outside the big Hall, he began to think he’d been bamboozled when Mendax told him their toilet facilities were around her somewhere.
Hold on…this is an old ass castle…ran by fucking *HIC* monsters…why the hell would they have toilet facilities?
This resolved, he had no problem exiting to the outside world and relieving himself just off one of the castle turrets. The air felt cool. Nice and breezy. Delightful weather for comfortable tower-pissing.
“I see you have been enjoying yourself.”
The voice of his interloper came from behind and he turned to see none other than…what was her name again?
“Hey! It’s…you. You – Red. A-An-Anteater, Anaconda. Wait – no, no, no – don’t tell me. Ummmmmmmm – Antabolis?
“Antethra,” she spat. “That is being my name. Though it is pointless for you to know it.”
She turned away from him as though struck, and he feebly made an attempt to chase after her.
“Hey, hey, come on!” he pleaded like a kid. “Look – I’ll level with you, Big Red: I’m drunk. I’m a drunken little weenie who’s just watched my champion kick ass in my name. Can ya blame me for feeling a little giddy and forgetting some details?”
She spared him a look of disdain. “You are making no sense, as usual.”
“Where you been all night, anyway?”
She flashed him a look that reeked of superiority. “Conversing with the Elder and the Sisters of my Order. I am doubting you wish to know the details. But the Lightbringer has begun her training upon this night. Soon she shall be ready for the war to come.”
“Lovely,” he said, ready to turn back to his stargazing and just let her carry on down her suicidal little path.
But she suddenly touched his arm gingerly, as though afraid to pronounce something she had to.
Oh? his suddenly very interested mind pondered. So, you like the cold and aloof approach, eh?
“I must be thanking you,” she said. “For giving me my freedom.”
He scoffed. “To be fair, you gave me little choice back there in that storeroom.”
“You are thinking I would have killed you? Or handed you in to that devilish bird?”
“Women have done much worse to me before, I’ll tell you that.”
“I am knowing this is true.”
She looked at him then with the knowing eyes of someone who’d seen something they shouldn’t have, and instantly his charming, boyish humor drained from his face. Something else came over him, tempered only by the booze still swishing around in his belly.
His suspicions were confirmed: she’d seen what he’d seen down in that pit with the scorpion-woman. She’d seen the girl. She’d seen his hesitation. She’d seen…well…what else was there to see, really?
“Yeah, well,” he muttered. “We both know eachothers’ secrets, now, don’t we?”
“Does this frighten you?”
“I’ve killed for less.”
He said these words with a voice so unbecoming to his nature that she stiffened abruptly. But he had to give her credit – she didn’t turn away and flee.
“You could be pushing me from these battlements right now,” she told him in a harsh whisper, leaning in close like she threatened him with the possibility of his own action. “But you are not doing this.”
He let out a deep, morose sigh. One that carried on past her into the night, dissolving in the chants of joy from the main hall.
“Then I couldn’t ask you why you never told them,” he replied. “And why you aren’t telling anybody right now. Why you’re coming to me and admitting what you saw – and why you’re giving me the chance to silence you when you know fine well why I won’t.”
She touched her hand to his chest then, and in spite of her skin, and the two burning coals in her eyes, all he felt was the touch of deep frost crawl through his armor and kiss his skin.
“You are being joker,” she said. “One who laughs to hide one’s fear. One who trusts no one – least of all himself. One who wears one face one day, and then is putting on another like a child playing with masks.”
When she withdrew her icy hand, he felt himself breathe again.
“You are thinking I do not know this way of life?” she asked him. “I wear masks every day. Masks that make the Blackbird happy. Masks that show his men I am submissive servant. Masks that hide what I feel and what I know. And I am knowing that you must wear these masks too.”
She lingered on him for a moment before turning away to look upon the darkened skies of the Sands, and in one swift, fluid movement, she tore the veil from her face and let it drop from the castle battlements.
“Only now can I live without a mask,” she told him – her lips dry yet full, tinged with black dye that she had perhaps worn for eons. “Now that I am here, I shall watch the Sands change again. I shall carry the light of the Lady with me, and together we shall burn away all those who are living with the burden of lying to themselves. Like you, Marius.”
He regarded her with an air of cool, quiet interest, before himself turning away to look upon the whole wind-blasted, shitty realm.
“Don’t try and ‘fix’ me, Antethra,” he told her. “I’m already broken enough. My mask is here to stay.”
He felt her presence leave him only after a few minutes had gone by of absolute silence, broken only now and again by a random cheer from the drunkards below. If she hadn’t uttered one final little sentence before she left, he’d have doubted she’d even really been there at all.
“If this is being true,” she said. “Then why do you travel with the girl?”
Silence was her answer. She left him there, cold and alone, looking out over the castle courtyard and the sands beyond, till he spied Yelena taking in the night air on a balcony below.
He smiled. It was time for a little chat.
“After all,” he mumbled to himself as he staggered back downstairs. “There’s no mask to cover up pure stupidity, is there?”