It was a strange experience.

One moment Avelina was standing on the fields and the next she was standing in a strange room. She didn’t even know she could call this room. The walls were dark blue, but they didn’t seem real, more akin to artificial barriers than an actual wall. She had few words to describe it, but it felt as if someone hadn’t actually finished designing this room on some kind of architecture program.

“Haha.”, A desperate laugh left her lips as she shook her head.

This was such a shitty situation. She kept being thrown around akin to some kind of doll and it was royally starting to piss her off. She could still feel her head pounding with the desire to go to sleep and her stomach turning with the desire to throw up the sandwich that she had eaten. The fact that she was still hungover didn’t help in the slightest to make this horrible and strange situation even a little bit better.

“Calm. Avelina. Just calm down.”, She started to speak to herself as she nervously paced around the room. She now understood what was going on, to a degree. She didn’t know how or why any of this was happening, but she was smart enough to figure out that whatever was going to happen in this ‘culling’ wasn’t going to be nice.

As she placed around the room she summoned her status once more. This was the one thing that made her believe that this was real and not some kind of practical joke being played on her. This strange blue box that she felt was taunting her, hiding the secrets of what was going on and lording it over her akin to some cruel god. Slowly she reached out, seeing if she could touch the box only to have it not interact with her hand in the slightest.

Finally, she sat down in the corner of the room, not knowing what she would have to do now. Her head hurt so much, but she didn’t dare close her eyes. She wouldn’t know what happened if she fell asleep and then this ‘culling’ started. She had been able to stay awake on pure spite and stress during exams to study, so she should be able to keep going for a day or so as long as she was fueled and driven by fear and paranoia.

And then it came

It was inconspicuous. The wall she had been resting against simply disappeared, causing her to stumble backwards and land on her back.

With a groan, she pushed herself up and took a swift glance down the corridor that had opened up. With little choice, she started to move forward, deeper into whatever place this was. After only a few steps she could see a bright light coming from what seemed to be the end of this little corridor, inviting her in.

Without wasting time and in a rather reckless manner she charged forward, not wanting to end up stuck in this place. As she exited the room she could feel her footing shift as the sun blinded her, forcing her eyes close for just a second. Once she had recovered to see enough she swiftly realized where she was standing.

This was an area. She was certain that Angela would know the proper name of whatever structure this was mimicking, but to her, it just seemed like the pictures she had seen of the colosseum, just not ruined. There were empty stone seats for spectators, sand that covered the arena itself, a weapon rack to her left and one next to the other exit where she didn’t see any movement from and finally it had the sun bearing down on it-

“What.”, a gasp left her lips as she brought her to her face to better look at the sun and realized that the sun was at high noon. Not a bit after it, but High Noon. It had been an hour past noon when she had been ‘kidnapped’. Either she had been awake for far longer than she had expected, this was somewhere completely different or that wasn’t the sun.

“Hello?”, she finally heard a voice call out from the other entrance. A few moments later a young man wearing quite the fancy suit stepped out of it. Unlike Avelina, who seemed to be a mess, his appearance was impeccable.

“Here!”, She finally called out after a few moments of hesitation.

She was a person and in the end, she’d better at least try to work together with whoever this was. Unless he had been part of all of this, but she doubted that. Despite his smile, she knew people well enough to be able to see the panic in his eyes, panic that somewhat seemed to die down once he saw her.

Still, this guy seemed familiar to her, but she couldn’t remember where-

Culling: Two entered, one may leave.

A single message rang out, causing her eyes to widen in panic as she glanced up at the young man about ten meters away from her. He had just stepped into the arena and she could see that the hallway behind him had disappeared, turning into simple normal stone. She knew that the same had most likely happened to the one behind her, but she didn’t dare look away.

As her heart started to wildly beat in her chest, threatening to burst out of it she silently raised her gaze towards the young man in front of her, a nervous smile forming on her own lips. At the same time, he mimicked her movements and the pair is locked into acting as a mirror for the other.

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“This has to be a joke, right?”, He remarked and, despite being well in the early twenties, his voice still cracked.

“Yeah.”, Avelina’s wasn’t much more firm.

For a moment they both stood there, the well dressed young man with an empty look in her eyes and Avelina with white knuckles and trembling arms. They both knew that they most likely wouldn’t have a choice. This system hadn’t ever not simply done as it pleased, still, as normal human beings, they both were apprehensive.

That is how the time passed. One minute. Two minutes. Five minutes. Fifteen minutes. The pair stood there, strained breathing underneath a fake sun, frozen in time. After all, while a person might be able to kill someone if they were pushed to it, actually trying to kill another person who hadn’t even attacked yet wasn’t something they had the stomach for and neither wanted to let go of a little bit of their humanity yet.

“The name is Adrian, Adrian Hopkins.”, His voice had gotten more solemn.

“Avelina Louisa Croy. I know-,” A strained smile formed on her lips, “It is a mouthful isn’t it?”

“You can say that.”, He replied, trying to sound as jovial as possible and failing, “I’m a sort of manager for now, at Alpha Safe, it is an accounting firm-”

Before he could finish his sentence, Avelina opened her mouth and this time replied on a somewhat more genuine tone, a hint of amusement in her tone, “Dirty windows on the sixth floor?”

“That is the one.”, He replied with a raised eyebrow, “I take it you heard of us?”

“Not quite. I’m a medical student. I pass by your building on my way to get something to eat on, well, Thursdays-”, a helpless shrug broke up her words, “The windows are really obvious you know?”

“Yeah.”, He awkwardly scratched the back of his head, “They say that the cleaning lady from that floor, Lisa, has an affair going on with the big boss and can skimp out on a lot of work. Whenever it gets too dirty he just tells one of the other cleaners to fix it... “

“Ouch.”, Avelina’s impressive verbal skills once more came out, “Sounds like a bit of a sleazebag.”

“Yeah-”, his smile fell, “He kinda is.”

It was clear to Avelina that she had stepped on a landmine. She didn’t know what had gone on between this guy and his boss, but she could normally make a few educated guesses. Still, with the way her head was pounding and begging her for some sleep it failed to actually think of something that she could say to such a telling response.

“You know.”, She finally spoke up, “We are going to have to do this, don’t we?”

The forced smile on the manager’s lips cracked as he averted his gaze. She knew that he had been thinking about it, given that she had been thinking of the same thing during this entire conversation.

“Do you think it was a mistake-”, He finally spoke up as he walked over to the weapon’s rack, “Talking with each other I mean. I’d rather not, you know?”

“Actually see me as a person?”, She replied with a quivering smile, one mimicked by Adrian, as she moved to do the same. She grabbed a simple knife and stuffed it behind her belt before letting her hands hover over the weapons. She could see quite a few, but in the end, decided that she might as well go for the sword. The one that she could see that could only cut from one side seemed like a bigger surgical knife.

She knew that wasn’t how it worked, but she’d tell herself a hundred lies to calm her nerves even slightly.

The truth was she had honestly no idea what weapon was best in this situation. She could see axes, maces, swords, knives and dozens of different variations of all of them. The only things that were missing were any bigger weapons and shields. She wished Angela had been here if only to scold her about how stupid she was for picking the weapon that she had done and how one of the others was obviously the best one for dozens of different historical reasons.

Her body froze.

Angela.

After a few moments, she let out a hollow round of laughter. How stupid could she be? It was obvious that this entire thing was localized to the building that she had been standing in front of. This was proven by the fact that this guy in front of her worked in the same building. Some kind of cosmic fate or bad luck. The campus would be fine.

She nodded as she once more lied to herself.

“You know.”, She finally looked at him again. He had taken a proper knight’s sword and a second one. It was such a charming and strange sight that her sleep-deprived mind actually lost track of what was going on for a short moment.

“You don’t look half bad holding that.”, as the words left her lips she flinched, realizing what had slipped out of her mouth. “No, I’m sorry-”

For the first time since entering this place, she could hear genuine laughter. It was loud, obnoxious, but at the same time held something so beautiful that she hadn’t ever paid attention to until she had heard how brittle desperate laughter was in person. Adrian, after a few moments, opened his mouth and barely stopped himself from laughing further.

“Not the worst thing I could hear in a situation like this, you know?”, He added, “You aren’t half-bad yourself, although you are a bit of a midget aren’t you.”

“I’m 1 meter 64! I’m only a bit below average!”, she groaned, “You’re just a tall freak. What are you, almost two meters?”

“No, I wish.”, A grin formed on his lips, “I’m only one almost two meters.”

Silence returned to the fields for a short moment as they both tried to desperately push back what they both knew would have to happen. After a few moments he spoke up once more to break the silence and from the look in his eyes, she knew that he was afraid. Horribly so. She was just happy she didn’t know what kind of face she was making herself.

“What were you going to say.”, He finally said, knowing that would be the end of their conversation.

“I’m sorry, you know?”, the words finally left her lips as she raised her weapon.

“Yeah, me too.”, He replied, tone firm, one final time mimicking her actions.And she wished everything had gone white again.