Okay… fuck this.

Seriously. Fuck this shit.

Whoever the fuck thought it’d be a good idea to stick him in this situation was a rampant fucking sadist who deserved more than anything to fucking die.

…oh yeah, Drathok.

What was he doing?

He’d teleported over to the fuckmassive, monstrous abomination and seemed to be layering his body within sheets of glowing red magic. Fun.

Meanwhile, monster seemed like it wasn’t sure whether it wanted to destroy the arena or try to consume the audience, and seemed content to settle for ‘both’. Wouldn’t be long until this whole place came down…

Markus needed to stop it.

Right?

He needed to…

God his head felt fuzzy. Determination and grit kinda got slammed into a brick wall when you witnessed the things Markus just had. He didn’t know what the hell to think.

Luckily, Randall and Serena seemed to be far enough away from the arena now that he didn’t have to worry about randomly being assaulted by godly magic…

But that meant Serena was gone too.

Were there other gods in the stands? Could they help? Would they?

Markus wasn’t sure. There was always the chance they’d all decided to conveniently miss out on this fight, knowing how dangerous Randall could be. Markus wasn’t sure if he was the most powerful of the gods that frequented this arena, but given that he was the main god of this region, and considering he was apparently the wealthiest, Markus figured it was probably the case…

Was he destined to be Randall’s toy until he broke? Maybe Serena would kill him… he could only hope so.

Screams broke his reverie. He was still dazed, but the gurgles and cries of the audience gave him focus on the present. He hated those people. He’d despised them from his first fight, wished ill upon them, wanted and hoped for the same fate to befall them as had befallen him over and over…

This didn’t feel cathartic in the slightest. Watching those spectators clamor and run and fight for their lives filled him with nothing resembling joy or satisfaction, and that was the difference between him and them.

But he didn’t feel beholden to them, either.

Markus was no hero. He’d been dragged here against his will. Forced to fight. To do terrible things that went against who he viewed himself as in order to survive.

Maybe that experience had changed him as a person. Maybe he was colder now. Maybe it didn’t matter how he viewed himself. Maybe he just was as he was, and as he’d always been.

The exit appeared to be open. Where it led, he didn’t know…

Drathok had engaged the monster. Lances of blood, electricity, and fire shot from his chest and skewered the creature, but it seemed to barely be affected by the attack. Drathok summoned swords of lightning around his body, coated them in flame, and launched each of them at the monster’s face, attempting to form a cage of blades around the creature and then puncture it from a thousand angles…

The monster bathed Drathok in fire as it was skewered. When its attack was deemed more or less ineffective, it launched down and attempted to chomp his head off.

Drathok dodged the bite, but the front of the monster’s armoured still smashed into his shoulder, sending him flying. His face was bloodied as he made to stand, his nose broken, blood leaking from his mouth.

Still he launched forward to attack the monster. He was hellbent on defending the arena, the patrons, his livelihood.

Whether he did it out of compassion for another or out of fear for his own job Markus didn’t know, but the truth of it was immaterial. Drathok was fighting for his life, and—singed as he was by a glowing mote of golden energy upon attempting to place his hand on the creature’s scales—he was clearly struggling.

Markus’ brain took precious seconds to process this. Drathok was… struggling. He, the demon who’d brought him here, who’d put him through endless torment, who’d seemed almost insurmountable in power to Markus ever since he arrived, ever since he first tried to raise his hand against him, who’d seemed almost comically futile to challenge even for all the apparent flaws in his designs if only for the sheer and insurmountable gap that laid between them.

Markus watched as the pair exchanged another set of blows. After the shit he’d just been through within his own mind, separation was easy. It was like watching a movie.

Drathok was injured. He didn’t have healing magic. He’d told Markus so himself. At the very least, he said he didn’t…

Markus’ theory was confirmed when Drathok reached into a portal he conjured right in front of himself and pulled out a red vial. Likely a healing potion of some kind. He downed the contents in a hurry, then reached in for yet another vial.

This one he ignited and hurled at the abomination.

The impact could be felt even fifteen feet away, but it barely staggered the creature even as the explosive vial blew up in the enemy’s face, even as the explosion burnt stubble from Markus’ face. Even as Drathok directed the shards of burning, molten glass into a ball and launched it right into the altok’s head, morphed as it was to the top of the draconic worm.

Such attacks did little to impede its motion, even to slow it down. Drathok moved with inhuman speed to dodge attacks, but when the worm toppled a pillar in the centre of the arena and it looked set to smash into and erase dozens, Drathok paused still and used his magic to redirect the falling stone, earning himself another hard strike in the process, dropping to one knee as he began to cast a white and orange barrier around himself.

Ember stirred nearby.

Markus could see his future laid ahead. There was a path for him. He could leave right now.

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It was such a crazy thought to even have. A prospect that never would’ve entered his mind before if only for how outlandish it was.

But right now, with the arena in such turmoil, with no one watching him, with Drathok so pressed to keep fighting this creature…

If Markus ran through the open hole and followed the tunnel it’d formed, would he find a barrier? He knew they existed to prevent those with contracts from escaping, but had such a barrier really been erected to go through a tunnel that hadn’t even existed moments before?

And that was without mentioning…

Markus felt his heart pulse upon the realisation; if Drathok died, he could go free. Drathok still held his contract… he’d said so himself.

And with everything that Markus had read about contracts…

He’d be stupid not to run. Staying here was a terrible idea. A death sentence. There was nothing to be gained from fighting and dying here.

Randall might find him if he ran. But he might not. He didn’t know everything. He didn’t know that Markus could break free from his Divine Arm’s power, that he could resist a Divine Virtue… if Markus decided to leave, there was a good chance he’d eventually be discovered, but there was the far more enticing possibility that Markus would be able to run further, to escape this region, to find a corner of Firrelia far from Randall’s clutches and start working on a way to get himself home…

He had things waiting for him at home, after all. Surely those things mattered.

Surely his own life mattered.

It wasn’t running away. He was running towards something.

That’s what he told himself.

“Hey,” Markus started, rubbing at Ember, attempting to rouse her.

“Hey. We’ve gotta go.”

Ember eventually pulled her way onto her feet. She was a little wobbly.

Markus pulled the red crystal out. “You wanna get inside? Maybe that’d be easier?”

Another smash. More screams. The stands were bathed in fire. Drathok launched himself twenty feet into the air, blasting lightning into the monster’s face, only to be slammed back down into the sand with a whipping headbutt.

He should stay down… he wasn’t going to kill it. He was exhausting everything and didn’t seem to be getting anywhere. Markus attempted to use [Identify] on the monster, but it was so far beyond what he’d seen previously that it didn’t even give a description. This thing was beyond power. It was abhorrent, a vicious twist away from nature’s law.

Still he fought on. Perhaps he felt he had to. Perhaps this was all that was left to him.

Markus still had a life to try and live. He shook the crystal before Ember, urging her to get inside.

“Come on… we need to go! Now!”

Ember ignored him for a while. She stared out at the ensuing fight. Took a step towards it.

“Ember!”

Her ears folded. She relented. She didn’t clamber inside the crystal, but instead took station beside Markus, waiting for his next move.

“Good dog...”

He patted her. He wasn’t fully cognisant. Too much of his mind was going towards pushing away the horrible sounds that rang out in the near distance.

He was so tired. He’d had to work through so much.

He deserved his freedom. He deserved his rest…

Markus got to his feet all the way, and began walking towards the exit, and then, before long, jogging.

Ember ran right beside him.

He heard another scream. The audience had likely started to trample one another at this point.

Markus forced himself not to look. No one was paying attention to him. He didn’t need to be privy to this. He didn’t need to worry about it. He wasn’t going to be here much longer, anyways. He’d find his way out of Sun City. Walk if he had to. Run. He just needed to get out. He needed to run. He couldn’t be here anymore…

Another clash of bodies right in his peripherals, and Markus winced as he saw Drathok get smashed into the ground once more.

He looked. He shouldn’t have. He couldn’t help it.

Drathok found his eyes.

He didn’t say anything. He coughed. Blood spewed from his mouth and ran down his chin.

Markus was already halfway to the exit. He was sure Drathok could see it.

He was sure Drathok could stop him if he really wanted to. He’d noticed him. He’d pushed himself back to his feet…

Still he didn’t say a word. His eyes were unreadable. Hard, focussed, but not filled with spite, nor hatred. Not that same anger Markus had seen from him before.

He summoned up yet another instrument from a portal, this one a long, curved blade, something between a scimitar and a sickle.

He turned away from Markus. Launched himself at the monster again. Slashed at its face, attempted to climb atop it and stab at the altok host.

Markus kept running. What was he meant to do? Drathok had just basically given him his fucking blessing, hadn’t he?! He hadn’t stopped him! The exit was right fucking there!

It was right there…

Markus stopped.

Why had he stopped?!

Why!

Because.

He knew why.

He shuddered.

He hated it.

But he knew why…

Drathok hadn’t stopped him because he had something more important to do.

It was more important.

Running was what Markus was convinced he wanted more than anything. What he’d fought for, what he’d hoped for, what he’d prayed for.

A chance to leave all of this bullshit behind and go somewhere that he wasn’t in constant threat or danger.

But his body knew.

He knew.

That wasn’t the kind of person he was. Or maybe it was. Maybe Markus had always been a coward. Maybe dying had been easier than doing the hard thing. Maybe living was so appealing to him now because it was the easier option. He’d never seemed to care that much about living until now, right?

Fucking asshole, why did you decide now to give a shit about your own life, huh? You never fucking cared before, did you?

Maybe it was easier for him to force himself through pain than it was to choose things he couldn’t control.

Maybe it was easier to pretend that there was nothing here for him. That he didn’t have a friend he wished to save. That there weren’t people dying in front of him, whether he cared for them or not. That this world didn’t need the Randalls that plagued it fucking exterminated.

That he wouldn’t be doing anything but being the very person he’d tried his whole life not to be if he didn’t fucking…

Fuck…

Markus turned.

Fuck.

Markus faced the monster.

Fu—

He watched as a door closed shut within his mind. A future forever lost.

He saw death.

He smiled.

He walked towards it, determined to kick its fucking teeth in.