Days passed in a haze. Maybe weeks. Peacock couldn’t tell anymore. The pattern remained the same as Nex woke him and Viseral, walked them to the mob-filled room, set increasingly out of reach goals, then poisoned them to near death before reviving them and leaving them to collapse back into their cages.
The mobs remained White Rabbits, which was just as well. Thanks to nearly dying every day, Peacock hadn’t kept a shred of experience. It didn’t make sense. Why train them but never let them get stronger? Nothing made sense anymore.
A slice of green meat appeared in front of his nose. Peacock didn’t react. What was the point? Maybe he could starve to death, although he’d have to die before Nex found and revived him.
“If you don’t eat, you’ll feel worse.”
Peacock flicked his eyes toward the once-empty cage to his right. In his current splayed position on the ground, he couldn’t see much more than a rosy-colored blur.
“Worse than what?” As far as he was concerned, worse described every minute anyway.
“Well, stat penalties aside, starving status means you get tired faster and feel more pain. Not fun.”
The absurdity of those words cleared some of the fog in Peacock’s head. He picked his head up and stared at the naïve new arrival. “Not fun? What precisely do you think will be fun in this place? Trust me, starving is the least of your problems, and is going to happen whether you like it or not.”
The juvenile, a light pink dragon with dark red points on their legs, face and tail, narrowed bright purple eyes at Peacock. “I kind of figured that. Doesn’t mean we make it easier for them to torture us. The whole point of this is to break us. You give up, they win.”
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Peacock coughed out a short, bitter laugh. “They win? They won when they killed the only ones who gave a damn about me in this messed-up world. Who the hell makes a world like this and thinks, yeah, this is fine. Where the hell are the admins?”
The pink dragon grimaced, flinching at Peacock’s words. “That’s fair.” They glanced toward the exit tunnel, then scooted as close as they could to Peacock, pressing their face against the bars of their cage. “Except, what if I told you Zenith Flight blocked the admins?” They growled. “They’re cheating, Peacock.”
A jolt of surprise ran through Peacock, and it wasn’t from the dragon’s revelation nor the sudden surge of stink as all the old meat switched to rotten. He jumped to his feet. “How do you know my name?”
The juvenile hesitated and backed up a step. “Oh… uh… I heard it from my parents before they were killed. You and your family were one of the first to get hit.”
Peacock stared, his eyes wandering over every part of his new roommate. Was there something that would tell him if it was Oncian, Cavua, or Arianrhod reborn? If there was, he couldn’t tell. He sighed and laid back down.
The rosy dragon’s face fell as they gave a weak smile.
“Whatever,” Peacock snapped. “If they are cheating, starving to death sounds even better, unless you know how to cheat, too.”
“You can’t starve to death… oh.” The juvenile’s voice shifted from confused to pitying. It made Peacock’s aching stomach sour. “You’re new, probably with closed data, huh? I’m so sorry. This is a terrible way to start a new life.”
If Peacock had the energy, he would have rolled his eyes hard enough to lose them. As it was, he just wanted the tiny escape of sleep.
“I’m new, too. Name’s Alainn. Came in as an admin’s daughter, so of course Dad made sure I got top tier. He’d have us all moved, and this server cleared if he knew what was going on.”
Peacock curled into a tight ball, willing Alainn to shut up as he awaited another day in hell.