The unnamed ran, pumping his arms and legs as he skirted around the edge of the arena, Darksteel Lia’s sword comically jutting out of his right hand at an odd angle and threatening to cut his legs and poke out his eyes with every step. Panicked and filled with the heightening effects of the shine, the unnamed spun around and prepared to defend himself, holding the oddly tilted sword in front of his body like a protective talisman.
She was on him before he’d fully turned around, her fist smashing into his face and driving him back. He hit the ground with a sickening thud that drove the breath from his lungs, dislodged the blade, and sent it sliding out of reach.
Blood poured from the unnamed’s mouth, and his head spun as he tried desperately to push himself up into a sitting position. Vision blurring, he tried to focus once more, catching sight of Lia as she bent down and picked up her sword.
She looked angry, like she was concocting some special kind of death for him. He managed to stand, woozy, but driven by fear and adrenaline as he turned and ran once more. Laughter swelled throughout the arena as he stumbled in an unintentional, drunken zigzag.
“Look at him run, folks. Our little rat has had his fun, but it looks like playtime is over!”
Lia cracked her fist against the handle of her sword and the goopy substance fell away like shards of broken pottery. The unnamed noticed that the last traces of the powder were also beginning to fall away from his hands, their miraculous sticking capacity lasting only around thirty seconds.
He turned around to look for Darksteel Lia, finding that she had vanished, no longer behind him but…
Searing pain cut through his back and shoulder, two separate cuts that sent him tumbling in a heap once again. He fell hard, his head thudding against the wooden barrier to his right. The warrior’s lethal blade swiped through the air where his head had been a moment earlier and he heard a grunt of frustration from the woman as she moved in for the kill.
“This truly is a miracle, folks. A rat with nine lives? Who ever heard of such a thing?!”
Lia was about to finish the unnamed when the ground thudded and Naleth came charging past, his feet digging into the sand as he was pushed backwards by the savage monster with its jaws wrapped around the troll’s arm. It was like an out-of-control freight train barreling between Lia and the unnamed, forcing her to back away as the fight played out.
The unnamed slumped to the ground, sudden pain in his back and shoulder screaming as he saw Lia’s twin cut down two prisoners a short way off by means of a series of expertly placed slashes that sent arcs of blood spraying into the air. The kills seemed to have been choreographed in such a way to produce as much blood as possible, as though Darksteel Liam was trying to simulate one of those Vegas casino fountains.
The unnamed looked around at the carnage, bleary-eyed and desperately clinging to consciousness. All but two of the prisoners lay dead or dying, the unnamed and one other, aside from Naleth. The other survivor was standing between the two Sword Dancers, cornered at the final moment of their savage dance, standing in stunned terror between the deadly pair.
The young woman’s robe was almost completely unsoiled, as if the twins had purposely left her to this point, so that they could be sure their final dance would be as dramatic as possible. The twins flicked their swords out to the side in unison. Blood sprayed left and right, arcing out onto the dirt like the wings of a bird to the clear delight of the roaring crowd.
At the apex of their performance, the warriors let fly a loud, percussive shout and thrust their blades into the neck and lower back of the young woman standing between them, holding the pose for a moment in some gruesome parody of a religious statue venerating martyrdom.
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The two figures leaned forward, still holding the dying woman between them, skewered by their blades. They kissed her face, each pressing their lips gently on one cheek. Then they pulled back with carefully choreographed grace and let out a second percussive shout as they withdrew their swords.
“Majestic! Simply breathtaking!” the announcer offered.
The pair stood silently. The unnamed watched the scene from his tilted perspective, his head slumped on the ground, body ravaged by pain, weariness, and the brutal sword wounds across his back and shoulder.
He turned to see Naleth holding his own against the monster clawing at his body. The brute was covered in blood and one arm hung limply at his side, but he still fought on, snarling with rage as he pummeled his enemy with one huge fist.
The unnamed blinked. Even that meager movement brought a sharp twinge of pain. He shifted focus back to the twin sword-bearers but found only the dead prisoners lying in the sand, blood pooling around their prone forms. He twisted his neck, bringing the Sword Dancers into focus. They were sauntering toward him, the female at the lead, her sword trailing her in the dirt as her male companion walked slowly after her.
The unnamed tried to stand, pushing against one hand, blood pouring down through his fingers as his muscles spasmed. He buckled under his own weight, unable to stand. The woman was almost on him, savoring this final kill, teasing it out for the benefit of the crowd and her companion.
“Here we are, folks. The final reckoning for our courageous rat. Give him a cheer, folks, for giving us such a great show. It’s not every day you see meat wrestle a sword out of the hands of such an accomplished Blade Dancer.”
A cheer went up as the unnamed tried desperately to think of some way out of his impending death. There had to be something he could do, some trick or last-minute ploy.
The male sword-bearer stopped twenty or so feet away, content to stare blankly ahead as his companion moved closer, lifting her blade and preparing to thrust it down into the unnamed’s bare neck.
As he sat hunched over himself, something in the stands above caught the unnamed’s attention, a flickering symbol illuminated by vivid crimson light. He stared in confusion, blinking to test the veracity of what he was seeing.
Was this a hallucination? Had he lost so much blood and been battered so hard that he was starting to imagine things?
There it was again, a bright symbol that came and went. It flickered as though someone was holding up a mirrored plate and turning it up and down so its surface glinted in the distance.
In that moment, the unnamed was taken by the strangest impulse, an unexplainable desire to replicate that symbol as quickly as possible. Before he could register that his hand was moving, he’d begun tracing a line in the dirt, marking out the flickering symbol with one shaking finger. He traced the lines, blood pouring down his hand and into the shallow channels his finger left behind. The symbol looked like a broken circle with a vertical line running down its center and the topmost sections leaning in a little like the top of a cartoon love heart. It reminded the unnamed of a lowercase version of the Greek letter phi but twisted at a slightly different angle.
When the mark was completed, the compulsion that drove him to write it vanished, leaving him weak and foggy. Something tugged at his heart, squeezing tightly as he fell to his back just as the female sword-bearer’s blade drove toward his throat.
The air thickened as she thrust downward. Then the sword slid to the side as it connected with a translucent barrier that cast a faint crimson light as it flared around the unnamed in a protective bubble.
He stared up at the woman’s face in confusion as she lifted her weapon and thrust it forward again. The blade was once more driven aside by the crimson barrier.
A holographic display popped into life above the unnamed, shimmering with bold golden letters.
CRIMSON WARD: LEVEL 1
A basic magical shield able to deflect basic melee and projectile attacks. A level 1 shield typically lasts for up to thirty seconds, so unless you’ve got another one up your sleeve, genius, it might be time to start running!
“WOW! Folks, I can honestly say I’ve never seen anything like this before! Who knew one of these meat sacks could actually do sorcery! Looks like a pretty sturdy shield too. Darksteel Lia is trying to carve that thing up like a turkey, but no luck so far!”
The unnamed felt his consciousness drift. He was only vaguely aware of the magic shield message hovering above his body as he closed his eyes, no longer able to keep them open. Blood still poured from his wounds, and judging by the sound of cursing above him, the woman was still trying to stick him with her sword like a shish kebab.
The noise began to fade as he lay in shadow. Confused, exhausted, and still racked with pain, the unnamed gave in to the darkness and let it swallow him whole.