Sam
Sam wrapped her wrists and hands in bandages, humming to herself, and once finished repeated the process with her feet, wrapping ankles and foot arches.
On her left was a man with a dog—were dogs really allowed in here?—and on her right was a huge man with a bull neck who was staring holes into the side of her face with a look of unrestrained tomfuckery.
A small group of Golden Boy’s people cut through the bustle in the pit, checking over the fighters to make sure they cleared ‘regulations’, such as they were.
Golden Boy himself soared overhead—a tiny, graceful, and extremely noisy angel. “LADIES AND GENTLEMEN,” he cried. “ALLOW ME, YOUR HUMBLE HOST, TO DESCRIBE THE RULES OF THIS SPECTACLE.
“FIGHTERS ARE NOT ALLOWED TO USE ARMS OR ARMOR OF ANY KIND, WHETHER SOULBOUND OR OTHERWISE. THEY ARE NOT ALLOWED TO WEAR CLOTHING OR ACCESSORIES THAT COVER ANY PART OF THEIR SHEET. THEY ARE NOT ALLOWED TO LEAVE THE RING FOR ANY REASON WHILE A MATCH IS ONGOING. FIGHTERS ARE NOT ALLOWED TO INTERFERE WITH EACH OTHER BETWEEN MATCHES. FAMILIARS ARE ALLOWED AT A MAXIMUM OF ONE PER FIGHTER. VIOLATION OF THESE RULES WILL RESULT IN IMMEDIATE DISQUALIFICATION AND DISMISSAL FROM THE SHEERHOME PIT FIGHTING LEAGUE.
“ASIDE FROM THAT, EVERYTHING IS LEGAL. THEY CAN SMASH, THEY CAN CLAW, THEY CAN BITE, THEY CAN DEMOLISH; ANYTHING THEIR PRECIOUS LITTLE HEARTS CONCEIEVE OF. UNLESS THE HORN SOUNDS, A FIGHTER HAS NO OBLIGATION TO STOP IF THEIR OPPONENT FORFEITS.
“THESE PRELIMINARIES WILL RUN UNTIL SIXTEEN FIGHTERS ARE LEFT STANDING, WITH ALL OTHERS DEAD OR INCAPACITATED.
“NOW THAT ALL THE BORING STUFF IS OUT OF THE WAY, WITHOUT FURTHER ADOOO…” Golden Boy threw up his hands, and a huge glassy cube appeared in the air high above the ring, about ten feet to a side, each face displaying a remote image of Hell-1 for anyone not standing directly ringside or occupying one of the rickety bleachers. It appeared to be cast from the spherical tip of his scepter, which had dislodged itself from the base and was zipping around the arena to capture various angles.
“LET US BEGIN!!!”
Distantly, a horn honked out a long, tremulous cry.
There was an immediate scramble of activity as sixty-three men flew upon each other.
Sam was not surprised when a brick of a fist came at her from the right, attached to the bull-necked man. She caught the offender by the wrist and launched herself up in a flying armbar as she kicked off the big man’s upper thigh. Coming down inverted, her limbs all wrapped around the man’s beefy limb, she pried with all her strength.
The man roared and batted at her shoulders, but she clung on. His blows hurt, but he had poor leverage with her so close up. It wasn't any worse than what the chimps had been hitting her with. She kept pulling, and only let up when she heard a satisfying pop. She fell free and allowed the man to stagger away, his arm dangling uselessly from its dislocated shoulder socket.
She rolled deftly to her feet in a low crouch. The big man was still flailing around on one knee, trying to get back up. Before she could firmly disabuse him of that notion, a shaggy dog—the one she had seen earlier—came leaping over her head, thudding into the man and knocking them both to the sand. A moment later, Sam saw a spurt of blood as sharp teeth found a man’s throat. A brief cry pierced the din, then the man did not make another sound.
Sliding upright, Sam took two steps back to keep both the dog and its owner in her view at once. But the man—an Explorer, going by the spyglass symbol on his arm—took one look at Sam, then whistled sharply to his dog, the bloody-mouthed familiar trotting faithfully after its master into the crush of fighters.
She had no real desire to chase after him.
Sam only got a few heartbeats of calm, however, before the next opponent presented himself, charging at her like a madman. His movements were sloppy, amateurish, so she forewent caution and met his approach with a firm straight kick that caught him center mass and folded him in half with a wide-eyed gasp. The man crumpled in a heap, and she stepped over him to advance toward the next.
There was no use bringing strategy into this kind of chaos—she just blocked or dodged when she perceived an attack coming at her and struck when she saw an unprotected body part.
Then, suddenly, Sam felt a flare of pain in her side and leapt clear, touching a long, bleeding gash running along her obliques. How…?
An unassuming, smiling man faced her down, hands clasped before him as though he were waiting in line at the bank.
It was Raider, that serial killer Serene had warned her about.
The coiling serpent on his Profession symbol marked him as a Physician. Had he used a skill on her, somehow? Was that how he had wounded her like that? All five of his AP crystals were still glowing, though.
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“I will not take any pleasure in this,” Raider said with entirely too much glee in his voice. “If you would only stay still, I promise I can make it quick and painless. The more you struggle, the worse it will be for you.”
“You’re kind of a sick puppy, aren’t you?” Sam grunted, taking her hand off her side; palm stained red. She closed her fists in a long guard. “I’m sorry to say, friend, but I’m not just going to sit nice while you murder me.”
“That’s such a shame. You are too beautiful to die with a look of pain on your face.”
“Agreed. I think I’d prefer the look of satisfaction I’ll have after I kick your ass.”
The little man’s face fell, becoming tight with displeasure. “Such an ill-mannered—”
He only barely managed to jerk back before her leaping punch would have caught him between the eyes, and she laughed as he went tumbling over the back of someone lying face-first in the sand.
Raider came up red-faced and furious. When a man came at him from the side, his hand quickly darted out with a flash of something metal, and the other man staggered past him, vainly trying to stop the blood pumping from his slit throat with fumbling fingers.
He's using a weapon, Sam realized. Raider came toward her again, a cold fury in his narrowed eyes. But try as she might, she could not see anything in his unclenched hands now, and his sleeves ended just below the shoulders, meaning he could not be hiding anything there.
“You’re cheating, aren’t you?” Sam called to him. “You’re using a weapon.”
“Prove it,” Raider replied with an insufferable smirk.
Not wanting to end up on the back foot, Sam launched into another, more conservative attack. He was ready for her this time, and slipped easily out of range of her punches. Abruptly stopping dead on his heel, he retaliated with a swipe of his own. She jerked back, but still felt a hot streak bloom across her chest, and looked down to see that he had scored her just below the collarbone. Whatever weapon he was using, it had to be deadly sharp to pierce her Stoneskin thingy.
“You’re really pushing me here,” Raider mused mournfully. “It’s not very nice.”
Sam grinned, ignoring the pain. “I’m sorry for being an inconvenience.”
Raider shrugged, letting his arm drop. “Well, no matter. That just means I don’t have to feel guilty over what I’m going to do to you.”
He went on the offensive, and Sam weaved around a quick flurry of strikes and swipes. Since he could seemingly bring out his concealed weapon instantly as soon as he connected, that meant she had to treat each one of his attacks as though it were made with deadly force. She had to devote most of her energy toward defense, with no opportunity to safely retaliate.
They came together, and she tried to hook his leg, but he stepped over her foot and followed up with a quick jab that she was just barely able to duck under. She wasn’t able to close the distance into her favored ground-game either, since that was just giving him a clear opportunity to stick her with something sharp. She had to stick to striking, an area she was weaker in.
Sam weaved around a trio of men fighting furiously in her peripheral, and kicked a spray of sand in the killer’s face when he tried to close the distance. It succeeded in momentarily distracting him, and she should have had him then, but a stray elbow from a fighter not even looking her way caught the side of her head and sent her staggering, fireworks exploding across her vision.
Still trying to regain her balance, Sam caught a glint of metal and instinctively threw up her arms in an X. A knife buried itself in her left forearm, slicing through muscle fibers, and she growled through gritted teeth.
Did he just throw his knife? But he couldn’t have! If he had, there’s no way it would have had enough power to go in that deep.
Before she could extract it herself, the knife vanished into thin air, leaving only the trickling stab wound behind. She looked up and found Raider already bearing down on top of her, kept her scrambling.
“Why won’t you die already?” the killer snarled between heavy breaths, barely audible over Golden Boy’s screeching commentary.
Can’t let this fight drag on. I have to finish it quickly before he can damage me even more.
Deciding that she wasn’t going to play defense anymore, Sam waited for an opening and extended her arms to catch the killer’s arm as he went for a punch. But the man did not try for the knife at all. As soon as she lowered her guard, the little man hurled himself on top of her, crazed, his jaws split wide in a serpentine gape.
Only an instinctive sideways jerk stopped the man’s teeth from sinking into her neck. Instead, they found her right trapezius, and she cried out as she felt a meal being made of her flesh.
No man should have been able to bite that hard. She especially would not have expected it of a man like Raider, who had an obvious lack of any points in Strength. And yet, there he was, grinding his teeth into her shoulder and noisily slurping up her blood.
Once the momentary shock wore off, Sam dropped forward to send both of them to the ground, Raider on the bottom. He grunted when his back hit the sand, her entire weight bearing down on him. His bite grip loosened momentarily, which was all Sam needed to tear free.
“You—” Raider hissed, the entire lower half of his face and collar of his shirt stained with her blood.
Sam’s full-strength punch caught him on the jaw. It should have had more than enough power for a knockout, but it was her hand that came away hurting. Not wanting to waste a moment wondering why this man had such an iron chin and give him an opportunity to recover, she immediately hoisted herself off him with her hips and free hand, then put her full weight into a vertical elbow. It struck him square in the face, driving his head back into the ground, and crushed his nose flat. The man’s eyes crossed over, and she left him to his incoherent, drunken mumbling as she staggered back to her feet, a hand to the hot, thumping bite wound on her shoulder.
“Motherfucker,” Sam muttered. So much for avoiding damage in the preliminaries.
She had not really collected herself for another fight when, a few moments later, a woman paired off against her. Sam raised her guard, one fist thumping after her encounter with the killer's unnaturally durable jaw.
Before either one could take a step toward the other, the left side of the woman’s abdomen was blown out her front, and a spray of blood and gore and bits of broken rib fanned out on the sand. The woman fell unconscious from shock before she’d even processed what happened, and fell flat on her face in a splattering of her own guts.
A man stood where she had been, lead hand smoking. Bouncing lightly, his handsome face wore a confident smile. His name was Henke, she remembered. The winner of the previous tournament.
“I like the way you move,” the man said. “Wanna team up?”