Mongrel

When Sam impacted the earth, one final flash blanketed the whole area, making Mongrel put an arm up over his face. A moment later he felt a great weight slam into him, and looked up to find a tidal wave of sand washing down over him and everyone else. Some unlucky audience members were knocked clean off their feet, nearly drowning in the stuff, while others were left stumbling and coughing and spluttering.

Mongrel struggled to find his balance in the calf-high layer that was trapping his legs. He pulled them free one at a time, losing a boot in the process, and cursed profusely while jumping on one leg, pouring the sand out of the thing before sticking it back where it belonged.

Once the dust settled a bit, Mongrel scrambled to the edge of the ring, leaning on the railing to see the aftermath. Nyx had not been affected one bit by the deluge, looking unruffled and calm beside him.

The floor of the pit had been swept down to bare stone, only a few drifts of sand left here and there. Sam stood tall on the back of her fallen opponent, stray sparks bouncing off her. She was an absolute bloody mess, half her clothes blasted off, but she still looked like a victorious conqueror, powerful and invulnerable.

She was saying something, but Mongrel was too far away to hear. The capture orb must have been swept away, because it was nowhere to be seen, and there was no amplification to make her voice carry.

She hopped off Henke’s back, took one jaunty step. Then the horn announced her victory, and a shudder went through her body. She fell like all the bones had been magicked out of her body, drained in an instant of all that seemingly endless strength.

The whole audience was quiet aside from some low grunts of people getting back up, and the shuffle of feet as folk flocked to the railing.

Mongrel tried to process everything that had happened in the last thirty seconds, and found it difficult to reconcile with reality. But it had happened. She had won. Some-fucking-how.

And Mongrel suddenly found himself a very, very rich man.

He tamped down the urge to laugh, not wanting to jinx it.

Voices picked up among the gathered spectators, and soon there was a roar of activity. There were a surprising number of cheers amid the chaos—or maybe not so surprising. Mongrel doubted that there had ever been such a spectacular finish to a five-under pit fight in the history of the sport.

The unhappy ones, however, were really unhappy.

There were definitely a lot of people in that crowd who were down a good chunk of cash with Sam coming out the winner, and they weren’t shy about making their displeasure known. Scattered fights were breaking out, most of them between disgruntled audience members, but in some places League security people were stepping in to pacify the worst of the malcontents with the business end of a cudgel.

Security was not doing a very good job at containing the situation. There were only a handful of them, compared to the dozens that were making a scene, hyping each other up and becoming angrier by the second. Some of them were actually hopping over the railing and into the pit.

Golden Boy looked helplessly on from his bird’s eye vantage point, unable to plead with his patrons without the aid of his capture orb. He had both hands to his shining cueball head, tiny white wings hanging sad and limp from his back.

I’m guessing they’re not looking to get the new champion’s autograph.

“Motherfucker,” Mongrel growled, gripping the wooden guardrail. “Era’s goddamn withered titties, why’s there always some bastard looking to shit in an honest man’s dinner?”

“A valid philosophical conundrum,” Nyx mused, “for another time. For now, maybe you ought to do something to ensure our dear Samantha’s safety.”

“I know that, demon!” Mongrel barked, slapping his hands against the railing. “I’m just… working myself up to it.”

“If you come back alive, I’ll give you a kiss for free.”

“On my cock?”

She snorted. “On the cheek.”

“On the mouth.”

“Fine. On the mouth.”

Mongrel smiled his most winsome smile, and whistled over the din to bring the boys to attention. He swung over the railing, turning back to face the pretty demoness with one hand hanging onto the guardrail and one leg dangling over the edge of the pit.

“A generous offer,” he said, “but I’ll have to decline. I’m a firm believer in not sticking my dick in crazy, and darling, you’re as twisted as they come. Still, it’s nice to know that the effect I have on women extends to demons, too.”

He winked, then let himself fall, a puzzled-looking Nyx quickly passing out of view. He landed in a graceful crouch, the boys dropping down on either side of them, and he charged ahead to reach Sam before the filthy zoo animals Sheerhome considered upstanding citizens did.

* * *

Sam

Sam found herself thinking that she might have played her role as a heel a little too well.

Half her vision was filled with gray stone, while the other half was filled with angry people running her way. She counted… ten. No, two more just jumped down. An even dozen, then. There was a sort of storybook symmetry in being able to say you were beaten black and blue by a dozen men.

Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.

People always told her that she was reckless and stupid and had the survival instincts of a lemming, but even she would have tucked tail and ran with odds like those. She would have loved to run away, only she was faced with the slight predicament of not being able to move a single muscle in her body.

In fact, she might as well have been an amputee from the neck down for all that she could feel it.

The men were getting closer, screaming obscenities and cursing her for all sorts of things. Oh. That one was holding a knife, wasn’t he? And so was that one. That one had a sword, even.

They weren’t going to beat her. They were going to murder her.

Oh. That makes this a lot less funny, then.

A furry shape leapt over her head, then another, and another, all knuckling past. On their vests were the numbers ‘2’, ‘4’, and ‘5’.

The chimps met the messy throng of oncoming aggressors, and a lot of leaping and snarling and shrieking and screaming and punching and wrestling and stabbing ensued.

There was still something furry in the very corner of her vision, so Sam turned her eyes up until they almost rolled back against her skull, found Number Three standing there, flipping a knife in one hand while pinching a cigarette to his broad mouth with the other.

“Appreciate… the help…” Sam managed to work out, the effort leaving a strong taste of blood on her tongue.

Number Three glanced her way, scoffed, and made a jerkoff gesture with his knife hand.

“Nice work out there, kid,” came Mongrel’s distinctly coarse, unattractive voice, and the man himself came clattering up on her other side a moment later, a rust-spotted sword resting on his shoulder. “We’ve got the rest.”

Which was encouraging to hear, except when she looked back to the three chimp brothers brawling with the group of men some twenty feet off, it didn’t look so much like the chimps were winning. The nice even dozen had suffered some falloff, several men lying moaning with bloody wounds, but three of the ones still standing had ganged up on poor little Number Five and were poking him full of holes while he screamed terribly. Number Two lay on his back, arms thrown wide, a knife handle sticking out of his neck. Number Four was surrounded by a slowly closing circle of men, his frantic jabbing with his knife not enough to keep them at bay.

“Well,” Mongrel said, scratching at his head, “time for Plan B, I guess.”

“What’s… that?” Sam asked.

“We run like hell.”

“Good plan…”

As they were finishing up with the chimps, a few of the attackers broke clear of their group and came for Sam, steel in their hands and murder in their eyes.

Number Three charged ahead to deal with the first, expelling a fearsome war cry and swinging his knife arm in circles over his head.

At the sight of the other two rounding the chimp to continue toward their real target, Mongrel reluctantly lowered his sword into an awkward sort of guard stance. He gave a disgusted croak and hawked a gob of saliva on the ground, as though the very thought of having to actually fight for himself put a bad taste in his mouth.

“What happened… to running?” Sam asked.

“We’re onto Plan C now, kid. Keep up, will you?” He glanced over at her, then back at the two men coming his way. “Plan C is we murder them before they murder us. Actually, you don’t think you could get off your ass and help, do you?”

Sam gave a tired chuckle.

“Yeah, thought not.”

Mongrel angled his weapon at the faster of the two men, striking a bow-legged en garde posture. He never actually got to cross swords with his opponent, however. There was a brief flicker of movement, then the man’s open, roaring mouth went into a surprised O as he slid into two pieces, bisected at the waist. Wet, pink guts spilled out of both ends as they flopped onto the dirt.

In his place stood a man with a long, silvery blade held out to the side, its single edge dripping red.

Even from behind, Sam instantly knew who it was just from the taper of his back and his unkempt hair.

Will.

Her heart beat faster at the sight of him, and her deadened body even scraped together enough nerve activation to twitch a little. As soon as she saw him, she knew she was safe. Mongrel clearly felt the same, because he immediately tipped his sword back to let it rest on his shoulder.

Then Will looked back, and the relief she’d felt at seeing him turned all sour.

He looked… terrifying. Rain-soaked and tight-jawed, his chest heaving with huge, slow breaths like a wolf at the end of a long hunt. Dried blood spatter covered the front of him, and his grip on that strange sword was so tight it looked like his knuckles were about to pop.

The thing that disturbed her the most, though, was the look in his one thrown-wide eye. There was something indescribably dark behind that gaze, something that made her want to run away even more than the men literally out to kill her.

The second man slowed at the sight of his bifurcated comrade, but kept up a cautious advance, a long dagger in one hand, the other held wide for grappling. He was a Level 6 Builder, she noticed by his uncovered left forearm.

Will turned back to the man and approached him in a casual, plodding way. He had the reach advantage considering the absurd length of that sword he was wielding. Going by the dead gems on his arm he only had 2 AP left, along with a strange orange one sitting above the other crystals, but it didn't look as though the resource discrepancy between him and his opponent bothered him much. When the enemy was within striking distance, he aimed a lazy swing, as though swatting an insect.

The Builder dropped his dagger and caught Will's blade between his palms, stopping it only inches from his face. “Demolish!” he cried triumphantly.

For once, Sam knew enough about the whole skill thing to understand what the man was looking so smug about, and her own heart sank in anticipation of Will’s blade flying into shards.

But the blade did not shatter. It rattled a little in Will’s hand, but there was no visible damage; not even a crack.

On the other hand, all the self-assurance drained from the Builder’s face along with the color, leaving him slack-jawed and gray. Then he fell on his butt, and his mouth opened wide, and he began to scream, even though the sword had caused no injury to him that Sam could see.

He fumbled desperately for his fallen blade, caught it, arm shaking violently as he held it up toward Will.

With a dismissive flick of the wrist, Will’s silvered blade severed the offending arm at the elbow, cutting through bone and sinew and muscle like it was nothing. The severed limb flopped like a fish even after being cut off, fingers working spastically around the hilt of the dagger.

The man lay back and wailed, back arching, an obscene amount of blood pumping out of the remainder of his right arm.

Will paid him little mind, sidestepping the fountain of bodily fluids and proceeding toward the attackers that were left. Number Three passed him on his way back to his master, having dispatched his opponent without much trouble.

The six men that were left inside the pit looked as though they had thoroughly lost their appetite for violence, an attitude encouraged by the impossibly loud screams of the one-armed fellow.

Will halted some distance from them, the tip of his sword resting on the ground. “The show’s over,” he said. “Go home.”

He received no argument. One of the men turned and started running, and the rest promptly followed.

As soon as he saw that they were leaving, Will broke off any attempt at pursuit and returned to Sam instead, a hunch to his shoulders and a stiffness in his legs. He stopped on the way to clean his sword on an unsullied bit of the screaming man’s tunic, then slammed it back in its filigreed scabbard.

He bent to pick up the man’s lost arm, dropped it in his lap. “That belongs to you,” he said. “Don’t lose it.”

Sam’s stomach churned with all the death. Part of her wanted to be sick, but the rest of her couldn’t muster enough energy to care much. Things started going foggy on her, like she was fading in and out. One moment she was on the ground. Then she was… moving. In Will’s arms, she realized. Carrying her like a princess. For some reason, that made her want to giggle.

Feeling his arms around her, the rumble of his chest as he was speaking to Mongrel, everything was all right again. All the death, all the pain, it didn’t matter so much anymore.

She’d won, and Will was with her, and he was taking her someplace safe. That was all that mattered.

Finally, her eyes slid all the way shut, and she let the fog take her.