Will

Waking up was not a pleasant experience.

His head throbbed like mad, and he was cold all over; feverish. When he opened his dry, bleary eye a crack, he immediately wished he’d kept it shut as it was impaled by spears of impossibly bright light.

Blinking the light down to a somewhat manageable level, he found he was in an unfamiliar room, fresh sunshine washing in through open windows and ragged holes in the walls. The space was completely clear of furniture, just four walls and a ceiling, the only adornment being a moderately sized pile of horse feces sitting not far from where he lay.

Sitting up was a laborious, lengthy process that involved a lot of wincing and groaning and muffled swearing. Once he got some momentum behind him, though, and his mental faculties began to return, he was spurred on faster by a growing sense of urgency, staggering to his feet and catching himself against a wall, letting out a sharp yell at the jolt to his tender shoulder.

He’d been stripped out of his coat and shirt and put into a fresh tunic, unlaced at the neck. His weapons were nowhere in evidence; neither was Mongrel, or his chimps, or—most importantly—Sam.

Mongrel had said that she was safe, hadn’t he? Will seemed to remember a conversation like that before he’d passed out, but he wasn’t sure he trusted the integrity of his recollection too much at the moment.

Finding the front door, Will hurried outside into the warming mid-morning air, finding himself standing at the edge of Millstone village.

The place was a dump—more than it had been previously. A generous handful of the surrounding buildings had been stripped essentially down to their foundations, and the longhouse off on his right had completely collapsed in on itself.

Dark mounds of grinner corpses littered the place, the ground suffused with their viscous black blood, air heavy with the rank smell of them. He counted nineteen.

Mongrel must have had a hard time of it. In all honesty, he was more than a little surprised that the old bastard had held out against so many, especially with only two chimps to work with.

He’d only just started wandering aimlessly in search of Sam when he saw Number Two and Number Four come up the way and take hold of either end of a dead beast, intending to drag it off to a large open pit beyond the town's eastern edge that already contained a whole heap of grinners. Will was glad that Mongrel hadn’t decided to burn them—the smoke would draw the attention of monsters and humans alike, and attention was the last thing they needed at the moment.

“Hey!” Will called to the two chimps, approaching them at a stiff half-jog that set his skull pounding, begging him to stop. “Where’s Sam? Is she all right?”

Number Two dropped the rounded, human-like head of the grinner and signed back. ‘In the middle,’ he said, then pointed toward the center of town. ‘She okay. No worry.’

Will nodded, but he wouldn’t allow himself to relax until he made sure of her status for himself. “And Mongrel?” he asked.

‘Go fishing.’

“I see. Any more trouble from the grinners since I’ve been out?”

‘No. They run away, don’t come back.’

“Good.”

He took leave of the chimps and headed in the direction Number Two had indicated, running in spurts and slowing to a brisk walk whenever his body protested too much. He entered out onto what had once been the village green, now just an overgrown field of weeds, the stone well at its center nearly swallowed by the waist-high greenery.

Will felt an instant and immense surge of relief as he saw a familiar shape bobbing up and down. Sam was in a section of the green that had been cleared of grass, doing forceful push-ups with a gleefully shrieking Number Five riding on her back. She was stripped down to a light linen undershirt, heavily bandaged underneath, a light sheen of sweat coating the bare muscles of her shoulders.

“Sam!”

She shot to her feet almost instantly, spinning to catch the young ape in one arm with a dancer's grace and setting him down gently. Her face, battered and bruised and crusted with old blood, was split by a stupid grin.

Before he could say anything else, she was already wading through the grass at a quick, high-kneed clip, cutting the distance between them in a handful of seconds. Will braced himself to be tackled, gritting his teeth at the pain that was sure to follow, but the embrace she folded him in was surprisingly soft, her arms reaching around his waist and her hands gripping the back of his tunic.

Love this novel? Read it on Royal Road to ensure the author gets credit.

“Hey,” she murmured into his shirt.

“Hey,” Will replied.

“I missed you.”

“I can tell.”

Her grip hardened for a moment, and Will let out a stiff grunt at a flare of muscle ache in his stomach. “Asshole,” she said. “You’re supposed to say you missed me, too.”

“All right, I missed you a little.”

“Liar.” She looked up at him, eyebrow cocked. “I bet you were inconsolable without me.”

Will snorted, and disentangled himself from her hug before it inevitably turned into some kind of wrestling match. He wasn't sure he'd survive that. “I’d miss you more if you weren’t such a brat all the time.”

Number Five, still standing a ways off, waved to get Will’s attention and signed: ‘Dad say come get when you wake up. I go get now.’

Will nodded, and watched the little chimp trundle off before turning his attention back to Sam. He held her still by her elbows and gave her a long once-over. Some of her bandages were blood-spotted, but they looked fresh enough. There was no sickly-sweet smell of infection coming off her, just salty sweat. She made a disapproving grunt when he pried the lids of her right eye wide with two fingers, but otherwise suffered his examination without complaint.

“You seem to be recovering well,” he said with a reluctant nod of approval. “How’s your head?”

She clicked her tongue. “Hurts like a motherfucker.”

“I’d imagine. Any vomiting?”

“Nope.”

“Good. Vision impairment? Memory loss?”

“No and, uh, maybe? A lot of that last fight is a bit of a blur. I don’t really remember how I ended up here, either. Or where ‘here’ is, for that matter.”

“Did Mongrel explain it to you?”

“He said that was your job.”

Will sighed. “Of course he did.” He shrugged, shoulder sockets thumping with lingering skill fatigue. “Well, I’ll need to give your head a closer look at some point, but I’d say you’re healing nicely. I take it that means you got the second rank in Healing Factor like I asked?”

Sam frowned, freckled nose crinkling. “Huh? When’d you tell me that?”

“Oh. Then…”

“No, for Level 6 I got this thing called Dental Enhancement. Look!” She hooked a finger under her cheek and pulled it wide, revealing white, straight teeth with sharp, overlong canines on top and bottom. “My teeth got all busted in the finals, but I learned about Dental Enhancement earlier, so I knew just how to fix ‘em up again. Smart, huh?”

“Sam, that’s…” He shook his head slowly, rubbing at his bad eye. “If you’d taken that rank in Healing Factor, you could have gotten your teeth back anyway by pulling out the broken ones and waiting for new ones to come in.”

She snorted. “Whatever, dude. And anyway, it’s not like I took it just for the teeth. This guy I fought in the preliminaries of the tournament had it, and when I punched him in the jaw it was like hitting iron, so I reckon it’ll make my chin a lot stronger.”

“That’s great, Sam. Really great. I’m sure your super chin will be a big comfort when someone puts a spear through your gut.”

He found he wasn’t able to hold onto his annoyance for long, however. He had missed her, antics and stupidity included. Maybe especially that.

Since she hadn't put another rank in Healing Factor, that meant it was likely her sheer amount of Toughness that had saved her brain from going to mush. That, or simple dumb luck.

The latter had always been somewhat of a specialty of hers.

“What about you?” Sam asked. “You slept for a whole day. Mongrel said you must’ve been using a lot of skills before you came and got me that night.”

“I was,” Will admitted.

“Are you better now?”

“Halfway there, maybe. I’ll need another day or two before I’m back to full strength.”

“But you weren’t injured or anything?”

Will shook his head. “No.” Nothing that would show on the outside, anyway. His conscience was the only thing that had taken a beating.

“What were you doing, exactly?” She looked resigned as she asked the question, as though she already expected not to get a straight answer out of him.

That made his stomach twist up with guilt. “I reckon it’s time for us to have a bit of a talk,” he said, rubbing vigorously at the stitches of his bad eye. “I’ll explain everything that’s going on. I didn’t think you’d be ready just yet, but after everything that’s happened…” He trailed off.

Sam took his hand in both of hers, touch warm and soothing, and pulled it away from his face. “All right,” she said, sounding uncharacteristically serious. “I’d really appreciate that. Whatever it is you’ve got weighing you down, I want to help you carry it.”

Will chuckled. “It’s not the kind of heavy lifting that big biceps will help with.”

She returned an incredulous smirk. One newly elongated canine got caught on her lower lip, made her look even more like a big puppy than usual. “You lift with your legs, not your biceps, stupid.”

“Right. Silly me.”

Sam held onto his hand as he looked out over the ruined village, stepped closer until they were bumping shoulders. “So…” she said, trailing off as she waited for Will to elaborate.

“This stuff is kind of dark,” he explained; words sticky, hard to work past his lips. “Would you mind if we start with your half? I’m very interested in knowing what happened during this… tournament.” He wanted to know exactly how much of a beating Mongrel deserved.

“Sure!” Sam replied, smiling big, the brightness of her features not lessened in the slightest by the mess of battle damage covering its entirety. “I have so much to tell you, it’s crazy. It feels like it’s been ages since we talked, even though it was only a couple days ago. Actually, how many days has it been now?” She started counting on her fingers, brow knitting with concentration.

“Six,” Will said after a brief mental catalogue.

“Damn. But yeah, it feels way longer than that.”

“You were talking about the tournament.”

“Right! The tournament.”

“Start at the beginning, please. Give me the long version.”

“You got it!”

Hands clasped, they wandered aimlessly through Millstone as Sam began her deliberation of the past week’s events.