Will
“Mongrel said it was my idea, did he?”
“Something like that,” Sam replied with a shrug. “That was a lie, then?”
They made their way past the not-so-photogenic mass grave of monsters, two chimps still toiling away to roll more inside. They were going to need a bigger pit soon.
“That was a lie,” Will confirmed with a terse nod.
“Are you angry with him?”
“A little.”
“How much is a little?”
“Enough that he’ll feel it tomorrow.”
“Just don’t go too hard on him.”
Will stopped abruptly, forcing Sam to do the same to avoid letting go of his hand. “Why the fuck not? He’s been making money off your blood and pain.”
“I wanted to do it, Will. I could have said no, but I didn’t. I’m happy it turned out this way. Mongrel is who he is—a little bit of a scumbag sometimes, sure, but not a bad guy.”
“Then you’ve got a lot more faith in him than he deserves.”
“He risked his life for me in the pit, when those people were trying to kill me. And he did it again, keeping this place safe from all those… things, when he could’ve turned and ran.”
Will shook his head, but saw no point in arguing. He suspected that there was nothing he could say that would crack Sam’s relentless optimism. “Whatever,” he sighed. “Go on. Tell me what happened.”
She'd already given him a rundown on how she'd allocated her level-up rewards since he'd last seen her. Two points each in Toughness and Strength at Level 3, a second rank in Shock Absorption at Level 4, and four points in Toughness at Level 5. All in all, he had no complaints, aside from her rather unfortunate digression into Dental Enhancement at Level 6.
“Right,” Sam replied, and tugged him along as they reached the edge of the village and began looping back around its western slope. “So at first it was supposed to be just one fight, but then Mongrel got talked into the whole tournament thing by this guy called Golden Boy. Do you know about him?”
Will nodded. “I do.” He’d heard a fair bit about the promoter through the rumor mill—none of it good.
“Gotcha. So then Mongrel went to a brothel for the night, and I got shacked up with this, uh, lady of the night named Serene. I wasn’t too stoked about it at first, but eventually we got to talking and I found out she’s actually really nice. She helped me out a bunch, but I ended up losing track of her at some point. I hope she’s doing all right. I think she took it pretty hard when Ratcatcher died.”
“Who’s Ratcatcher?”
“Oh, he was another fighter in the tournament. Bro, he was so amazing! He’d been doing these pit fights for years but had never won a single match, and he joined the tournament to basically force himself to go all out and win at least once.”
Her face lit up as she spoke, and she was gesturing wildly with her free hand, almost catching Will in the face more than once. Will found himself smiling along with her. Another man might have been jealous at hearing his woman speak of another man with such obvious admiration, but he knew that there was no need. Somehow, he knew that no one could ever take his place at her side.
“I take it he lost in the end?” Will asked, closely studying the side of her battered face, finding himself more than a little tempted to kiss her after what felt like a great abstinence.
Sam shook her head at his question. “I don’t see it that way at all. Let me tell you the whole story, though. He won his first round against this Laborer called Skullcrusher. Skullcrusher was way bigger and stronger and everything, but Ratcatcher had this whole strategy for how to beat him. I guess his day job as an actual rat catcher helped him with his ability to think up traps and stuff, because he eventually got Skullcrusher stuck to the ground and choked him out by removing all the oxygen from the air around him using this skill called Tidy Up. There wasn’t one person who thought he would win—honestly, even I wasn’t so sure about his odds—but he showed ‘em all up. It was fucking spectacular.”
“Tidy Up, huh?” Will mused. He’d heard of the skill, but had never seen much need to dive into the mechanics of it. To immobilize your opponent, then remove all the oxygen from a section of the air by sucking it into another spot… He had to admit, that was pretty clever, if a bit roundabout to serve much purpose in an actual fight.
They came across Mongrel’s mule, who was grazing among the wildflowers and idly swishing her tail to shake off the insects buzzing around her. Sam jogged over to the animal and began to stroke her mane, getting an indifferent harrumph in return.
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“For the second match, he got paired up with Henke, the undefeated champion and the betting favorite,” Sam continued, still fretting over the mule; stroking her neck, scratching her behind the ears. “I think he did even better in that fight, to be honest with you. The champion had this special ring that—”
“I know about the Devil’s Eye,” Will cut in. Which meant that he also knew exactly how unlikely her upset against Henke the Hero had been. It was said that the great Marcille had forged that ring, and that Dickie Rich had paid one million glories for it. He wasn’t sure how much of that was true, but he knew its power had been the real deal.
“Right, well, Ratcatcher was able to turn the fire that the ring shot out against Henke, and landed some really nice shots on him. Then he used this thing called a valor surge, which was kind of like a big lightning strike if you twisted it sideways. He would’ve won off the back of that, but some idiots in the audience started throwing things at him, and he got hit with this bottle, and then…” She shrugged, and slowly let her arm fall limp. “He died. But I know he would’ve won if it wasn’t for that cheating at the end, so it would just be plain unfair to say that he lost. As far as I’m concerned, he came out of that tournament undefeated.”
“I guess that’s one way to look at it.”
“I think you would’ve liked him,” Sam said, turning toward him with a smile. “You’re both the thinky type.”
“I’m sure I would have. But that aside, as much as I’ve enjoyed hearing about all the friends you made along the way, why don’t you tell me about some of your own matches.”
“Oh. Well, they weren’t really that interesting. There was the Dental Enhancement guy, some sort of serial killer apparently, that I fought in the preliminaries. He gave me this.” She peeled back a bandage on her shoulder, revealing a near-perfect ring of tooth marks on her trapezius that was already beginning to scar over. “He tried to cheat by using a knife on me—there were a lot of cheaters in that tournament, actually, now that I think about it—but then I beat him up some, and that was that.
“In the first round there was this lady named, uh, I want to say Terry? I knocked her out with a front kick to the chin.
“Then there was this weird cultist guy named Jax who kept blinding me with the Illuminate skill and doing all sorts of annoying stuff. Then he used Power Word on me so I would get super mad—I guess he was trying to tire me out or something—but I got my hands on him and beat him up a bunch. I was so mad that I nearly beat him to death, though, so that was kinda scary.
“The third round was this dude named Holden who had a dog with him. That match never really got off the ground ‘cause he threw a bomb at me and got disqualified for cheating.”
“Sorry, a what?” Will asked. “A bomb?”
“Mmhmm.”
“I don’t know how he expected to get away with that one.”
“I dunno, man, but that’s what happened. It gets kinda blurry after that, but I know I fought Henke in the finals and won. Ratcatcher inspired me a lot, actually, because I was able to copy what he did and use one of those valor surges to beat the guy. I think I busted him up pretty good, but I can’t say I feel bad about it.”
Will had seen the very tail end of her match with Henke, so he already knew about the valor surge, but it was somehow still shocking to hear about it. At least hearing the part about her friend using it told him how she’d learned about it in the first place.
Of course, that left the question of how Ratcatcher had come across this information. He found it unlikely that the man had had the same passion as Will did for diving through old dusty tomes.
“Well, that’s pretty much it,” Sam said with a shrug as they moved on and let Zero return to grazing in peace, “I guess you’d know more than me about the part after that.”
“I do.”
“Like the reason why we’re out here in this weird-ass ghost town, maybe?”
He chuckled. “Yeah. I’ll explain everything in detail, but for right now, let’s just say that your big entrance in the city will have caused a bit of a stir, and there’s a good chance that Brimstone is on our asses. I’m going to try and find a way to salvage the situation, but we’ll need to do some strategizing when Mongrel gets back. I’m afraid it might get a bit dicey for a while.”
“That sounds ominous.”
“Yeah, well, it’s probably worse than it sounds, so.”
“Oh!” Sam said suddenly, brows shooting up. “I forgot! There’s one more important thing I need to tell you about.”
“What’s that?”
“There’s this guy called Bill—he’s a slave working on the cleaning crew in the pits. I promised I’d buy his freedom if I won the tournament.”
Will blinked, unimpressed. “How did this promise come about, exactly?”
“He helped me bury Ratcatcher after he died.”
“Sam, have you ever considered that there might be such a thing as being too friendly?”
“Nope.”
“Didn’t think so.”
“Anyway, now that I’ve got my own money, I’m gonna go back and make good on that promise as soon as I can. The prize money for winning the tournament was fifty thousand—that’s a lot, right? Golden Boy made it sound like a lot.”
Will smiled, and nodded reassuringly. “That’s a good chunk of change, yeah.”
“Does that mean I’m rich?”
“Sure, more or less. You could probably buy your own house with that money and have a bit left over.”
“But I don’t want my own house.”
“It was an illustrative example, Sam—I wasn’t getting ready to Message a realtor or anything.”
Sam gave a satisfied grunt. “Good, then. Because I meant that thing I said about sticking to you like a tumor. You’re not getting rid of me—like, ever.”
“I know that.” He chuckled, and tried not to let any of the bitterness he felt come through. He wasn’t looking forward to telling her that they would probably have to part ways again—very soon.
There were a lot of things he wasn’t looking forward to telling her.
But he’d put it off for as long as he possibly could, and now that her story was finished, she was looking at him expectantly to start his own.
Will sighed, working his tongue around in his mouth, chewing words he didn’t want to speak. “Right,” he said, forcing himself to begin. “I kind of lied, before. I’m not really an herbalist, or a healer, or whatever. I mean, I am that, but not only that.”
“I’d kind of figured as much,” Sam replied. “So what is it you really do?”
“I’m a hired killer, Sam. I kill people for money. That’s what I do.”
They stopped walking, and a long silence followed. He studied her face closely, trying to read every twitch of her features for some sign of what she was feeling.
“I’d kind of figured as much,” she repeated, not sounding particularly surprised.
The disappointment in her eyes cut him worse than any blade could have.