The Grimly Gladiator
Once Tiff’s board was sorted, Null went up to the third floor and entered room 324 after sliding her key into the lock. The sun had already set when she entered the room, and a thick blanket of darkness had encased her living space. While most rentals within Peregrine were small rooms that existed only as a temporary place of sleep, the fancier spaces within this particular building were complete with separate bedrooms as well as running water for personal convenience. It was a building that was owned by the Canes for the Canes, so the establishment was generally off limits to outsiders.
Ordinarily, Null would have wasted no time in sauntering over to bed due to her fatigue and passing out immediately. However, today was different. The sound of the crossbow had been replaying in her mind like a bad dream she couldn’t wake up from. Was it trauma or a premonition? She closed the door behind her, placed the key in her pocket, then strolled towards her kitchen area to the sound of the floorboards creaking under each step. This portion of the room was complete with an imported refrigerator, a fireplace, and a washing area. She glanced over at the dining table which she’d walked past, then opened the refrigerator.
That was when she saw the movement. With all the strength she could muster, she kicked off the ground, disrobing herself as she closed the distance between herself and the table she’d been glaring at. The sound of something whizzing past her left ear followed the sudden shot of pain. The sound of the floorboard underneath her feet had given her position away, but she managed to move her head to avoid a fatal blow thanks to her quick reflexes. Had the entire ear been blown off? She didn’t have the time to consider the possibility as she came down on the man beneath the table and slid her magic knife near his throat.
“… It can’t be.”
Null’s mouth hung open in shock, and that hesitation was all the man needed to knock the dagger out of her hand and scramble away. She couldn’t believe it. The man before her, who laid on his back and fumbled with his crossbow, was dead. She’d killed him herself. She recalled the cold sensation of sinking the blade into his chest at the Colosseum earlier. Even if there was another mage in the city who could potentially heal him, healing magic couldn’t revive the dead. The implications of his presence were enough to terrify her.
“I… I recognized you, heh… when you showed me your face… Remembered seeing you around here,” the bowman said, loading his crossbow and aiming at her once more.
“How…. are you alive?”
The man didn’t respond. He instead pressed down on the trigger and fired a bolt at her dumbfounded face. But once her expression changed, it was like the bolt had warped its trajectory in fear and avoided her face. She hadn’t even realized that she dodged the projectile. Before she knew it, she was already in front of him and had smashed the crossbow with her own hand, knocking it away.
“Wha-“
Before the bowman could even get another bolt from his sack for use as a potential melee weapon, Null knocked him down with a strong right to the jaw. His head ricocheted off the wooden floor, rocking his brain on the inside of his skull. Her fingers then coiled around his neck, firmly gripping the base as she applied every ounce of strength that she could muster out of her tired body into killing him. If a blade wouldn’t work, then she would just have to suffocate him.
“A-agh…ack…”
The bowman clawed at her grasp with all the strength that his own hands, which were slowly being deprived of oxygen, could muster. His wide, lifeless eyes beckoned her cold-hearted visage for reprieve as he eventually ran his hands along her rigid arm muscles, then her face, all in a futile attempt at shoving her from his body. His eyes quickly became bloodshot the longer Null maintained the grip, melting into the flesh around his neck as it slowly crumbled underneath her strength, until it eventually caused his arms to flop to the side.
“W-what the…?”
Rather than loosening her grip in relief now that the color had all but left his eyes, she found herself gripping his neck more firmly as a vague darkness coalesced around the two of them in the form of small tornados being vacuumed into his body. Their vague hiss as they swirled into the bowman had given Null cause for concern, but it only fed her conviction to kill him. If this was some kind of spell, then she needed to end him before he could get it off.
However, it was only once the last bit of life had left his body that the magic power’s purpose had finally been completed. The amalgamation erupted into an explosion of dark particles that had shoved her with an inhuman strength that the bowman probably wished he could have somehow concocted when he was fighting her off. Her back crashed against the wall of her room, and she smashed through the wood effortlessly.
Reflexively, she grabbed hold of an elongated piece of the destroyed wall near the floor level. The brunt of the force was slowly dissipating, and she found most of her body hanging below her floor, over an alley that was located behind her lodging. The hard dirt so far beneath her was like the grim reaper beckoning her to her demise, almost seeming to sing songs of her that relished in the death she had doomed so many of her opponents to. She was lucky that the magic had already dispersed, as a more continuous surge of the hurricane-force particles would grant her an expedited meeting with death.
In a bout of desperation, she pulled herself up by swinging one foot onto the floor and pushing herself up by relying on her lower body strength. The sight of her dagger before her face, which had apparently been blown over with her, instilled within her great comfort once she finally pulled her body over the edge.
When she recentered herself, the corpse of the man that Null had killed twice up to that point had vanished completely. She hadn’t clocked such a fact immediately however, as her mind was as empty as the Colosseum’s arena had been during her victory when she laid eyes upon the thing before her. Its large body hunched forward, slender tendrils sprouting out of its neck along with a low, crunchy growl that escaped the toothy orifice at the center of that chaos that was its face. The creature partially masked itself in remnants of the dark particles, twisting and turning its head slowly as if in search of something.
Unauthorized usage: this narrative is on Amazon without the author's consent. Report any sightings.
There was an intuitive recognition building up inside of Null once she had gazed upon the creature. That is, without Tommy, she stood no chance of defeating that thing. The level of self-loathing that had consumed her for leaving her trusted blade at the colosseum during such a crucial time was orders of magnitude higher than anything she’d ever faced after losing a fight.
Would the small blade be enough to defeat it? The thick, white hair around its abdomen was reminiscent of the fur she wore around her neck. And if it were comprised of the same material, then most of its vitals were completely protected from sharp blows like the blade. The only possible avenue for landing a killing blow instantly would be to strike at its neck.
She eyed the creature that still appeared to be distraught by its surroundings, unperturbed by her presence in the room. It hadn’t noticed her, she realized. There weren’t anything resembling eyes attached to its face. Was it blind? In that case, landing the blow might have been easier than she expected. Null held her breath then took a single step forward.
However, she realized instantly that her first move had already been a mistake. She found herself leaping to her left. The creak of the floorboard had given her away, and a surge of wind had come barreling in her direction. The creature had already ran up to her and reached out with its extended palm to swipe at her. The gladiator’s heart leapt out of her chest. Her reflexes had saved her. That the creature was capable of moving at such blinding speeds had caught her completely off guard. Having narrowly dodged the blow, she gripped the Circuit Breaker she picked off the ground and sliced at its fingers.
It hissed as a blue liquid spurted from the small cuts that appeared in its red skin. Once she landed, she tossed a nearby chair over into the center of the room. The creature, which had whipped its head in her direction initially, followed the sound and thrusted its pointed tail at the chair and crushed it instantly. She glanced at its body in frustration. Despite the fact that she had, in fact, cut the creature open using her blade, if the flesh was that tough, then damaging it through the hairs would be impossible.
However, when she glanced down at her blade, whose amethyst hilt had been glowing, she came to another realization. The creature’s body contained magic. Perhaps that was why the blade hadn’t sliced through its fingers clean. Was that blue mucus some sort of magical secretion that made it immune to slices? If that were the case, then the dagger truly was her only hope at dealing damage. She would need to stick the creature at its neck until it was no longer capable of producing that liquid. Perhaps if Tiff were here, she could have him cast an enhancement spell on the blade and that might help to tear through it.
As she started to ponder her next move, glaring at the confused creature, a couple of knocks came from the other side of her door.
“Hey, keep it down in there! We’re trying to sleep!”
“Shit-“
There was no time to think. She followed behind the monstrous dash of that large creature as its strides cleared the entire room in two steps. Before she could even make it halfway, it punctured the door with its tail. She couldn’t get there in time. The sound of death in the form of a blood-curdling scream had already reverberated from the other side. A member of the Cane family was now dead.
There was no time for regret. Null had used the distraction to close in on the beast, deciding to clear the rest of the distance by leaping at its neck in order to avoid the noisy floors. The creature’s tail was preoccupied, as it had pierced both the door and the man, so with her arm lifted above her head, blade in hand, she felt confident due to its lack of sight that the offensive would hit its mark.
But that was only until the creature had caught her in its grasp out of midair. Its large fingers wrapped around her abdomen; her left arm contorting within its fingers as it tilted its head to face her.
“Urghh…”
She felt her body contorting under the creature’s strength. It was becoming difficult to breathe. She felt her lungs being squeezed on the inside of her chest. Her shoulder was slowly being dislocated due to the awkward position it had caught her at, but she bit her lip. She couldn’t make a sound. No matter how small it was, there was still a chance that it would let go if it thought she was dead. Though her battle-hardened mind had convinced her of such, her body wouldn’t stop squirming due to the pain. The flappy, thick tentacles on its face unfurled, unveiling the pointed teeth of a carnivore.
It was entirely possible that she might have been able to escape the creature if she’d plunged her knife down onto its hand. The issue is, her body was slowly being destroyed by the creature’s tremendous grip, and she had no faith in her ability to escape anymore. Having it merely let go of her for a few seconds wouldn’t be enough. She would certainly die regardless.
That’s why she allowed the creature to draw her in with its head, and used the moment to thrust her magic blade so far down past those bladed teeth and into the walls of its trachea that it would be impossible for it to remove it on its own.
An eardrum-shattering hiss filled the room as she fell to the ground. The creature’s teeth grazed her arms, cutting them open on the way out and causing blood to come trickling out. She gasped for air with wide eyes, barely escaping the same fate of the man she’d strangled just moments earlier. Her left shoulder and her hips were dislocated, and her ribs were broken. She was beyond medicine. The reality that this room would be her grave was becoming increasingly impossible to ignore.
But in spite of the hopelessness, in spite of the terror and the pain and regret and the weight of all of the Cane family weighing heavily onto her, she never made a sound. To yell would draw the creature’s attention back to her, and would absolutely result in certain death, something she refused to accept. She was strong, and the strong got to live.
Gritting her teeth then using her bleeding arm as a boat’s paddle, she slowly pulled herself over to the hole in the wall. The creature had been flailing around, crashing into the walls and furniture, dragging the dead man along with its tail, but Null hadn’t bothered to look back. She had one goal, and it was to escape.
After about a minute of fighting with her fading consciousness and her useless body, she finally arrived near the edge. There was someone looking up at her next a large, wheeled trash container filled with what looked like it would make a nice cushion should she decide to jump. It wouldn’t catch her if she fell from her current position, however, but that was just a gamble she’d have to take. This was because, after turning back to the sound of the creature’s hissing that had produced so much wind force that the debris of the shattered wood was being scattered around, she realized that it might have been possible for that thing to dislodge the blade in its throat if it continued exhaling.
“I’m jumping down! Catch me!”
The man beneath her tilted his head, then panicked frantically as he noticed her dragging her body slowly over the edge. Would he really get it? She wondered. She would have explained it to him if it weren’t for the fact that she was desperate for oxygen as is, as her lungs were still in disarray from the creature’s grip. She paused for a second to steady her breathing, recognizing that this next moment might be her last. Reflexively, she turned back to the sound of the blade splattering down onto the wooden floor. There was no longer any time.
She pushed herself off the third floor.
---
“Null?! Null?!”
A powerful musk overwhelmed her senses. When she opened her eyes, she found herself staring up at Tiff. That’s strange, she thought. Wasn’t he supposed to be in bed? Why was he walking through an alley in the middle of the night?
“Are you okay?! What’s going on up there? Why did you jump down?!”
However, when she saw the creature looming over from the room, she immediately let go of the questions.
“Tiff… monster… sound….”
“Null? What are you talking about? What monster?”
She slowly raised her right arm, pointing at the creature whose head was now pointed their way
“W-what the hell is that thing?!”
“It’s… blind… use… illus…”
With only the strength to let that much escape her lips, Null’s consciousness faded once more.